========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 00:02:04 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Printers? In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 28 Feb 1998 08:57:29 -0800 from Bookcrafters did an excellent job on the festschrift for Honig - Glass of Green Tea. Is this list the place for namecalling without substantiation? Calling them "crooks"? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 00:20:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: smack / In the Cut MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > In terms of risk, a poem functions in our wider culture like an > unsolicited kiss. > > Tom B. > where does that leave Poetry In Motion? (the brief-snippets-of-poems-posted-on-the-subways/buses phenom that one finds in, I think, at this point, several big cities?)? -- speaking of which, said poems play a not insignificant role in the (as one may say) hip intellectual thriller, *In the Cut*, by Susanna Moore. The protagonist of said novel is, among else, a linguist living in the Village, studying the evanescent appearance of argot. uncle david says: check it out (if you can deal with the horrible homicides around which the tale turns) -- the closing lines of the book bring into focus (pathetically & well) the narrator's consideration of a few such Po in Mo lines from a Native American poem d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 00:48:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: floating moustache MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Where exactly lies the difference between writing in a "bachelor" ("studio") apartment, and writing in a mall, as far as writing method goes? I was going to use the word "private" to begin a usual way of describing where that difference might lie but it then occured to me: what can "private" mean if there isn't a viable "public" nomores? Isn't walking from apartment into mall walking from small *private* space with media in it into large *private* space with people and media in it? In a way, only that. But: "private" continues to have some *relative* merit as a site from which new disclosures are made, just as "public" can still be *thought* ... and, besides, am I not being empirically obtuse in refusing the distinction? Is there not instead, however, a useful distinction to be found between writing where-ever you are, and writing for pay where- ever you are (and then a further distinction within the latter)? This is what some on the list recently suggested to be the case with regards to poets in places other than their rooms. Once upon a time in the land of the late '80s Michael Dennis was an Ottawa poet without a job. (Ottawa... a small government town about the size of the postcard you can get from it declaring itself a country's capitol.) Michael Dennis used to sit at a cardtable in the window of a used bookstore on -- appropriately enough -- Bank Street, at a typewriter, writing at at at poems for his next chapbook. One poem I remember is about how his girlfriend kicked him out of their shared place because she smelled someone else on his moustache. Think of, not moustaches, soaked in rum & orange, & thighs, but rather, Michael's way of orienting himself in what you have to kind of fill-in to imagine as the commoditized social space of a gentrified block of small shops. Michael's social-space "orientation" is, I think, different from that Dan Davidson is purported to have brought to writing his incredible book, *Product*, in a mall. In contrast to Michael's, Dan's "orientation" would seem to be as a nonperformer anonymously assuming any seat in the mall, ethnography-style. There is a kind of immediate *symbolic* payback Michael gets from his orientation within social space -- and from the social space itself (and on its own terms) (and at his former girlfriend's expense), that Dan does not get from the way *he* "occupied" his social space. Dan takes on the social space of the mall as the very subject matter of his poem: subjectivity becomes an objectified labour mystified by the commodity form as that form especially pervades the mall environment. Whereas, occupying a window as a live mannequin that types, advertising one's life as the next attraction besides the store, seems to only make the commmodity form come more mysteriously to life in his own person. What, in other words, would one hope to achieve by being paid to "be a poet" in, say, a laundromat, or at NASA, as some have suggested on this list? -- Fans? -- A moustache? -- Proof that absurdist interstices exist achronically and that you have found one of them? Yet perhaps there *is* a role for the poet with personality to sell, now (that is, for poets way-way younger than Vozneshensky, and, moreover, way-way past the Cold War trip). But then compare "being a poet" working for NASA with "being a poet" working for a literacy project, or working as a poet in a car plant (as someone suggested), a school, prison, or community centre. Aren't they two different ideological orders of work? Isn't there (or can't one "say" this anymore) a different understanding of what language is as a medium, implicit behind each of these two orders of paid poets? *Is* there a difference, then, between Dan stepping outside of a domestic writing-space in order to self-reflexively address the rules themselves of social space such as they manifest themselves in a mall, and Michael simply using the rules of a space to elevate himself before a gaze of the abstract Buyer much as if he was standing before his bedroom mirror? What might a Return of the Living Beat Poet, post politics, mean? It remains the case for me that the performance of the social space of the mall ca. late-80s gets refracted -- very live -- in *Product*, but the performance of Michael's personal life in the shop window on Bank Street remains purely anecdotal, despite his chapbook. Michael's used store at least had poetry on the shelves -- which lead to some social ironies. Right opposite the used bookstore with the poet typing in the window was another bookstore. This other store sold new books and magazines of left, left-left, radical- left political persuasions. It was run as a cooperative. It barely had any poetry books. A novelist was employed there. Yet I was a good friend of the novelist's; whereas, I was only the vaguest acquaintance of the poet's. Yet I bought more books from the store with the poet in the window. Yet I have no fucking idea why I am writing this excruciatingly dull and long discursive and mechanical post anymore, and in such a turgid style too, stalely remembered, with probably overall misplaced determination -- I need air bad; whereas, *Capital* vol. 1 chapter 1 sits open to the left of my screen, like a window onto ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 22:53:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: dept stores & poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was going to say something brilliant but by the time I'd logged-in I forgot it. This must be the opposite of staircase wit. Imagine, finding oneself on-line on-List with no apparent purpose." Oops--sorry!" As though one had blundered upon others better organized, persons aware of just where their creds are at this point in the evening. All over the bed, like coats and scarves. I find Tom Beckett's advent upon us, miraculous. In the most everyday sense of that term. Like, the landscape altered. In a twitch of a lid. It had had to do with the application of poets. To getta job. Anyone who knows me, knows I would fit this role well. But noone who knows me is able to make me the offer. I wonder, how can one be a poet and meet the credentials for this kind of application of what one happens to be? Usually, when I gotta job, I hid the poetry part. The plane trees had been recently polled, beside Barclay's Bank of California. O, I remember what I wanted to say. George Bowering was looking good in the lingerie department, and he used to sprawl there and scribble away. But SFU with a 5-million-in-90-years contract, lured him away from Hudsons Bay Company. dmb3 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 23:37:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Printers? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I didn't call them crooks, Henry. Glass of Green Tea is ok, except that there's a lot of read-through because the paper is rather light, but the two samples they sent me were really appallingly bad printing. At 12:02 AM 3/1/98 EST, you wrote: >Bookcrafters did an excellent job on the festschrift for Honig - Glass >of Green Tea. Is this list the place for namecalling without substantiation? >Calling them "crooks"? - Henry Gould > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 23:45:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: dept stores and poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I must have misunderstood. I thought the poet-in-residence at a commercial concern would be a sort of poet laureate, expected to write occasional verse. "Ode to a C-cup," and the like. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 07:15:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Re: smack / In the Cut Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit It all sounds pretty compatible to me. Why not publish a poem on a sidewalk or bus? Think of Jenny Holzers early work. Incidentally, I like Susanna Moore's fiction. But particularly the Hawaiian novels. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 07:50:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Pocket Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii "I can't stick a desktop in my pocket." Tom Beckett Tom, If you've seen the PalmPilot Professional or others of the higher end hand- held PDAs, you'll realize that it's just a matter of time. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 08:47:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: cyberia Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" cyberdemo create new folder iraqi people paste this poem over the past month the entire population of Iraq has passed thru the Miami or Dade County airport ` quietly but inexhorably they have replaced every person in the state of Georgia soon they'll elect a senator their children will repoplulate South Carolina the only casualties reported from the bombing the seven american witnesses from PEN or any other poem you choose under file click save save save iraqis all select all iraqis save copy paste iraqi people paste save paste save iraqi people 10am &10pm all click save iraqi people all send CBC or gov or bbc, abc or soaprah/lush rimbuagh/hairy cling 3 words save iraqi people 10am &10pm all send save iraqi people all click save save as living breathing iraqi people ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 11:24:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: I/O MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Im reminded of when the xerox machine first invaded, its cheap access spawning (& still) a notion of publishing more anarchist than democratic, & how many years it took for xerox to be legitimized as a valid form of publication, especially in the eyes of libraries, buyers & archives. The accessibility allowed everyone to try their hand at publishing "editions". This initiative, however, was far more successful in the zine world (very little of which contains the type of content discussed here), that in the literary small press, partly because the monstrous enigma of the printed book is unscalable, unoverthrowable, xerox publishing has largely remained ephemeral & marginalized, nee mimeography. I see the web as an entirely different beast. Rather than comparing it to print media, I prefer to compare it to broadcast media & networking. Also I think it is a mistake to think that content is the only marker of successful netmedia. Poor layouts, bad code, cliche devices, lack of vision & promotion, & understanding of what makes hypermedia an evolution in information delivery & retrieval will all play a part in sustainability of the digital inflorescence. Since I dont have a feeling of this readership's knowledge of the computer industry & what is available, there is one vision that has been around for many years, perhaps began in diginfant days of the Media Lab, of books & objects transmitted via the net, to be reproduced via intelligent printers which will print, collate, bind & deliver a book at the click of a button, & of course, the technology exists to do the same with extruded 3-D objects. & as with most research technology, it is poised to be released only at the point when the "consumers" are ready to invest in the next best thing. Leonardo Glissando ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 12:28:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kcglowworm Subject: Re: Critical issues Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In response to Joel Kuszai's post ("NOW we might think of clustering critial interests around volunteeristic/careeristic editors who would do the labor of assembling the texts. As Loss pointed out (here/there) the actual markup for this activity would be relatively easy and done at the EPC home office, so no real html experience would be required"): I agree, but would suggest further: 1. why doesn't each of us volunteer for such work, since it can all be attached to email as text files, and 2. why do it only at the EPC home office, for the same reason? Most of us on this list have access to a computer (or we couldn't be on this list unless your only access is through computer labs and such) and there are HTML editors that can be downloaded online (AOLPress, for example, is quite a handy one). Let's spread out the work, not burden any one person with this, AND get more people published, even if "only" online. Hell, let's get social! Think of it as a webbing bee. George Hartley kcglowworm@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 12:50:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Rhizome 2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Rhizome 2 is out. It includes David Bromige, Patrick Pritchett, Ray DiPalma, Barbara Guest, Nick Piombino, a really exciting collaboration between Nico Vassilakis & Noemi Maxwell, George Albon (poems and art), Tan Lin, Norma Cole, very odd fiction from John Yau. Poems by Joe Ross, Douglas Messerli, Jacques Debrot, Michael Gottlieb, Mark Wallace, Steve Carl, Andrew Mossin, Graham Foust. Laynie Browne, Martha Ronk, Leslie Scalapino, Bruce Andrews, another exciting collaboration between Paul Vangelisti and Dennis Phillips. Aaron Shurin, Brian Strang, Paul Long, and Avery Burns are also there. Plus translations of two Mexican fiction writers- Jaime Villareal and Fabio Morabito. A number of reviews and essays ranging from Japanese Suicides Notes as a Genre to Sorrentino's Ocean, reviews of Andrew Joron, Guy Bennett, Dominique Fourcade. John Yau's latest books are illuminated by Dennis Barone. It's a handsome issue, perfect bound, 176 pages, an array of art by Dennis Oppenheim and William Greenspon. Copies are available for $10. Send check to Standard Schaefer, 366 S.Mentor Ave. #108, Pasadena, CA 91106. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 12:08:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: smack / In the Cut In-Reply-To: <199803010522.AAA15094@radagast.wizard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:20 AM -0500 3/1/98, David R. Israel wrote: ...the closing lines of the book bring into focus (pathetically & well) >the narrator's consideration of a few such Po in Mo lines from a >Native American poem > but it is from a Pomo poem, and is it postmodern? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 13:08:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Re: Critical issues Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Now you're talking. Tom B. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 13:12:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: Critical issues In-Reply-To: <8793cdf4.34f99aa4@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ok. thanks Kcglowworm for your suggestions about "each of us" getting the business done. i have some comments and some rather silly questions perhaps, but there might be people on this list who can help. first, back to George H's post: > I agree, but would suggest further: > 1. why doesn't each of us volunteer for such work, since it can all be > attached to email as text files, and > 2. why do it only at the EPC home office, for the same reason? 1. one thing in reply here. As someone who owns two computers that don't work (floppy disk drives broke), the use of the network has meant digital survival. sending docs via attachments or thru ftp or fetch has been crucial to all my projects. I can upload at school files and disks and then pull them down at home to edit, print, etc. Anyhow--and more on this question, as the network extends where I can continue a healthy percentage of my business, both on-line and off. It reminds me of when I was in college (late 80s) when I didn't own a computer and relied on the school labs. luckily they were open24hrs. now i'm glad when the door to a computer lab is locked, some kind of institutionally mandated form of situationist intervention. 1.b George, a simple technical reminder which gets to the heart of the issue: please remember not to send attachments to the poetics list address, as not everyone has an email reader which will allow for this to be accomplished with any success, and also, people on the digest feedbag i think will have it worse as I can't even imagine howthe digest file handles attachments. And on that note, i find that not everyone I deal with on the network can really handle or access the technology required to work with attachments. this can and will be something that is overcome, but because I am barely/not quite able to do all of the things with a computer that I need to, I'm not always able to help. All that aside, there are so many ways around the issue of attachments so the on-line collaboration is a possible pathway here to getting the EPC author page webs done. More of George: > Most of us on this list have access to a computer (or we couldn't be on this > list unless your only access is through computer labs and such) and there are > HTML editors that can be downloaded online (AOLPress, for example, is quite a > handy one). some technical questions. right now (and I'm hoping this changes) i am running a mac2cx with mucho memory and a new hd, but it is slow and its brain fizzles whenever it enounters anything new in the software vein. i use netscape 2.02 and tried to use eudora but it woldn't have it. i write my code out in my notebook then type it into the computer, but eventually it wouldbe nice to export text to html or wave a magic wand over an essay and have it marked up. I've sampled a variety of html looks and feel that the basic template is really simple and thus easily taught--anyone who remembers dos or reveal codes will have a gas with html...but, and here's the ringer, eventually i would like to automate some of this html generation and was wondering if there was software out there (like a cheap html editor). GH mentions aolpress but that takes up so much memory. I use HTML Pro (which could really use an update) which is nice because you type in one window and behind it another code magically appears. it's good for getting the logic, solving problems, etc., but is fairly limited. I am new to all this and so I ask, should I keep working it out by hand, developing my html vocab, or is there a good editor that I can use that doesn't require a powrmac or an 040 chip? sorry for the technical delay, now back to our debate: > > Let's spread out the work, not burden any one person with this, AND get more > people published, even if "only" online. Hell, let's get social! Think of it > as a webbing bee. > yeeehah! i feel like a real hopeful member of a search party. I'm also on a utopia/utopias list and now I find myself deleting IT all the time. Let's get organized. Who wants to help? "What is there to be done?" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 11:02:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: Critical issues MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel, As somebody mentioned (Tom B., I think), Netscape 4's "Composer" is very easy to use. You can get a copy of Netscape for $30. AOL Press is also excellent. I'm pretty sure you can get that for free. (In fact, you can get almost anything for free, of course...) I think you'd have to have Windows 95 for these programs (and that's some money, _generally_...) and for Windows 95, you might need more memory, but a coupla gigs are only a coupla hundred dollars. Someone else mentioned 3D for books--yep, I think this is _very_ close. Am gearing up to try it myself, in fact. Just went out and purchased Caligari 3D Truespace. Anyone with the time and ambition could not only make a book, but a virtual library as well. It's all coming very soon. P.S. Totally Shameless Reading Series Promotion: My own first site, just beginning, was done on Netscape Composer. The URL is http://www.vom.com/stills. This next Monday's readers are Steven Farmer, David Bromige, and Peter Gizzi. They'll be presenting "A Troubadors Panel Discussion" and reading from respective poetries much influenced by the troubs. According to one Socopoets member here in Sonoma Cty., I've got Jehovah's Witnessess walking around Santa Rosa talking up this reading (see latest issue of "Awake," smile), but they must be doing it on a volunteer basis. Joel Kuszai wrote: > ok. thanks Kcglowworm for your suggestions about "each of us" getting the > business done. i have some comments and some rather silly questions > perhaps, but there might be people on this list who can help. first, back > to George H's post: > > > I agree, but would suggest further: > > 1. why doesn't each of us volunteer for such work, since it can all be > > attached to email as text files, and > > 2. why do it only at the EPC home office, for the same reason? > > 1. one thing in reply here. As someone who owns two computers that don't > work (floppy disk drives broke), the use of the network has meant digital > survival. sending docs via attachments or thru ftp or fetch has been > crucial to all my projects. I can upload at school files and disks and > then pull them down at home to edit, print, etc. Anyhow--and more on this > question, as the network extends where I can continue a healthy > percentage of my business, both on-line and off. It reminds me of when I > was in college (late 80s) when I didn't own a computer and relied on the > school labs. luckily they were open24hrs. now i'm glad when the door to a > computer lab is locked, some kind of institutionally mandated form of > situationist intervention. > > 1.b > > George, a simple technical reminder which gets to the heart of the issue: > please remember not to send attachments to the poetics list address, as > not everyone has an email reader which will allow for this to be > accomplished with any success, and also, people on the digest feedbag i > think will have it worse as I can't even imagine howthe digest file > handles attachments. And on that note, i find that not everyone I deal > with on the network can really handle or access the technology required to > work with attachments. this can and will be something that is overcome, > but because I am barely/not quite able to do all of the things with a > computer that I need to, I'm not always able to help. > > All that aside, there are so many ways around the issue of attachments so > the on-line collaboration is a possible pathway here to getting the EPC > author page webs done. More of George: > > > Most of us on this list have access to a computer (or we couldn't be on this > > list unless your only access is through computer labs and such) and there are > > HTML editors that can be downloaded online (AOLPress, for example, is quite a > > handy one). > > some technical questions. right now (and I'm hoping this changes) i am > running a mac2cx with mucho memory and a new hd, but it is slow and its > brain fizzles whenever it enounters anything new in the software vein. i > use netscape 2.02 and tried to use eudora but it woldn't have it. i write > my code out in my notebook then type it into the computer, but eventually > it wouldbe nice to export text to html or wave a magic wand over an essay > and have it marked up. I've sampled a variety of html looks and feel that > the basic template is really simple and thus easily taught--anyone who > remembers dos or reveal codes will have a gas with html...but, and here's > the ringer, eventually i would like to automate some of this html > generation and was wondering if there was software out there (like a cheap > html editor). GH mentions aolpress but that takes up so much memory. I use > HTML Pro (which could really use an update) which is nice because you type > in one window and behind it another code magically appears. it's good for > getting the logic, solving problems, etc., but is fairly limited. I am new > to all this and so I ask, should I keep working it out by hand, developing > my html vocab, or is there a good editor that I can use that doesn't > require a powrmac or an 040 chip? > > sorry for the technical delay, now back to our debate: > > > > > Let's spread out the work, not burden any one person with this, AND get more > > people published, even if "only" online. Hell, let's get social! Think of it > > as a webbing bee. > > > > yeeehah! i feel like a real hopeful member of a search party. I'm also on > a utopia/utopias list and now I find myself deleting IT all the time. > Let's get organized. Who wants to help? "What is there to be done?" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 13:24:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Acker/Scalapino In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980223200550.006c1cbc@pop.lmi.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" when i teach these two writers in the same course, or acker and a number of others in the same course (which goes by various names: weird books by women, women and the literature of trauma, women and experimental writing, etc) i usually offer a bifurcated model of both postmodernity and general trauma writing (but, w/in the framework of the courses, women's trauma writing, which in addition to historical trauma also includes the more --tho by no means exclusively of course --gendered phenomena of sexual abuse and sexual violence); there's the "hysterical mode" and the "flat affect mode", both of which are discernible modes in trauma survivor accounts and the styles characterized as "postmodern." it's cool to find that others are working on similar matters. At 12:05 PM -0800 2/23/98, Laura Moriarty wrote: >I wanted to thank Tom B., Steve T. and others for interesting and very >unsentimental posts about depression - and to solicit them (you) for the >upcoming headache and Scalapino nons - > >The fact of pain - of physicality and all the specificities of gender, age >etc that it implies - exists in any writing, but it is sometimes put aside >with a sense of a neutral writer and reader - No one wants to whine or to >tell an I-overcame-the pain story with inspiring music - (well most of us >don't) - and yet we write with our bodies - > >The degree to which thinking is embodied and this embodiment effects and >shapes and allows for a text is discussable - > >The clausal quality of Leslie's texts for example and her speech with its >particular breathing (breathiness), levelness and hesitations - her singing >voice (which has been revealed to be amazing in her singing roles in K. >Killian's plays) - are all apparent in her work - and have as much to do (in >a completely intended way) with her physicality as with her Buddhism - >(floating world etc) - and poetics - It is a continuum - > >I know that I'm not suggesting a new apporach to poetics particularly - just >urging toward one possible emphasis - theoretical but not forgetting the >physical situation and state of the theorist - > >PS - > >There is and will be more non today - an additonal piece with small gif by >Myung Kim - (who is fascinating in the interview of her in the new Tripwire) >- revealing herself to be the foundational writer and teacher she has been >to a lot of the new writing that is going on in the Bay Area - AND OTHERS - > >about which more anon - > >Laura > >moriarty@lanminds.com >http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~moriarty/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 14:30:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Garrett Kalleberg Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Announcing=8A?= Comments: To: Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Transcendental Friend http://www.morningred.com/friend (A journal of poetry, poetics, art & criticism.) Updated on the first of every month, The Transcendental Friend will present several regular sections, including A Critical Dictionary, The Bestiary, Dialectic, and a Project. (Additional sections will be introduced in future issues.) Something like the Princeton Encyclopedia were it edited by Bataille, Coleridge & Kierkegaard, perhaps, the Critical Dictionary will present articles on topics of a quasi-technical nature; our first entry is on "Sincerity," by Duncan Dobbelmann. The Bestiary is a joint project of Laird Hunt & Eleni Sikelianos; this month's Bestiary features work by Lisa Jarnot, and is edited by Laird Hunt. The whole of theory in a single frame, Dialectic, will offer texts in the moment of dialectical fissure. Our first issue presents a longer investigation of the question about the nature of "poetics" in the form of a brief survey of the literature. We are pleased to present in our first issue a Project by artist Dennis Thomas, combining exquisite graphite on paper drawings with texts by the entomologist, Henri Fabre. Garrett Kalleberg mailto:editor@morningred.com The Transcendental Friend can be found at: http://www.morningred.com/friend ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 11:32:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: Re: lives of the poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is primarily for Miekal And, but I thought others might like to know . . . . . Don't know why I was that overdressed the day my son Chris took that (cover of THE DIFFS #3) pic, perhaps had some "square-world" function to attend, but if you would care to see a pic of me UNDERdressed, plus others of me with friends & relatives, let me refer you to the Contemporary Authors "Autobio" series, published by Gale Resarch in Detroit, vol. 26, which should be in yr local college libary by now (and includes also autobios by Sheila Murphy, Carl Djerassi, Ed Foster, David Meltzer, Sarah Menefee, Stephen Schwartz, Nanos Valaoritis, C.K.Williams, Michael Bishop, Dorothy Bryant, Victor de Suevo, Richard Harteis, Marvin Himestra, Leza Lowtiz, Thomas Love Taylor, and [a corker!] Julia Vinograd.) Earlier volumes have much to offer also. One of my faves is George Bowering's. Another is Anselm Hollo's. A third is Rae Armantrout's, although I wish _I_ could have written it about her, so that it might go beyond her 24th year. I've read in proof Ron Silliman's, a brilliant coping with the assignment, which must be forthcoming shortly. Check out Listmaster Bernstein's piece in a previous volume, too. He elected to use an interview. The approaches can be quite various, happily, although many go for the linear perspective. Also,like others on this List, I have an upcoming entry (about my writing) due to be published in April in the DLB series from Gale. Don't know how long your college library will take to acquire and process this volume, the 2nd, I believe, to result from our own Joseph Conte's perspicacious hard labor. It would be great to see such accounts of EVERYBODY, stashed electronically. I'm sure Miekal And doesn't resemble my mental image of him, either, but I'm willing to shatter that ikon on the rocks of a more common reality. Besides, I enjoy my invented poets also, it's hard to surrender them to my curiosity. But I got in so much hot water last time I proposed we each invent the poet from the poetry that I better quit right now. I confess that I do read bios and autobios like crazy and I was only quacking idly with my squib abt wally stevens a year ago. Truth is stranger than fiction. Did you know Doris Day slathered Vaseline all over herself once a week, then swathed herself in Saranwrap so she could get a good night's sleep w/o staining the sheets? That she went w/o sex for 3 years? That one of her legs is longer than the other? Or closer to home, that Sheila Murphy likes to eat gorp, a mixture of Virginia peanuts, slivered almonds, shaved coconuts, and raisins? That the first word of Bowering's autobio is his wife's name? That Stephen Schwartz was named after Stephen Spender? That Ed Foster published under the name Retsov? That when she was 9, Sarah Menefee was converted by a blind Baptist who had been struck by lightning? That my great-grandfather was murdered by poachers? That Ron Silliman spent his first acid trip (it was still legal then) on an apartment building rooftop, just for the heck of it taking apart a TV aerial? And that it was the night his father was fatally injured? And Jack Spicer died? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 11:57:11 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: Critical Issues MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel, I was reluctant to give up the html handcoding, but there's a big world of wysiwyg editors out there & they save lots of time & let you move on to bigger & better, etc. There are plenty of editors you can download off the web as trial products--usually for 30-60 days. If you want to learn lots of interfaces, you can probably avoid buying anything indefinitely! HotMetal Pro (Is this what you mean by HTML Pro?)was my choice for the transition from hand to wysiwyg. It "thinks" like a person. NetObjects Fusion is rather a poetic program, by which I mean it can do ANYTHING, if only you can think associatively & attune yourself to its rationale. My favorite, though, is Front Page, but that's Microsoft--and lots of people won't deal with them, though anyone who wants to debate the god/bad (typo but I'm keeping it) Microsoft issue is welcome to backchannel me :) The newer Word version has html-export capability, and I imagine that's true for the MAC version as well. Good luck! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 13:54:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Address request = Tina Darragh Comments: To: SSSCHAEFER In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pardon, but has anyone of us got a means of contact for Tina Darragh? Please back-channel...and thanks ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 16:03:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robin Morris Subject: Re: Critical issues MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, you can download AOL Press free. You can also run it (if you get the right one) on Windows 3.1. Robin At 11:02 AM 3/1/98 -0800, you wrote: >Joel, > >As somebody mentioned (Tom B., I think), Netscape 4's "Composer" is very easy to >use. >You can get a copy of Netscape for $30. AOL Press is also excellent. I'm pretty >sure you can get that for free. (In fact, you can get almost anything for free, of >course...) I think you'd have to have Windows 95 for these programs (and that's >some money, _generally_...) and for Windows 95, you might need more memory, but a >coupla gigs are only a coupla hundred dollars. > * * * * * * * * * Robin A. Morris ramorris@english.umass.edu Home page: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~ramorris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 16:15:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: lives of the poets/bromige clothing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit D. Bromige, its not what you wear, its what you have to say. -and you said a lot when you visited my class w/pierre joris in October 1997, the reading was so excellent the next day I didn't even notice if you were =Over or=Under dressed, and for someone to even start a discussion on the kind of clothing you wear is interesting, alot of people believe that wearing a suit and tie or nice clothing is some kind of concession into the square world or the lifestyle of the "uptight" I persoannly dont giv e afuck (who cares) - I have the flyer from the reading on my refrigerator here in Albany where you are dressed in a three piece suit and look so calm cool and ready to talk- its right next to my picture of muhammid Ali, see ya -some times life is stranger than fiction-B.R. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 15:27:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Ahearn Subject: Re: smack / In the Cut Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:15 AM 3/1/98 EST, you wrote: >It all sounds pretty compatible to me. Why not publish a poem on a sidewalk or >bus? Here in Dallas, our ubiquitous Bob Trammel won a contest sponsored by the city. Now his poems will appear on the walls of the Central Transit Authority for twenty years. Joe Ahearn _____________ joeah@mail.airmail.net ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 16:47:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Printers? In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 28 Feb 1998 23:37:26 -0800 from On Sat, 28 Feb 1998 23:37:26 -0800 Mark Weiss said: >I didn't call them crooks, Henry. Glass of Green Tea is ok, except that >there's a lot of read-through because the paper is rather light, but the >two samples they sent me were really appallingly bad printing. Mark, I wasn't responding to your post. We chose the Green Tea paper carefully & decided that the lightness & strength (in a very long book) was what we wanted. I was responding to Doug Messerli, who called them "crooks". - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 17:06:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: book Say goodby to the books tactile authority, wingspread spine walking with the black-on- white like a page among pages a wriggly field full of homers in the middle of a merry can of worms Babe Ruth follows you out into the dreamfields of corn goodby books! remember my whisper - Jack Spandrift ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 19:07:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: Re: Critical Issues MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel--Would it be possible to see Loss Glazier's list on the List? I'd be interested. Thanks--Marcella ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 19:51:14 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Critical issues Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:12 PM 3/1/98 -0500, Joel Kuszai wrote: > > >> >> Let's spread out the work, not burden any one person with this, AND get more >> people published, even if "only" online. Hell, let's get social! Think of it >> as a webbing bee. >> > > >yeeehah! i feel like a real hopeful member of a search party. I'm also on >a utopia/utopias list and now I find myself deleting IT all the time. >Let's get organized. Who wants to help? "What is there to be done?" > > There is a lot of material already available even though it is not organized. I have informally gathered URL's for a number of individual and collaborative sites. I think this is an important direction to look into. But I do have a strong personal reaction to the idea of orgAGAGG ation (guess my hand does, too). tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 19:51:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Critical Issues Comments: To: kkel736@bayarea.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:57 AM 3/1/98 -0800, Karen Kelley wrote: >Joel, > Trellix (http://www.trellix.com) is new - I found it very usefull for easily publishing (to the web) a series of related pages with text and graphics. I guess I published an epub? Cost is about $100. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 18:34:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: this is the hour of the web In-Reply-To: <2960dd49.34f8acba@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this recent discussion both exciting and exasperating / yes, access is soon no longer a problem, as public libraries go on-line etc., as Bill Gates (bless him?) donates millions to furnish Microsoft-ready workstations (the business is still there--but let's take advantage, i guess) / but besides access, and this more to Tom's post below, web artists, e-publishers, etc., have to consider common-denominator ceilings on an "audience"'s PC capabilities -- modem and computer speeds, for example -- which limit some people's "viewing power" once they've managed to view as for "collective actions," one exciting possibility that i'm exploring currently with another publisher is "cross-publishing", where respective sites (two or three art or poetry e-zines, for ex) build links to each other's servers to create a small web ring -- the model is the net itself, which we're constantly reminded is actually one big meta or hypertext / like-minded ventures this way aspire to the kind of "larger-than-myself" or "mysite" attitude i think Miekal And was calling for, not only promoting but subsuming each other -- creating "metazines" through aggregation otherwise, i think it's extremely important for web workers to remember what makes e-publication special and potentially different from paper publication (not better or worse, obviously, since they currently do and always will occupy separate domains, and what's interesting is how they nudge and redefine each other's parameters) / in general reply to Mike K's earlier query about people's preferences for reading (online, printout), the use of the web as a text archive to my mind is a drag, tho i'm the first to applaud its value for research, for "quick hits" of people's work, etc. / currently the page is a much more comfortable space (some will disagree i hope) for reading large blocks of text, for reading on buses, etc. -- the popular "you can't curl up in bed with a PC" is generally true, tho not for long, as MIT works while we sleep to build paperback-sized laptops with page-like resolution / but finding a way to simulate the experience of page-reading is hardly the point (akin to meat substitutes) / i think it's much more important to consider what has contributed to our historical familiarization with book and page technologies as "comfort zones", what in other words makes us hit the print icon when we find something on the net we wanna read / and what then might define comfortable uses of the web for reading, viewing, web publishing, etc. -- again carefully thinking about what can be done online that can't be done in print / maxing the media, iow, not just mixing -- just as some of the best books test the limits of that technology too bill m At 07:32 PM 2/28/98 EST, Tom wrote: >I've been reading and re-reading Miekal's and Joel's recent postings.And I'm >fascinated by the possibilities that the web would seem to present for >collective actions. I need more education in these matters and look forward >hearing what others have to say. > >Tom B. > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 10:40:53 +0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Weldon Sithiwong Subject: this is the hour of the web Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Miekal, my ancient asian scenes are no less stale than those of dreamtime village. I wonder as I spend my mornings with you all and what you offer how I will coerce my poetic friends to consider what these infernal machines can do for us in the land of eternal traditional culture. Is anyone on this list in email contact with a Thai poet working in Thailand? Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 00:24:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: this is the hour of the web Comments: To: William Marsh In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980301183416.007af8d0@nunic.nu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, some of the questions raised by this thread, especially as regards web-rings (meta-zines through aggregation), and the preference of pages to web-pages are addressed in multiple ways in Michael Joyce's book, "Of Two Minds" -- see also his web page, the url of which I haven't got on hand just now. I wish I'd WRITTEN IT DOWN somewhere. As far as the writing is concerned, I'm currently writing my first poem in hypertext and staring into the screen I find helps align me with the structure of the piece, somehow. In most cases, I'd rather read the printed word (which is why I publish my journal Kenning in that money-losing format), whereas I write to the screen and generally feel uncomfortable when I cannot. That's my vote. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, William Marsh wrote: > this recent discussion both exciting and exasperating / yes, access is soon > no longer a problem, as public libraries go on-line etc., as Bill Gates > (bless him?) donates millions to furnish Microsoft-ready workstations (the > business is still there--but let's take advantage, i guess) / but besides > access, and this more to Tom's post below, web artists, e-publishers, etc., > have to consider common-denominator ceilings on an "audience"'s PC > capabilities -- modem and computer speeds, for example -- which limit some > people's "viewing power" once they've managed to view > > as for "collective actions," one exciting possibility that i'm exploring > currently with another publisher is "cross-publishing", where respective > sites (two or three art or poetry e-zines, for ex) build links to each > other's servers to create a small web ring -- the model is the net itself, > which we're constantly reminded is actually one big meta or hypertext / > like-minded ventures this way aspire to the kind of "larger-than-myself" or > "mysite" attitude i think Miekal And was calling for, not only promoting > but subsuming each other -- creating "metazines" through aggregation > > otherwise, i think it's extremely important for web workers to remember > what makes e-publication special and potentially different from paper > publication (not better or worse, obviously, since they currently do and > always will occupy separate domains, and what's interesting is how they > nudge and redefine each other's parameters) / in general reply to Mike K's > earlier query about people's preferences for reading (online, printout), > the use of the web as a text archive to my mind is a drag, tho i'm the > first to applaud its value for research, for "quick hits" of people's work, > etc. / currently the page is a much more comfortable space (some will > disagree i hope) for reading large blocks of text, for reading on buses, > etc. -- the popular "you can't curl up in bed with a PC" is generally true, > tho not for long, as MIT works while we sleep to build paperback-sized > laptops with page-like resolution / but finding a way to simulate the > experience of page-reading is hardly the point (akin to meat substitutes) / > i think it's much more important to consider what has contributed to our > historical familiarization with book and page technologies as "comfort > zones", what in other words makes us hit the print icon when we find > something on the net we wanna read / and what then might define comfortable > uses of the web for reading, viewing, web publishing, etc. -- again > carefully thinking about what can be done online that can't be done in > print / maxing the media, iow, not just mixing -- just as some of the best > books test the limits of that technology too > > bill m > > > At 07:32 PM 2/28/98 EST, Tom wrote: > >I've been reading and re-reading Miekal's and Joel's recent postings.And I'm > >fascinated by the possibilities that the web would seem to present for > >collective actions. I need more education in these matters and look forward > >hearing what others have to say. > > > >Tom B. > > > > > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > William Marsh > PaperBrainPress > Voice & Range Community Arts > National University > wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu > http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh > snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 > San Diego, CA 92109 > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 01:40:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan or Orion Raphael Dlugonski Subject: publishing; writing where In-Reply-To: <199803020500.VAA28636@jumping-spider.aracnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" wanting to chime in on two current streams here yes--more people should publish chaps/mags be they in print or electronic. publishing helps create communities. in the 12 plus years i did NRG, a tabloid with a strong stylistic bias, many contacts wre made among the contributors, including folksl like johm m bennet, jeffrey little and ivan arguelles. my project for the last couple years, 26 books, focusses instead on this region (pacific northwest) and has create a web among those writers ive published, as well as helping my rep and possibilities in the region. just think if everyone published 6 or 9 issues of a mag how much would be out there to cross pollinate and -promote! as for where you write, i write when it comes to me, which is usually after an event like a movie or a reading. i'll sit down outside the theatre ro wherever, sometimes walk a block or three before more words come and i have to stop and write more. also i do word sketches--which seldom become poems--watching and listening to people in places like bars and coffeehouses. dan raphael ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 22:24:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Critical issues In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980228204110.006cbea0@pop.lmi.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >To which (Ron's list) one could add > > >Dodie Bellamy >Rachel Blau DuPlessis >Diane Ward >Nicole Brossard >Norma Cole Not quite true. I dont know about the others, but as to Nicole Brossard. There was a special issue of "la nouvelle barre du jour_, nos. 118-119, called "Traces: ecriture de Nicole Brossard. Nov. 1982. 222 pages. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 01:44:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: this is the hour of the web and this is _The most bueatiful order? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" What I find energizing with epublication is the potential for bottom-up accretion of knowlege, people, pages, etc. Top-down still has a place but I was never much for _Dictionaries of (_____) Literature_, authorative guides, etc. I have started my own heap of sweepings. Anyone interested in connecting with, contacting, touching on this, _The Most Bueatiful Order_ please let me know. tom bell At 06:34 PM 3/1/98 -0800, William Marsh wrote: >this recent discussion both exciting and exasperating / yes, access is soon >no longer a problem, as public libraries go on-line etc., as Bill Gates >(bless him?) donates millions to furnish Microsoft-ready workstations (the >business is still there--but let's take advantage, i guess) / but besides >access, and this more to Tom's post below, web artists, e-publishers, etc., >have to consider common-denominator ceilings on an "audience"'s PC >capabilities -- modem and computer speeds, for example -- which limit some >people's "viewing power" once they've managed to view > >as for "collective actions," one exciting possibility that i'm exploring >currently with another publisher is "cross-publishing", where respective >sites (two or three art or poetry e-zines, for ex) build links to each >other's servers to create a small web ring -- the model is the net itself, >which we're constantly reminded is actually one big meta or hypertext / >like-minded ventures this way aspire to the kind of "larger-than-myself" or >"mysite" attitude i think Miekal And was calling for, not only promoting >but subsuming each other -- creating "metazines" through aggregation > >otherwise, i think it's extremely important for web workers to remember >what makes e-publication special and potentially different from paper >publication (not better or worse, obviously, since they currently do and >always will occupy separate domains, and what's interesting is how they >nudge and redefine each other's parameters) / in general reply to Mike K's >earlier query about people's preferences for reading (online, printout), >the use of the web as a text archive to my mind is a drag, tho i'm the >first to applaud its value for research, for "quick hits" of people's work, >etc. / currently the page is a much more comfortable space (some will >disagree i hope) for reading large blocks of text, for reading on buses, >etc. -- the popular "you can't curl up in bed with a PC" is generally true, >tho not for long, as MIT works while we sleep to build paperback-sized >laptops with page-like resolution / but finding a way to simulate the >experience of page-reading is hardly the point (akin to meat substitutes) / >i think it's much more important to consider what has contributed to our >historical familiarization with book and page technologies as "comfort >zones", what in other words makes us hit the print icon when we find >something on the net we wanna read / and what then might define comfortable >uses of the web for reading, viewing, web publishing, etc. -- again >carefully thinking about what can be done online that can't be done in >print / maxing the media, iow, not just mixing -- just as some of the best >books test the limits of that technology too > >bill m > > >At 07:32 PM 2/28/98 EST, Tom wrote: >>I've been reading and re-reading Miekal's and Joel's recent postings.And I'm >>fascinated by the possibilities that the web would seem to present for >>collective actions. I need more education in these matters and look forward >>hearing what others have to say. >> >>Tom B. >> >> > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >William Marsh >PaperBrainPress >Voice & Range Community Arts >National University >wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu >http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh >snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 >San Diego, CA 92109 >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 01:53:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Subject: tripwire? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I seem to have deleted the ordering info (address, price) for Tripwire that was posted a week or so ago. Could someone repost it (backchannel or otherwise) please? Also, picked up Jeff Clark's -The Little Door Slides Back- yesterday, which (the parts I read before sleep yesterday) looks fascinating, and clearly quite a throwdown for the (us?) under-thirties to get cracking. Much thoughtfulness beneath a vividly decadent surface. ('Beneath' isn't right, but...) I'm excited. fjb ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 05:59:18 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Writing in Public Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Duncan wrote "This Place Rumored to Have Been Sodom" on the SF Muni buses, and Whalen and Blackburn both wrote works obviously composed likewise on public transit, which were important precedents for my writing when I was younger. First instance I can think of, though, of a poet writing in public would probably be Pound in the wire cage in the mud at Pisa. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 21:07:07 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: Writing in Public In-Reply-To: <19983265025241@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In its court-affiliated forms and in numerous other social contexts traditional Chinese poetry was very much a performance art. A bunch of courtier poets would be trailing the Emperor and when he would propose a topic, everyone would compete to come up with the best poem. On a somewhat lower social level lots of poetry would be composed on the tongue in bars at parties, and frequently written up on the wall by the author or whoever had the best calligraphy. Part of the point of inviting Li Bo (Li Po) over for drinks and dinner was to watch him come up with a poem, and compete with the other poets in the neighborhood. Of course this is writing in public in a different sense from Duncan, Whalen or Blackburn on the bus, where they are outside and in a public space, taking in but not necessarily displaying themselves in public. G. Apollinaire is an earlier example, e.g. Lundi Rue Christine. Edwin Denby's aesthetic was "in public in private" and might be considered to devolve from the same issue. Can one be both, writing in a public location privately and at the same time performing publicly? Maybe the second poem in my chapbook "At Baoshan" would be an example. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:22:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: Critical issues Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >IN ADDITION TO the names that have already been mentioned, there have never >been any critical issues of magazines devoted to: > >Beverly Dahlen > >Every single one of whom has produced more than enough great writing to >warrant same. > > >Ron Though it was not an issue _entirely_ dedicated to Dahlen, in 1986 _Ironwood_ (v14 n1) published a lengthy feature on her, including some sections of _A Reading_ as well as four or five appreciative essays, one by Duncan and one other by DuPlessis. I know that was the first place I'd encountered her work. -- Fred M. ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1@cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:19:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: goodbye books MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henyr! Thank you for mentioning the name of my press, Goodbye Books. In honor of the happy coincidence, and as is the custom on this list, please permit me to sell something! Steve Malmude's book got a tremendously respectful (n.b. not fawning!) review in Lisa Jarnot's News Letter. John Godfrey said among other things that art comes to this poet, not he to it, and that there are certain things the poet says which are none of the reader's business! I'll send out a copy of this letterpress book free to the first person who e-mails me with their street address (it'll take me a week or so -- I have to go fold them together). The next nine people can have it for $10 ppd. Read it now or read it later, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:43:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Heather Starr Subject: Re: Address request = Tina Darragh In-Reply-To: from "Patrick F. Durgin" at Mar 1, 98 01:54:10 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit you probably already got this, but just in case -- Tina Darragh darraghm@gunet.georgetown.edu take care heather > > Pardon, but has anyone of us got a means of contact for Tina > Darragh? Please back-channel...and thanks > > ` > ` > ` > ` ----->*<----- > ` K E N N I N G| > ` anewsletterof| > ` poetry&poetic| > ` s418BrownSt.#| > ` 10IowaCityIA5| > ` 2245USA\/\/\/| > -- ________________________________________________________________ Heather Starr work: hstarr@pobox.upenn.edu home: rain@voicenet.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:40:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: eletronic kisses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I haven't finished reading through the weekend's posts yet....Very likely I'll find that someone said something like this, but..I feel rather strongly moved by the cyber-spirit to say: *In extension of stuff Tom Beckett has said, and several others have nodded to: I'm made *very* uncomfortable by the fact that the websters don't quite see how the immediate poetry-community structure has become split. This will be a temporary, and rapidly evolving situation. But it is going to exist in some form for some time. *I know important and dynamic poets, writers, and readers of poetry who don't have much (or any) access to web and net modalities. This makes a huge difference as resources get shifted to cyberspace. *Eventually, public libraries will provide something apporaching half-adequate resources for accessing "non" and other great cyber-publications. But this will continue to be a troublesome option, in relation to the hours poets can manage to spend in their public library, the ambiance and ability to concentrate, etc., & very importantly: their ability to submit if paper submissions are not accepted for electronic venues. Etc. *Already (in a way many folks who've just posted apparently don't see) there is a large split between cyber-empowered poets and others; a gradual evolution of a two-tier structure in what had been a purely paper culture not long ago... Mark P. @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:13:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: Anthology of New American Poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Announcing the publication of An Anthology of New (American) Poets edited by Lisa Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz, and Chris Stroffolino from Talisman Books, featuring Mary Burger, Lee Ann Brown, Jordan Davis, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Drew Gardner, Peter Gizzi, Jennifer Moxley, Mark Nowak, Hoa Nguyen, Rod Smith, Elio Schneeman, Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace Elizabeth Willis... and many others available now at bookstores near you and through Small Press Distribution. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:01:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Ahearn Subject: Re: Writing in Public Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >First instance I can think of, though, of a poet writing in public would >probably be Pound in the wire cage in the mud at Pisa. > >Ron > Owen and Sassoon wrote in the trenches in France. Another horrible public experience. Perhaps one of the keys to our time is poets writing in public voluntarily and publicly. Robert Hass, the recent poet laureate, pledged to write poetry whenever he used public transportation. The rub is that there is so much busywork to being the PL that he had to write when travelling or not write at all. We take a working poet (mainstream or not, a working poet), make him/her the PL, and then sentence her/him to millions of meetings with Rotarians... Joe Ahearn _____________ joeah@mail.airmail.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 10:58:15 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Critical issues In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable George Hartley wrtts: > > Let's spread out the work, not burden any one person with this, AND ge= t more > > people published, even if "only" online. Hell, let's get social! Think= of it > > as a webbing bee. to which Joel Kuszai repliis: > yeeehah! i feel like a real hopeful member of a search party. I'm also o= n > a utopia/utopias list and now I find myself deleting IT all the time. > Let's get organized. Who wants to help? "What is there to be done?" Alright, then. I'm certainly willing to pitch in. (it's sort of like a barn-building, no?). do we have clearance for take-off? are there directions the EPC author pages are already wanting to go (e.g., folks that need to be covered asap =96 any chance we can see Loss' list?). there are some serious omissions =96 it's too much to expect one or a few folks to build a very large edifice. I guess we can all see what the template is for the pages, shall we begin? shhhh =96 rattletrap. ok, I'm ready. I can do a Spicer page (unless...), a page for Peter Ganick, and Linda Russo and I can col- laborate on a page for Kathleen Fraser. I'd be willing to do others, too. Chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:05:17 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale M Smith Subject: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you?) Unless you're loaded, publishing a little mag takes craft, energy and imagination. That's enough to go on. You either obtain a photocopier or make friends with someone who has access to one. Distribution is a problem, but there are creative ways to get the things out once they're ready. At Mike and Dale's, we lovingly letterpress each cover. Each issue is designed with attentive skills by an artist who willing devotes his time to our little cause free of charge. (Check out those EXPLOSIVE covers too, silk-screened and gorgeous). We set the type in Quark and I'm alwayspicking up design tips from graphic design folks. My first mag was an awkward clutter of poems. But over time I've managed to make it look as good as any pub. If we had the money I would ideally have each issue offset and perfect bound. But M&D, EXPLOSIVE and other little zines have a rough beauty to them. At least I like to think so. You almost have to think so with all the time that goes into it. Soliciting materials is easy. You contact poets and read their works. Take what you can use and return the rest. E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for poetry's market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the value of physical production. It limits the mobility of the product, tying the reader to one location, for me, often at work. It lacks the correlating physical materials that provides support to the word, reminding us of poetry's very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It promotes every kind of self indulgence becaue it is easier to reproduce inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy it and bind it you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. On- line you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less time and money invested in it. Finally, the idea that the web is democratic in any way is way off. There are still two communities out there. Printed and online communities. For many, these areas cross. For many, they don't. Ideally you'd want to share work with both groups. That's a problem. For me publication is about the work. And the best way to present that work is still the book. It gives a shape and coherence to the work. The web leaves that shape undefined. The book is the vehicle for this work we do. Without that, we are only addressing each other in a void. Noise results. Did somebody say something? To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU In-Reply-To: <34F72529.2484@mwt.net> > TB wrote: > > > I would challenge everyone on this list who has not had the experience of > editing/publishing a magazine or running a reading series to begin to do so > sometime within the next year. It could be frightening. This might be the type of question where the answer is, "if you have to ask, you'll never know," but what are some of the many ways one can go about setting up a magazine? I'm talking about the material questions here: How much does it cost? How cheaply can it be done? How do you handle the printing? The distribution? The rejection notices? How do you choose a name, for instance? Do you get institutional funding, or do you go it alone? Etc... Along these lines, I'm about halfway through Michael Cuddihy's memoir, _Try Ironwood_, about his late lamented magazine. It's great, but these questions have gone unasked in that book (I get the feeling he had access to money besides the NEA grants -- not that he was living on easy street given his illnesses, of course, but money didn't seem to be a problem for the mag). So Poetix folks: I know full well some of you HAVE your own mags and have been dying since this thread has started to talk about them. Here's your chance: Any how-to advice? Horror stories? Success stories? etc etc. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago So often nothing happens and then when something does noone notices. --Alan Davies (Thanks to Tom Beckett for this week's signature. Coming next week: Bern Porter) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 13:18:38 -0500 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: eletronic kisses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just a note to say I don't think the split between cyber-empowered and acybric poets too important. To me it's like the split that occurred years back between typewriter-empowered and pencil poets. All kinds of adjustments are going on, like access to computers at libraries or one's workplace or school. Friends with computers should be available, too. And I suspect that equivalents of Kinko's will pop up where you can scan hard copy onto disks cheaply. Indeed, I wonder that Kinko's doesn't already offer such a service. Maybe it does. Plus, being cyber- empowered isn't all that big a deal right now: poetic cyber-space is too disorganized and hard to get around in (at least for me, still in my first year in cyber-space) for it to be much of a factor. It DOES let one communicate much more easily and cheaply with people on the net, which is a plus--but no more empowering than having enough money for long-distance phoning is for some poets (never me). My final thought is that the cyberization of poetry is among the least of the huge number of problems facing serious poets. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:39:34 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: electro smooch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Prejsnar wrote: > *In extension of stuff Tom Beckett has said, and several others have > nodded to: I'm made *very* uncomfortable by the fact that the websters > don't quite see how the immediate poetry-community structure has become > split. This will be a temporary, and rapidly evolving situation. But it > is going to exist in some form for some time. I dont believe that web publishing is creating any new schisms that havent already existed. Since I began publishing other's books in the late 70s there has always been visible divisions between letterpress, the xerox crowd, & the shinycovered perfect bound crowd. My feeling is that it is just such divisions which make the challenges of wholeness & continuity in the larger community of the printed word separate parallels which need be continually juggled & mixed up. The advent of the web, is simply yet another way to enhance dissemination. > *I know important and dynamic poets, writers, and readers of poetry who > don't have much (or any) access to web and net modalities. This makes a > huge difference as resources get shifted to cyberspace. I seriously propose that we think of the web as a broadcast medium, that there become web surrogates who create hardcopy from web content (& it has the possibility of becoming a whole new book art in itself) for just such isolated cases. The reverse of course, hard copy going cyber, is finally happening at a rate that would make Theodor Nelson proud. > *Eventually, public libraries will provide something apporaching > half-adequate resources for accessing "non" and other great > cyber-publications. But this will continue to be a troublesome option, in > relation to the hours poets can manage to spend in their public library, > the ambiance and ability to concentrate, etc., & very importantly: their > ability to submit if paper submissions are not accepted for electronic > venues. Etc. as a community of about 10-20 people we jointly bought a computer & access, which really didnt amount to that much money per person. I firmly believe that when possible, it is best to be independent of libraries & institutions because individuals cannot control access (unless perhaps if yr faculty or employee)... > *Already (in a way many folks who've just posted apparently don't see) > there is a large split between cyber-empowered poets and others; a gradual > evolution of a two-tier structure in what had been a purely paper culture > not long ago... My reading of this shift is that there has been & always will be splits of power & prominence, but when I consider that most of my own books have been in editions under 200 copies, & most are hidden in special collections & people's dusty shelves (or my dusty shelves, anyway), & most of my websites are getting at least 200 hits per month, I feel like the split that has never been in my favor (or even the larger communities that Im part of) is finally getting a chance to find visibility & balance. Miekal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:42:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you?) In-Reply-To: <9803021203172.3121447@utxdp.dp.utexas.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" rather than issue a once-and-for-all edict re new media (as dale has just done, and he's in good company---three nobel laureates have made similar claims, as has andrei codrescu): listen folks: if you could only SEE the strings attached to those hunks of paper out there we all call *books*... well you CAN: just have a close look, real close now, and ask how that thing got in your hands, start to finish... the web, the internet, is part of the digital world---same one that brings you (next generation) copier-printers, same one that brings you quark, same one that brings you tv, and poetics, and rice crispies (hey---think about it)... print and broadcast media combined becomes something else again, good and bad and in-between (it's human, for chrissakes)... turning one's back on this as a poet is worse than retro, now that so many poets have migrated into these regions... the access questions are not going to go away---EVER... anymore than the food questions will... perhaps broadsides will be the way to go in places where people can't find enough to eat---you tell me... but the larger issues re poetry and poetix really do have to do with how to make do with what each has (access to and so forth)... now how about that, huh?---all on this list have (as mark p indicates) different levels of access... but we're all here, somehow, variously connected... now we can activate to get others online, however... but to argue against doing things with the online resources at hand?---someone please explain to me how this is either necessary or desirable?... and how this is *not* a reactionary gesture, finally, in the face of those sundry realities that currently shape print publishing (nothing against the latter either)... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:10:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: eletronic kisses In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark P.'s reference to "the ability to concentrate" is I think central. The experiences of reading on-line and on paper are decidedly different. Scrolling, and the insistent light-source, enforce an in-the-moment reading that makes of the poem a transitory thing, and poetry written with the web in mind is likely to remake itself for that requirement. The equivalent of sound-bites, one after another. One can write good poetry within those constraints, but most poetry unfolds, beyond first acquaintance, slowly, and the casual referencing at the oddest moments to this or that line or section effectively restructures the experience of reading the poem, deepening one's penetration of the text, one's pleasure in the experience, and expanding its structure. Books facilitate this. A new book of poems is likely to sit on the floor by my bed for a long time, or travel with me in a pocket (the joy of paperbacks). I finally "got" Creeley, for instance, in bars and public parks, and "The Opening of the Field" went with me on a backpacking trip to the Adirondacks. The point is, or a point, anyway, is that the kind of concentration required for the reading of poetry is not, in my experience, summonable at will--it's rather akin to the energy required to write a poem (which is one reason why work by a poet unknown to an editor has a harder time making it past the gate the first time out). It's hard to remain available to those moments if a computer is required. There's also the way the book falls open. The beginning or end of the poem accesses the poem on the facing page, and one journeys through becomes a series of discoveries, orchestrated by the poet or editor's ordering of the poems. And this is instantly visible, not only as a succession of lines, but as a structure on a page and on successive pages perceived whole. Then there's the question of design. When I design a book the poems seem to tell me, after prolonged meditation (and of course within the limits of my finances and design experience), how they should look. This selection of paper, the texture of the cover, etc., details that I don't think a computer print-out can replicate. Even the kerning of the text--how much randomness to allow--is determined by the character of the material. A computer, for me, is a convenient way to sample a range of work. If I like it, I'll buy a book. At 09:40 AM 3/2/98 -0500, you wrote: >I haven't finished reading through the weekend's posts yet....Very likely >I'll find that someone said something like this, but..I feel rather >strongly moved by the cyber-spirit to say: > >*In extension of stuff Tom Beckett has said, and several others have >nodded to: I'm made *very* uncomfortable by the fact that the websters >don't quite see how the immediate poetry-community structure has become >split. This will be a temporary, and rapidly evolving situation. But it >is going to exist in some form for some time. > >*I know important and dynamic poets, writers, and readers of poetry who >don't have much (or any) access to web and net modalities. This makes a >huge difference as resources get shifted to cyberspace. > >*Eventually, public libraries will provide something apporaching >half-adequate resources for accessing "non" and other great >cyber-publications. But this will continue to be a troublesome option, in >relation to the hours poets can manage to spend in their public library, >the ambiance and ability to concentrate, etc., & very importantly: their >ability to submit if paper submissions are not accepted for electronic >venues. Etc. > >*Already (in a way many folks who've just posted apparently don't see) >there is a large split between cyber-empowered poets and others; a gradual >evolution of a two-tier structure in what had been a purely paper culture >not long ago... > >Mark P. >@lanta > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:43:17 -0500 Reply-To: Gabriel Gudding Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Web Communities, Poetry, Spicer & useful binaries In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, William Marsh wrote: > > no longer a problem, as public libraries go on-line etc., as Bill Gates > > (bless him?) donates millions to furnish Microsoft-ready workstations (the > > business is still there--but let's take advantage, i guess) / > > as for "collective actions," one exciting possibility that i'm exploring > > etc. -- the popular "you can't curl up in bed with a PC" is generally true, > > tho not for long, as MIT works while we sleep to build paperback-sized > > laptops with page-like resolution Thomas Bell wrote: >What I find energizing with epublication is the potential for bottom-up >accretion of knowlege, people, pages, etc. Top-down still has a place >but I was never much for _Dictionaries of (_____) Literature_, >authorative guides, etc. I have started my own heap of sweepings. --------------------------------------------------------------- I'll start with two cliches: Seeing epublication as a kind of demo-utopic option is not an option. Bottom-up is exactly how top-down structures are built. Let me put that another way. E-word is certainly different from ink-word. But both are themselves radically different -- different in kind, not degree -- from the spoken word. Trying to cultivate some new utopia in the tiny valley between e-word and ink-word strikes me as just more neophilia. The impulse toward abandoning books in favor of screen for some sense of community or non-traditional community is understandable, but the screen is a highly privatizing mechanism, serving only to remind us, in the words of Kavanagh, that we "aren't alone in our loneliness." Spicer kept insisting that we never lose sight (?) of the voice: "They [New Critics] have taken poetry (already removed from its main source of human interest -- the human voice) and have completed the job of denuding it of any remaining connection with person, place, and time.... Live poetry is a kind of singing. It differs from prose, as song does, in its complexity of stress and intonation. Poetry demands a human voice to sing it and demands an audience to hear it. Without these it is nake, pure, and incomplete -- a bore." (This lifted straight fr Hoover's Norton, including ellipsis.) To say then that it's in great part a matter of how many have access to computers is sort of crazy: that's just another version of that very weird and very American impulse to have MORE THINGS (if we just had more things -- more computers, more laptops, more and softer and smaller gatches so we can curl up in bed with them!) Waiting on MIT to come out with their next dingie is like placing all hope for America in Flint Michigan, which of course the nation once did: "The PC -- it's not just a computer, it's your freedom." Come on! The proliferation of screens or books in itself neither makes nor destroys communities: it's what, to refer back to Spicer, the human voice dares do with those books (screens) that brings people together or drives them apart. If I assert that the memory of the spoken word is much stronger than the presence of the written word (whether type-face or pixel), would I be wrong? THis is of course the old much-maligned binary btw spoken and written word, but it serves a purpose when considering the new muchma-loved binary btw ink and e-word. What is inksome isn't necessarily irksome: it's HOW something is spoken -- out loud -- it's not WHAT is said or read (whether these are "meta-zines" or meta-meta zingy-zines or e-zippy neo-zines or zappy zingzangy zines): a zingy zangy e-word or ink-word cannot compete with the singy-songy of the spoken word. Gabriel Gudding ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:15:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: eletronic kisses In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I haven't finished reading through the weekend's posts yet....Very likely >I'll find that someone said something like this, but..I feel rather >strongly moved by the cyber-spirit to say: > >*In extension of stuff Tom Beckett has said, and several others have >nodded to: I'm made *very* uncomfortable by the fact that the websters >don't quite see how the immediate poetry-community structure has become >split. Which exacerbates the previously existing split of those who have relatively easy and cheap access to the sorts of things that come up on this list (through university libraries with decent collections; through poet friends; through this list; and mostly through not only being at the right place at the right time but through knowing the right people in those places and times) and those who don't. I well remember my years in the wilderness when I didn't know that anything worth reading existed (this is an exaggeration, but not by much). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:06:39 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph Subject: Re: Writing in Motion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Adding to Joe's post: << Robert Hass, the recent poet laureate, pledged to write poetry whenever he used public transportation. The rub is that there is so much busywork to being the PL that he had to write when travelling or not write at all. We take a working poet (mainstream or not, a working poet), make him/her the PL, and then sentence her/him to millions of meetings with Rotarians... In a combo of intuition (mine) and alleged fact that someone shared not long ago (requires substantiation), there are chemical reasons for what SEEM spectacular results associated with writing while in motion. Apparently (this lore has it) the physical motion releases something (could it be the ususal "phins" from running?) in the body that seems to induce the process of creating. Yours truly has had (of necessity) to write on airplanes, and have recently taken to riding public transport whenever possible (Phoenix is not conducive to an all-out effort in this direction YET). I can say only that I *sense* evidence that writing in motion is very useful and pleasurable. Trains, of course, feel best, but we don't have them here, alas. S. Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:54:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: this is the hour of the web Comments: To: "Patrick F. Durgin" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Patrick yes, "Of Two Minds" treats some of these issues well / the URL for M.Joyce's webpage is http://iberia.vassar.edu/~mijoyce/ best, bill At 12:24 AM 3/2/98 -0600, you wrote: > > Well, some of the questions raised by this thread, especially as >regards web-rings (meta-zines through aggregation), and the preference of >pages to web-pages are addressed in multiple ways in Michael Joyce's book, >"Of Two Minds" -- see also his web page, the url of which I haven't got >on hand just now. I wish I'd WRITTEN IT DOWN somewhere. > As far as the writing is concerned, I'm currently writing my first >poem in hypertext and staring into the screen I find helps align me with >the structure of the piece, somehow. In most cases, I'd rather read the >printed word (which is why I publish my journal Kenning in that >money-losing format), whereas I write to the screen and generally feel >uncomfortable when I cannot. That's my vote. > Patrick F. Durgin > >` >` >` >` ----->*<----- >` K E N N I N G| >` anewsletterof| >` poetry&poetic| >` s418BrownSt.#| >` 10IowaCityIA5| >` 2245USA\/\/\/| > >On Sun, 1 Mar 1998, William Marsh wrote: > >> this recent discussion both exciting and exasperating / yes, access is soon >> no longer a problem, as public libraries go on-line etc., as Bill Gates >> (bless him?) donates millions to furnish Microsoft-ready workstations (the >> business is still there--but let's take advantage, i guess) / but besides >> access, and this more to Tom's post below, web artists, e-publishers, etc., >> have to consider common-denominator ceilings on an "audience"'s PC >> capabilities -- modem and computer speeds, for example -- which limit some >> people's "viewing power" once they've managed to view >> >> as for "collective actions," one exciting possibility that i'm exploring >> currently with another publisher is "cross-publishing", where respective >> sites (two or three art or poetry e-zines, for ex) build links to each >> other's servers to create a small web ring -- the model is the net itself, >> which we're constantly reminded is actually one big meta or hypertext / >> like-minded ventures this way aspire to the kind of "larger-than-myself" or >> "mysite" attitude i think Miekal And was calling for, not only promoting >> but subsuming each other -- creating "metazines" through aggregation >> >> otherwise, i think it's extremely important for web workers to remember >> what makes e-publication special and potentially different from paper >> publication (not better or worse, obviously, since they currently do and >> always will occupy separate domains, and what's interesting is how they >> nudge and redefine each other's parameters) / in general reply to Mike K's >> earlier query about people's preferences for reading (online, printout), >> the use of the web as a text archive to my mind is a drag, tho i'm the >> first to applaud its value for research, for "quick hits" of people's work, >> etc. / currently the page is a much more comfortable space (some will >> disagree i hope) for reading large blocks of text, for reading on buses, >> etc. -- the popular "you can't curl up in bed with a PC" is generally true, >> tho not for long, as MIT works while we sleep to build paperback-sized >> laptops with page-like resolution / but finding a way to simulate the >> experience of page-reading is hardly the point (akin to meat substitutes) / >> i think it's much more important to consider what has contributed to our >> historical familiarization with book and page technologies as "comfort >> zones", what in other words makes us hit the print icon when we find >> something on the net we wanna read / and what then might define comfortable >> uses of the web for reading, viewing, web publishing, etc. -- again >> carefully thinking about what can be done online that can't be done in >> print / maxing the media, iow, not just mixing -- just as some of the best >> books test the limits of that technology too >> >> bill m >> >> >> At 07:32 PM 2/28/98 EST, Tom wrote: >> >I've been reading and re-reading Miekal's and Joel's recent postings.And I'm >> >fascinated by the possibilities that the web would seem to present for >> >collective actions. I need more education in these matters and look forward >> >hearing what others have to say. >> > >> >Tom B. >> > >> > >> >> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >> William Marsh >> PaperBrainPress >> Voice & Range Community Arts >> National University >> wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu >> http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh >> snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 >> San Diego, CA 92109 >> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >> > > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:02:29 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you?) In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:42:15 -0600 from One of the things Edwin Honig used to say is that he became a poet because all he needed was a pencil, it's a very portable art form. As Dale says, a good tactile book is a work of art in itself & a joy to be & hold; but in the end, the medium is not the message. The poem is the poem, the message is the message. The poem can expand into different media (visual, aural, conceptual), but then poems can be, prior to all these media. The word per se, via pencil, or lips. I would rather read, myself, in non-cyberspace. Easier on the eyes, more pleasing to hold. But as people have been saying, even reading is changing. Soon we'll have these little electrotalking pocketbooks, I suppose - and you won't "click", you'll "flip". But I like the crinkle of the dry driftwood clouds & the ink smell, and especially the glue. The glue, the smell of composting paper from some dumpster in India. Every book is connected to the great outdoors because it's fading fast - that's the last breath of fresh air for both you & your book. I lost a whole knapsack of books once on a bridge in a papermill-stinking town in northern Minnesota - into the river they went. Those books were trying to return to their native home. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:25:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: EdWard Dorn Update Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I was told recently that Ed Dorn has been sick. I would really love an update as to how he is coming along, possibly an e-mail or po box address so I can send him a message. Someone please post something to let me know how he is doing. thanks Erik Sweet Albany, New York, 1998 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:27:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: eletronic kisses In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:40 AM 3/2/98 -0500, Mark wrote: >> >*Already (in a way many folks who've just posted apparently don't see) >there is a large split between cyber-empowered poets and others; a gradual >evolution of a two-tier structure in what had been a purely paper culture >not long ago... gosh, why just two tiers? even within the community of cyber-empowered poets, readers, students, citizens, i see or at least sense emerging striations: writers/artists working for businesses or institutions who get to use the newest-latest company software and hardware to construct and distribute their work, others who get email and internet browsing, small web pages, and that's it, others without such affiliations but with enough income to purchase/upgrade to the hot new machines and programs, others who pinch and save for a while only to watch as their brand new equipment gets outmoded after 6 months or a year, others who don't have access to e-venues by choice or by lack of financial empowerment, etc., with several possible permutations within this latter group as well / and yes, the differences between these cyber-artist groups create power differences, as some garner access to technologies that others don't have >*Eventually, public libraries will provide something apporaching >half-adequate resources for accessing "non" and other great >cyber-publications. But this will continue to be a troublesome option, in >relation to the hours poets can manage to spend in their public library, >the ambiance and ability to concentrate, etc., & very importantly: their >ability to submit if paper submissions are not accepted for electronic >venues. Etc. up until a few years ago, most of the reading i did was in the public and university libraries (not as a student) because i couldn't afford to buy the books i wanted to read (i'm super fortunate to be in San Diego where UCSD houses the terrific new poetry archive, and that helped) / i don't see how using public library computers (assuming they have them, i admit) is any more a "troublesome option" than using library books -- multiple users, time restraints, ambiance have always been a problem in libraries / and i'm not sure if public internet machines allow this function or not, but there is free e-mail available (and free websites through Geocities or the like? perhaps someone who knows more could clarify) -- in fact, assuming this free email service does still exist and can be used on a public machine, it would be cheaper and easier to send submissions electronically than through the mail >*I know important and dynamic poets, writers, and readers of poetry who >don't have much (or any) access to web and net modalities. This makes a >huge difference as resources get shifted to cyberspace. i think it would be important to know why these poets, writers and readers don't have access, how they could get it if they wanted it (if possible) / i'm sure the stories are different, the reasons diverse, but i think it would be wrong to think that "cyber-empowerment" necessarily requires the right job or right income (not nec. your claim, Mark, i can only speculate) / i know i had to take on more work in order to save enough money to buy a computer / i also have friends who've done similar things, or sold tv's to pay for second-hand PC's, etc., and who make fewer long distance calls (to friends like me!) in order to pay for phone or cable modem services / i also remember life in a "purely paper culture" when similar budgeting (time and resources) was necessary to get the book, go to the reading, mail the submission, etc. / access is just as much an issue in the paper world as it is in the electronic, and is contingent on several other things too (geographical location, community funding), so again, i'm curious to know why these folks don't have access i also think those currently with better access and machines, etc., can help out those without by web-enabling their work and sending it to e-zines or posting it in web venues / if anyone has paper they want converted to pixels, please send it along / which also suggests opportunities for collaboration (revising a friend's work for e-performance, for ex) that might serve to compress the tiers Mark describes bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:28:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Neophilia Comments: cc: davidi@mail.wizard.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain [was, Re: Web Communities, Poetry, Spicer & useful binaries ] am dropping into this outa context, sotosay (having not as yet perused the antecedents) -- but this begs for remark: Gabriel Gudding wrote, << E-word is certainly different from ink-word. But both are themselves radically different -- different in kind, not degree -- from the spoken word. Trying to cultivate some new utopia in the tiny valley between e-word and ink-word strikes me as just more neophilia. . . . >> where's the necessity of either/or here? the dream-world doesn't replace the waking world, but helpfully supplements it. the e-world doesn't replace the ph-world, but does the same. the ink world, ditto re: the laryngeal world, ditto the world of unspoken thought, etc. -- if I may so opine -- neophilia is a wonderfully self-ironic neologism, eh? -- just more neophilia -- coining a neologism while denouncing (or belittling) love of the neo qua neo, eh? -- | it was night | then yon orient horizon | flushed w/ faint traceries of dawn -- | | it was just more neophilia / end of outa-context notation d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:28:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: Writing in Public Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Ron, whatabout Walt Whitman writing outdoors everywhere, anyplace and even in the dark outside on beaches at night? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:27:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: archival strategies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Miekal and others - took short break from computer to have earth life but coming back find much life teeming (teaming?) here as well - As an (unemployed) eletronic archivist, I am not directly aware of the policies of print collectors, but I think Yes it is a strategy to create something that can be easily printed out and can be made relatively delectable in hard copy - ( I add things to the printouts) - My experience electronically was that there can be problems of platform - Various hardwares becoming obsolete and the information stored in a way that is only compatible with those hardwares becoming inaccessible - Of course one can transfer the data to a new format - but you have then doubled your storage needs (unless you arrive at the point of finally trashing the original - whatever that is electronially speaking -) - You can also spend your life transferring data - And if you have it done by a bot you of course find yourself with too much of everything - I find I must print out and physically file corrspondence etc for it to be of any use - The set of relationships one creates by making such files is an archivable work in itself - It seems that what we are doing on this list and one of the uses of web rings or even just plain links is the fact of linking and quick communication - A self-perpetuating organization occurs which is close to being alive - It makes up for the the lack of portability and tactility that e zines suffer from - Although if a new e zine can have a global readership (they of course can and do) - another kind of portability is created - Laura At 03:40 PM 2/28/98 +0000, you wrote: >Laura Moriarty wrote: > > >> I try to send printouts of non to the not-netted (though of course some >> texts and images are web-only knowable) - As an archivist I know that such >> hard copies collected at the various archives will be of lasting importance - > >I detect a strategy here, & would like to know more. Are you saying >that the same archives that collect small press & bookart are also >interested in a hardcopy version of webworks? How are they being >catalogued? Are you binding actual volumes or are you handing them >looseleaf xeroxes. Do you think such works get treated equal to >published volumes or is it treated as ephemera, like say an author's >letters? > > > > > >> Relatedly - >> >> Recently got some stats for non that suggest much readership - many hits >> form all over the world and want to thank people for checking in - > >When I compare how many hits we get on various sites to how many people >have read a Xexoxial book, I have to console myself that ehy are really >2 different mediums. There is of course the question of how many of >those "hits" actually consume content. > > > >> I've always thought that it's good to give something to the writing >> community esp if you expect anything back - run a series, publish a magazine >> etc - It feeds the work - > >I think the days of poets being supported by a critical & publishing >that is separate from their own life's work have largely come to pass. >Of the 100s of writers/artists Im in contact with, I really dont know >one that isnt participant in at least some of the other furniture of >creating poetic culture, whether it be publishing, distributing, >bookstores, working in archives & libraries, radio, reading series, >collaborations, teaching & promotion. > > > >> I also think (on another thread) that it's hard for anyone to really imagine >> David Bromige's true glamour if they haven't experienced it in person - > >You know, I invited David to come show me his goat milking tricks for >just that reason. > > moriarty@lanminds.com http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~moriarty/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 11:53:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you?) In-Reply-To: <9803021203172.3121447@utxdp.dp.utexas.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >E-publications suck. WORK. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for poetry's >market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. LOVE. It limits ALTERS the value >of physical production. It limits EXPANDS the mobility of the product, tying the >reader CONNECTING THE WORKS to one location, TO SEVERAL LOCATIONS for me, often at work. AT WORK, AT HOME, IN SCHOOL, IN AUSTRALIA It lacks the correlating >physical materials CREATES A CORRESPONDING ELECTRONIC SPACE that provides support to the word, reminding us of poetry's >very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It >promotes every kind of self indulgence AWARENESS becaue it is easier HARDER to reproduce TO PRODUCE >inferior work. NOTICEABLE WORK. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy >it and bind it ENTER TEXT, CODES, DEFINE FONTS, COLORS, LINE UP EACH NODE, CONSTRUCT LINKS, DESIGN IMAGES you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. On- >line you might be tempted to publish lesser works MIGHT BE ABLE TO PUBLISH GREATER WORKS because there is less >time and money JUST AS MUCH TIME AND MONEY invested in it. > >For me publication is about the work. And the best way to present that work >is still the book. CAN BE THE BOOK OR CAN BE THE WEB. It ALL OF IT gives a shape and coherence to the work. The web >leaves that shape undefined. DEFINES ALTERNATIVE SHAPES. The book is the vehicle THE BOOK AND THE WEB ARE TWO OF THE VEHICLES for this work we do. >Without that, we are only addressing each other in a void. Noise results. >Did somebody say something? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 13:55:07 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale M Smith Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can yo There's no doubt that the same technology that created computers and the Internet contributed to advanced photocopiers etc... What I'm arguing against is the supposed fluidity of the physical medium. The book is the essential communications medium for poetry. But it's not going to remain so. I can imaginge an argument thousands of years ago between minstrels and scribes. "The voice is the only true place for poetry, by Gar!" "Duh, Wake up Homey, Time to spread the word to more people." The question now is whether or not more is better. Proliferation for the sake of proliferation. What is the selective process under new mediums? Doe it change? Will our perceptions of the poem change in relation to new electronic mediums? My sense of the Interne t is that it is a vast advertising tool. It's a perfect medium for the advertising spectacle. A lot of presses use the web to support their books. Not a bad idea considering the present reality of market publishing pressures. But as a tool for presenting the poem, the Internet is only a shell of the book. To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU In-Reply-To: <9803021203172.3121447@utxdp.dp.utexas.edu> rather than issue a once-and-for-all edict re new media (as dale has just done, and he's in good company---three nobel laureates have made similar claims, as has andrei codrescu): listen folks: if you could only SEE the strings attached to those hunks of paper out there we all call *books*... well you CAN: just have a close look, real close now, and ask how that thing got in your hands, start to finish... the web, the internet, is part of the digital world---same one that brings you (next generation) copier-printers, same one that brings you quark, same one that brings you tv, and poetics, and rice crispies (hey---think about it)... print and broadcast media combined becomes something else again, good and bad and in-between (it's human, for chrissakes)... turning one's back on this as a poet is worse than retro, now that so many poets have migrated into these regions... the access questions are not going to go away---EVER... anymore than the food questions will... perhaps broadsides will be the way to go in places where people can't find enough to eat---you tell me... but the larger issues re poetry and poetix really do have to do with how to make do with what each has (access to and so forth)... now how about that, huh?---all on this list have (as mark p indicates) different levels of access... but we're all here, somehow, variously connected... now we can activate to get others online, however... but to argue against doing things with the online resources at hand?---someone please explain to me how this is either necessary or desirable?... and how this is *not* a reactionary gesture, finally, in the face of those sundry realities that currently shape print publishing (nothing against the latter either)... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:53:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: eletronic kisses Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <34FAF7FE.597C@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I just don't think Bob is right on a number of points he makes below. My original post was cautioning that this is a problem *with respect to those publications which *are* shifting to cyberspace.* Yes, from among the large array of practical (and artistic) problems facing poets right now, this one would not be chosen as in the the top 5 or ten. But that wasn't what was being discussed. I can't fully interact with web and net (especially web) oriented publishing, and know a lot of poets of whom this is true....Bob seems maybe to have misunderstood the purpose of my post: I just think the folks who (doing a very good job of it, by the way) are shifting their publishing operations into c-space should be aware of the structure of the current poetry world... On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Bob Grumman wrote: > Just a note to say I don't think the split between cyber-empowered and > acybric poets too important. To me it's like the split that occurred > years back between typewriter-empowered and pencil poets. All kinds of > adjustments are going on, like access to computers at libraries or one's > workplace or school. Friends with computers should be available, too. > And I suspect that equivalents of Kinko's will pop up where you can scan > hard copy onto disks cheaply. Indeed, I wonder that Kinko's doesn't > already offer such a service. Maybe it does. Plus, being cyber- > empowered isn't all that big a deal right now: poetic cyber-space is too > disorganized and hard to get around in (at least for me, still in my > first year in cyber-space) for it to be much of a factor. It DOES let > one communicate much more easily and cheaply with people on the net, > which is a plus--but no more empowering than having enough money for > long-distance phoning is for some poets (never me). My final thought is > that the cyberization of poetry is among the least of the huge number of > problems facing serious poets. > > --Bob G. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:01:46 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: (or can you?) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dale M Smith wrote: > E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for poetry's > market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the value > of physical production. It limits the mobility of the product, tying the > reader to one location, for me, often at work. It lacks the correlating > physical materials that provides support to the word, reminding us of poetry's > very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It > promotes every kind of self indulgence becaue it is easier to reproduce > inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy > it and bind it you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. On- > line you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less > time and money invested in it. Dale, Im charmed by the soapbox yr standing on, & thank gutenberg that there will always remain some traditionalists out there. I think your position is remarkable in light of what transpires minute by minute on the web. What I would like to know, tho, is what your feeling is about poetic works that are net dependent (or computer dependent via cdrom), works like hypertext, intermedia, soundpoetry, & animated poetries? Do these get discounted in this blanket condemnation of electronic poetics? digitbrain ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:10:37 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: archival strategies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit laura: what about is webtexts had a .pdf file option that would insure anyone can print them out, formatting intact? miekal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:25:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael J Kelleher Subject: Atopia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm writing this from a state university funded workstation in Buffalo, NY. Color me privileged. Poets shouldn't hate the web. Luddism gets you arrested, but little else. It seems to me an exciting time for poetry in that the web creates the potential for not simply new (neophilial) but different FORMS of poetry. The fact that the word e-poetry exists points to the realm of possibility. And isn't it just this possibility for techne-cal innovation that has driven twentieth century (if not all) poetry from the getgo? Electronic media are not the death of the body nor of the physical world. They are simply extensions. The body is and shall ever be here in the world and the voice and the eyes and the you-know-what... What will change is simply awareness of our physical parts in relation to one another and in relation to the world. This is neither u- nor dystopia. It is Atopia. Placelessness. The physical body will not disappear, it will be everywhere at once. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:34:56 -0500 Reply-To: Gabriel Gudding Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Web Communities, Poetry, Spicer & useful binaries In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, David Israel wrote: > [was, Re: Web Communities, Poetry, Spicer & useful binaries ] > > am dropping into this outa context, sotosay (having not as yet perused the > antecedents) -- but this begs for remark: > > Gabriel Gudding wrote, > > << E-word is certainly different from ink-word. But both are themselves > radically different -- different in kind, not degree -- from the spoken > word. Trying to cultivate some new utopia in the tiny valley between e-word > and ink-word strikes me as just more neophilia. . . . >> > > where's the necessity of either/or here? > the dream-world doesn't replace the waking world, but helpfully supplements > it. > the e-world doesn't replace the ph-world, but does the same. > the ink world, ditto re: the laryngeal world, > ditto the world of unspoken thought, etc. -- if I may so opine -- > Well, 2 pts for picking out the irony. And no need, you're quite right, for these dang either/or's all the time: it's all, as they say, One. Om. The binaries aren't as you say "necessary" at all -- but they're present, insofar as there are differences btw the two media, print and etext, all of which is implicit in some of the anteceding posts you say you missed. To be serious, though, for a minute: the idea that epublication can become a reliable means of awakening or creating a new nontraditional community is a dubious one: all the talk of "meta-zines" or meta-meta zingy-zines or e-zippy neo-zines or zappy zingzangy zines sort of misses the pt that Spicer and so many others tried so hard to make: that _spoken_ poetry is the lifeblood of a community. As I said, a zingy zangy e-word or ink-word cannot compete with the singy-songy of the spoken word. Gabriel Gudding ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:37:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can yo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Dale writes, << What I'm arguing against is the supposed fluidity of the physical medium. The book is the essential communications medium for poetry. But it's not going to remain so. . . . >> neither did it begin so -- it is / was one intermediate stage of a larger / more fluid process the published book being a very new thing the hand-copied individual book being older / more ancient what we assume as eternal being a little blink on the screen or what now's a screen & tommorw? -- a dream d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:39:34 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: (or can you?) Comments: To: Miekal And In-Reply-To: <34FABBC8.26D9@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII What IS this compulsion to see the printed page as any more transcendent (in an aesthetic sense) than the screen, when each are just a variation of the "POEM OBJECT" -- -- The medium & the message interface in endlessly interesting ways, but have we learned nothing from the surealists, for instance, who challanged the frame of poetry in this way? Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Miekal And wrote: > What I would like to know, tho, is what your feeling is about > poetic works that are net dependent (or computer dependent via cdrom), > works like hypertext, intermedia, soundpoetry, & animated poetries? Do > these get discounted in this blanket condemnation of electronic poetics? > > digitbrain > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:40:14 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Ahearn Subject: Re: eletronic kisses Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm not sure the current dialog condemning the online reading experience is useful in practice. It is just too damned easy to print what you want to read and take it with you. Adobe Acrobat enables the writer or publisher to distribute a book of any size, formatted in any way, to the Web, mail, ftp, etc. AT NO COST. The person who wants to read this "book" in paper format can print the book quickly and easily and read it EXACTLY as it was formatted, whether or not his/her computer even supports the fonts and formatting used in the Acrobat file. The paper file printed IS a book if the author makes it so. Similarly, Web pages can be printed very easily. Internet Explorer allows one to print not only the web page one is looking at, but also all related Web pages. So one can print an entire Web site (read: book, magazine, broadside, etc.) very quickly and with almost no mental work. I read a great deal of stuff online. I recently read online all 50 of Sheila Murphy's fine haibun on Bill Slaughter's web site. That is, I sat there and read them all off the computer. It was no harder or easier than reading them from a paper copy. If I wanted a paper copy, all I had to do was print one and take it with me to the park, couch, or other favored reading spot. I think we should all be honest and just say that we prefer to read books, if we do. I do often. I see no reason to argue about whether the 'Net is dangerously impinging on one's right to read toner on a page. It isn't. If you prefer to read paper, in most cases you can easily, quickly, and cheaply. Enough said. I think the more interesting discussion has to do with the availability of 'Net technology (read: computers, modems, software, printers) to "everyone." Obviously, if you can't afford a computer, it's hard to participate in this Brave New World. And if you don't know enough to hack a little HTML, you're effectively disenfranchised from the electronic printing and distribution methods. ON THE OTHER HAND, it makes just as much sense to argue that the truly poor don't have the money to buy books of poetry (usually $12-$15 new), or literary journals (usually $5-$10) either. And "they" certainly don't have the minimum investment required to start up and maintain a printed literary journal, which costs considerably MORE, by the way, than the electronic counterpart. If you are really concerned with whether the poor can read literature, why not drop prices on your books and magazines? Or give them away free? Or offer to donate money and time to putting out a magazine run by those without the money and skill to do so? My magazine, VEER, or any e-zine, will be FREE to anyone who can get to it with a computer. It will be free passed hand to hand. Currently one can get 486 computers virtually free. Slow modems can be had for $20. This very small investment opens up the WORLD of the Internet, where almost everything is FREE. Can an equal investment gain someone equal access to the world of print media, where almost everything COSTS? Perhaps a good question for the print-mad to ponder. I like books. I collect first editions. I make a living as a professional writer. But I don't for a moment suspect that someone truly in need can afford my indulgences. He or she is left, mostly, with the library. God bless libraries. And while he or she, this mythical "poor" person, is at the library, checking out Pound and Williams by the crate, I hope they'll take a few minutes to read a few literary e-zines, which are also FREE. Joe Ahearn _____________ joeah@mail.airmail.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:57:34 -0600 Reply-To: Christina Fairbank Chirot Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: today's anagram/tagstagstags In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes this is a good essay-- I got into visual poetry actually via years of tagging (not to mention getting into trouble!) and it influences my work a lot still, as i use spray paints for my works and materials found in the street once tagging saved perhaps my life-- i was painting in a dimly lit alley in Boston when i saw on the wall two shadows growing larger and larger--obviously two people aprroaching--when the shadows were very large i spun to face one man with a gun and another with fists drawn back--i sprayed them in the eyes and ran off while they screamed-- in a talk i gave at Edmonton "Eyerhymes" conference last summer I spoke of tagging in relation to visual poetry and showed some examples tagging is maybe the oldest form of writing in a sense, when you think of cave paintings and petroglyphs obviously, tagging is condemned because it interferes with private property (though much of it is property that is condemned!) there was a brief period in the early eighties when tagging was in movies and in museums--(related to hiphop esp.)--PBS even did a special on the great old "bombing"days in NYC--!!! provided a visual performative interrelated language along with hip hop beats--of street life making its own documents, rather than accept the ones written for those streets by others-- one of the best taggers in Milwaukee died a few weeks ago--fell through roofing on a condemned building-- as one of the world's oldest artforms--it will continue-- always-- dave baptiste chirot On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, robert drake wrote: > karl young wrote convincingly on tagging in th context of vispo > (& also mailart and book art) in his postface to bob harrison & > nicholas frank's _context: a survey of recent visual poetry_ > (1995; hermetic gallery, milwaukee)... > > >Tagging is great, on the Amtrack north from Manhattan to Albany > >just around the beginning of the Bronx are some great tags, visual and > >poetic, yet at the same time criminal? > >-poetry on walls, colorful, often moving (on trains) blurred, short and to the > >point(like Creeley) , criminal (?) > >-In the parking lot of Buffalo's Albright -Knox art gallery I watched someone > >tag one of the moving trucks all white and clean with a sparkling new message, > >As the security guard chased that person down Elmwood Ave, I remember ( > >watching, hiding behind the bus stop) thinking the tag was better than > >anything inside-cherrio folks-J michel basquiat would have liked that. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 13:11:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: Web Communities, Poetry, Spicer & useful binaries In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:34 PM 3/2/98 -0500, you wrote: >To be serious, though, for a minute: the idea that epublication can become >a reliable means of awakening or creating a new nontraditional community >is a dubious one: all the talk of "meta-zines" or meta-meta zingy-zines or >e-zippy neo-zines or zappy zingzangy zines sort of misses the pt that >Spicer and so many others tried so hard to make: that _spoken_ poetry is >the lifeblood of a community. As I said, a zingy zangy e-word or ink-word >cannot compete with the singy-songy of the spoken word. > >Gabriel Gudding i guess the same can be said about "maga-zines" too / and even more seriously, who's competing? let's not insist on binaries in order to argue against them best, bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:09:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: eletronic kisses In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:40:14 -0600 from I just want to concur with Joe. This seems like the most sensible post yet on this issue. (& where would <<>> be without the magnifique Mudlark.) Nor do the options Joe is describing make xerox mags any more marginal or any less precious than they are already. - Henry Gould On Mon, 2 Mar 1998 14:40:14 -0600 Joe Ahearn said: >I'm not sure the current dialog condemning the online reading experience is >useful in practice. It is just too damned easy to print what you want to >read and take it with you. > >Adobe Acrobat enables the writer or publisher to distribute a book of any >size, formatted in any way, to the Web, mail, ftp, etc. AT NO COST. The >person who wants to read this "book" in paper format can print the book >quickly and easily and read it EXACTLY as it was formatted, whether or not >his/her computer even supports the fonts and formatting used in the Acrobat >file. The paper file printed IS a book if the author makes it so. > >Similarly, Web pages can be printed very easily. Internet Explorer allows >one to print not only the web page one is looking at, but also all related >Web pages. So one can print an entire Web site (read: book, magazine, >broadside, etc.) very quickly and with almost no mental work. > >I read a great deal of stuff online. I recently read online all 50 of Sheila >Murphy's fine haibun on Bill Slaughter's web site. That is, I sat there and >read them all off the computer. It was no harder or easier than reading them >from a paper copy. If I wanted a paper copy, all I had to do was print one >and take it with me to the park, couch, or other favored reading spot. > >I think we should all be honest and just say that we prefer to read books, >if we do. I do often. I see no reason to argue about whether the 'Net is >dangerously impinging on one's right to read toner on a page. It isn't. If >you prefer to read paper, in most cases you can easily, quickly, and >cheaply. Enough said. > >I think the more interesting discussion has to do with the availability of >'Net technology (read: computers, modems, software, printers) to "everyone." >Obviously, if you can't afford a computer, it's hard to participate in this >Brave New World. And if you don't know enough to hack a little HTML, you're >effectively disenfranchised from the electronic printing and distribution >methods. > >ON THE OTHER HAND, it makes just as much sense to argue that the truly poor >don't have the money to buy books of poetry (usually $12-$15 new), or >literary journals (usually $5-$10) either. And "they" certainly don't have >the minimum investment required to start up and maintain a printed literary >journal, which costs considerably MORE, by the way, than the electronic >counterpart. > >If you are really concerned with whether the poor can read literature, why >not drop prices on your books and magazines? Or give them away free? Or >offer to donate money and time to putting out a magazine run by those >without the money and skill to do so? My magazine, VEER, or any e-zine, will >be FREE to anyone who can get to it with a computer. It will be free passed >hand to hand. > >Currently one can get 486 computers virtually free. Slow modems can be had >for $20. This very small investment opens up the WORLD of the Internet, >where almost everything is FREE. Can an equal investment gain someone equal >access to the world of print media, where almost everything COSTS? Perhaps a >good question for the print-mad to ponder. > >I like books. I collect first editions. I make a living as a professional >writer. But I don't for a moment suspect that someone truly in need can >afford my indulgences. He or she is left, mostly, with the library. God >bless libraries. And while he or she, this mythical "poor" person, is at the >library, checking out Pound and Williams by the crate, I hope they'll take a >few minutes to read a few literary e-zines, which are also FREE. > > > > >Joe Ahearn >_____________ >joeah@mail.airmail.net > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:55:14 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale M Smith Subject: (or can you?) Digitbrain: I'm not attentive to the kinds of poetry you're speaking of. But I think that a poetry of the web will be something different than that of the book, or that of the human memory. The medium shapes the poem in fundamental ways. There is no such thing as a poem, that I can see, without some sort of medium through which it reaches away from one person (or machine) to another. Call me an old fuddyduddy, but I'm attached to the textures, smells and visual elegance of the page. A letterpressed volume of verse somehow conveys an immediacy electronic media will never approach. Maybe we'll have to rethink our relationship to the poem, think of it w/a more ephemeral attitude, a passing stranger with whom we take a moment's delight. The vacuous pleasure of e-media does make me a bit anxious, and my soapbox is a too rickety. Still, the Internet has not convinced me of its possibly human potentials. I see it primarily as an extension of commercial rackets. Blockhead. To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Dale M Smith wrote: > E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for poetry's > market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the value > of physical production. It limits the mobility of the product, tying the > reader to one location, for me, often at work. It lacks the correlating > physical materials that provides support to the word, reminding us of poetry's > very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It > promotes every kind of self indulgence becaue it is easier to reproduce > inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy > it and bind it you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. On- > line you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less > time and money invested in it. Dale, Im charmed by the soapbox yr standing on, & thank gutenberg that there will always remain some traditionalists out there. I think your position is remarkable in light of what transpires minute by minute on the web. What I would like to know, tho, is what your feeling is about poetic works that are net dependent (or computer dependent via cdrom), works like hypertext, intermedia, soundpoetry, & animated poetries? Do these get discounted in this blanket condemnation of electronic poetics? digitbrain ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:01:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Atopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Michael J Kelleher wrote: > I'm writing this from a state university funded workstation in Buffalo, > NY. Color me privileged. > > Poets shouldn't hate the web. Luddism gets you arrested, but little else. One shouldn't hate, period. The day that Luddism gets one arrested will be the day that Luddism is Necessary. > > It seems to me an exciting time for poetry in that the web creates > the potential for not simply new (neophilial) but different FORMS of > poetry. Agreed. But the concern that has been expressed here is about hte notion that associates Communities with No-placeness. There's a certain frisson found in yoking the two ideas, sure. But Internet Community will never be anything more than an oxymoron. Oxymorons are fun. But they're not what they say they are: we like them because they're wacky and ironic yokings, not because they pretend to be what they say they are. We can all pretend, as hard as we are able, that one can have an Atopian Community. It's a nice idea, but that's all. Atopia is another name for hell. Read the ol Milton. Or don't they do that in Buffalo? If no readings took place at Black Mountain, you wouldn't have the Black Mountain School. STop all readings in Buffalo for two semesters and see what happens to the morale and the mettle of that program: it'll puff into powder. The keyboard is nothing without that larynx above it. Gabriel Gudding ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:23:55 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: magazine concept Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit RE: What to do Intended audience: the lurkers and the lonely I've been thinking a lot about the concept of the magazine as I have just put out my second issue of Rhizome. I believe a distinction should be made between books that include more than one author and magazines. Magazines should be like snap shots of what work is currently being done. They should not be like museums (Arshille, Rhizome). The art should be current and not from some recent gallery showing. Preferably, made for the issue. If anyone remembers Invisible City (I was two) that Paul Vangelisti and John McBride did in San Francisco/LA during the seventies, they managed to put a lot work on one page, but their design was exquisite and never looked cluttered. I don't think magazines should be read the same way a book is. I also regret that times are such that it is difficult to produce any magazines at all. When Evan Calbi and I started Rhizome, we knew almost nothing about small presses and lit magazines. We had to go out and talk to people who had done them and not until then did it makes sense to me why anyone would bother to start a poetry magazine. Los Angeles is a grissly national forest so even Sun&Moon can get covered in the under brush. But the literary magazine community is truly awe inspiring. What very unrich people are doing that is high quality. If not magazines, a series of chap books like Guy Bennett is doing with Seeing Eye (see www.litpress.com) This guy makes his living type- setting for Sun & Moon and teaching French. Paul Vangelisti's Ribot is the sharpest magazine going in terms of design and has won awards, but he is a part-time art school teacher. Pays for Ribot by writting ad copy. John Lowther's Syntactics. Chris Reiner's Witz. Mark Presjnar's Misc. Proj. At any rate, the way Rhizome is paid for is by bringing in lots and lots of people to take over small tasks. And to chip in with money. This makes for disorganization and plenty of mistakes. It also makes us get into a room together and talk about literature, writing, methods, design, type-setting. I think this is sort of group activity is what Chain might be about at this point as I know they are relying on donations and subscriptions. It definitely seems to be this way with Brian Lucas' Angle. Those writers who are looking for a community might find that this kind of publishing gets you in contact with people who think like you do and who also challenge you. I spent $20K on an MFA and never met a sole who had read Stein. I started a magazine knowing no one and now I get letters every day from people who are doing the same thing, thinking about the same things, telling me how to think better. As one who is leery of academia, I find that getting to know various pubishers is a an excellent way to get an intellectual life. Sometimes, I think the publishers are the ones most passionate and those are the people I want to know. I meet or correspond with lots of younger people who ask me how they can get their poems into magazines or whether or not Creeley will respond to their letter. I tell them that if they are serious about those things, they should get a magazine going in whatever way they can. The rest will fall into place. Oh well enough cheer leading, there are bills to pay. Standard Schaefer ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:30:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: the medium is the massage MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII or is it? (question with respect to recent discussion on publishing on the web) Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:33:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can yo In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as david i. suggests, a little familiarity with the history of the printed word goes a long way... may i recommend jay bolter's (now somewhat dated and a bit evangelical) _writing space: the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing_ (lawrence erlbaum, 1991) to help flesh out the history of writing---quickly... but in any case, i'll make a stronger claim: that there are things you can do online wrt poetry and poetix that you plain CAN'T do with books... we already know vice versa is true... but owing to this medium's relative newness, it's not clear yet what all those things are, or might be... and i fully anticipate, as with any new technology, new needs and new problems to rear their ugly heads... so if one wantsa use this medium to critique this medium, i'm all for it... but critique is not simply skepticism---it's informed by, among other things, some careful consideration re what's going on... sayeth the fucking professor of english, if you like... and just saying something sucks---dale---is not what i call careful consideration... i mean, if you're trying to start a flamewar, that's one way... if you're rendering your aggregate judgment after carefully weighing the issues, i guess i'll have to take your word for it... didn't sound like it though, not to me... here's andrei codrescu, the title essay from _the disappearance of the outside: a manifesto for escape_ (addison-wesley, 1990): "The electronic media, however, operate differently. Simultaneous, auditory, global, tribal, connecting us all to the only job left: moving information. Work disappears. It will be done by the machines. But which machines? The *lesser* machines. We, the superior machines, will work at becoming more of a *single* organism. And more of a *marginal* organism. The individual dies for the species. The original program. Finis. But which species? Theirs or ours? McLuhan's vision makes no room for the unpredictable, the asystemic, the imaginary. It is a closed and closing circuit. It cannot foresee its overthrow, and it knows nothing of the operation of mystery in the world. It is not demiurgic, it is cooperative. It conforms to its own ineluctability. The State and rationalism (religion before that) have always attempted and never succeeded in passing themselves off as irrevocable, necessary, and ineluctable. It is the task of technology as the newest member of this directorate to finish the job." (201-2) he concludes the essay, and the book, with this: "There are two global realities, resembling in a nonrepresentational way the old programmatic realities of East and West: the imaginary electronic globe, and the poetic-specific-eco community. "The poet's job is to short-circuit the imaginary globe." (207) i think codrescu is wise to be cautious, but his binaries are a real problem for me, for lotsa reasons... i suspect others'll feel this way too... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:37:59 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Query: Mobilio Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Anyone who has either Albert Mobilio's address (home or e) or George Kalamaras' please back channel me with the info. In dire need. Thanks ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:21:39 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: [Fwd: [FWD] towards a europanto: a five-year plan] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Received: from mail.Desk.nl (ns2.Desk.nl [194.109.3.69]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.8.7/8.8.6) with ESMTP id QAA07417 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:42:01 -0600 (CST) Received: from basis.Desk.nl (listserv@basis.Desk.nl [194.109.3.67]) by mail.Desk.nl (8.8.8/8.6.9) with ESMTP id XAA14623; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 23:31:16 +0100 Received: (from listserv@localhost) by basis.Desk.nl (8.8.5/8.6.9) id XAA16919 for nettime-l-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 23:18:39 +0100 Message-Id: <199803022218.XAA16919@basis.Desk.nl> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 19:20:18 +0100 From: t byfield To: Nettime Subject: [FWD] towards a europanto: a five-year plan Sender: owner-nettime-l@basis.Desk.nl Precedence: bulk Content-Type: text The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt ENGLISH as the preferred language for European communications, rather than GERMAN, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English had some room for improvement, and has accepted a five- year phased-in plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). in the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k", not only will this klear up any konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter. In the third year publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always been a deterent to akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful, and that would go. By the fourth year, people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be droped from vords kontaining "ou"' and similar changes vud of kors be be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After ze fifz yer, ve vil hav a sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis, and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozr. Ze drem vil finali kum tru. !!! -- "...curse you, Byfield....Nurse! Time for my bong hit..." --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 18:27:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: pair o' ducks Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Joe Amato writes -- << . . . so if one wantsa use this medium to critique this medium, i'm all for it... >> me too, to wit: the proper forum to rail against cyberspace? -- cyberspace thus: you shd. see my paperbook savaging / disparaging the inkprint word then I'll give me a speech whose vituperative gist will be the patent bootlessness of speaking till finally I sigh & think to meself "ah, what did I ever gain by thinking?" d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:11:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: (or can you?) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Head: A poem is made of w,o,r,d,s, and a person is made of tongues, and a machine makes more merry the meet market of spit? Spatehide Dale M Smith wrote: > Digitbrain: > > I'm not attentive to the kinds of poetry you're speaking of. But I think that > a poetry of the web will be something different than that of the book, or that > of the human memory. The medium shapes the poem in fundamental ways. There is > no such thing as a poem, that I can see, without some sort of medium through > which it reaches away from one person (or machine) to another. Call me an old > fuddyduddy, but I'm attached to the textures, smells and visual elegance of > the page. A letterpressed volume of verse somehow conveys an immediacy > electronic media will never approach. Maybe we'll have to rethink our > relationship to the poem, think of it w/a more ephemeral attitude, a passing > stranger with whom we take a moment's delight. The vacuous pleasure of e-media > does make me a bit anxious, and my soapbox is a too rickety. Still, the > Internet has not convinced me of its possibly human potentials. I see it > primarily as an extension of commercial rackets. > > Blockhead. > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > Dale M Smith wrote: > > > E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for > poetry's > > market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the > value > > of physical production. It limits the mobility of the product, tying the > > reader to one location, for me, often at work. It lacks the correlating > > physical materials that provides support to the word, reminding us of > poetry's > > very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It > > promotes every kind of self indulgence becaue it is easier to reproduce > > inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy > > it and bind it you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. > On- > > line you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less > > time and money invested in it. > > Dale, Im charmed by the soapbox yr standing on, & thank gutenberg that > there will always remain some traditionalists out there. I think your > position is remarkable in light of what transpires minute by minute on > the web. What I would like to know, tho, is what your feeling is about > poetic works that are net dependent (or computer dependent via cdrom), > works like hypertext, intermedia, soundpoetry, & animated poetries? Do > these get discounted in this blanket condemnation of electronic poetics? > > digitbrain ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 16:34:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "trace s. ruggles" Subject: Re: Writing in Public In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi All, I haven't posted here in a very long time, but I've got some input on this... When I was at Naropa, I used to hang out with all the Buddhist studies folks a lot. They loved to get drunk and write exquisite corpses in whatever bar was available. They probably never wrote anywhere else, but they had a ball doing it. I read/performed some of these poems and it usually went over pretty well as long as I introduced it as being a poem by "5 buddhists and a poet". Maybe Boulder was a little different than other towns (in fact, I'm sure it is, now being in Portland), but the other people in the bar wouldn't even give us a second look when they saw us writing and passing around sheets of paper, laughing. I guess this wasn't so out-of-the-ordinary. Also, a couple of times, when Naropa would have some bazaar, I'd set up a booth with a big sign reading "FREE POETRY", and would sit there waiting for people to approach me. Most of them would ask me, "what do you mean, 'free poetry'?", and I'd tell them to give me a word or a phrase and I'd write a poem for them. I wouldn't always use the word they gave me, but I'd let their 'essence' direct me in the poem. I'd write it just once, right there on one page, filling it up however I saw fit. Sometimes I was 'right on', in the sense that when they read it something would wake up in them. Other times, they'd just shrug their shoulders and move on. This all felt very public to me, but a very private exchange, especially with the free poetry booth. So, it was a performance, I guess in 'process', but not everyone would see/hear the 'product'. Trace At 5.07 am -0800 3/2/98, you wrote: >In its court-affiliated forms and in numerous other social contexts >traditional Chinese poetry was very much a performance art. A bunch of >courtier poets would be trailing the Emperor and when he would propose a >topic, everyone would compete to come up with the best poem. > >On a somewhat lower social level lots of poetry would be composed on the >tongue in bars at parties, and frequently written up on the wall by the >author or whoever had the best calligraphy. > >Part of the point of inviting Li Bo (Li Po) over for drinks and dinner >was to watch him come up with a poem, and compete with the other poets >in the neighborhood. > >Of course this is writing in public in a different sense from Duncan, >Whalen or Blackburn on the bus, where they are outside and in a public >space, taking in but not necessarily displaying themselves in public. G. >Apollinaire is an earlier example, e.g. Lundi Rue Christine. Edwin >Denby's aesthetic was "in public in private" and might be considered to >devolve from the same issue. > >Can one be both, writing in a public location privately and at the same >time performing publicly? Maybe the second poem in my chapbook "At >Baoshan" would be an example. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 17:45:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: tomorrow's bananagram (was today's etc) Comments: To: Christina Fairbank Chirot In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" joe austin who currently teaches at bowling green state u has a terrific book coming out (columbia?) on the sociology of grafitti in those golden nyc hip hop daze... At 2:57 PM -0600 3/2/98, Christina Fairbank Chirot wrote: > Yes this is a good essay-- > I got into visual poetry actually via years of tagging (not to >mention >getting into trouble!) and it influences my work a lot still, as i use >spray paints for my works and materials found in the street > once tagging saved perhaps my life-- > i was painting in a dimly lit alley in Boston when i saw on the >wall two shadows growing larger and larger--obviously two people >aprroaching--when the shadows were very large i spun to face one man with >a gun and another with fists drawn back--i sprayed them in the eyes and >ran off while they screamed-- > in a talk i gave at Edmonton "Eyerhymes" conference last summer I >spoke of tagging in relation to visual poetry and showed some examples > tagging is maybe the oldest form of writing in a sense, when you >think of cave paintings and petroglyphs > obviously, tagging is condemned because it interferes with >private property > (though much of it is property that is condemned!) > > there was a brief period in the early eighties when tagging was in >movies and in museums--(related to hiphop esp.)--PBS even did a special >on >the great old "bombing"days in NYC--!!! provided a visual performative >interrelated language along with hip hop beats--of street life making its >own documents, rather than accept the ones written for those streets by >others-- > one of the best taggers in Milwaukee died a few weeks ago--fell >through roofing on a condemned building-- > as one of the world's oldest artforms--it will continue-- >always-- > dave baptiste chirot > > > > > > >On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, robert drake wrote: > >> karl young wrote convincingly on tagging in th context of vispo >> (& also mailart and book art) in his postface to bob harrison & >> nicholas frank's _context: a survey of recent visual poetry_ >> (1995; hermetic gallery, milwaukee)... >> >> >Tagging is great, on the Amtrack north from Manhattan to Albany >> >just around the beginning of the Bronx are some great tags, visual and >> >poetic, yet at the same time criminal? >> >-poetry on walls, colorful, often moving (on trains) blurred, short and >>to the >> >point(like Creeley) , criminal (?) >> >-In the parking lot of Buffalo's Albright -Knox art gallery I watched >>someone >> >tag one of the moving trucks all white and clean with a sparkling new >>message, >> >As the security guard chased that person down Elmwood Ave, I remember ( >> >watching, hiding behind the bus stop) thinking the tag was better than >> >anything inside-cherrio folks-J michel basquiat would have liked that. >> ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 19:47:43 -0500 Reply-To: Gabriel Gudding Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Web Communities, Poetry, Spicer & useful binaries In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980302131119.007b7d30@nunic.nu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, William Marsh wrote: > At 03:34 PM 3/2/98 -0500, you wrote: > >To be serious, though, for a minute: the idea that epublication can become > >a reliable means of awakening or creating a new nontraditional community > >is a dubious one: all the talk of "meta-zines" or meta-meta zingy-zines or > >e-zippy neo-zines or zappy zingzangy zines sort of misses the pt that > >Spicer and so many others tried so hard to make: that _spoken_ poetry is > >the lifeblood of a community. As I said, a zingy zangy e-word or ink-word > >cannot compete with the singy-songy of the spoken word. > > > >Gabriel Gudding > > i guess the same can be said about "maga-zines" too / and even more > seriously, who's competing? let's not insist on binaries in order to argue > against them > > best, > bill bill, The same can in many cases _not_ be said about magazines (way back in NE America, prior to the new stamp rate, magazines were an extremely, like, local phenomenon: it was the _physical_ presence and nearness (rabid love affairs, thudding paperweight battles, and in one case an actual leg-biting [no dogs involved: author bit editor]) that made them go): physical nearness is sort of important to maga-zines. The curious thing about maga-zines is that a _physical_ community creates them. Meta-zines just don't have this: they have nothing to do with "community." Community, I guess I'm arguing, is a totally physical phenomenon; can't be numinous and stuff. When it comes to maga-zines the community is already extant: the mag comes _from it_. Community is a PHYSICAL thing. Now I know that a lot of folks have a problem with the idea of Physicality. Physicality is something we've wrestled with since, like what?, Plotinus, Augustine? further back than that? It became THE bad bugaboo with Plotinus. So much talk about the internet and the great "body that is all one" (aum) is just more of the same old neo-platonic hopes, but with some new rabidity, zippy irony, and really fun binaries. Not arguing gainst binaries at all: they're great fun and quite useful dingies. So, I hate to say this but there's some historical residue of neo-platonic prudery and christian humanistic prudery clinging to the common e-zippy boosterism that flows from certain certains. Spicer was right to associate New Critics & denudedness & non-person-ness & boredom. NOt saying anything here about whether poetry works well on screen or not or if books are better etc etc: saying that we ought not place epimethean hopes in a promethean vessel. Gabriel Gudding ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 20:24:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: web publication, etc. MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've been following the thread relating to this with interest... methinks it comes down to this: the web is good for wide opportunity and collective action. but the fact is: we are living in a world that is quickly alienating itself from itself via any source it can. the web is adding to this is two major ways: 1) it gives the guise of communication, but with out any kind of physical relationship between those "communicating" with each other. so no true communication can take place due to a lack of viceral stimulation between the people communicating (no body lang, eye contact, hearing a voice, etc). 2) with all of the voices crying out, no one is being heard. it is not hard to see how these points relate to web-publication. esp when you add in the fact that web related things are not "real" in the sense that they are only bytes of information conveyed over energy waves. this does not stand up well to an actual page or a poets voice. and tho the networking possibilities are stagering, the easy out provided by the internet is destroying human social interaction. and with the destruction of social interaction, comes the destruction of art. yet, here i am. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 19:31:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Kirschenbaum Subject: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe Amato sez: >but in any case, i'll make a stronger claim: that there are things you can >do online wrt poetry and poetix that you plain CAN'T do with books... we >already know vice versa is true... but owing to this medium's relative >newness, it's not clear yet what all those things are, or might be... and i >fully anticipate, as with any new technology, new needs and new problems to >rear their ugly heads... I dunno Joe, that noise about the new sounds a bit tinny to me; it's just so _reflexive_. I mean, what's "new"? -- Pinsky, Rosenberg, Joyce, probably others, have been writing in electronic spaces for ten years now . . . I'm tempted to argue that we have a surprisingly _clear_ sense of what _a_ digital poetics is or can be, at least at this particular moment, at least as that poetics has been self-consciously articulated by certain of its practicioners -- which is not to say that said poetics won't expand or shift or dissolve, but where is the poetics that won't? I'm not really taking exception to anything you write -- certainly not aligning myself with the web sux crowd! Quite the opposite really, I'm marveling at how much electronic writing there _is_ out there -- now -- new and not-so-new -- lying around on disks and drives and wondering if there comes a point where what's new doesn't eclipse what we could _know_ from thinking/writing about/into what we have -- what's been going around. Or as I've suggested in other e-places, there's going to come a time, and sooner than we think, when the challenge of preserving/porting these earliest, oldest e-texts -- say _afternoon_ or _Mindwheel_ -- will force a *spectacular* engagement of scholary editing and the art of the hack. Best, Matt ====================================================================== Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia mgk3k@virginia.edu or mattk@virginia.edu Department of English http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 20:52:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chrsmccrry Subject: Poems for the Millennium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I was wondering if there's any news on the second volume of Poems for the Millennium. Is it still in the works? Any info would be appreciated... Thanks-- Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 18:37:37 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you?) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > >but to argue against doing things > with the online resources at hand?---someone please explain to me how this > is either necessary or desirable?... and how this is *not* a reactionary > gesture, finally, in the face of those sundry realities that currently > shape print publishing (nothing against the latter either)... > > It's a shame to see artists rejecting new possibilities. My thought is this: a good poem is a good poem--read onscreen, printed out from the computer, or in a book. I particularly love the web & my computer (which CAN go everywhere & hold alot more poetry than a steamer trunk full of books), because I can archive material to my own taste, instead of rummaging through all the books in my storage shed. I hate physical clutter & have a small home. So the computer functions as my own personal library. Karen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 21:53:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: barn burning In-Reply-To: <94F67D53F2@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > I can do a Spicer page (unless...), a page for > Peter Ganick, and Linda Russo and I can col- > laborate on a page for Kathleen Fraser. I'd be Do Linda Spicer Dead > willing to do others, too. Do others ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 22:15:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: River of Red Wine (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i just read a poem today in a notebook by jml to j.m ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Jack Micheline dies AP.state (02-28) 19:04:21 Beat poet Jack Micheline dies KARYN HUNT, Associated Press Writer SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Jack Micheline, a Beat poet who wrote about society's downtrodden and called himself one of America's last troubadours, has died. He was 68. Micheline, a close friend of Beat greats Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and Bob Kaufman, died Friday of an apparent heart attack on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train leaving San Francisco, where he lived. He had suffered from diabetes for several years, his publisher, Matt Gonzalez, said Saturday. Micheline wrote more than 20 books of poetry over 40 years, forging a voice that captured the rhythms of street speech and various ethnic dialects -- half jazz, half street hustler. His subject matter was the poor working class and outcasts such as petty criminals, prostitutes, junkies and destitute artists. In his introduction to Micheline's first book in 1958, ``River of Red Wine,'' Kerouac wrote of his friend's prose, ``He has the swinging free style I like and his sweet lines revive the poetry of open hope in America.'' Born of Russian-Romanian Jewish ancestry in the Bronx, Micheline read ``Studs Lonigan'' as a child and was shaken by the images of injustice and cruelty that he also found on his own streets. Still convinced poets were ``sissies,'' he didn't begin writing prose until the age of 24, according to a biography written by longtime friend Gerald Nicosia. Micheline identified himself with the tradition of American street poets, fierce rebels who often were driven to barter their poems for food, drink and a night's shelter, Gonzalez said. He also saw the poet as a revolutionary committed to freeing people from the slavery of unfulfilling jobs, roles and relationships. ``He was really the last of the vagabond poets,'' Gonzalez said. While he achieved acceptance in the literary world, he was known for a prickly exterior and for making drunken scenes at decorous soirees, Nicosia wrote. He might rush around the room shouting, ``To be alive is to lead an exciting life!'' or make rough passes in offensive language at proper ladies. In his later years, Micheline lived a spartan life on social security and painted more than he wrote. He is survived by a son, Vincent Silvaer, and a granddaughter, Nicole Silvaer, both of Tucson, Ariz. Funeral arrangements were pending. ______________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 20:37:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: Writing in Public MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" it never even occured to me that writting in public would be discussed. it's always seemed natural to me. i carry a notebook and a pen in my pocket at all times. jeff. >In its court-affiliated forms and in numerous other social contexts >traditional Chinese poetry was very much a performance art. A bunch of >courtier poets would be trailing the Emperor and when he would propose a >topic, everyone would compete to come up with the best poem. > >On a somewhat lower social level lots of poetry would be composed on the >tongue in bars at parties, and frequently written up on the wall by the >author or whoever had the best calligraphy. > >Part of the point of inviting Li Bo (Li Po) over for drinks and dinner >was to watch him come up with a poem, and compete with the other poets >in the neighborhood. > >Of course this is writing in public in a different sense from Duncan, >Whalen or Blackburn on the bus, where they are outside and in a public >space, taking in but not necessarily displaying themselves in public. G. >Apollinaire is an earlier example, e.g. Lundi Rue Christine. Edwin >Denby's aesthetic was "in public in private" and might be considered to >devolve from the same issue. > >Can one be both, writing in a public location privately and at the same >time performing publicly? Maybe the second poem in my chapbook "At >Baoshan" would be an example. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 19:10:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: electronic kisses In-Reply-To: Mark Weiss "Re: eletronic kisses" (Mar 2, 11:10am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii EE Cummings once said something like, "If you like my poems, let them follow behind you as you walk in the evening." Hard to do though if the plug gets pulled thus the portable electronic book, which would likely cost quite a bit more than most paper/glue versions (not to mention the upkeep for batteries, etc). There is alot more on the non-aesthetic side of this issue. Consider the runaway nature of profit taking in business today along with rising costs of technology, marketing, materials, and energy. The inevitable increase in the price of monthly on-line service year to year. The ever looming potential for new taxes on internal usage (witness the past debate on the "bit tax"). Let's not forget the threat of censorship -- government, corporate, or whoever( internet snoop-doggydogs working for corporations or government). I am not an anti-technology technologist, but the cost-benefit just doesn't exist yet for computer poetry OVER poetry on the paper page (will it ever?) Explore/exploit computer technology for the purposes of poetry? Yes by all means. And by all means remain open yet sceptical to what can happen to what we have. Someone on this list said earlier today, "enjoy it while it's free." As for Henry G.'s interesting take on this, I am reminded of the conclusion of Ray Bradbury's _Fahrenheit ..._ where a secret society of book lovers hides itself in the woods from the book-burning authorities. In the absense of any books, they recite their favorite written works to themselves completely from memory. William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 20:13:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: Re: Atopia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gabriel Gudding wrote: > We can all pretend, as hard as we are able, that one can have an > Atopian Community. > It's a nice idea, but that's all. Atopia is another name for hell. I don't recall yoking the words "atopia" and "community" together. I meant simply to say that here in this placelessness you read my voice and you might call that poetry. Might not. That's up to you. But you see it speaking to you on the screen and thus an extension of me here in Buffalo touches you in Indiana. Without the web you might (gratefully) never see my voice nor I (sadly) yours. Granted, it is not the voice of the poet speaking into your ear but neither is it not not the voice. It is the voice you see. Relations between physical parts physical beings change and our senses react to different sensations differently. That's the neo in it. I like to read your voice. It's nice. Soothing, with a gentle mocking wit. Atopic Synaesthesia has a nice ring to it. > Read the ol Milton. Or don't they do that in Buffalo? Milton is forbidden in Atopia. We read Dante and wear hairshirts on thursdays. > If no readings took place at Black Mountain, you wouldn't have the > Black > Mountain School. STop all readings in Buffalo for two semesters and > see > what happens to the morale and the mettle of that program: it'll puff > into > powder. The keyboard is nothing without that larynx above it. It's true it's true. But have you heard the sound files on the epc? It's the next best thing to spending 500 dollars to get on a plane to hear the Buffalonian larynxes. And it's free! Atopia is not every place. Atopia is not some place. Atopia is not no place. Atopia is not place. Atopia is placelessness. Truly, #1332649785 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 22:37:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Re: magazine concept Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Standard's views on magazine publishing pretty much mirror my own. It has,finally, more to do with epistemology than technology. It also has something to do with risk.I distrust any art that doesn't involve a component of risk. It may be easier to publish by website, but... I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying don't just do that. Taking responsibility for the production of a physical magazine issue will teach you things you can't learn on the web. And Standard's written very eloquently about some of what he's learned. I too always advise young writers to start a magazine as a way into finding other people to interact with as artists. And let me say it again: this list is great if the work done here is translated into actions in the wider world of poetry work and if we can stimulate one another into doing things that we might not otherwise do.We can give one another the encouragement and permission to do what needs to be done. All this expensive technology is a box of tools--nothing more. I'm very pleased to have a new computer after all these years. ( Me who once thought my used Selectric was the bee's knees. I miss it actually.) But it's only one tool among many. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 23:05:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Chrsmccrry wrote: > I was wondering if there's any news on the second volume of Poems for the > Millennium. Is it still in the works? Any info would be appreciated... > > First 2 copies still hot from printer & binder reached Jerry & me friday. Official publication date is Poultry month, i.e. April. More news on the book & events around it soon. Meanwhile I'm sipping some Maker's Mark , fondling the object -- which has a gorgeous cover by Tom Philips (from the Humument) if I may say so myself -- pouring another Bourbon, and wondering what to do with the rest of my life. (Well, Jerry & I have started work on a _Collected Writings of Pablo Picasso_ for Exact Change -- so that will take care of itself...) Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 23:00:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a recent back channel Pierre Joris told me that he received the 1st copy of M-2 this saturday just past. Tom B. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 23:41:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Boy Meets Girl Meets Tractor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII BOY MEETS GIRL MEETS TRACTOR Geographical location, community fun-- So again, Thanks to Tom Beckett for this week's signature. Coming next week: many folks who've just posted public libraries will provide something apporaching enough money to buy the guise of communication, but with all of the crying ... As for "collective actions," one exciting possibility that paperback-sized nontraditional community cannot compete with the singy-songy of the zippy neo-zines or zappy zingzangy zines. To be serious, though, for a minute: the idea that epublication can become against them cyber-publications wrankles the feathers of even the most average bird. But this will continue to be a troublesome option, don't have much (or any) access to web and net modalities. This makes the immediate poetry-community structure has become purely paper culture half-adequate resources for accessing great experiences of the whole wide world can be said about even more inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, hard copy is going to exist in some form for some time. If you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less market. Still the book is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the *very* uncomfortable fact that seriously, who's competing? Let's not insist on binaries in order to argue sometime within the next year. It could be a frightening situation. But the ambiance and ability to concentrate, etc., & very importantly: their large split between cyber-empowered poets and others; a gradual reduction in necessary intelligence. Dale: I detect a strategy here, & would like to know more. Are you saying I haven't finished reading through the weekend's posts yet....Very likely publishing equal to technologies that others don't have--access, which really didnt amount to that much money per person. But critique is not simply skepticism---it's informed by, among other things, such as research, detailed description, analysis, and careful consideration. But in any case, i'll make a stronger claim: the larger issues re poetry and poetix really do have to do with how to choose or by lack of financial empowerment, etc., with several possible can curl up in bed with them!) Waiting cause free of charge. Check out those EXPLOSIVE curtains. Spicer was right to associate New Critics & drunkenness & challenge you. I spent $20K on an MFA and never met a sole who had read in a circuit. It cannot foresee overthrow, and it knows nothing of the claims, as andrei codrescu cluttered magazines, nor should he be read the same way a book is "communicating" with communication - A self-perpetuating organization occurs which is close to communications medium for poetry. But it's not going to remain so. I can live in communities that Im part of as long as Im finally getting a chance to find community truly awe inspiring. What very unrich people are doing that is compatible with those hardwares becoming inaccessible - I also have friends who've done similar things, or sold tv's to replicate. Computers is sort of crazy: that's just another version of those very weird constraints, but most poetry unfolds, beyond first acquaintance, slowly, in the larger community of the printed word separate, denuding it of any remaining connection with person, place, and time....design folks. My first mag was an awkward clutter of poems. But over time, destroying human social interaction. and with the destruction of social--Did somebody say something? digitbrain dingie is like placing all hope for America in Flint Michigan, which of plenty of mistakes also makes us get into a room, distribute their work, others who get email and internet browsing, small seeing Eye don't quite see how the immediate poetry-community structure was undone, and he's in good company---three nobel laureates have made similar E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for poetry's evolution of a two-tier structure in what had been a purely paper culture from people who are doing the same thing, thinking about the same things, but I'm attached to the textures, smells and visual elegance of new problems to get a magazine going in whatever way they can. The rest will fall into place in editions under 200 copies, & most are hidden in special and we have to take your word for it... didn't sound like it though, not to me...he concludes the essay, and the book, with this: help out those without by web-enabling their work and sending it to e-zines Here's your chance: Any how-to advice? Horror stories? Success stories? here's andrei codrescu, from the title essay from _the disappearance of the cost_: "But how am I going to get paid?" How cheaply can it be done? How do you handle high quality, if not magazines, as an argument thousands of years ago between minstrels and scribes. In any way is way off. There are still two communities out there. Printed in mind is likely to remake itself for that requirement. The equivalent of my experience, summonable at will--it's rather akin to the energy income to purchase/upgrade to the hot new machines and programs, others who do inferior work, if you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy information, work disappears. It will be done by the machines, which is the intended audience: the lurkers and the lonely interaction, comes the destruction of art. listen folks: if you could only SEE the strings attached to those hunks of zines which have a rough beauty to them. At least I like to think so. I'm made *very* uncomfortable by non-person-ness & boredom. Not saying anything here about whether poetry does but whether noone notices. So often nothing happens in academia, I find it became THE bad bugaboo with Plotinus. So much talk about that e zines suffer from - Although if a new e zine can have a global that it is just such divisions which make the challenges of wholeness & that makes of the poem a transitory thing, and poetry written with the web that the kind of concentration required for the reading of poetry is not, the individual dies for the species. The original program. Finis. But ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 01:00:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Lets talkabout TED BERRIGAN? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit There seems to be a general lack of writing and scholarship on the great Ted Berrigan. Personally, I feel that "The Sonnets" are amazing and it is totally unfair that the critics have often dismissed him as a "minor" poet living in the shadow of others, a "disciple" of Frank O' Hara, an imitator. -Why is it that some people can't deal with his importance to 20th century poetry? and when will somebody get it together enough to publish "The Sonnets" again in an edition that includes them all (not the Penguin selected poems) I want more. So lets talk:;how do you all feel about Mr. Ted Berrigan or how we can get the "Sonnets" re-published? Dear Everyone; it is 12:58 am in Albany lets talk more about the "master of pathos" okay. Erik Albany, New York March 3, 1998 Earth "dot dot dot" TB ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 00:18:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Atopia Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Returning after a brief absence I find my "heap of sweepings" [see Heraclitus, fragment 124] has mushroomed into Topias, Internet communities, etc.. all in a day's journey. I think I may have started this particular email riff (rift, rumor, cavil?). I had no such intention and can't find it in my original post. tom bell At 05:01 PM 3/2/98 -0500, Gabriel Gudding wrote: >On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Michael J Kelleher wrote: > >> I'm writing this from a state university funded workstation in Buffalo, >> NY. Color me privileged. >> >> Poets shouldn't hate the web. Luddism gets you arrested, but little else. > > >One shouldn't hate, period. The day that Luddism gets one arrested will >be the day that Luddism is Necessary. > > >> >> It seems to me an exciting time for poetry in that the web creates >> the potential for not simply new (neophilial) but different FORMS of >> poetry. > > >Agreed. But the concern that has been expressed here is about hte notion >that associates Communities with No-placeness. There's a certain frisson >found in yoking the two ideas, sure. But Internet Community will never be >anything more than an oxymoron. Oxymorons are fun. But they're not what >they say they are: we like them because they're wacky and ironic yokings, >not because they pretend to be what they say they are. We can all >pretend, as hard as we are able, that one can have an Atopian Community. >It's a nice idea, but that's all. Atopia is another name for hell. Read >the ol Milton. Or don't they do that in Buffalo? > >If no readings took place at Black Mountain, you wouldn't have the Black >Mountain School. STop all readings in Buffalo for two semesters and see >what happens to the morale and the mettle of that program: it'll puff into >powder. The keyboard is nothing without that larynx above it. > >Gabriel Gudding > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 00:18:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can yo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:55 PM 3/2/98 CST, Dale M Smith wrote: >There's no doubt that the same technology that created computers and the >Internet contributed to advanced photocopiers etc... What I'm arguing against >is the supposed fluidity of the physical medium. The book is the essential >communications medium for poetry. But it's not going to remain so. I can >imaginge an argument thousands of years ago between minstrels and scribes. >"The voice is the only true place for poetry, by Gar!" I always thought there was life (and poetry) before the book. >"Duh, Wake up Homey, >Time to spread the word to more people." The question now is whether or not >more is better. Proliferation for the sake of proliferation. Yes, enough caviling. Let's _do_ some good work. What is the >selective process under new mediums? Doe it change? Would wish it would. >Will our perceptions of >the poem change in relation to new electronic mediums? Would wish they would. >My sense of the Interne >t is that it is a vast advertising tool. It's a perfect medium for the >advertising spectacle. A lot of presses use the web to support their books. >Not a bad idea considering the present reality of market publishing pressures. >But as a tool for presenting the poem, the Internet is only a shell of the >book. "If I can hone one bit of this vast advertising tool into a piece of art or craft I will not have lived in vain, vaingloriously he [read here "I" to avert email cavil] blurted to screen. - I like "email cavil"! tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 00:18:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you?) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, the thing to do might be to use the typewriter well tom bell At 12:42 PM 3/2/98 -0600, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: >rather than issue a once-and-for-all edict re new media (as dale has just >done, and he's in good company---three nobel laureates have made similar >claims, as has andrei codrescu): > >listen folks: if you could only SEE the strings attached to those hunks of >paper out there we all call *books*... > >well you CAN: just have a close look, real close now, and ask how that >thing got in your hands, start to finish... > >the web, the internet, is part of the digital world---same one that brings >you (next generation) copier-printers, same one that brings you quark, same > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 00:18:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have to side with Joe here. Most of the "epoetry" I've seen is little more than transferring printed text to html or whatever just as the first and tv shows transferred radio, plays, and printed texts to the screen. I think this leads to a text-based mindset for readers as well as writers. While fascination with the new, the latest technology, the glitsy or zingy-zangy, etc. seems overpowering right now, it will fade away quite soon. I think there is quality stuff already if one looks. I think Joe was referring to new ways of writing (thinking) that are in fact not possible on the printed page or at a reading. Just because one can't compose hyperlinked lines for the printed page or to be read aloud does not mean they can't be poetry. The same applies to simultaneous multi-media composition: written and spoken, written and drawn, spoken and visual, moving and moving. tom bell At 07:31 PM 3/2/98 -0500, Matthew Kirschenbaum wrote: >Joe Amato sez: > >>but in any case, i'll make a stronger claim: that there are things you can >>do online wrt poetry and poetix that you plain CAN'T do with books... we >>already know vice versa is true... but owing to this medium's relative >>newness, it's not clear yet what all those things are, or might be... and i >>fully anticipate, as with any new technology, new needs and new problems to >>rear their ugly heads... > >I dunno Joe, that noise about the new sounds a bit tinny to me; it's just so >_reflexive_. I mean, what's "new"? -- Pinsky, Rosenberg, Joyce, probably >others, have been writing in electronic spaces for ten years now . . . I'm >tempted to argue that we have a surprisingly _clear_ sense of what _a_ >digital poetics is or can be, at least at this particular moment, at least >as that poetics has been self-consciously articulated by certain of its >practicioners -- which is not to say that said poetics won't expand or >shift or dissolve, but where is the poetics that won't? I'm not really >taking exception to anything you write -- certainly not aligning myself with >the web sux crowd! Quite the opposite really, I'm marveling at how much >electronic writing there _is_ out there -- now -- new and not-so-new -- >lying around on disks and drives and wondering if there comes a point where >what's new doesn't eclipse what we could _know_ from thinking/writing >about/into what we have -- what's been going around. > >Or as I've suggested in other e-places, there's going to come a time, and >sooner than we think, when the challenge of preserving/porting these >earliest, oldest e-texts -- say _afternoon_ or _Mindwheel_ -- will force a >*spectacular* engagement of scholary editing and the art of the hack. Best, Matt > > > > > > >====================================================================== >Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia >mgk3k@virginia.edu or mattk@virginia.edu Department of English >http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 01:28:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: webbed fingers vs. webbed feet MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark P. wrote: "In extension of stuff Tom Beckett has said, and several others have nodded to: I'm made *very* uncomfortable by the fact that the websters don't quite see how the immediate poetry-community structure has become split. This will be a temporary, and rapidly evolving situation. But it is going to exist in some form for some time." personally, I don't buy that the websters don't quite see this split. and I think it was Miekal who put it best--that the opportunities have really been expanded. I think some of the hostility to the net can be seen as an adverse reaction to the decentralization the web offers. Sure, it's not REAL decentralization. But it has ruined the academic authority over poetry, as we have seen here. It has taken the "centers" of poetic authority (the big city poetry clubs) and the graduate programs, and tossed their authority out the window. Whatever authority those scenes, schools, urban centers, still have is largely in reactionary retreat. Rather than develop a community while participating, the reaction to the "coming community" is a nostalgia for a community constructed by other means: 1. anthologies, which re-code at least temporarily who's in and who's out, are a good way of marking off the territory. Like the academy, which doesn't recognize unjuried publications, the poetry scene can't handle such a widespread invasion (without proper credentials, identifyable formal tactics, having the last name of a famous poet, etc.). Anthologies--are the productive residue of this social-formation process & reconstruct whatever hierarchies are left after this dispersal of power and authority. 2. arbitrary revaluation: I don't like looking at the screen (except tv) so I can't read it, so it'll never get my vote as "serious literature"; there is no judgement giving authority to mediate issues of "quality control" so the whole lot is a mess (i.e. it is too easy, too user friendly, too accessible, too open); i make my books by hand, so they must be better; I write by hand, so it must be more authentic, etc. certainly many of the people who don't participate here or "officially" "online" do so privately, gaining admittance to the cool private cc. lists and the backchannel networking that makes everything go. so the idea that there is some kind of split is just bullshit. also--since when did the idea of "public access" become a worry to people who are now circling the IBM selectric wagons hoping to ward off a total revolution. unfortunately the "alternative" poetry community that doesn't adapt will be left to the rare book rooms, which in my experince (in buffalo, ann arbor, east lansing, portland, new york, and sandiego) are usually empty. by the way, I hate being put in the position of being a defender of that which don't need me to defend-and which i have no interest in defending. But I can't even imagine the anti-digital backlash happening OFF this list--and I find it odd that so many people busy perpetrating it here are busy slamming it-- for my interest, the Small Press Collective and my branch of it, The Student Periodical Club, are still in formation. for a link to all of that see: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~kuszai/ and for me it is all about "education" not as much about poetry. Luckily for me, poetry can be a big part of the educational process, and not because some kid needs to read Milton to know that he's among the slobs sucking it up in the trashcompator of your favorite deathstar. And no, we don't read Milton in Buffalo--there they assume that you read that stuff a long time ago. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 16:01:56 +0900 Reply-To: kimball@post.miyazaki-med.ac.jp Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kimball Organization: kimball@post.miyazaki-med.ac.jp Subject: Corman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Would greatly appreciate receiving, backchannel, Cid Corman's contact info, address, phone, E-mail address if there is one. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 02:45:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: publishing & prestige Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain question: to what extent is the evident quesiness or diffidence abt. web-publishing (vs. paperbook-publishing) tacitly related to issues of prestige? -- (e.g., higher prestige now associated w/ the latter) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 01:13:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Writing in Public In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" What about Han Shan? He used to write his poem/characters on rocks on the mountainside. Of course, in smalltown B.C. the drunken highschool graduands do that, but not with good poems. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 05:54:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Malmude & Gilfillan Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I want to second (or third) the wonderfulness of this book, which is really fabulous even if far too small. Malmude, with just three books over a 25 year period, is one of the most underpublished and underappreciated poets of my generation. Just when you've nearly forgotten about him, something like this comes out and nearly takes the top of your head off. I may have noted awhile back Merrill Gilfillan's Satin Street (from Asphodel Press, though the rear cover says Moyer Bell) as a similar occasion, another really fine poet whose work is far too hard to locate. [And has anyone thought to publish his translations of Gaspard de la Nuit by Aloysius Bertrand, the first book of prose poems (1826)?] Books such as these are treasures. Ron ...... Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:19:01 -0500 >From: Jordan Davis >Subject: goodbye books > >Henyr! > >Thank you for mentioning the name of my press, Goodbye Books. In honor of >the happy coincidence, and as is the custom on this list, please permit me >to sell something! > >Steve Malmude's book got a tremendously respectful (n.b. not fawning!) >review in Lisa Jarnot's News Letter. John Godfrey said among other things >that art comes to this poet, not he to it, and that there are certain >things the poet says which are none of the reader's business! > >I'll send out a copy of this letterpress book free to the first person who >e-mails me with their street address (it'll take me a week or so -- I have >to go fold them together). The next nine people can have it for $10 ppd. > >Read it now or read it later, >Jordan > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:30:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Atopia In-Reply-To: <34FB5936.974A7296@acsu.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Okay, Mike. Truces truces! On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Michael J. Kelleher wrote: > > I meant simply to say that here in this placelessness you read my voice > and you might call that poetry. Might not. That's up to you. But you see > it speaking to you on the screen and thus an extension of me here in > Buffalo touches you in Indiana. Great point! I'll end with this: what I love about poetry is its coming to _total life_ before an audience: when the poet embraces _us_ with her voice and physical presence. Like, reading Lenin or hearing tapes of Lenin in _no way_ compare to _being there_, to hearing and seeing and smelling and feeling that big bald guy intoning -- and I mean really in-toning -- in the square, to know the presence of state troops only five blocks away, to know that ol Len is scared shitless but to hear him ride that fear and bring us out of ours: I've heard poets do this (hopefully we all have), and getting a voice-cut off the net from Buff's truly amazing website just isn't the same. I fear that we look toward the net the same way we look, with each passing decade and its armamentarium of inventions, toward gadget-x to save us from our increasing ennui. Without the web you might (gratefully) > never see my voice nor I (sadly) yours. Granted, it is not the voice of > the poet speaking into your ear but neither is it not not the voice. It > is the voice you see. Relations between physical parts physical beings > change and our senses react to different sensations differently. That's > the neo in it. But I could neither punch you nor kiss you. And I miss the option. Thanks for this, Mike. Made me think. I like doing that on occasion. GG ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:59:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: web publication, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Mar 1998 20:24:05 -0500 from So, responding to Jeff, in a sense the medium is the message and the packaging is important - the advantage physical magazines have is that not only do they emerge from/create physical communities, they are a PRODUCT that you can CIRCULATE by hand (gift-giving) in a way that trading URLS can't compare. This is just to add to the pointing out of the VALUE of non-web publishing - not to demean the alternate VALUES of web publishing. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:10:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Writing in Public MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > First instance I can think of, though, of a poet writing in public would > probably be Pound in the wire cage in the mud at Pisa. > > hmm, I like the image, Ron, & the sense of the cage at Pisa as public place -- but first? maybe first public-jail-writing instance. I spent 2/3 of my 1.5 desultory years in Paris medical school so going around the city locating the cafés writers wrote & were writing in -- hemingway's c.w-l.p, sartre & beauvoir's (&a hundred other's) flore, the surrealists hangouts from the 20s on. When next in Paris, you'all should checkut the tables of the Closerie des Lilas, corner of Boulvard Montparnasse & Boulevard St Michel: all the tables have little brass plaques with the names of the writers used to use them -- for eating, drinking and writing. Thinking further back: how about calling "public writing" what Tzara did at the Cabaret Voltaire performances in 1916/17: cutting the words up into the hat & taking them out, making & reading a new work in public that way. In a wonderful detournement of such a situtaion is Jackson Mac Low's habit top write continuously while attending other poet's readings, using , I believe in some instances at least one of his procedures(the letters of the reading poet's name in the postion they are in that name used to select words from the reading with those letters in the same position) to create new texts. As to the web/vs stylus thread: any means whatever to get it down & spread it around is good enough, pecil, typer, selectric, screen, bathroom wall, parchment, Bic, Mont Blanc Fountain Pen, onion skin paper, etc. Genêt wrote several of his novels in jail on toilet paper and had them smuggled out. A writer's job is to write, whatever the means at her disposal. Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:15:48 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: wet kisses and technophilia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable OK-- > This is neither u- nor dystopia. It is Atopia. Placelessness. The physi= cal > body will not disappear, it will be everywhere at once. The "U" in utopia is "no" and makes the "A" in atopia a bit redundant. "Noplace" and "Placeless" are both in the same distopian discourse commun= ity, no? No fingers pointed, but what we need to underline here, in thick black = magic-marker, is the difference between "collective action" (of which I'm sure there = are a few good examples on the net) and the rhetorics of "democracy", "utopia", and "com= munity" which have always only been ads for the emergent technology of the day. = The promotional language that surrounded radio in the 20s and 30s was almost = word-for- word the same as that used to promote our current stomping ground. I hav= e a relevant piece in PMC January 1996, "Radio Lessons for the Internet" , or, for those of us denied access to Muse because we don't have account= s at universities that subscribe: As homey and seductive as it is, I don't find it particularly useful to = talk about what we are engaged with here in terms of rediscovering some lost connection. = In fact, t's a much more sound to argue that espace proposes itself as the remedy = for the very social disjunction (commodity fetishism) which it creates. > Adobe Acrobat enables the writer or publisher to distribute a book of = any > size, formatted in any way, to the Web, mail, ftp, etc. AT NO COST. Aside from being just plain wrong--computers, monitors, terminals, modems= , phone lines, "access providers" (love that phrase), tuition, computer ed, softw= are, all do COST-- this kind of discussion distracts us a bit from looking at the lit= being produced. We can recognize that the net is a decidedly class-b(i)ased = phenomenon that allows some people to *feel* like they're participating in a "commun= ity" while vacuuming *real* community and political action into itself (and excludin= g wholesale groups of others), AND talk about (and even ADMIRE) the kinds of "collect= ive action" that Joel rightly suggests it makes possible. I think one of the= finest (and funniest) of these projects happened on this very list a couple of years,= the Anti- Hegemony Project. There's a little write-up of it (if not the thing itse= lf) at: "Collaboration" was an early ad-line for the net, but I can count the num= ber of good examples of it on a few fingers. Collaborative editing of e-zines and = the mish-mash of MOOs aside, I would love to hear about good online textual collaborations= . Some of us must know where these things are... or maybe we just don't play well = with others. Missing my community, Martin _________________________________________ Martin Spinelli spinelli@pavilion.co.uk LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak ENGAGED http://www.engaged.demon.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:16:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Foley Subject: FLASHPOINT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain henry GOULD and mark WALLACE respond to joe BRENNAN's "A=R=T M=E=A=N=S" and Brennan replies ... mark WALLACE also ponders post-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poets in the new... FLASHPOINT (http://webdelsol.com/FLASHPOINT/) Along the frontier where the arts & politics clash ... Baraka Brennan Brody Clark Coe Eshleman Gould Haas Hickman Katz Parcelli Scroggins Stuefloten VanderMeer Wallace ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:30:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium In-Reply-To: <34FB73BF.6B980775@cnsunix.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bravo Pierre (&Jerry)! That means I'd better hurry to finish Vol. 1--I knew this would happen. Sylvester At 11:05 PM -0400 3/2/98, Pierre Joris wrote: >Chrsmccrry wrote: > >> I was wondering if there's any news on the second volume of Poems for the >> Millennium. Is it still in the works? Any info would be appreciated... >> >> > >First 2 copies still hot from printer & binder reached Jerry & me friday. >Official publication date is Poultry month, i.e. April. More news on the >book & events around it soon. Meanwhile I'm sipping some Maker's Mark , >fondling the object -- which has a gorgeous cover by Tom Philips (from the >Humument) if I may say so myself -- pouring another Bourbon, and wondering >what to do with the rest of my life. (Well, Jerry & I have started work on a >_Collected Writings of Pablo Picasso_ for Exact Change -- so that will take >care of itself...) > >Pierre > >-- >========================================= >pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 >tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 >email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu >http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >"What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to >a single vice is that we have several of them." > La Rochefoucauld > All my life I ve heard >one makes many > Charles Olson >========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:05:17 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale M Smith Subject: Re: (or can you?) So true, Spatehead, but are words and tongues and machines in isolation from each other? What guideth that consciousness toward the word, or draws said word into form? Poems exist not in themselves alone, but rely on the mechanisms of their disemination, verily I believe. The scratch of the pen over paper, the tap of the typewriter or the clack of the keyboard don't reverberate, in some way, through the organism of the poet/poem? The field of visions shift from paper to screen, from grass or wood to light and glass. Know ye I am not a Neuroscientologist, but the tools by which words are etched transform, however subtly, a relationship with language. Mind you, good sir, these words I write are not etched in stone. Tombstones are only reserved for that dignity this day and age. Language appeareth to me to possess a weight and a lightness. Thy medium relayeth the size and scope of vision. Perhapseth my own dissolveth like wind... To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Head: A poem is made of w,o,r,d,s, and a person is made of tongues, and a machine makes more merry the meet market of spit? Spatehide Dale M Smith wrote: > Digitbrain: > > I'm not attentive to the kinds of poetry you're speaking of. But I think that > a poetry of the web will be something different than that of the book, or that > of the human memory. The medium shapes the poem in fundamental ways. There is > no such thing as a poem, that I can see, without some sort of medium through > which it reaches away from one person (or machine) to another. Call me an old > fuddyduddy, but I'm attached to the textures, smells and visual elegance of > the page. A letterpressed volume of verse somehow conveys an immediacy > electronic media will never approach. Maybe we'll have to rethink our > relationship to the poem, think of it w/a more ephemeral attitude, a passing > stranger with whom we take a moment's delight. The vacuous pleasure of e-media > does make me a bit anxious, and my soapbox is a too rickety. Still, the > Internet has not convinced me of its possibly human potentials. I see it > primarily as an extension of commercial rackets. > > Blockhead. > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > Dale M Smith wrote: > > > E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for > poetry's > > market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the > value > > of physical production. It limits the mobility of the product, tying the > > reader to one location, for me, often at work. It lacks the correlating > > physical materials that provides support to the word, reminding us of > poetry's > > very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It > > promotes every kind of self indulgence becaue it is easier to reproduce > > inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, copy > > it and bind it you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. > On- > > line you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less > > time and money invested in it. > > Dale, Im charmed by the soapbox yr standing on, & thank gutenberg that > there will always remain some traditionalists out there. I think your > position is remarkable in light of what transpires minute by minute on > the web. What I would like to know, tho, is what your feeling is about > poetic works that are net dependent (or computer dependent via cdrom), > works like hypertext, intermedia, soundpoetry, & animated poetries? Do > these get discounted in this blanket condemnation of electronic poetics? > > digitbrain ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:21:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you) In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980303061850.00929814@pop.usit.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Just because >one can't compose hyperlinked lines for the printed page or to be read >aloud does not mean they can't be poetry. The same applies to simultaneous >multi-media composition: written and spoken, written and drawn, spoken >and visual, moving and moving. >tom bell > What goes around comes around. There was a similar (but much briefer) discussion some time back on necessarily e-work (i.e., work that doesn't translate to the page). One link that can lead you to some of this stuff is Jim Rosenberg's home page, http://www.well.com/user/jer/. Unfortunately he uses a hyperlink system that doesn't translate to html (do any of them? I'm ignorant) but if you can get the right software his stuff is gorgeous. Other folks might want to contribute other links. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:26:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Foley Subject: NEW POETRY in FlashPoint Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain NEW POETRY by joe BRENNAN, clayton ESHLEMAN, david HICKMAN, carlo PARCELLI, and mark SCROGGINS in: FLASHPOINT (http://webdelsol.com/FLASHPOINT/) Along the frontier where the arts & politics clash ... Baraka Brennan Brody Clark Coe Eshleman Gould Haas Hickman Katz Parcelli Scroggins Stuefloten VanderMeer Wallace ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:29:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Kirschenbaum Subject: Re: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom Bell, >While fascination with the new, the latest technology, the glitsy or >zingy-zangy, etc. seems overpowering right now, it will fade away quite >soon. I think there is quality stuff already if one looks. Just my point, Tom. >I think Joe was referring to new ways of writing (thinking) that are in >fact not possible on the printed page or at a reading. Just because >one can't compose hyperlinked lines for the printed page or to be read >aloud does not mean they can't be poetry. The same applies to simultaneous >multi-media composition: written and spoken, written and drawn, spoken >and visual, moving and moving. Yes yes yes Tom -- and . . . "there is quality stuff already if one looks." Lots of it in fact. About a year ago, Chris Funkhouser said to me that it was possible -- just barely -- for him to comprehensively survey the range of existing electronic poetry in his dissertation. I don't think he (anyone) could do it today. I'm trying to get (myself) out of the habit of qualifying (all) digital poetics with an anticipatory hypothetical and the c(h)ant of the NEW -- we have (some) digital poetics today, right now, that can already (uh oh) be historicized, institutionalized, materialized. E-ven enjoyed. Matt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:44:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Loss Pequen~o Glazier" Subject: EPC author pages Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear George, Joel, Chris, and others, It would be terrific to have some help. It's very difficult to do the whole thing under single sail and I agree, development of the author pages are a good way to go - and it is an area where there are immediate needs. This is a space that was original envisioned as benefitting from collective energy. Your suggestions are encouraging. Perhaps a good way to proceed would be to e-mail me (glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu) the name of the author(s) you will do. I could perhaps make an "authors under development" page on the EPC where this could be posted. Once you commit to an author I would think the pages should be submitted to me within, say 2 months. The authors you have mentioned in your posts on this topic are certainly ones we'd like.=20 The template can be obtained at: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/template Some authors who need to be done in short order are mentioned in the following post, originally sent out to graduate students in the Poetics Program at UB. Note that this list is no more than a quick graph, that some authors not listed have pages under construction, and that of course other suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Loss P.S. Please note that I may not be able to reply to your message for about two weeks. I will reply as soon as I am able, however. =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 We are asking people to consider contributing to the EPC author page development initiative. We feel there are certain key authors who should now have a page at the EPC. Since you may also be working on/reading some of these authors, helping to create their page might be a simple matter, and might be a natural tie-in to ongoing research. What is an author page? Our basic aim is to create a place where links to resources in various web locations by and about the author might be gathered. (Additionally, if the author would agree to notify me of future web publications of their work, that would also be helpful.) In addition, in an EPC author page, we often seek to make available some new-to-the-web textual and/or visual resources, items specific to the EPC. But this is not necessarily required. The basic requirements of such a page are a photo, a cv/list of publications/ bibliography, brief bio, the above-mentioned textual work, and the author's agreement to use their work. Files can be sent as attachments to e-mail (include a list of file names in e-mail message) or mailed on diskette. The main purpose here is to develop a center where people might find out more about these authors. Help us with this collective effort to develop this resources. A list of suggested authors whose pages need to be created or developed follow. Have a look and let us know if you have thoughts. For further details, please contact: Loss Glazier, glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu or Charles Bernstein (bernstei@bway.net) regarding this initiative. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Susan Howe Joan Retallack (under development) Tina Darragh Diane Ward Carla Harryman Lyn Hejinian Maggie O'Sullivan Melanie Neilson Denise Riley Rae Armantrout Catriona Strang Nicole Brossard Wendy Mulford Rosmarie Waldrop Deanna Ferguson Hannah Weiner Geraldine Monk Karen Mac Cormack Katheleen Fraser Lisa Roberston Marjorie Welish Barbara Guest Caroline Bergvall Fiona Templeton Fanny Howe Bernadette Mayer Leslie Scalapino Ann Lauterbach Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge Stacy Doris Dodie Bellamy Lydia Davis Kathleen Fraser Rachel Blau DuPlessis =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 Earlier conversation on this topic: >George Hartley wrtts: >Let's spread out the work, not burden any one person=20 >with this, AND get more people published, even if "only"=20 >online. Hell, let's get social! Think of it as a webbing bee. >> >>to which Joel Kuszai repliis: >>> yeeehah! i feel like a real hopeful member of a search party. I'm also= on >>> a utopia/utopias list and now I find myself deleting IT all the time. >>> Let's get organized. Who wants to help? "What is there to be done?" >> >>Alright, then. I'm certainly willing to pitch in. >>(it's sort of like a barn-building, no?). do we >>have clearance for take-off? are there directions >>the EPC author pages are already wanting to >>go (e.g., folks that need to be covered asap =96 >>any chance we can see Loss' list?). there are >>some serious omissions =96 it's too much to >>expect one or a few folks to build a very large >>edifice. I guess we can all see what the template >>is for the pages, shall we begin? >> >>shhhh =96 rattletrap. ok, I'm ready. >> >>I can do a Spicer page (unless...), a page for >>Peter Ganick, and Linda Russo and I can col- >>laborate on a page for Kathleen Fraser. I'd be >>willing to do others, too. >> >>Chris >> >>Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:49:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: (or can you?) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I absolutely agree with you that letters pressed into nice paper letterpress is fabulous, that the materiality of language is fabulous, that everything from the page space to the font to the binding or lack thereof is wonderful. Sorry if I ever implied that these things aren't. I wouldn't even think such a thought. And that last post, it was hasty and just mostly jest--I'm not sure what I meant, except to have fun. Top of the day to ya, Dude, Steve Dale M Smith wrote: > So true, Spatehead, but are words and tongues and machines in isolation from > each other? What guideth that consciousness toward the word, or draws said > word into form? Poems exist not in themselves alone, but rely on the > mechanisms of their disemination, verily I believe. The scratch of the pen > over paper, the tap of the typewriter or the clack of the keyboard don't > reverberate, in some way, through the organism of the poet/poem? The field > of visions shift from paper to screen, from grass or wood to light and glass. > Know ye I am not a Neuroscientologist, but the tools by which words are etched > transform, however subtly, a relationship with language. Mind you, good sir, > these words I write are not etched in stone. Tombstones are only reserved > for that dignity this day and age. Language appeareth to me to possess a > weight and a lightness. Thy medium relayeth the size and scope of vision. > Perhapseth my own dissolveth like wind... > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > Head: > > A poem is made of w,o,r,d,s, and a person is made of tongues, and a machine > makes > more merry the meet market of spit? > > Spatehide > > Dale M Smith wrote: > > > Digitbrain: > > > > I'm not attentive to the kinds of poetry you're speaking of. But I think > that > > a poetry of the web will be something different than that of the book, or > that > > of the human memory. The medium shapes the poem in fundamental ways. > There is > > no such thing as a poem, that I can see, without some sort of medium through > > which it reaches away from one person (or machine) to another. Call me an > old > > fuddyduddy, but I'm attached to the textures, smells and visual elegance of > > the page. A letterpressed volume of verse somehow conveys an immediacy > > electronic media will never approach. Maybe we'll have to rethink our > > relationship to the poem, think of it w/a more ephemeral attitude, a passing > > stranger with whom we take a moment's delight. The vacuous pleasure of > e-media > > does make me a bit anxious, and my soapbox is a too rickety. Still, the > > Internet has not convinced me of its possibly human potentials. I see it > > primarily as an extension of commercial rackets. > > > > Blockhead. > > > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > Dale M Smith wrote: > > > > > E-publications suck. But it looks like the future, in many ways, for > > poetry's > > > market. Stillthe web is a medium every poet should hate. It limits the > > value > > > of physical production. It limits the mobility of the product, tying the > > > reader to one location, for me, often at work. It lacks the correlating > > > physical materials that provides support to the word, reminding us of > > poetry's > > > very tactile relation to the world, not to our own inner subjectivity. It > > > promotes every kind of self indulgence becaue it is easier to reproduce > > > inferior work. If you have to set type, line up each page, produce it, > copy > > > it and bind it you're gonna want to present poetry of the highest quality. > > On- > > > line you might be tempted to publish lesser works because there is less > > > time and money invested in it. > > > > Dale, Im charmed by the soapbox yr standing on, & thank gutenberg that > > there will always remain some traditionalists out there. I think your > > position is remarkable in light of what transpires minute by minute on > > the web. What I would like to know, tho, is what your feeling is about > > poetic works that are net dependent (or computer dependent via cdrom), > > works like hypertext, intermedia, soundpoetry, & animated poetries? Do > > these get discounted in this blanket condemnation of electronic poetics? > > > > digitbrain ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:03:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Writing in Public In-Reply-To: <34FC0186.67BB195E@cnsunix.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pierre Joris just said: "A writer's job is to write, whatever means are at their disposal"-- I love poetry and wish more people loved it as much as I do-- But I don't think that a writer's "job" is necessarily to write-- In the past two days the insinuation has been that good writer/writing has something to do with how much writing is produced by said writer-- It seems to me that the notion of writing as work is a pretty historical one--and, according to some (freshest on my mind is Avital Ronell in CRACK WARS) would have come into the mix with the Romantics (I believe, though I haven't looked this up for a while--) It also seems to me that a lot of people think that peotry (in the generic sense) should be smeared all over everything-- Why the desire to make poetry ubiquitous (as opposed to available)? Poetry isn't advertising--(the advertising of one's feelings? exhibitionist poetics?)-- Why do some of us keep insisting that the world needs to be reading it all the time? To be having it put in front of its face? Maybe the "public" has reasons aside from false consciousness etc. for not wanting to read poetry all the time-- So-- Some reactions to "publishing" in public places-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:58:18 -0500 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: EPC author pages MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------7F1B593A1617" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------7F1B593A1617 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To help out in the effort to further knowledge of poets and poetry, I will gladly accept any bios of poets not right for the EPC author pages. Send them to Comprepoetica! Or directly to me. Make sure to give me a way of contacting bio-subjects, though, to clear the bios with them. I'd love to have bios of EPC authors, too--extensions of what the EPC author pages have, though, not duplications of it. I'm also collecting poetics terms, with or without definitions, and discussions of schools of poetry, etc. --Bob G. --------------7F1B593A1617 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="sig.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="sig.txt" Bob Grumman BobGrumman@Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site --------------7F1B593A1617-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:22:54 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Nicole Brossard Nicole Brossard's name came up in the list of poets for whom there have not yet been a magazine issues or critical studies. Hot off the press from Peter Lang is a book by my friend Alice A. Parker, _Liminal Visions of Nicole Brossard_. It's hard cover -- $53.95 -- so ask a library to buy it? (ISBN 0-8204-3065-X. e-mail: customerservice@plang.com) Alice worked with Nicole for several years in preparing this excellent book. Contents: Pretext: The Enigma of Writing (Quantum Reading) In the Beginning is Desire A Differential Equation of Lesbian Love Holographic Writing: The Generic Woman Reading Nicole Brossard Reading Djuna Barnes: Intertextuality and Subjectivity Open Work: The Mauve Horizon From Post-Modern to Polytechnique: Figuring the Violence Rituals of Reading / Rituals of Writing Body Work: The Speed of Silence When Language Lapses I think that Small Press Distribution still has a number of Brossard's works in print. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:25:03 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit) In-Reply-To: <199803030535.AAA26382@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII tho i'm mostly with joe amato on this thread, to me the technology is (still) alltoo new for one to be able to come down firmly for or against. while the analogy to print culture is certainly not a seamless one, it's still a useful one. being for or against web/electronic print seems to me akin to being for or against moveable type circa 1505. look how long it took print to impact poetry, and even the continued changes it wrought upon poetry even until recently. take wyatt as someone who, save tottel's miscelleny, was for all intents and purposes a manuscript poet -- same for donne, save his 1633 edition. perhaps not until the mid-19th century do we get print as a serious means of commodifying writing for a mass print readership -- the serialization of dickens' novels. then along comes the typewriter in, what, the 1930, whence wcw, cummings. what's new is /not/ michael joyce's afternoon, a text i find entirely uninteresting: once you "get" the trick afforded by the technology, there's little point in going on. nevertheless joyce's text will maintain it's position in the hypertext literature canon (and i don't lament this) mostly by virtue of its timing and its novelty. likewise, bolter's writing space, while a good book and especially a good one for when it came out (1991?), is by now hopelessly out of date. for what's /really/ new, go to the ubuweb, burningpress, and light&dust sites... tmorange ___________________________________________ | To grasp the relation of words to matter, | | mind, process, may be the greatest task. | | -- Clark Coolidge, /The Crystal Text/ -- | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:28:01 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: barn burning In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Joel =96 ieeeeeeeee! what choo want? en anglais. btw, L.sent a package to you & it got returned, but it looks like the right address to me (I hope so); please confirm: PO Box 527 Buffalo, NY 14226 "mister postman la La la la mister postman la La la la la" ind-oo-pidably, Chris (played by Peter Lorre in the film version) > > I can do a Spicer page (unless...), a page for > > Peter Ganick, and Linda Russo and I can col- > > laborate on a page for Kathleen Fraser. I'd be > > Do Linda > Spicer Dead > > > willing to do others, too. > > Do others .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:47:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael J Kelleher Subject: Re: publishing & prestige In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, David Israel wrote: > question: to what extent is the evident quesiness or diffidence abt. > web-publishing (vs. paperbook-publishing) tacitly related to issues of > prestige? -- (e.g., higher prestige now associated w/ the latter) d.i. > Many of the authors I have so far solicited for a l y r i c m a i l e r have asked: does this count as publication? Yes. It should. My answer thus far has been that the existence of the large, interested readership on this list and others and the (yes, problematic) easy, quick-read nature of web-published, text-based poetry might actually secure a larger audience for the poetry than would a print-magazine, the majority of whose subscribers would probably be university libraries. Print-culture prestige depends upon the quality of your binding and the corporate or non-profit icon there appearing. Truly, Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:46:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua N Schuster Subject: Philly Talks #5 Alcalay/Mandel MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Philly Talks #5 is: Ammiel Alcalay & Tom Mandel 6pm, Thursday, March 5th The Kelly Writers House 3805 Locust Walk University of Pennsylvania 215-573-WRIT There is not yet a publication for this talk. We plan on transcribing the event (including anything you say) and sending it out in a month or so to the mailing list. If you would like to be on this list (i.e. "subscribe"), please contact Louis Cabri at: lcabri@dept.english.upenn.edu Philly Talks #6 will be an open call for written responses to past talks (more on this later). -js ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:51:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Walt (in L.A. & beyond) Comments: cc: Rachel Dacus , Markar , Tom Phillips MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Poetas, of poss. anecdotal interest, today's L.A. Times carries a front-page article on the American poet du jour (thanks to l'affaire d'Lewinsky) -- http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/t000020758.1.html The online version is divided into 9 screens-ful; am pasting in the intitial 2 below. What follows includes mention of an upcoming opera abt. Whtiman (by Robert Strassburg, set to open this fall at Cal State L.A.), the big Rutgers U. Whitman conference happening this fall, and other things. Luminaries such as Gary Snyder, Ed Folsom and J.D. McClatchy are quoted (or, w/ Robert Hass, paraphrased) in brief; etc. Not a bad report, all in all . . . cheers, d.i. COLUMN ONE Whitman Goes Global The poet's themes, once thought distinctly American, fire imaginations from here to Nepal. Rumor linking his work to the Clinton-Lewinsky story has scholars, reporters trying to read between the lines. By TONY PERRY, Times Staff Writer =A0 These are boom times for Walt Whitman, America's most influential poet. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0A century after his death, Whitman, the poet of democracy, the poet of the body and soul, commands a loyal and expansive following from his birthplace on Long Island to the literary circles of Nepal. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0His rough, rigorous, unrhymed verse, informal and impassioned, appeals to both genders, all ages and numerous nationalities. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0"Whitman is the poet of liberty, of indiv= idual freedom," said Carol Muske-Dukes, a poet and creative writing professor at USC. "As the world heads toward a new millennium, Whitman speaks more loudly and directly to people than ever." =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0Whitman may even have a fan in the White = House. If the daily leakage is to be believed, his masterpiece, "Leaves of Grass," has a cameo in the investigation involving President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0Whitman's poetic themes--themes that Amer= icans in their ethnocentric way thought were uniquely American--turn out to be so energetically universal that they are increasingly being assimilated into different cultures. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0In China, a new Mandarin translation of his entire 400-poem canon has become a bestseller. The Communist government tried to suppress its publication in recent years but abandoned that effort in the face of widespread opposition. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0Whitman has long been popular in China--although his works were banned as subversive by Mao Tse-tung during the Cultural Revolution. In an earlier decade, the revolutionary followers of Sun Yat-sen were devoted Whitman readers. ("My call is the call of battle/I nourish active rebellion," Whitman said in "Song of the Open Road.") =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0In August, Polish National Radio broadcast a marathon Whitman reading. A year earlier, 23 Hungarian translators finished translating 73 Whitman poems. A professor at the University of Wales completed a translation of Whitman into Welsh. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0A Brazilian scholar has surveyed Whitman's influence on Brazilian writers, and a scholar at a university in Katmandu, Nepal, just finished "Whitman's System of Dynamic Meditation: A Tantric Guide to His Work." =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0The domestic and international spread of Wh= itmania --the term used by his fans to describe their devotion--has been spurred by new editions, new critical studies, new translations, ever larger symposiums and an increasing number of reading circles. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0One of the most active is at Leisure World in Laguna Hills. It is run by Robert Strassburg, an emeritus professor of music at Cal State L.A. Each month for seven years, 50 or so fellow retirees gather to parse Whitmanian lines and debate their meaning. =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0"By the 21st century, Whitman will be as wel= l- known around the world as Shakespeare or Beethoven," Strassburg predicted after last month's meeting. ... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:01:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: Web Communities In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:47 PM 3/2/98 -0500, Gabriel wrote: >On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, William Marsh wrote: > >> At 03:34 PM 3/2/98 -0500, you wrote: >> >To be serious, though, for a minute: the idea that epublication can become >> >a reliable means of awakening or creating a new nontraditional community >> >is a dubious one: all the talk of "meta-zines" or meta-meta zingy-zines or >> >e-zippy neo-zines or zappy zingzangy zines sort of misses the pt that >> >Spicer and so many others tried so hard to make: that _spoken_ poetry is >> >the lifeblood of a community. As I said, a zingy zangy e-word or ink-word >> >cannot compete with the singy-songy of the spoken word. >> > >> >Gabriel Gudding >> >> i guess the same can be said about "maga-zines" too / and even more >> seriously, who's competing? let's not insist on binaries in order to argue >> against them >> >> best, >> bill > > >bill, The same can in many cases _not_ be said about magazines (way back >in NE America, prior to the new stamp rate, magazines were an extremely, >like, local phenomenon: it was the _physical_ presence and nearness (rabid >love affairs, thudding paperweight battles, and in one case an actual >leg-biting [no dogs involved: author bit editor]) that made them go): >physical nearness is sort of important to maga-zines. The curious thing >about maga-zines is that a _physical_ community creates them. Meta-zines >just don't have this: they have nothing to do with "community." Community, >I guess I'm arguing, is a totally physical phenomenon; can't be numinous >and stuff. > >When it comes to maga-zines the community is already extant: the mag comes >_from it_. Community is a PHYSICAL thing. Now I know that a lot of folks >have a problem with the idea of Physicality. Physicality is something >we've wrestled with since, like what?, Plotinus, Augustine? further back >than that? It became THE bad bugaboo with Plotinus. So much talk about >the internet and the great "body that is all one" (aum) is just more of >the same old neo-platonic hopes, but with some new rabidity, zippy irony, >and really fun binaries. Not arguing gainst binaries at all: they're >great fun and quite useful dingies. So, I hate to say this but there's >some historical residue of neo-platonic prudery and christian humanistic >prudery clinging to the common e-zippy boosterism that flows from certain >certains. Spicer was right to associate New Critics & denudedness & >non-person-ness & boredom. NOt saying anything here about whether poetry >works well on screen or not or if books are better etc etc: saying that we >ought not place epimethean hopes in a promethean vessel. > >Gabriel Gudding > Gabriel provocative response and some truth in the notion that print mags emerged and continue to out of physical communities, tho i'd imagine that several press ventures over the years have involved people working from different physical or geographic sites (different cities, states, countries) and that the contributing and editing 'community' emerged out of the networking of individuals who perhaps never met face-to-face / i know i've heard stories of such ventures and perhaps others here could fill us in / the problem is also how one defines "community", since in addition to "people living in a specific locality" it can also mean a body of people with some practice or profession in common, or a "fellowship of interests" / and this i guess is where we disagree, since in the latter two senses of the word, electronic zines certainly can emerge out of or establish a community, no quotes / also i should clarify that i suggested the term "metazine" (off the cuff really) as one possible response to another listee's (Tom Becket's i believe) statement or query about potential "collective actions" on the web (not as a synonym for e-zines) / i don't see electronic collectives (ie, separate journals and magazines joining and cross-publishing their efforts through electronic hyperlinks) as a means of replacing or simulating physical communities, but again simply as one of the ways web ventures can be collective and, yes, communal in their actions / the appeal to me would be in the way a venture of this sort would suggest "a fellowship of interests" or commitment to common practice, and how it would localize/concentrate people's activities in the only way possible in electronic space / as for "neo-platonic" and "christian humanistic prudery", i'm afraid i just don't get it -- i see people with common interests getting together to explore possibilities in a fresh medium, as the NE locals did with their first magazines, no? best, bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:21:03 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit said book has finally been transported via goat cart over rocky terrain by an apprentice from the land of bern porter & am now, a few minutes ago getting first glimpse of vol 1, & am happy as new snake skin to see my pal alexei k figuring into 20th century poetics in a way that is finally rightful. said volume is in the bathroom awaiting scholarly invasion, those moments some of the few us country folk have for "reading" poetry. more on where poetry is "written" in the future tho I have just received a rejection slip from a smalltime college literary magazine saying the ongoing collaboration, Literature Nation, interwriting by Maria Damon & myself, is definitively not poetry, so I wont bother to speak to "where" that is written. rasputin zukofsky ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:23:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael J Kelleher Subject: Re: wet kisses and technophilia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII day Thursday On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Martin Spinelli wrote: > OK-- > > This is neither u- nor dystopia. It is Atopia. Placelessness. The physical > > body will not disappear, it will be everywhere at once. > > The "U" in utopia is "no" and makes the "A" in atopia a bit redundant. > "Noplace" and "Placeless" are both in the same distopian discourse community, no? To belabor: topos being "place" u- being "no" thus "no place" i.e. does not exist but translated Utopia meaning "place of ideal perfection" whereas dys- being "ill" or "bad" thus dystopia meaning the opposite of translated utopia, "bad or ill place" whereas a- (or an-) being "not", "without", or "lacking" thus atopia meaning without lacking place but implying the existence of something though not of the "landed" type, say being I forward this definition, uncontentiously, as being distinct from utopia as it implies not an ironic criticism of human ideals of perfection nor perfection itself nor perdition, so to speak, but a state of being whose location or place is not verifiable in physical terms. Thus the utterance is not "located" in space but rather in the "moment" of it's articualtion in Time. Placelessness allows for dismbodied, placeless communication across great distance, in time. Place requires physical presence, which isn't always possible. No place requires the impossible, perfection. Bad places we all want to stay out of. Atopia allows us not community, but communication (between beings in distant places in time) that otherwise we could or would not have made. Atopia is municipal Truly, Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:39:29 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: AVEC query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT does anyone have Cydney Chadwick's email? I was given an address for her which proved itself unfruitful -- thx. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:32:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: web publication, etc. In-Reply-To: <01IU7CEA3CM095RTMK@ACS.WOOSTER.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:24 PM 3/2/98 -0500, jeff wrote: >i've been following the thread relating to this with interest... > >methinks it comes down to this: >the web is good for wide opportunity and collective action. but the fact is: >we are living in a world that is quickly alienating itself from itself via >any source it can. the web is adding to this is two major ways: > 1) it gives the guise of communication, but with out any >kind of physical relationship between those >"communicating" with > each other. so no true communication can take place due > to a lack of viceral stimulation between the people >communicating (no body lang, eye contact, hearing a >voice, etc). jeff admittedly this is one of the things i find myself missing too, in email communications like these for example, when, among other things, it's hard to posit ideas with a light or humorous touch (although David Bromige does it pretty damn well!) or to convey emotion (:)) without recourse to reductive and often misleading (?) emoticons (;)) etc. / it becomes an issue of rhetoric as with other writing -- i *miss* the same things when i read a letter from a friend or a rejection slip from a journal / so i'm afraid the tired point has to be made that if you subsitute the word "book" or "newspaper" or "personal letter" for "web" in your statement above, the language of your critique sounds suddenly antiquated and reactionary -- if no "true communication" can take place without "viceral stimulation between the people communicating", then this pretty much damns the whole written record, doesn't it?, and not just the web, unless you mean something more specific by "communication" / not to sound flip, but we're communicating here, aren't we? > 2) with all of the voices crying out, no one is being heard. >it is not hard to see how these points relate to web-publication. esp when >you add in the fact that web related things are not "real" in the sense that >they are only bytes of information conveyed over energy waves. this does not >stand up well to an actual page or a poets voice. and tho the networking >possibilities are stagering, the easy out provided by the internet is >destroying human social interaction. and with the destruction of social >interaction, comes the destruction of art. sure, a vast cacophony, but wander around the triple-decker Border's in Chicago and you hear the same voices crying (really, bookstores often fill me with anxiety -- so much to read, etc. -- the web is no different) / and i think it might help to think of the bubble-jet printer as a forerunner to the pixelated screen -- bits and bytes or ink dots, take your pick / one just smears a little easier i'd like to write more, but i'm off to meet Joel Kuszai who's visiting San Diego and whom i met in this space / we're gonna get together over coffee and talk about how the Internet destroys human social interaction bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://www.dtai.com/~bmarsh snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:42:09 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: call for submission(s) Comments: cc: linda russo , BRUNI , Matthias Regan , B Young , Hugh Sansom , keelanc@nevada.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce topic for the next (spring) iss. of n/formation will be (since y'all are thinkin about it) . . . PUBLIC-/A(C)TIONS public / interaction / public action / publication interst'd in poems, pomes, prose, essays esp- ecially essays, hypertext, vizpo =96 meditations and mediatations on this ardently convoluted topic love and kisses, (inappropriate display) Chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:48:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Writing in Public In-Reply-To: ScoutEW "Re: Writing in Public" (Mar 2, 2:28pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 2, 2:28pm, ScoutEW wrote: > Subject: Re: Writing in Public > Ron, whatabout Walt Whitman writing outdoors everywhere, anyplace and > even in the dark outside on beaches at night? And Whitman pissing the "Song of Myself" into the snow. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:19:33 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: ezines what MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable I've been thinking about a new, more interesting way to operate n/formation (my ezine =96 see .sig below for my URL), so while we're all debating the print versus e-publication teeny zine thing, I just thought I'd put in that one thing a zine can do on the www but not in print is... add to itself. I'm thinking here of p e r f o r a t i o n s specifically, which organizes itself nodally around topics, such that there begins with an initial cluster and +s to it, over time developing something much larger and more dialogical. on the other hand, I might as easily cite other sites more local =96 non seems to me something like this, as we're given it in development; dunno, tho, if this sort of continued developing is in the plan (hey, Laura?). anyway, I know whatcha sayin': well, but folks can respond to one another in print journals, it happens all the time be civilized, man. [Poet, be like =96 totally, dude =96 get a clew, would you?]. alls I'm saying is that here in atopia or whereever, dis here topia (dys-topia?), we're afforded (ha) an opportunity for a different organ-ization, i.e., a different embodiment of that work, and one which might encourage yammering to the extent that a) everyone's talking in the same room 'bout similar things; b) I promettre that response time wld be optimum =96 i.e., that I'd get yr responses to the matter at hand up in a jiffy. I'm wondering, what is it that folks think abt. such a fiendish plan? willing to write for it & not just search yr files for work that sorta fits? willing to send prose? =96 which, again, is I think the hardest goddamn'd thing to get round here. now, IDEALLY this involves a print version of the original cluster with a whole big page abt. the www version and making responses or something =96 but in the real world, I lack the inner resources to keep making a piece of paper with words on them in more than a few copies, at least until I can figger something out. and no, like everyone else I don't have any funding or rich Uncle Sugardaddy (mommy?) Sammy. incidentally, in mentioning this re-organization, I don't mean to impugn any of the work I have there =96 got some damn'd fine pieces by a # of us present here, and other damn'd fine pieces by others not present. mmhmmm. so, next iss. is topical an I'll announce it here, live, say you saw it here first. best, Chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:42:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: web publication, etc. In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980303093233.007b0c20@nunic.nu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, William Marsh wrote: > > i'd like to write more, but i'm off to meet Joel Kuszai who's visiting San > Diego and whom i met in this space / we're gonna get together over coffee > and talk about how the Internet destroys human social interaction > Bill, will you say hello to Joel for me and order me a short latte, I'll be there in a minute. -Gabe (I'm just out the door now) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:01:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Malmude & Gilfillan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-03 06:54:39 EST, you write: << >Steve Malmude's book got a tremendously respectful (n.b. not fawning!) >review in Lisa Jarnot's News Letter. John Godfrey said among other things >that art comes to this poet, not he to it, and that there are certain >things the poet says which are none of the reader's business! > >I'll send out a copy of this letterpress book free to the first person who >e-mails me with their street address (it'll take me a week or so -- I have >to go fold them together). The next nine people can have it for $10 ppd. >> weren't we gonna do a trade? Charles Smith 2135 Irvin Way Sacramento, CA 95822 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:11:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: web publication, etc. In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980303093233.007b0c20@nunic.nu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well, so much to say to all who've been posting such insightful stuff... Q: Is it a sad or happy fact of life that you met your partner (Kass, above) online? A: Both. the web is, as martin s. suggests, symptomatic of certain national (and restrictively global) trends---techno-corporate-capitalist, if you like... in this sense it figures a technology that is and is not (tom beckett) a tool, if by tool you mean something like a screwdriver... we are caught if you like at the junction of the corporate (which in the case of the web only seems, as so many have now commented on, to displace the corporeal) and a decentralized, distributed agency... which is to say, that some writers see the web, as many see technology itself, as NOT simply a tool... hence the art|technology divide that still persists in certain circles (until, that is, as is now happening and as joel and others indicate, web publication becomes 'suitable,' 'official' criteria for awards, honors, vitae etc)... or, in order to neutralize, imaginatively, the evident saturation of these spaces with fortune 500 motives, some writers call the web-computer-modem combine simply a tool and proceed thenceforth, agencies intact and unintervened-in... i posted the codrescu excerpt by virtue of the former attitude---web as instrument of oppression (and note c's refusal to understand npr broadcasting as a digital technology fully in complicity, if that's the word, with his "imaginary electronic globe," lansat hook-ups and all)... by virtue of the tool ideology we might have a look at the discourse coming out of post-mcluhanites (yes, i read mcluhan too)... an unsettling amalgam of these two perspectives occurs in a tiny book by jacques attali, _millennium: winners and losers in the coming world order_ (random house, 1991)... i'm asking that we manage not to lose sight of the transnational corporate empire even as we plumb away on our plastic devices (i.e., tools)... matt, you're right about the "new," of course --- in context --- as is tom bell re jay bolter's book... but here again it *is* a matter of context: i hardly expect to have to justify emedia publication on an electronic list named "poetics"!... i *do* expect to have to interrogate its implications---for poetic form, collective action, network community (not an oxymoron, according to howard rheingold, albeit not imho a substitute for the 'real thing,' gabriel g, but then---shall we thereby forgo same?), etc... at the same time, this list itself emerges out of a public poetic context which, a mere six summers ago, was in many ways unwilling to accept that the internet was here to stay (each of you can 'fess up now, privately, as to what you each believed five years back re email etc.)... now, in certain circles in which i move, i wouldn't mention jay bolter's book as a starting point (b/c in fact it is dated---albeit i still like his thumbnail history), and i would advocate that the 'new' (whatever it is) would have to be understood as itself time-dependent, itself subject to newer (historical?) developments... which is to say, that in the digital world three years old is ancient... but of course, in the geological world, this is hardly the case... so i use the 'new' hereabouts as a colloquial gesture, yes, but also to tip my hat toward the idea of the new as itself rendered anew... (case in point: i generally check my email before i send out a long-ish post such as this one... reason being something new might have been said in the half-hour or so interim it takes me to compose this, something that negates my feeling the need to say it mself)... of course, as tom bell indicates, the web is nothing new!---in some sense... in that the printing press as an "agent of change" (e. eisenstein) itself could be thought to emerge from sociocultural coordinates too... many if not most of us have long-since lost the sense of this latter device and its offspring (and its associated distribution networks) in such terms... which is what i'm saying when i ask folks, pedantically perhaps, to think through the assumptions they bring to online spaces from the print world, and---hey, here's the point now---*vice versa*... chopping up trees is not a good thing in itself, nor is the refuse coming out of the plastics industry... in my view, neither can be entirely avoided (not now, anyway)... and we should, as poets, and to be as emphatic about it as i can, get our feet wet in all spheres (a tautological prompt in part, owing to the fact that you're all, skeptical or otherwise, reading this online---again, part of my point here)... charles b raises a similar issue in his ebr6 piece (which you'll need netscape 3.x or equiv. to view/read!---access again!): (as i recall) that rejections of innovative poetry (please allow me this phrase for just a moment) parallel, rhetorically, rejections of electronic form... that in effect, a similar conservatism underwrites both impulses... of course, this does not foreclose on the possibility that one may like innovative poetry and hate electronic form; or that one may like electronic form and hate innovative poetry... mself, i would fret both of these latter positions... as dale suggests, spending time online *will* affect our reading and writing habits, in ways that are, i think, only beginning to be documented... matt---i sit on the editorial board of _computers and composition_, have for some years now---and i still regularly run across studies of writing, in print and online, that time and again utilize tacit assumptions from (if you will) a strictly print-literate pov (no sense that the writer has read contemporary poetry, or understands developments in radio during this century, etc.)... the ten-year track record to which you refer is in fact even longer, if you include online communications (as you know, i'm sure)... those of you who are interested, have a look at shoshana zuboff's _in the age of the smart machine_, in which zuboff analyzes an online business scenario from the early 80s... and for that matter, the hawisher leblanc moran selfe history of computers and composition (on ablex) begins in 1979... and for that matter, ted nelson used the term hypertext in the mid-60s, and published the first version of _literary machines_ in 1980... again, a fascinating dialogue on same (with mark amerika, robert coover, and janet murray talking about nelson's book) in the current issue of FEED (you'll need that newer netscape or equiv. again!) at http://www.feedmag.com/html/document/98.02nelson/98.02nelson_master.html?mail (odd-looking url, but it works) as to whether poetry really needs to be read by all or some or (katy): well it's never read by all, is it?... personally, i'll seek the satisfaction of a readership that's interested, small or large, and hope, optimist that i am, that i can make a valuable contribution, somehow... if the web fuels a whitmanian impulse that everyone is speaking, or must speak, to everyone, that's an issue worth pursuing in these spaces too... in any case i agree in general with the suggestion that a new sort of literacy, or set of literacies, is emerging---hence perhaps even a new sense of what we mean by "literacy"---and that this *might* topple prior hierarchies... but not w/o collective effort of some sort, which i suppose need not comprise, always, a purely conscious (political) effort... though i do indeed fear (if that's the word) the coming of a new set of mediated hierarchies, too, much more powerful than those of the past, if much more implicit... virtual, if you like... a development that in my view is likely to parallel what some on this continent are now calling the booming "office economy"... i'm enjoying this exchange, really, and learning much from all of you... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:24:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: web publication, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:11:36 -0600 from amongst all us jaded terminal heads, has anyone mentioned the sheer joy of having your work accessible to people all over the globe? I know, not accessible to everybody yet. so I find my own attitude is a bit lopsided - asymmetrical. I have trouble READING poetry on the web; but I like having my own junk available to OTHERS!! (this asymmetry, come to think of it, maybe seeps into ALL poetry for me... oh-oh...) that's honesty for you. I always remember what Wallace Stevens said (though I can't remember the exact quote) - something about: "where would I be if I spent a lot of time paying attention to my contemporaries?" denounce that attitude if you will, but there's something to it. All the top poets have been blind; a lot were deaf & pretty dumb, too. It's like piano tuning - helps sharpen the mumbling. Like fasting the appetite. I find I play better music if I HAVEN'T practiced for a long time. This doesn't hold for all creative situations - just want everybody to be clear on that. [joke] Down with community - drop like a stone, just so long's you anchor right. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:54:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: D W Have Subject: No Subject Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In response to the general buzz about cyberspace versus print media etc, I come down on the side of poetry, wherever and however it occurs genuinely and offers something of food value to both reader and writer. That technical innovation will have some effect on the presentation and content of poetry and the lives of poets seems a given, and nothing much to worry about. Rather it offers one more interesting sidelight in the evolution of an art that will continue as long as there are people interested in pursuing it. The difficulty I encounter as I follow this thread, is that the gist of these posts imply "career" (a word that is probably antithetical to any honest poetic moment, & the very thing the language poets decry in the mainstream/mfa elite) is at the back/middle or front of many people's minds. Of course I may be mistaken, and I do not claim that such things do not enter my own mind, they do. However, I have been writing for twenty five years, sometimes in considerable poverty, partly because another life did not seem to be forthcoming, but also because I willingly resisted it, sometimes out of stubborness, sometimes out of fear, and sometimes because I sensed that it would be harder to write/read/and think with that particular monkey on my back. From such a perspective I have no one to blame or to resist, and the only people I have to thank are a few friends in the art. This is not to say I haven't railed at the way things are in moments of need, and I suppose if fate delivered me into the hands of a career at this point in my life I would probably take it because I need the money. But I am not likely to pursue my writing or its publication as a means to that end right now, mainly because my work is where I prefer to put my energy, but also because I am aware that it is risky to entertwine personal ambition and poetics. Frankly it worries me that so many on this list appear to be in the other camp without at least questioning the potentially dangerous position so much self-promotion ( or promotion of one "kind" of poetry against another) can put them in . David Hickman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:34:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "trace s. ruggles" Subject: Re: Writing in Public In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8.03 am -0800 3/3/98, you wrote: >Pierre Joris just said: [...] >It also seems to me that a lot of people think >that peotry (in the generic sense) should be smeared all over everything-- > >Why the desire to make poetry ubiquitous (as opposed to available)? Poetry >isn't advertising--(the advertising of one's feelings? exhibitionist >poetics?)-- > >Why do some of us keep insisting that the world needs to be reading it >all the time? To be having it put in front of its face? > >Maybe the "public" has reasons aside from false consciousness etc. for >not wanting to read poetry all the time-- My wife and I argue all the time about how and why (and when) to read poetry. She almost never does (maybe once or twice a year). Her reasons: 1. it takes too much work to read poetry (even the 'easy' ones) 2. she can't lose her 'self' like she can with novels 3. to her, writing should have 'story' but, because she very rarely reads poetry, does it mean isn't a force in her life? She is constantly trying to get me to read novels, but I won't. I don't like them. My reasons: 1. it takes too much work to read novels (even the 'easy' ones) 2. i feel uncomfortable losing my 'self' in a novel 3. to me, writing should have 'experience' I like it that when I read poetry, I'm aware that I'm a person reading poetry, as well as experiencing the act of reading and whatever 'effects' the poem has on me (or i upon the poem). So, are we just two types of people who experience writing/life in different ways? Or is one of us right? Trace ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 15:43:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: "*selby's or someone else's list of experimental poetry readings" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Does such a thing exist? Not, of course, of individual events -- such as Jack Collom's reading with Dug Rothschild tomorrow night at St. Marks, or Tom Raworth's reading with Drew Gardner Thursday at Poetry City -- but the places, times, hosts? I told a friend of mine I'd find out if there were any reading series in Chicago he could contact, but then I realized the people I thought were in Chicago were actually in entirely different places. Would it be a useful document or would it provoke headaches? Jordan Davis who doesn't like headaches ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 15:48:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: wet kisses and technophilia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII yinz might wanna join the Utopias list at UB. same address as this. this debate has been rocking the utopianist scholars world since i joined that list...for more entertaining discussion of this topic, hook up with the reesarch on anarchism list curtsy of nothinness.org. much of it is in french, spanish, or Italyun, but it makes deleting more triumphal. On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Michael J Kelleher wrote: > day Thursday > > On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Martin Spinelli wrote: > > > OK-- > > > This is neither u- nor dystopia. It is Atopia. Placelessness. The physical > > > body will not disappear, it will be everywhere at once. > > > > The "U" in utopia is "no" and makes the "A" in atopia a bit redundant. > > "Noplace" and "Placeless" are both in the same distopian discourse community, no? > > To belabor: > > topos being "place" > > u- being "no" thus "no place" i.e. does not exist > but translated Utopia meaning "place of ideal perfection" whereas > > dys- being "ill" or "bad" thus > dystopia meaning the opposite of translated utopia, "bad or ill place" > whereas > > a- (or an-) being "not", "without", or "lacking" thus > atopia meaning without lacking place but implying the existence of > something though not of the "landed" type, say being > > I forward this definition, uncontentiously, as being distinct from utopia > as it implies not an ironic criticism of human ideals of perfection nor > perfection itself nor perdition, so to speak, but a state of being whose > location or place is not verifiable in physical terms. Thus the utterance > is not "located" in space but rather in the "moment" of it's articualtion > in Time. Placelessness allows for dismbodied, placeless communication > across great distance, in time. Place requires physical presence, which > isn't always possible. No place requires the impossible, perfection. Bad > places we all want to stay out of. Atopia allows us not community, but > communication (between beings in distant places in time) that otherwise we > could or would not have made. > > Atopia is municipal > > Truly, > > Mike > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:52:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: whitman... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" re whitman, from today's online capsule summary of _chronicle of higher ed_ (hope this isn't a repeat): >* WALT WHITMAN imagined himself to be everywhere. Now, in > countless digital bits, he is indeed. A team of > American-literature scholars has developed the Walt Whitman > Hypertext Archive, which contains almost all of Whitman's > poetry, facsimiles of manuscripts, galleries of photographs, > and more. You can also hear, for the first time on line, a > recording of what is thought to be Whitman's voice. > > --> FOR MORE, go to http://chronicle.com/infotech whitman's voice? --- FAR OUT/// best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:36:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881 Subject: KSW Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Juliana Spahr, Rob Manery & Bill Luoma will be reading this Saturday March 7 at the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver at 8pm. KSW is at 112 West Hastings. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:42:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: newtek & po In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII New media. Old media. Books superior. Web a class issue. Okay, fine. What I'd like to see happen is a CD-ROM anthology of American Sign Language poetry--which is out there, and must, by its nature, have a unique poetic, but doesn't get, for lack of a better word, "heard" through the usual channels. Maybe a CD ASL po-zine from Gallaudet? Then, to make it really interesting, they could play the video clips of poems to ASL-literate apes and get their response. ("You call this poetry? If I had the time, I could write /Hamlet/....") Gw(seriously)yn ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 06:03:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: ALERT - Petition to save Endangered Species! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Annie Finch wrote: > > >X-From_: lakes@cp.duluth.mn.us Wed Feb 18 06:34:57 1998 > >X-Sender: lakes@cp.duluth.mn.us > >Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 05:25:29 -0800 > >From: Debby Ortman > >Subject: ALERT - Petition to save Endangered Species! > >Mime-Version: 1.0 > >To: unlisted-recipients:; (no To-header on input) > > > >* START * PETITION TO SAVE ENDANGERED SPECIES * KEEP IT ALIVE! > >* * PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD BY APRIL 15th, 1998 * URGENT! * * > > > >We're experiencing the greatest rate of extinction since the > >dinosaurs - up to 50,000 species a year. In the U.S., we > >have lost over 500 plants and animals since the signing of > >the Declaration of Independence; 250 of these species have > >disappeared in the last 15 years. This massive loss of life > >threatens our own existence, by depriving us of potential > >cures to deadly diseases and decimating local economies. For > >example, in the Pacific Northwest, the fishing industry has > >lost approxmiately $1 billion in the last ten years due to > >the decline in salmon. > > > >The U.S. Congress is now considering two radically different > >bills to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act. Kempthorne's > >Extinction bill (S.1180) rolls back 25 years of conservation > >efforts, sacrificing protections for endangered species to > >benefit industry. Miller (H.R. 2351) strikes a reasonable > >compromise, balancing wildlife needs with landowners, while > >working for the recovery of species. > > > >Congress could vote on these bills as early as the end of > >February, 1998. Please keep our endangered species alive > >by signing the below petition and forwarding to family, > >friends, and lists interested in preserving our environment. > > > >* HOW TO SIGN THIS PETITION * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > > > >Copy this entire email (from * START * to * END *) into a > >new email. After the last signature below, enter a new line, > >with the next number. Please list your name, city, state > >and zip code. Forward to your family, friends, coworkers, > >and relevant lists. Please cc: your message to > >. > > > >* PETITION TO CONGRESS * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > > > >Dear Member of Congress: > > > >We are currently faced with the greatest rate of extinction > >worldwide since the disappearance of dinosaurs 65 million > >years ago, losing up to 50,000 species a year. Since 1973, > >the Endangered Species Act (ESA) has halted the potential > >extinction of dozens of animals, including the bald eagle, > >the gray wolf and the California sea otter. > > > >Senator Kempthorne's (R-ID) and Chafee (R-RI) are pushing > >forward a bill, S.1180, that protects the interests of > >industry at the expense of endangered species. At the same > >time, Rep. Miller (D-CA) has introduced a moderate bill, > >H.R. 2351, that strikes a balance between wildlife and > >landowners without sacrificing protection and recovery > >for endangered species. > > > >Please vote against S.1180 and support H.R. 2351. > > > >* SIGNED * > > > >1) Christopher Chatto, Santa Barbara, CA 93101 > >2) Chris Mullin, Quincy, MA 02169 > >3) Elizabeth Hitchcock, Washington DC 20003 > >4) Richard Trilsch, Washington, DC 20003 > >5) Adam Ruben, Boston, MA 02111 > >6) Mark Ferrulo, Tallahassee, Fl 32303 > >7) Debbie Ortman, Duluth, MN 55811 > 8) Annie Finch, Cincinnati, OH 45220 > >9) Rachel Levitsky, Boulder, CO 80306 > > > >* FOR MORE INFORMATION * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * > > > >http://www.pirg.org/ > >-The State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) > > > >pirg@pirg.org > >-general email address for inquiries > > > >http://www.pirg.org/enviro/esa/ > >-The PIRG's endangered species pages, including fact sheets > >on Kempthorne's Extinction Bill (S.1180), Miller's Recovery > >Bill (H.R. 2351), and what else you can do. > > > >http://www.pirg.org/enviro/esa/petition/ > >-A web-based version of this petition, and detailed > >instructions on how to sign an email petition. > > > >* * PLEASE SIGN AND FORWARD BY APRIL 15th, 1998 * URGENT! * * > >* PETITION TO SAVE ENDANGERED SPECIES * KEEP IT ALIVE! * END * > >-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+ > >Christopher Chatto, Internet Organizer e-mail: pirg@pirg.org > >The State Public Interest Research Groups http://www.pirg.org > >1129 State St #10, Santa Barbara CA 93101 805(p)9630949(f)9658939 > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > _____________________________________________ > ________________________ > Annie Finch > http://muohio.edu/~finchar > Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing > Miami University > Oxford, Ohio 45220 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 06:06:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: poets-in-residence MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I read it as "pet-in-residence" David R. Israel wrote: > > The appended item appeard in "News of the Weird". Am not sure > what "questions it raises," but meseems it's fodder for anecdotage. > > cheers, d.i. > > / / / > > * Peter Sansom began work on January 19 at his new, two-day-a- > week job with the big Marks & Spencer department store in > London. For the next six months under a government grant > program run by the Poetry Society, he will work for about $1,500 > per month as the store's Poet in Residence. He said he hopes > generally to raise employees' and customers' level of awareness of > poetry. A lesser-known Poet in Residence, at London's Botanical > Gardens, said she has already had an impact on that organization, as > witnessed by her telephone message recording: "Sarah Maguire can't > get to the phone/So please leave a message after the tone." > > ============================================== > > NEWS OF THE WEIRD, founded in 1988, is a nationally syndicated > newspaper column distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. To > receive the columns by e-mail, free of charge, send a message to > notw-request@nine.org with the Subject line of Subscribe. To read > these News of the Weird newspaper columns from the past six months, go > to http://www.nine.org/notw/notw.html (That site contains no > graphics, no photos, no video clips, no audio. Just text. Deal with > it.) > > COPYRIGHT: Neither the name News of the Weird nor any > issue, or portion, of News of the Weird may be used for > commercial purpose . "Any commercial purpose" > includes something as small as a bartered advertisement on a Web > page. If you have a Web page or a mailing list that you run purely as > a hobby at entirely your own expense, and it is freely accessible by > the public with , you may use portions of News of the > Weird without express permission provided that the portion(s) is(are) > (1) not edited, (2) distinctly separated from material that is > from News of the Weird, and (3) identified on the Web site or message > as from News of the Weird and with this copyright notice affixed: > Copyright 1998 by Universal Press Syndicate. > > AUTHENTICITY: All items reported in News of the Weird are > from news stories appearing in daily newspapers in the U. S. and > Canada (or occasionally, reputable daily newspapers in other > countries or other reputable magazines and journals). No so-called > supermarket tabloid, and no story that was not intended to be "news," > is the source of a News of the Weird story. Chuck Shepherd will try > to accommodate reasonable and occasional reader requests for sources. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:21:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: publishing & prestige In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Actually, my diffidence about electronic publication is pretty simple: if it precludes publication of the same piece in a print publication, or if the electronic submission must be previously unpublished, I'm not interested. Otherwise, why not? I guess that means I still see the web as more ephemeral than print, and that I prefer a smaller audience, if necessary, that's likely to stay with the poem longer. At 11:47 AM 3/3/98 -0500, you wrote: >On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, David Israel wrote: > >> question: to what extent is the evident quesiness or diffidence abt. >> web-publishing (vs. paperbook-publishing) tacitly related to issues of >> prestige? -- (e.g., higher prestige now associated w/ the latter) d.i. >> > >Many of the authors I have so far solicited for a l y r i c m a i l e r >have asked: does this count as publication? Yes. It should. My >answer thus far has been that the existence of the large, interested >readership on this list and others and the (yes, problematic) easy, >quick-read nature of web-published, text-based poetry might actually >secure a larger audience for the poetry than would a print-magazine, the >majority of whose subscribers would probably be university libraries. > >Print-culture prestige depends upon the quality of your binding >and the corporate or non-profit icon there appearing. > > >Truly, > >Mike > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:45:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: AVEC query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Linda, Cydney's e-mail is CChadwick@metro.net. linda russo wrote: > does anyone have Cydney Chadwick's email? I was given an address for > her which proved itself unfruitful -- > > thx. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 20:03:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Jack Micheline Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was sorry to hear of the death of Jack Micheline. Jack was a gracious and wild energy in the North Beach poetry scene when I lived there in the late 80's. He was everywhere, selling the socialist newspaper in each cafe and adding poetry to the climate with his intelligence and heart. Have a good one, Jack. AF ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ ________________________ Annie Finch http://muohio.edu/~finchar Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45220 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:11:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Looking for input on talk In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19980228160757.3137f910@mail.airmail.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've been asked to give a talk this summer to help poets try to understand what publishers are looking for, etc. I'm planning to push it a little bit and, where appropriate, talk from the opposite view point: how publishers (primarily those of periodicals such as journals) can do a better job of communicating to potential submitters. I would love any suggestions any of you might have on points, nits & grand schemes to make sure I hit. thanks, Tim ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com poetry is the shock of insight's drive-by ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:45:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: publishing & prestige In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19980303172121.00b8c350@mail.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" weird, mark w, how much we differ here: i didn't even put up a website for mself until i had what i thought were sufficient epublications, and certainly didn't and don't want those to overlap with my work in print... didn't put my vita online---didn't see the point... didn't put my print work online either (not saying you shouldn't)... didn't even compose a hypertext till i could come up with something that violated generic differences (whatever its value, it does this)... my website is useful, to me, b/c i use it as a node to 'gather' my online work... in general, i want to publish stuff online intended to be viewed/read (slippage intended) online... i imagine my print pubs overlapping with my electronic pubs---sometimes intended and sometimes not... but not in terms of dupes---i'm talking thematically---lines, concerns, images, etc... i imagine my "self" in this sense as occupying alternating alphabetic, visual and aural habitats... any writer imagining herself so is bound to require, in the near future, a critical apparatus that can take account of these alternating, con/disjunctive effects... one nice thing about this medium is that it's helped throw the formal issues in relief... which is to say that, personally, i would recommend---as a different sense of how to go about this---publishing stuff online that in fact you have no intention of publishing elsewhere... if you're even a little creative with online possibilities, any print reprint MUST be a substantively different reading (maybe even writing) experience... which is to say, make it for the screen and it changes, often in subtle ways... why not explore/construct along this axis, just for a change?... what have you got to lose?... the risk is, as always, in the making... of course there are all SORTSA publishing-business issues that arise when you attempt to publish something in a trade or academic press that was previously published online (and vice versa---as i just discussed backchannel with someone)... one of the interesting issues is whether simply putting something online yourself IS publishing... well of course it is... and if someone links to you---is this publication too?... and when does this activity begin to accrue (in the eyes of whomever) intellectual capital? (which self-publishing today seems not to)... certainly when it generates $$$, but not only then, no?... best, joe email: amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu url: http://www.iit.edu/~amato ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:46:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: glasa conference miami u, oxford ohio... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" my it's been a busy day for me on poetix!... apologies for my long-windedness, but every now and again i feel the urge to rant a bit about the eworld... just to say that kass fleisher and i will be copresenting on a panel at the great lakes american studies conference, miami u in oxford ohio, this friday at 3:30... our paper is entitled "urgently parallel distributed processsing: how the middle class makes (the) working-class history"... love to meet anyone from the list!... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 18:23:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Looking for input on talk In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980303191119.0087d100@mail.datawranglers.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Interesting topic. When you find an answer patent it. Tje Junction Press entry in the Dustbooks directory says "Modernist/postmodernist poetry, non-academic," but I get mostly submissions that by anybody's definition fall outside the parameters. Years ago I did a magazine called Broadway Boogie. The name itself should have been a giveaway, as the contents surely were, which didn't stop someone from sending me an incredibly mannered 75 page manuscript in heroic couplets. When I get a real mismatch I often scribble on the return "you could have saved the postage if you'd looked at one of our books," but desperation (I guess) and self-deception are powerful drugs. By the evidence of the cover-letters almost none of my suitors have taken the trouble to find out what I publish. Which, by the way, isn't very flattering. Maybe someone's done a study that tells these people that making a blind submission to all the publishers in the directory is cost-effective. At 07:11 PM 3/3/98 -0600, you wrote: >I've been asked to give a talk this summer to help poets try to understand >what publishers are looking for, etc. I'm planning to push it a little bit >and, where appropriate, talk from the opposite view point: how publishers >(primarily those of periodicals such as journals) can do a better job of >communicating to potential submitters. I would love any suggestions any of >you might have on points, nits & grand schemes to make sure I hit. > >thanks, >Tim > > >______________________________________________________________ >Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com > >poetry is the shock of insight's drive-by > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 18:31:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: publishing & prestige In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe--I'm not sure that we have polar positions here. That part of your work that you intend for the kind of reading that the web facilitates requires a much surer sense of the medium than I have at present. This may change over time. The "property" issues are real, and aren't for me about money. If I publish a poem on the web that's really ben written with paper in mind do I preclude the possibility of subsequent journal publication? And do e-zines as a rule require that the work they publish never have seen the public light before? At 07:45 PM 3/3/98 -0600, you wrote: >weird, mark w, how much we differ here: i didn't even put up a website for >mself until i had what i thought were sufficient epublications, and >certainly didn't and don't want those to overlap with my work in print... >didn't put my vita online---didn't see the point... didn't put my print >work online either (not saying you shouldn't)... didn't even compose a >hypertext till i could come up with something that violated generic >differences (whatever its value, it does this)... my website is useful, to >me, b/c i use it as a node to 'gather' my online work... in general, i want >to publish stuff online intended to be viewed/read (slippage intended) >online... i imagine my print pubs overlapping with my electronic >pubs---sometimes intended and sometimes not... but not in terms of >dupes---i'm talking thematically---lines, concerns, images, etc... i >imagine my "self" in this sense as occupying alternating alphabetic, visual >and aural habitats... > >any writer imagining herself so is bound to require, in the near future, a >critical apparatus that can take account of these alternating, >con/disjunctive effects... one nice thing about this medium is that it's >helped throw the formal issues in relief... > >which is to say that, personally, i would recommend---as a different sense >of how to go about this---publishing stuff online that in fact you have no >intention of publishing elsewhere... if you're even a little creative with >online possibilities, any print reprint MUST be a substantively different >reading (maybe even writing) experience... which is to say, make it for the >screen and it changes, often in subtle ways... why not explore/construct >along this axis, just for a change?... what have you got to lose?... the >risk is, as always, in the making... > >of course there are all SORTSA publishing-business issues that arise when >you attempt to publish something in a trade or academic press that was >previously published online (and vice versa---as i just discussed >backchannel with someone)... one of the interesting issues is whether >simply putting something online yourself IS publishing... well of course it >is... and if someone links to you---is this publication too?... and when >does this activity begin to accrue (in the eyes of whomever) intellectual >capital? (which self-publishing today seems not to)... certainly when it >generates $$$, but not only then, no?... > >best, > >joe > >email: amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu >url: http://www.iit.edu/~amato > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 21:22:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hzinnes Subject: reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit 3 March l998 Hollins College, Virginia, is holding its Literary Festival this year during the week-end of March l3. Harriet Zinnes will be reading on March l4, l0 a m, from her book of translations of Jacques Prevert (Blood and FEathers, Moyer Bell, l993) and from her My, Haven't the Flowers Been? (Magic Circle, l995). Are there Virginians on the List? Do come! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 22:30:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium In-Reply-To: <34FBE798.1235@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:21 AM +0000 3/3/98, Miekal And wrote: ... I >have just received a rejection slip from a smalltime college literary >magazine saying the ongoing collaboration, Literature Nation, >interwriting by Maria Damon & myself, is definitively not poetry, so I >wont bother to speak to "where" that is written. > > >rasputin zukofsky whoa dude! i'm thrilled, like, hello, i'm finally officially a card carrying member of POETIX, having some two-bit college lit mag say, not that it's not good enough poetry for them to publish, but that it's NOT POETRY. "definitively", moreover. can i get a copy of that document for my office door? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 22:31:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jack Micheline In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:03 PM -0500 3/3/98, Annie Finch wrote: >I was sorry to hear of the death of Jack Micheline. Jack was a gracious >and wild energy in the North Beach poetry scene when I lived there in the >late 80's. He was everywhere, selling the socialist newspaper in each cafe >and adding poetry to the climate with his intelligence and heart. Have a >good one, Jack. > >AF yes. i remember him from my bob kaufman research daze in SF; his reading at Kaufman's funeral, etc, and his presence at the Beat conference at NYU in, was it 1994? he scared me a little, so i appreciated him from a distance. committed to the end. --md >____________________________________________________________ >_____________________________________________ >________________________ >Annie Finch > http://muohio.edu/~finchar >Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing >Miami University >Oxford, Ohio 45220 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 20:54:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbuuck Subject: Re: tripwire Comments: cc: bruno@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" re: Franklin Bruno's inquiry about Tripwire--- tripwire is a new poetics journal edited by Yedda Morrison & David Buuck. Issue one is aprox. 150 pages, including an interview with Myung Mi Kim, and work by Noah de Lissovoy, Eleni Sikelianos, Kathy Lou Schultz, Rodrigo Toscano, Sarah Anne Cox, Eliazabeth Robinson, Tan Lin, Jocelyn Saidenberg & Brian Strang, Robert Hale, Tim Davis, Elizabeth Treadwell, Sarah Rosenthal, Dana Lomax, Thiagarajah Selvanithy, Sherry Brennan, Mark Wallace, and others. It includes essays, "work," artwork, reviews, and more. $6 for one issue / $10 for two --- Published biannually tripwire c/o Morrison & Buuck 722 Shotwell #4 SF CA 94110 ---------------------- Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 01:53:29 -0800 From: Franklin Bruno Subject: tripwire? I seem to have deleted the ordering info (address, price) for Tripwire that was posted a week or so ago. Could someone repost it (backchannel or otherwise) please? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 00:14:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: blah blah blah etc... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I recently asked you all why some poets like Ted Berrigan are ignored by the "academy" and no-one was interested enough to reply about how they see Berrigan's work, well I guess you all are too busy talking about the WWW!, I suppose the academy of the future is closing its doors to argue about publishing on the web? If anyone wants a break, write to me and explain why some critics call Berrigan an "ardent disciple" and like some kid brother to Frank O' Hara. An imitator. His writings mean alot to me, and I would like some discussion on the matter. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 00:39:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... In-Reply-To: <234842b2.34fce323@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII anybody have a literature review on this? On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, ScoutEW wrote: > I recently asked you all why some poets like Ted Berrigan are ignored by the > "academy" and no-one was interested enough to reply about how they see > Berrigan's work, well I guess you all are too busy talking about the WWW!, > I suppose the academy of the future is closing its doors to argue about > publishing on the web? If anyone wants a break, write to me and explain why > some critics call Berrigan an "ardent disciple" and like some kid brother to > Frank O' Hara. An imitator. His writings mean alot to me, and I would like > some discussion on the matter. > anyhow, back to the web. it was good to meet up with Bill Marsh of poeticslist fame and it proves that there is some humanity to all this. he showed me a nice little cafe where everyone was reading and not talking! imagine! well we lit that place up pretty good--especially when we got to remembering the good old days on poetics. and Mark Weiss your next, Rae? you there? Don? You had all better be at the reading tomorrow. I'm goign to take some time out of staring at endless asymmetries and soon--my fav., the Light Poems---hmmm. on another affront, I'm not sure what Katy means about making poetry ubiquitous. haven't you ever seen, wuzzit called "streetfare journal"? do they still have that? I'll never forget riding around on the busses of san francisco and seeing creeley poem and nikki giovanni and more. right where the ads are! imagine! and advertising is the poets trade. didn't lew welch write "raid kills bugs dead" ? i've taught that little humdinger of a poem, and it always gets tremendous applause from the students. another one, not so tremendous, is the poem by Reznikoff, goes (from memory) something like: FOR AN INSCRIPTION OVER A SUBWAY ENTRANCE This is the gift of Hephestus the god men say is lame. I'm not sure if I have that right, but it (for me is a little better than the one about the "girder still itself among the rubble" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 22:22:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: reznikoff's girder Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" has always bugged me. "Still itself amid the rubble." Heck, the girder's rubble, too. Howcum girder specified, here, rubble unspecified, there? break a leg tomorrow, if thats when you read, Joel. The box of books from Meow arrived, what a breathtaking collection and congratulations, again, on your endeavor! We should be talking about Berrigan (Ted) but we should also be talking about these Meow Press books. I will (must go eat right now, though). db3 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 22:23:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I recently asked you all why some poets like Ted Berrigan are ignored by the >"academy" and no-one was interested enough to reply about how they see >Berrigan's work, well I guess you all are too busy talking about the WWW!, I don't know who the academy is, but I do think Berrigan's work is really really good. What you didn't hear, was a lurker smiling. And yes his complete work should be in print. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:36:14 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... In-Reply-To: <234842b2.34fce323@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII if you would like to know why Ted Berrigan is sometimes referred to as an "ardent disciple" of Frank O'Hara, I suggest you look at the interview with Berrigan ("On Frank O'Hara's Birthday") which is included in the O'Hara memorial volume edited by Berkson and LeSeur. Re Berrigan in general, there are more memoirs than criticism, but the Waldman edited NICE TO SEE YOU memorial book has a good share of both. The Tom Clark ("Late Returns") and Ron Padgett ("Ted") memoir volumes, if you don't have them, are worth reading. Aram Saroyan wrote a novel ("The Street") before Ted died, and a memoir "Friends in the World," both of which deal with Berrigan as person and poet. There is also random stuff by Andrei Codrescu discussing the intrinsic importance of Berrigan. A couple years ago someone on this list indicated they were writing a Ph.D thesis on the works of Berrigan -- maybe that project has advanced. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 01:42:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: blah blah Kuszai Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit anyhow, back to the web, I detect some sarcasm in your reply. I hoped when I joined this poetics list that I would be able to read some interesting posts on poetics. I wish for more than Kuszai's stupid dismissal of my post...I only wanted to talk about Berrigan and if you want to take that tone pal, then have something more interesting or witty to say than anyhow, back to the web ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 02:00:24 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: sorry if.. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Kuszai, sorry if you were not meaning to be serious, I feel this web publishing topic has been beat down hard and that you were trying to make light of my post to generate some serious talk on Ted Berrigan by saying "back to the web." So lets talk about Berrigan , Padgett, Ashbery, any of the "New York School" poets, where do they fit in say the (olson /pound /williams) tradition of poetry, more specifically does anyone see "The Sonnets" as collage? enough publishing talk , just do it! By any means necessary!!! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 05:49:27 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Jack Micheline Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Annie, It is, I believe, Jack Hirshman who was (and hopefully still is) out hawking CP newspapers at events in SF. Micheline was a friend of his, but a fairly different guy. The best obit I saw was in the SF Examiner (compared with an unforgivably stupid piece in the Chron). Since it includes Jack M's last poem, I paste in below: Jack Micheline, poet, painter, free spirit Eric Brazil OF THE EXAMINER STAFF March 1, 1998 Author of 20-plus books was Beat icon to fellow poets Jack Micheline, an underground hero among his fellow poets who lived the Bohemia n life to the hilt, died Friday on a BART train somewhere between his San Francisco home and Orinda. Mr. Micheline was 68. His death was attributed to a heart attack. He had been a diabetic for several years. His body was found by BART police when the train reached the Orinda station. Born Harvey Martin Silver in New York, Mr. Micheline changed his name as a young man and committed himself to the artist's life, living by his pen and paintbrush, always poor, always on t he move. During his lifetime, Mr. Micheline authored more than 20 books, most recently la st year, when FMSBW Press of San Francisco brought out "Sixty Seven Poems for Downtrodden Saints." "We considered him a very pure person," said author Gerald Nicosia of Corte Made ra. "In the literary business, most people are in it for fame or money, but he was doing it because he loved wh at he was doing, and he had a great gift. There was real music to his poems." Mr. Micheline had lived in San Francisco, in the South of Market and Mission dis tricts, since the mid-1970s. And although he disavowed the label of Beat poet, he was nevertheless a Beat icon - a street poet whose poems were meant to be spoken and a champion of society's underdogs. Jack Kerouac, author o f "On the Road" and arguably the most famous of the Beats, wrote the introduction to Mr. Micheline's first bo ok, "River of Red Wine." "His sweet lines revive the poetry of open hope in America," Kerouac wrote. San Francisco poet Neeli Cherkovski, who knew Mr. Micheline for almost 40 years, said Saturday, "He always lived out the romanticism of the poet of the streets, the downtrodden. He never made it to a big publisher - he always shied away." Nevertheless, he said, "thousands of young poets in the country kind of march to the rhythms of Jack Micheline. He was always, like, under the underground, and the establishment held him at ar m's length." The late writer Charles Bukowski, a soul mate, had said Mr. Micheline's poems "a re total feelings beating their heads on barroom floors. I can't think of anyone who has more and who has been n eglected more. Jack is the last of the holy preachers, sailing down Broadway singing the song." Although he had tethered himself to San Francisco, Mr. Micheline's restlessness never left him, and he stayed on the move. "Always quick to pack his bags and take a trip, then roll into town and sleep on my couch until he could get his hotel room back," is the way his publisher, San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Matt Gonzalez, described him. "He had a lot of different sides. He was very spiritual, and he also had the Bea t sensibility and a great big heart," Gonzalez said. "He had an immense number of friends." Mr. Micheline could also be a pain in the neck to work with - even denying autho rship of a poem until shown the manuscript in his handwriting, Gonzalez said. A second printing of his last book is almost ready for publication. Nicosia said that Mr. Micheline "could be very difficult, but there was a small coterie of people who knew him well, and you kind of got past that thorny exterior, the loner with the blustery Bronx mannerism. And if you got past that, there was a real sweetheart in Jack. He was always there for the poor, the homeless, the people left by the wayside in society." There was "real music to his poems," Nicosia said. "They sing and they bounce an d they jump around the page." For example: OUT OF THE RAINS Out of the rains And mud of cities Walking in a fog On subway platforms In Harlem and Brooklyn and Queens I see the faces of children Staring at me And I want to run from the city Past freights And ships And buildings that scrape the sky I want to race down streets Dreaming of mountains and Spanish girls I am a poet I stare at the ground to see if I am bleeding. Long after becoming a published poet, Mr. Micheline took up painting - an art at which he made more money than at his chosen vocation. Charles Wehrenberg of San Francisco, a dealer in rare art objects who owns 40 or 50 Micheline paintings, said that "he was a really phenomenal painter, but he was so involved with the whole idea that the dead rule the world he didn't think he'd succeed until he dropped dead." Mr. Micheline's technique was "totally primitive" and eschewed draftsmanship. We hrenberg said that he once asked Mr. Micheline for a series of portraits on famous people he knew, and Mr. Micheline retorted that "I ain't no f- - - camera." "His whole idea was to paint people's psyches," Wehrenberg said. "He was a very hard-to-like character, but he had very brilliant moments. He was absolutely adamant that he didn't want to succeed. He wouldn't mind winning a lot of money, but he'd immediately l ose it back on the horse races," Wehrenberg said. "He really is the character that Kerouac wrote about in "On the Road.' He is Whitman's wild child. He really did live out a poetic life." Right, said his poet friend Cherkovski. "He was kind of wild. Even in his 60s he was still a man of the streets. He was saying, "I'm outside the system, I don't belong to it.' " Mr. Micheline is survived by his son, Vincent Silver of Tucson, Ariz. Funeral se rvices are pending. This is Mr. Micheline's last poem, written Feb. 25, 1998, in San Francisco. POEM To capture the feeling To feel its pulse To see the stream has been muddied I am reshaping the start I cannot be bothered with your Earthly pleasures All these rantings and ravings Have nothing to do with poetry Have nothing to do with magic Only the ears of butterflies And birds And the delicate moths Matter. Let the Angels in Let them into this Market Now Feel, see and breathe. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 07:04:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: meow Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I like DB's idea of discussing Meow Press books. Especially since I've only seen one of them (Silliman's XING). Actually, I thought I'd worked out a swap for a couple of them but I may not be remembering correctly. In any event, it would be nice to switch gears and talk about some specific books. Why is it when I see WWW I immediately think of Hulk Hogan. As ever, Tom B. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:18:51 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: long wet kisses and technophilia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mark-- > > The "U" in utopia is "no" and makes the "A" in atopia a bit > > redundant. > > "Noplace" and "Placeless" are both in the same distopian > > discourse community, no? > > To belabor: > > topos being "place" > > u- being "no" thus "no place" i.e. does not exist > but translated Utopia meaning "place of ideal perfection" whereas To labor: I don't know what "irony" is in Greek, but in Latin it's "illusio". As in: My distinction between utopia and atopia included a touch of illusio. > I forward this definition, uncontentiously, as being distinct from > utopia as it implies not an ironic criticism of human ideals of > perfection nor perfection itself nor perdition, so to speak, but a > state of being whose location or place is not verifiable in physical > terms. Thus the utterance is not "located" in space but rather in > the "moment" of it's articualtion in Time. Therein rubs the rub. This space (espace) is both as "physical" and as "virtual" as the Wall Street Journal or the Buffalo News's Poetry Page. Physical eyes read them in physical places on substances with physical presences, made with the physics of physical labor. The e- utterance is located in space just as the news, op-ed human contact, poetry and the funnies are all located in the moment, the moment that we read them as much as the moment they are articulated. > Place requires physical presence, which > isn't always possible. No place requires the impossible, > perfection. Bad places we all want to stay out of. Atopia allows > us not community, but communication (between beings in distant > places in time) that otherwise we could or would not have made. Aside from mythic instantaneity (try accessing over-seas web pages with a 28.8 modem), I don't see how this communication differs drastically from me buying Essex Street/Tailspin books at a London bookshop (which you can do) or subscribing to _The Nation_ via airmail. Oh... and Maria D., if you're listening. That rejected collab you did with Rasputin sounds interesting. Any chance of me seeing a copy, "e" or otherwise? Longingly, Martin _________________________________________ Martin Spinelli SUNY Buffalo English Department Granolithic Productions spinelli@pavilion.co.uk LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak ENGAGED http://www.engaged.demon.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 07:48:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: Query: Catriona Strang Does anyone have the s-, &/or e-mail address for Catriona Strang? If so, please back-channel. Thanks in advance. --Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:03:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: berrigan Seems to me one of the key things about Berrigan which he picked up on and which has been picked up on in turn from him by many many "NY School" poets is the fusion of formality & informality, of art & grunge - so that they find sort of a lyrical balance and an integration of beauty & everyday unofficial (& mostly moneyless & prestigeless) life. This can only happen when there is an intense awareness & understanding of art in all its arty grandeur coupled with an intellectual freedom & scepticism about same coupled with a devotion to it which is natural & not simply willed or calculated. & it could probably only happen in New York at a certain time when art, power & grunge competed on a level playing field. "The Sonnets" are art sonnets & improvised performance pieces combined. Grunge is probably the wrong term for everyday living in a devoted bohemian (poor) way. & Berrigan sometimes seems self-indulgent, too obviously performing that life. But that's a view from far outside. (we don't have grunge in Rhode Island. we have coffee milk.) just a few berrigan thoughts very calculatedly & stupidly self-centeredly designed to remind readers that my own sonnet thing ISLAND ROAD at Mudlark is designed as a reply to Berrigan, Berryman & Shakespeare combined, with #4 Homage to Falstaff especially aimed at Berrigan. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 07:52:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Clements Subject: Re: newtek & po In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Gwyn, The only person I know of who is doing anything with ASL poetry is Dirksen Bauman, who published a piece recently in the PMLA. I don't know where Dirksen is now, but you might be able to track him down through the Binghamton English Dept. Brian ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > New media. Old media. Books superior. Web a class issue. Okay, fine. What > I'd like to see happen is a CD-ROM anthology of American Sign Language > poetry--which is out there, and must, by its nature, have a unique poetic, > but doesn't get, for lack of a better word, "heard" through the usual > channels. Maybe a CD ASL po-zine from Gallaudet? > > Then, to make it really interesting, they could play the video clips of > poems to ASL-literate apes and get their response. ("You call this poetry? > If I had the time, I could write /Hamlet/....") > > Gw(seriously)yn > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:57:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Looking for input on talk In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980303191119.0087d100@mail.datawranglers.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pet peeve: unannounced theme issues whose themes are decided beforehand by editorial fiat, not evolving as a result of incoming material, which latter I've been guilty of doing myself. But I've submitted places and had work sent back with no explanation, only to find that they had been planning a theme issue on Jewish writers, whom I admire jointly and severally but can't claim to be, personally. g. oyisch On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Tim Wood wrote: > I've been asked to give a talk this summer to help poets try to understand > what publishers are looking for, etc. I'm planning to push it a little bit > and, where appropriate, talk from the opposite view point: how publishers > (primarily those of periodicals such as journals) can do a better job of > communicating to potential submitters. I would love any suggestions any of > you might have on points, nits & grand schemes to make sure I hit. > > thanks, > Tim > > > ______________________________________________________________ > Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com > > poetry is the shock of insight's drive-by > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 07:53:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: Looking for input on talk In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19980303182337.006c34b8@mail.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Boogie. The name itself should have been a giveaway, as the contents surely >were, which didn't stop someone from sending me an incredibly mannered 75 >page manuscript in heroic couplets. I've noticed the same thing. One publications that I'm involved in is a general circulation monthly on the arts that can only afford to do eight pages a month. After an interview an article a review the calendar, there's enough space for about two (raw) pages of poetry. That's never stopped anyone from sending poems of 10 or more pages. Hmmm... More thoughts like these would definately help. Nothing like stories from the horse's mouth to make a point. It might be fun to assemble them (perhaps dropping the names...) into a little chapbook with a list of resources & such. "Your first guide to the world of journals" or "The Dummies book of poetry publishing". . Beyond more thoughts like these, could any of you make suggestions on resources (either print or online) that would help either periodical publishers or poets in seek of publiation 'glory'. I've got my own feelings about SASEs & such. What do others think of them, or of using say a postcard instead? Have any you found any unusual ways to publicize your periodicals or that help you locate places to 'place' your poetry. And on and on. I'm looking for any remotely relevant thoughts. I've got experience and a high dose of opinion in regards to publishing, but I'd rather speak from more than just my little bit of ego. thanks, Tim ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com poetry is the shock of insight's drive-by ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 09:30:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: The Sonnets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Erik: You can get a copy of the Grove Press edition of _The Sonnets_ (1964) from Pomander Books for $30.00. A lot of money, maybe, but not bad for this, considering (a) I've seen it selling for $125.00 and (b) it has a very high Groove Factor (like, 8 or 9). Contact Pomander at: SZAVv@aol.com I think Berrigan took as much, maybe more, from Philip Whalen. I also think what he took from Whalen was ultimately more interesting than what he took from O'Hara. All three are amazing poets. Yours, Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:57:56 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale M Smith Subject: blah blah blah etc... I don't know if Berrigan's really considered "some kid brother to O'Hara" by every one here. I think that his Sonnets are also going to be republished soon, so there must be some interest out there. In a lot of ways he was his own thing, you know. Very funny and playful with language in ways quite different from O'Hara. Send me $5 and I'll send issue 8 of my magazine, with two previously unpublished collaborations between him and T. Clark. To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU I recently asked you all why some poets like Ted Berrigan are ignored by the "academy" and no-one was interested enough to reply about how they see Berrigan's work, well I guess you all are too busy talking about the WWW!, I suppose the academy of the future is closing its doors to argue about publishing on the web? If anyone wants a break, write to me and explain why some critics call Berrigan an "ardent disciple" and like some kid brother to Frank O' Hara. An imitator. His writings mean alot to me, and I would like some discussion on the matter. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:00:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: meow (..chats actuels) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, TBeck131 wrote: > would be nice to switch gears and talk about some specific books. Why is it > when I see WWW I immediately think of Hulk Hogan. > As ever, > Tom B. I'll mention briefly a specific magazine. Yesterday I received Raddle Moon 16, which conists of works by "Twenty-two new (to North America) French writers..." On one skim, it's incredibly exciting stuff, and folks should be sure to see it. The list of translators reads like a who's-who of the the interesting poets who are on this list or discussed here. I've never heard of any of the french poets, which isn't too surprising, but is also an exciting aspect of it. So far I've gotten thru the first selection, "Heros Are Heros Are," by Manual Joseph trans. Susan Gevirtz: pretty timely "gulf war" poem that reminds me a little of Spahr's superb use of bureacratic deformations as a looped political poetic style in her book Response; and "On my Desk," by Sabine Macher trans. Dodie B.: uses ways of playing with writing that I'd done years ago and forgotten about: how consciousness and words can hit and ricochet off specific physical objects, and gain some really interesting torques, a kind of spare approach to the-lyric-as-still-life. Very nice clipped rendering into amerenglish.. The next 20 sections look just as sharp.... Mark P. @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:11:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: The Sonnets In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 4 Mar 1998 09:30:38 -0500 from On Wed, 4 Mar 1998 09:30:38 -0500 Gary Sullivan said: > >I think Berrigan took as much, maybe more, from Philip Whalen. I also think >what he took from Whalen was ultimately more interesting than what he took from >O'Hara. All three are amazing poets. Gary, do you think you could expand on the Whalen connection a little? That's interesting to me. - Henry the horse ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:30:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Tripwire Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi everyone it's Kevin Killian . . . I wanted to add my 25 cents and recommend the new poetics journal "Tripwire" (very mindful that the "old" Poetics Journal is coming to an end soon with its final issue). . . . Living here in San Francisco I have long suspected there was a new generation of poets with ideas and formulations very different than my own, and "Tripwire" is now my handbook, as an anthropologist would have his handbook . . . It's quite wonderfully edited, by Morrison and Buuck, always something interesting on almost every page, especially the theoretical and critical work. And many of the writers are new to me--yes, there is a foregrounding of the "new,"--with Myung Mi Kim presiding over the "new" in this vatic, patient way. Anyhow it's well worth six dollars, I say, go for it. Schultz' essay about the difficulties of being a working-class avant-garde writer is the finest I've ever read on the topic. Robert Hale's and David Bucck's essays are also very fine on the exhaustion of the approach to a degree zero of writing--Many of these young people seem to have embarked on some kind of writing degree that presents itself, in "Tripwire," as a kind of grail of disgust. "Writing degree" = "zero"? Sherry Brennan's overview of some recent books of poetry is good also, very intriguing---though I wonder, given the fact that there are so many good poets today, yet so few books published, that another review of Some Other Kind of Mission, In Memory of My Theories, Imagination Verses, Metropolis and Response--won't throw their authors into some kind of canon from which it would be difficult to unseat oneself--They are so young and already they (and Myung Mi Kim) are the gods of "Tripwire" . . . it's interesting. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- tripwire is a new poetics journal edited by Yedda Morrison & David Buuck. Issue one is aprox. 150 pages, including an interview with Myung Mi Kim, and work by Noah de Lissovoy, Eleni Sikelianos, Kathy Lou Schultz, Rodrigo Toscano, Sarah Anne Cox, Eliazabeth Robinson, Tan Lin, Jocelyn Saidenberg & Brian Strang, Robert Hale, Tim Davis, Elizabeth Treadwell, Sarah Rosenthal, Dana Lomax, Thiagarajah Selvanithy, Sherry Brennan, Mark Wallace, and others. It includes essays, "work," artwork, reviews, and more. $6 for one issue / $10 for two --- Published biannually tripwire c/o Morrison & Buuck 722 Shotwell #4 SF CA 94110 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:20:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: reznikoff's girder/get out of jail "free" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII David Bromige! how good to hear from you. The reading today is Sherley Anne Williams - who is a fiction writer. I don't believe in poetry readings. on that note, I did manage to get word to Patrick Stewart that I needed him to "read" (record) my poem "A Miscellany" which is culled from 1,000 pages of Elizabethan-era lyrics. When told that he was going to have to do this, his brow grew deep with trenches, and the messenger relaying this shrunk back. Mr. Stewart then told my friend the messenger to send the work to his studio in LA. So...we'll see. I've got my fingers crossed that what John Cage once said of Mac Low's play "The Marrying Maiden" won't also be true of my poem: "Unless you do something to regulate delivery, they'll read their lines like Shakespeare" (that's a paraphrase from memory). back to the rubble. my sense of the girdle still itself among the rabble is that without recognition the girdle would still be rabble. It is the raising up of the girdle that gives it it its special halo. "I wanna be your halo" Today the girder tomorrow the I-beam. or is an I beam a girder? any construction workers out there? or more appropriate: anyone own a construction company out there? I feel that there is a definate lack of construction talk here on poetics. on a more serious note, I have been meaning to ask this of poetics for some time as my queries elsewhere have met up with a dead end. Perhaps this won't bear any fruit, but there's hoping. I would like to find a source (archival or attic-style) of the following: 1. prison literature. Specifically, I'd like to find a copy of "Iced Pig" the magazine "published" by Sam Melville in the months immediately before the Attica uprising. But I'm interested in other 60s/early70s era prison publications, although I realize that it might be a stretch to find extant copie of such. The University of Michigan's Labadie Collection, which has one of the best collections of civil liberties and civil rights material in the usa, don't any such material, although they do collect some material related to that, such as gay-rights prison literature. 2. I'm also trying to find a source for literature relating to the conscientious objector movement. David Dellinger published "Pacifica Views" which Mac Low I believe wrote a review for in the 1940s. Many of these people were held long after the war, some were literally arrested immediately upon being released (for not having their draft cards), which is a kind of double jeopardy, it seems to me. I have a copy of "Prison Etiquitte" which was published by Retort Press around that time--hand printed on paper donated by James Laughlin. This is a rare book that I found in a bookstore in Detroit last summer. "The Field of Broken Stones" is another book published at that time. A memoir of Lowell Naeve, a CO who was imprisoned at Danbury Fed Corr facility and rearrested. He was an artist who would "wash off" old time magazines, literally making white paper out of the magazines, thereby creating a sketch pad for himself. Field of Broken Stones was co-written by David Wieck, a philosophy professor at Rennselaer Polytech in Troy NY, who just died this past year after a long bout with Alzheimers. Wieck was an old co editor of one of the magainzes that Mac Low worked on in the 40s,early 50s. What I'm looking for (as field of broken stons was reprinted by Alan Swallow and shouldn't be that hard to find) what I'm really looking for are "newsletters" edited and printed at the CPS (civilian public service) camps--like Pacifica Views, but more fugitive and underground. PV was fairly well established and is archived many places. Greenwood even did a reprint I believe. Especially I'm looking for material from the Germfask Michigan Camp, were the troublemakers were sent in a kind of american style concentration camp. Most of the work camps were administered by the Friends, the brothers, and the sisters, if you know what I mean. Germfask, despite the shocking conditions, was still able to produce some kind of newsletter. No one I've talked to has seeen a copy although I've read of them. perhaps this isn't the place to ask. please back channel with advice, jail bird On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, david bromige wrote: > has always bugged me. "Still itself amid the rubble." Heck, the girder's > rubble, too. Howcum girder specified, here, rubble unspecified, there? > > break a leg tomorrow, if thats when you read, Joel. The box of books from > Meow arrived, what a breathtaking collection and congratulations, again, on > your endeavor! We should be talking about Berrigan (Ted) but we should also > be talking about these Meow Press books. I will (must go eat right now, > though). db3 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:27:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Looking for Address In-Reply-To: <01BD4750.32535600@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Could someone back-channel me Gian Lombardo's e-mail address or snail mail address? Thanks, Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:27:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Berrigan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Berrigan thread is welcome, since I subscribed to list in the first place for conversation about poetry and poetics. One of the sonnets, which is not a sonnet, is an imitation of FO'H "I do this I do that" mode, which mislead me at one point into thinking that Berrigan was a mere imitator of O'Hara. Since this poem doesn't really capture O'Hara's mode at all, I thought he was a rather poor imitator, in fact. But this is a poor poem by which to judge Berrigan. There are some interesting poems in one of the early issues of Talisman, from the "500 Postcards" or something like that. The whole 2nd generation New York school needs a 2nd look. How about Ron Padgett? Ceravolo? Tony Towle? Ch. Bernstein's essay on Berrigan in Content's Dream is very interesting because it argues for a non-biographical reading. Any thoughts on this? Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:29:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: The Sonnets In-Reply-To: <01BD4750.32535600@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'd agree with Gary Sullivan's analysis but also include Anselm Hollo, whose lyric beauty and casualness seem to work in the same way as Berrigan's, Whalen's, and O'Hara's. Maxine Chernoff On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, Gary Sullivan wrote: > Hi, Erik: > > You can get a copy of the Grove Press edition of _The Sonnets_ (1964) from > Pomander Books for $30.00. A lot of money, maybe, but not bad for this, > considering (a) I've seen it selling for $125.00 and (b) it has a very high > Groove Factor (like, 8 or 9). Contact Pomander at: > > SZAVv@aol.com > > I think Berrigan took as much, maybe more, from Philip Whalen. I also think > what he took from Whalen was ultimately more interesting than what he took from > O'Hara. All three are amazing poets. > > Yours, > > Gary Sullivan > gps12@columbia.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:45:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Early Warning: Mackey in Chicago MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The distinguished poet, novelist and critic Nathaniel Mackey will visit UIC on April 15 and 16. Here is his schedule "A Reading of Poetry and Prose." April 15th, 3:00, African-American Cultural Center, 2nd Floor, Adams Hall "On the Influence of H.D. on My Poetry." April 16th, 11:00 a.m., Humanities Institute, Basement, Stevenson Hall Both events are free and open to the public. the University of Illinois at Chicago is not the easiest place to find your way around, and these aren't the most convenient of times for those who lead non-academic lives, but it'll be worth it if you can make it. Mark your calander now. Nathaniel Mackey's visit to UIC is sponsored and supported by the Department of African-American Studies, the African-American Cultural Center, the Institute for the Humanities, the Department of English, the Office of Access and Equity, the Department of Performing Arts, and the Student Activities Funding Committee. For further information contact dzauhar@uic.edu or... James C. Hall Asst. Professor of African-American Studies and English University of Illinois at Chicago 601 S. Morgan St. Chicago, IL 60607-7112 (312) 413-7522 JCHALL@uic.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:51:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: The Sonnets Certainly Burrough's cut-ups would have been another big influence. And what about "Europe" written in Paris at almost exactly the same time that Burroughs & Gysin were doing their collaborations there? According to Padgett, as late as 1960, Berrigan thought that "Europe" was based on _The Golden Bough_. So he makes the leap, somehow, from "The Wasteland to _The Tennis Court Oath_, from high modernism to postmodernism, in only a year or so. (Query: did "Europe" first appear in the limited edition book _The Poems_?) Gary, I wish you'd say more about the Whalen connection. Ron Silliman briefly mentioned in a recent post that Whalen was also a formative influence for Coolidge's poetry. I've heard this before somewhere, but don't really see it; perhaps someone could spell this out as well. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:03:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: berrigan/grunge Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Grunge was first introduced into the American vocabulary via Mark Arm from the band Mudhoney talking to Everett True a writer for the English mag Melody Maker in 1988, I would never equated the word grunge to Berrigan. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:08:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: The Sonnets/thanks!!! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Thanky you very much Gary for the info on the Sonnets, you are just so kind to tell me, I've been looking for a personal copy for awhile, mine is from the library here, yes, I remember reading Berrigan write that he liked Whalen when he went to the Berkeley poetry conference because he kept a distance from the grandstannding that was going on and was very friendly. Thanks again!!! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:13:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... In-Reply-To: <234842b2.34fce323@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was told by one of my teachers upon asking this very question-- That he was not particularly archetypal-- "Where Plath has been translated into many languages--Berrigan somehow doesn't seem to strike the same kind of chord"-- This is one pretty "academic" response-- I personally think that Berrigan simply hasn't been pushed--he doesn't yet have a collected (but I'm sure that will come along soon enough--), and although he has passed away--he is still implicated in a lot of contemporary poetic politics--he is still associated with a "camp" of living writers--in the long run, perhaps--yes--like O'Hara (who isn't particularly "archetypal" either....) he will, it seems to me, become more "important"-- He is certainly an influence among younger writers--and, like Spicer and Duncan and Loy--he will probably get "bigger" when those who have been influenced by him get "bigger"-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:15:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Jack Hirschman Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Ron's mention of Hirschman provokes some memories. In the late 1970s I published a small chapbook by Jack called DOVE ROSE under the Viscerally Press imprint. (Side note: the cover art was by Hirschman's pal, the actor, Dean Stockwell.) I don't think I even have a copy of the book any more. Jack's an interesting figure: translator (see, for example, his work on Artaud), Marxist and street poet with a surrealist flavor. A warm and generous personality. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 09:48:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: berrigan, others MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Just wanted to jump in to say Henry's quick take on Berrigan and a few others, to wit > the fusion of formality & informality, of art & grunge - so that > they find sort of a lyrical balance and an integration of beauty & > everyday unofficial (& mostly moneyless & prestigeless) life. > > This can only happen when there is an intense awareness & understanding > of art in all its arty grandeur coupled with an intellectual freedom > & scepticism about same coupled with a devotion to it which is natural > & not simply willed or calculated. > strikes me as absolutely right-on, evoking for me the "organicism" discussed by Don Byrd some weeks ago. I'd also like to thank Ron for forwarding that epitaph of Jack, with whom I read once upon a time in the early 80s in North Beach and who was everything his pals said he was. Jack Hirschman, by the way, is alive and well (and healthy!) still with Sarah M. at last check, still an unregenerate commie propagandist. Good to see some things don't change! An announcement that Joanne Kyger is traveling north from Bolinas to read this Friday night, March 6th, at 8:00 in Auburn (south of Seattle). The place is called SPLAB, and I'll find the address if anyone needs it. Could someone please backchannel me to explain the command to get the full list of Poetics folks with their e-mails? I'm sure it's somewhere in the Welcome Message which I've temporarily mislaid -- thanks in advance! Joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:57:59 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: ASLese MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brian Clements wrote: > > Gwyn, > > The only person I know of who is doing anything with ASL poetry is Dirksen > Bauman, who published a piece recently in the PMLA. I don't know where > Dirksen is now, but you might be able to track him down through the > Binghamton English Dept. > > Brian brian: what makes his work asl? are you saying that the texts he writes use asl grammar & syntax or that he gives "readings" using asl? miekal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:59:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: _Raddle Moon_ Mark is dead-on, the most recent issue of _RM_ is inspiring, exciting, etc., etc. There are some interesting resemblances to work being done in the States -- eg. Christophe Tarkos' use of bracketed passages is a lot like Juliana Spahr's in "documentary," and "responding." Also, there are, in many of the poems (Tarkos', Prouvost's), provocative and varied uses of repetition. I thought, too, that the xeroxes by Guetat-Livani are at least a step beyond a lot of the stuff one generally sees in the vispo mags. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:10:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Saidenberg, Mullen, Nielsen at SPT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This weekend at Small Press Traffic--a reading AND a talk! =46riday, March 6, 7:30 p.m. A poetry reading by Harryette Mullen Jocelyn Saidenberg Harryette Mullen has written three books of poetry, _Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T_, and _Muse & Drudge_. Nina Wiener wrote in _Buzz Weekly_, =B3The exceptional quality of her jazz-inspired poems leads us to imagine he= r the literary offspring of Gertrude Stein and Langston Hughes--a delightfully lethal combination.=B2 There are few other poets in the USA with Mullen=B9s craft and verve, and out of all of these, she=B9s the smarte= st and nicest. Those of you who have never seen La Mullen read will come to this show and get persuaded. Join the crowd! Jocelyn Saidenberg is one of the brightest stars to emerge from the San =46rancisco State University Creative Writing department in recent years. She has published in _Arshile, B-City, Stilts, 14 Hills_, and with bated breath I await for her first book--_Mortal City_--to appear next year from Parentheses Writing Series, and for the anthology _Tense Present_ which will feature another grand helping of her work. Saidenberg=B9s poetry is formally rigorous and quite a challenge, yet underneath its coat of _protective ice_ a warm heart beats and gives it power and endurance. She=B9s the Ekaterina Gordeeva of poetry. New College Theater 777 Valencia Street, San Francisco $5 -------------------------------------- Saturday, March 7, 7:30 p.m. Black Chant: Expanding the African-American =8CCanon=B9 talks and discussion by Harryette Mullen and Aldon Nielsen Harryette Mullen is an associate professor of literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has published and lectured extensively on African American writing, on topics ranging from slave narratives to folk traditions to the avant garde. She is the author of _Freeing the Soul: Literacy and Liberty in Slave Narratives_, and the recipient of numerous fellowships, including a Rockefeller Fellowship from the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women=B9s Studies at the University of Rochester. Aldon Nielsen holds the Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University. His works include _Reading Race: White American Poets and the Racial Discourse in the 20th Century; C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction; Writing Between the Lines: Race and Intertextuality;_ and _Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism._ He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kayden Award for Criticism. New College Cultural Center 766 Valencia Street, San Francisco =46ree (This talk is sponsored by the California Council for the Humanities.) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:59:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: it's poetry it's poetry not... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" not to be cranky, but i don't quite see how talking about A poet or A poem or Poets or Poems or or or is the proper (if that's what it is) or more desirable (if that's what it is) subject matter for a list such as this... which, as has been observed time and again over the years, may entertain multiple threads... so those of you who indicate something similar (i can take a hint): please go right ahead with Poems and Poets and such, if that's what moves you---i'm all ears, i try NEVER to delete, and will occasionally chime in... but no need to wring one's hands over a group within a group of folks talking distribution/publication/medium/poetix, as these relate (or don't) to Poets and Poems... so there... yrs, virtually/// joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:07:38 -0500 Reply-To: John Latta Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Latta Subject: For Joel K. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Joel, I deleted your query before getting curious re: Germfask Newsletter. Fumbling around in OCLC learnt me this: two libraries show holdings: Swarthmore College Peace Collection and the Mennonite Historical Library in Goshen, Indiana. Sitting here in Michigan, and knew nothing about Germfask. Sorry to hafta send this listward. John Latta ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:52:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: berrigan/grunge In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:03:49 EST from >Grunge was first introduced into the American vocabulary via Mark Arm from the >band Mudhoney talking to Everett True a writer for the English mag Melody >Maker in 1988, I would never equated the word grunge to Berrigan. I wouldn't either if I was writing a dissertation. "Things to do in Providence" has a grunge feel. I'm using grunge as opposed to beat. I think grunge was invented in Minneapolis. Now we're really getting somewhere. all I mean is the "byt" (russian term for the everydayness of life, the intimate ordinary, the grungy this that & the otherness of life. that's all I mean. & I'm not saying Berrigan was a grunge poet. I'm saying he pointed up - balanced - juxtaposed - blended - art-sense & everydayness. the demotic & the sublime. a new way at an old way. & I don't mean to hammer away at this fairly obvious aspect, let's get down to some details - but I just dont' want this misunderstood. He was an "urban poet" in that the feel of the environment of the writing is urban & seeps into the poems feel, rhythm, idiom, viewpoint. there is nothing programmatic or strategic in a literary sense on an obvious level about that, except the lyric "beauty" is grounded in that environment which is a feel & is a kind of suffering & grunge. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:18:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Late Ashbery MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear fellow poeticians: Speaking of internet publications, you can check out my poem "Late Ashbery" at www.ellavon.com (also my "History of Modern Poetry" which I posted on this list a while back). There is also a column there by J. Conte. Anyone interested in collaborating on pantoums with me may backchannel (a word I only learned a few months ago [backchannel not pantoum[). Sense of humor required. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:19:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: Berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Jonathon, yes, Berrigan even admits at one point that he emulated the mode with which O'Hara wrote poems. His "It is 5:15 in ny" and so and so is all part of his process in the poems. Berrigan takes lines from here and there and either borrows them via collage into his work or sometimes takes a whole poem by a poet like John Ashbery and writes between the lines, then finally putting the poem together it is a response to the poem by Ashbery! I find this really interesting the way he plays off of things, even in the Sonnets he borrows lines from other poets and puts it all together in a new way. As far as the O' Hara comparison goes, I felt that the critic who called him a disciple, (i am not going to name names because it is not important plus I respect the rest of her work, and like what she does as a critic) was merely trying to find a place for him, as most critics do, Where does he fit in, o well, I'll put him next to O'Hara because it is easy. -What is not so easy is going back to the text, Sonnets, Bean Spasms, etc and finding where he "borrowed" some lines from, or should I say was inspired to add to his poems-He once said he put a lot of references into the sonnets so scholars would look at his poems for years to come. I love Bernstein's take on Berrigan in Content's dream, he even adds Berrigan into a line from "Dark City" in the poem, "The lives of the toll takers" which is incredible, he says something about Ted "bowl over" Berrigan and his "short stabs" poems from 1968, its great Well, thanks for your addition to this discussion, it made my day better, next we must talk about Ron Padgett and his great book of pomes "Tulsa Kid"! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:44:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: berrigan, others In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Could someone please backchannel me to explain the command to get the full >list of Poetics folks with their e-mails? I'm sure it's somewhere in the >Welcome Message which I've temporarily mislaid -- thanks in advance! > >Joe Me too! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:44:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: The Sonnets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Henry, Maxine, Jacques & Erik: No books here at work today, so Whalen/Berrigan will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday, so I can quote a few things. Erik, if you really want that copy, e-mail Pomander's pronto--I think they only have one. Do you have a copy of Whalen's _On Bear's Head_? I think you'd probably love it. It's been out of print, like, "forever." You can find used paperback copies every now & then, but if you can't wait, you can get a hardback copy for $25 from Second Life Books in Lanesborough, MA. If interested, e-mail them at: 2ndlife@cbcc.bcwan.net It's a great book. Also (& cheaper), _Heavy Breathing_, a "collected" of later books, for $7.50, from Powell's Books in Portland, OR. I don't know what their e-mail is, but you can order from them on-line by going to their website: www.powells.com Yes, Maxine, definitely Hollo, too. Missed his reading here last Saturday, but saw him in Minneapolis maybe two years ago; he read a few sonnets from a recent series, dedicated to Berrigan. My favorites among his work (read that day, anyway) were his translations from the Greek Anthology. Soon, Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:58:49 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: Re: _Raddle Moon_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii How does one get a hold of a copy of Raddle Moon? --Elizabeth Hatmaker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:16:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: All Things Considered / New York Public Library Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" True, they're not the Poetics List... Ron Padgett will be on All Things Considered this afternoon, talking about "From A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980". Tune in, turn on... Those of you interested in talking about the so-called generations of the New York School ought to come see the show, which features poetry magazines from The Black Mountain Review all the way through L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. Bye! Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:23:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Early Warning: Mackey in Chicago In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In addition to Mackey's readings at UIC, he is also reading in the series Paul Hoover curates at Columbia College. His reading there will take place at 3 p.m. on April 16 in the Ferguson Theater, 600 South Michigan, where he will be introduced by Art Lange, his collaborator on the Coffee House jazz anthology, Moment's Notice. The reading is free and open to the public. Maxine Chernoff On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, David Zauhar wrote: > The distinguished poet, novelist and critic Nathaniel Mackey will visit UIC > on April 15 and 16. Here is his schedule > > "A Reading of Poetry and Prose." > April 15th, 3:00, African-American Cultural Center, 2nd Floor, Adams Hall > > "On the Influence of H.D. on My Poetry." > April 16th, 11:00 a.m., Humanities Institute, Basement, Stevenson Hall > > Both events are free and open to the public. > > the University of Illinois at Chicago is not the easiest place to find > your way around, and these aren't the most convenient of times for those > who lead non-academic lives, but it'll be worth it if you can make it. > Mark your calander now. > > Nathaniel Mackey's visit to UIC is sponsored and supported by the > Department of African-American Studies, the African-American Cultural > Center, the Institute for the Humanities, the Department of English, the > Office of Access and Equity, the Department of Performing Arts, and the > Student Activities Funding Committee. > > For further information contact dzauhar@uic.edu or... > > James C. Hall > Asst. Professor of African-American Studies and English > University of Illinois at Chicago > 601 S. Morgan St. > Chicago, IL 60607-7112 > (312) 413-7522 > JCHALL@uic.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:32:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: Re: long wet kisses and technophilia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Martin, I don't know the greek for irony either. Atopia is a non-community of men and women who share their language, masks & placelessness, with each other that they may communicate their (un)common ideas and help others to communicate theirs. The only requirement for membership in Atopia is a desire to communicate. There are some dues and fees for access to Atopia, but hey, that's life. We are self-sustaining through our placeless contributions. Atopia is allied with many sects, denominations, politics and oganizations; Atopia does at times wish to engage in communication; Atopia endorses and opposes many causes. Our primary purpose is to communicate at great distances with those we would have never met had Atopia not come into being. To paraphrase Billy Joel: "I'm in a placeless state of mind." Atopia, be (t)here. Truly (sincere), Mike ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:35:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: berrigan / whalen / koch / ashbery / v lindsay MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Gary Lenhart or Joel Lewis or Simon Schuchat can probably speak to this better than I (or you!) but my sense is that Berrigan wired the Whalen of Bear's Head and Scenes of Life in the Capitol together with the Ashbery of the uncollected poem "The Poems" (ever green review #8) and zapped them into a very conservative matrix (some mix of a tate and vachel lindsay) to get a satisfying frisson.. I repeat my flatulent assertion that the sonnets is an ok work but tambourine life-train ride represents the major period, the good stuff, the pepsi, the gem spa. Larry Fagin rumors the original title of Bean Spasms was Lyrical Bullets and now that I've told you it'll be hell getting more out of him. Fuck communism, A fan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:38:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: EXPLOSIVE second printing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII EXPLOSIVE MAGAZINE #4 is now in its second printing. Issue number four features new work by: Lisa Lubasch, Prageeta Sharma, Rod Smith, Michael Basinski, Eleni Sikelianos, Mark Salerno, Gillian Kiley, Travis Ortiz, Leslie Scalapino, Albert Flynn DeSilver, Darin De Stefano, and wonderful poetry comics of pieces by Stein, Cage, and Hollo drawn by Dave Morice. Single issues are five dollars. A subscription is fifteen dollars for three issues. Upcoming issues will feature work by: Doug Powell, Juliana Spahr, Martin Corless-Smith, Dale Smith, Tan Lin, Pam Lu, Lisa Jarnot, Anselm Hollo, Bill Luoma, Alex Cory and many many others. Checks should be made payable to Katy Lederer and sent to: 420 E Davenport #2 Iowa City, IA 52245 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 14:53:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: newtek & po In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" try also tina neumann at arizona state u, dept of speech and communications (?) or some variation thereof. she gave an apparently terrific (i was at another underattended panel) though underattended panel at our XCP conference. At 7:52 AM -0600 3/4/98, Brian Clements wrote: >Gwyn, > >The only person I know of who is doing anything with ASL poetry is Dirksen >Bauman, who published a piece recently in the PMLA. I don't know where >Dirksen is now, but you might be able to track him down through the >Binghamton English Dept. > >Brian > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > >On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > >> New media. Old media. Books superior. Web a class issue. Okay, fine. What >> I'd like to see happen is a CD-ROM anthology of American Sign Language >> poetry--which is out there, and must, by its nature, have a unique poetic, >> but doesn't get, for lack of a better word, "heard" through the usual >> channels. Maybe a CD ASL po-zine from Gallaudet? >> >> Then, to make it really interesting, they could play the video clips of >> poems to ASL-literate apes and get their response. ("You call this poetry? >> If I had the time, I could write /Hamlet/....") >> >> Gw(seriously)yn >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:11:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A locus for this scene was St Mark's, and Blackburn should certainly figure, although he managed to share (at times invent) the attributes of several "schools" (often more like social circles) without wearing their brands. > >The whole 2nd generation New York school needs a 2nd look. How about Ron >Padgett? Ceravolo? Tony Towle? > >Ch. Bernstein's essay on Berrigan in Content's Dream is very interesting >because it argues for a non-biographical reading. Any thoughts on this? > >Jonathan Mayhew >Department of Spanish and Portuguese >University of Kansas >jmayhew@ukans.edu >(785) 864-3851 > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:07:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: it's poetry it's poetry not... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: may entertain multiple threads... Miekal And wrote: echo me ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 16:12:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: <6d60eeef.34fda92d@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII One of my favorite Berrigan books is RED WAGON-- Three of my favorite pieces: CONVERSATION (I would reproduce it, but the form is too complex for e-mail) TODAY's NEWS My body heavy with poverty (starch) It uses up my sexual energy constantly, & I feel constantly crowded On the other hand, One Day In The Afternoon of The World Pervaded my life with a heavy grace today I'll never smile again Bad Teeth But I'm dancing with tears in my eyes (I can't help myself!) Tom writes he loves Alice's sonnets, takes four, I'd love to be more attentive to her, more here The situation having become intolerable the only alternatives are: Murder & Suicide. They are too dumb! So, one becomes a goof. Raindrops start falling on my roof. I say Hooray! Then I say, I'm going out At the drugstore I say, Gimme some pills! Charge 'em! They say Sure. I say See you later. Read the paper. Talk to Alice. She laughs to hear Hokusai had 947 changes of address In his life. Ha-ha. Plus everything else in the world going on here. I USED TO BE BUT NOW I AM I used to be inexorable, But now I am elusive. I used to be the future of America, But now I am America. I used to be part of the problem, But now I am the problem. I used to be part of the solution, if not all of it, But now I am not that person. I used to be intense, & useful, But now I am heavy, & boring. I used to be sentimental about myself, & therefore ruthless, But now I am, I think, a sympathetic person, although easily amused. I used to be a believer, But now, alas, I believe. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:25:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Foley Subject: TLR Web Poetry Chapbook Series Comments: cc: editor@webdelsol.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain THE LITERARY REVIEW http://webdelsol.com/tlr/ announces the 1st series of Poetry Chapbooks on the Web featuring John E. Smelcer Barbara J. Orton Bino A. Realuyo New poets will follow shortly -- three more this spring 1998 The Web Poetry Chapbook Series from TLR represents an on-going effort of Web Del Sol (http://www.webdelsol.com/pub-bar.htm) to partner with quality literary magazines on the Web in order to bring important works of poetry to a new audience. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:01:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod4rigo Subject: Re: jack hirschman Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Jack Hirschman is alive and well here in SF...still reading at demos, pickets, whatnot (with all his furor)... .translating mallarme recently...etc.. Jack wouldn't be passing out CP papers really...he used to run with the CLP, from which the LR (league of revolutionaries) of which he's a part of -- split. Like many of the less sectarian socialists, his group LR as well as Socialist Organizer, along with PFP (peace and freedom) and elements of Socialist Action (as well as other left melieu -- fragmentia -- ) are, or are striving to be, non-obstructionist entrents into the Labor Party (Golden Gate Branch)...a party that has a medium-sized but dedicated (and growing!) base in the Trade Union movt...Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers, United Electrical, ILWU (longshoremen) etc..as well as other Pol. groupings, eg. National Welfare Rights Union..BWJ..Black Workers for Justice.. Jack hates the Net and its culture (though I'm not aware that he's all that informed on the important political work that sometimes get done through the net. He'd have something colorful to say if he got wind of this posting! And though our poetics differ greatly both formalistically and...and what? in affekt We both agree on the (urgent) need to de-sectarianize the left...this process is one that I think (or hope) is taking shape in the cultural sphere as well. Rodrigo Toscano ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 16:56:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: The Sonnets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have not seen much on Whalen's drawings. I think he is neglected, and neglected as a visual poet. He did some really fine jottings. tom bell At 09:30 AM 3/4/98 -0500, Gary Sullivan wrote: >Hi, Erik: > >You can get a copy of the Grove Press edition of _The Sonnets_ (1964) from >Pomander Books for $30.00. A lot of money, maybe, but not bad for this, >considering (a) I've seen it selling for $125.00 and (b) it has a very high >Groove Factor (like, 8 or 9). Contact Pomander at: > >SZAVv@aol.com > >I think Berrigan took as much, maybe more, from Philip Whalen. I also think >what he took from Whalen was ultimately more interesting than what he took from >O'Hara. All three are amazing poets. > >Yours, > >Gary Sullivan >gps12@columbia.edu > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 18:05:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Jack Hirschman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: TBeck131 To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Date: Wednesday, March 04, 1998 2:11 PM Subject: Jack Hirschman >Ron's mention of Hirschman provokes some memories. In the late 1970s I >published a small chapbook by Jack called DOVE ROSE under the Viscerally Press >imprint. (Side note: the cover art was by Hirschman's pal, the actor, Dean >Stockwell.) I don't think I even have a copy of the book any more. Tom or somebody else, Duncan dedicates a poem to Dean Stockwell somewhere (I think it's in _Bending the Bow_, but I'm at work and my copy's at home). What's up with him and poetry? This is just an interesting (to me) possible side thread. Cheers, David ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 15:28:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: NPR MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Radio Alert! As I type at 3:30 PM west coast time, NPR and All Things Considered is doing a piece on the NY Public Library's show of the Poetry Project's mimeoed magazines. Berrigan mentioned; Ron Padgett is speaking now . . . go to the left of your dial and turn it on! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 13:51:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jean Day Subject: Hejinian essays, Hejinian/Watten events at UCB, Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To everybody re the recent lament that a volume of Lyn Hejinian's essays has never been done (sorry, I don't remember whose post), UC Press is working on a collection of Lyn's critical writing right now. Don't know what the publication schedule is, but it will likely be announced on the Press's web site, http://www-ucpress.berkeley.edu, when the pub. date's confirmed. And for anybody in the Bay Area, Lyn will be reading with Barrett Watten at UC Berkeley on March 17 at 4pm at the Townsend Center for the Humanities in 220 Stephens Hall. Barrett will be giving a talk, "The Constructivist Moment: From El Lissitsky to Detroit Techno," the previous day, same time and place. The Townsend Center can be reached at (510) 643-9670 for more info. --Jean ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 18:40:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Kirschenbaum Subject: Re: web publication, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe, just checked in -- I read the list exclusively via the archive these days -- and the discussion seems to have moved on . . . but I really think we agree in any case. My only point, all along, has been that given the significant corpus of electronic poetry that _already_ exists for us the critical project would be well served by a turn toward sustained engagements with individual works or groupings of works -- and a turn away from more sweeping, speculative gestures. Certainly this is where I feel my own energies being pulled . . . The only electronic writing (prose or poetry) I'm aware of that's accumulated _any_ amount of really careful, thick discussion is Joyce's _afternoon_ -- which is not to say other works have not received notice and occassionally been commented upon, but I don't see that they've been much _studied_. Anyhow, back to Ted Berrigan. Matt ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 18:45:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: A Secret Location on the Lower East Side By a strange coincidence, NPR ran a story tonight on the exhibition of NY School mimeo magazines at the Public Library. Berrigan, one of the curators says, is the star of the exhibit. Padgett and Waldman were interviewed, the Donald Allen's anthology & the Poetry Project discussed, & the existence of "another tradition" leaked at last to the general public -- all together a very pleasant surprise. Plus, following the story, an explanation of what mimeo actually is -- I was never quite sure. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 16:10:10 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: RADDLE MOON MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit RADDLE MOON 16 can be ordered through Small Press Distribution orders@spdbooks.org or, for the more adventurous, direct from us: RADDLE MOON 518-350 East Second Avenue Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 CANADA The cost is $10 for a single issue or $15 for a two-issue subscription [subscription orders must be sent to the above street address]. Back issues at various prices, please ask. RM17 will have a section of new work from Vancouver and ex-Vancouver writers and a section curated by Nicole Brossard of work from Quebecois/e writers in translation as well other work not falling into these categories. We are still reading work for this issue. Deadline April 15/98. RM18 will be a our second special "image/text" issue and is open for submissions. "Image/text" work uses text and images (seems to be some confusion on this) in some sort of relation. (Please bear in mind that we print in black ink only and are a 2-D object measuring 6.25" x 8"). We are reading work for this issue now. Email [queries only -- no submissions, please] to Susan Clark clarkd@sfu.ca Don't forget to supply a self-addressed envelope and return postage [IRC or stamps, or M.O.] with submissions Contributors get a one-year subscription as payment and discount on extra copies of "their" issue if they want. bon route, Susan Susan Clark RADDLE MOON clarkd@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 19:13:44 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kwsherwood Subject: literary capital Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit the questions of first-publication, republication etc. editors of ezines receive from contributors are one index of the "view" on these venues. when rif/t debuted several years ago, loss and i recv'd boat-loads of questions/queries/concerns about whether online publication "counted", whether work could be previously or subsequently published in print, etc. as a practical matter (and because in '93 there was precious little online poetry in the poetics-list vein) we encouraged submission of work prev published in journals ... and urged that online publication shouldn't preclude subsequent print publication. Felicitoiusly, most print editors at seemed to class online pub with the circulation of home-made broadsides . . . viz: not publication, --- audiences for journals and web (gopher) mutually exclusive. The question seems to worry poets less in 98 (poetics-list traffic notwithstanding...); a reflection of what, growing acceptabilty of online publishing? reification of the 'separate but equal' doctrine? perhaps a coming to terms with concerns for the issue of ephemerality (as digital text returns to haunt us, refusing deletion)... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 19:13:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kwsherwood Subject: convergence Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit An odd convergence to eye the Poetics-list while NPR: All Things Considered enters the ear. Anne Waldman, Ron Padgett . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- The "mimeo revolution" has made it to the bigtime, "well printed despite the technology" "you can almost smell the mimeo ink." (A.W.) We simply wanted to show our work to our friends ... we didn't have any ambition to take over the world... "Today people **would probably** do this on the internet." "There is something magical about the . . . " "mimeographs were just one step..." "about ten years later, carbon paper came along" "mimeo from the greek, meaning I imitate" "the next revolution . . . came in 1938 . . . first xerographic image . . . " ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 16:31:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: reznikoff's girder take 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This in response to something in one of Joel Kuszai's recent posts.-- It strikes me as an oddly undemocratic vision for Reznikoff--or Oppen, who approved of this line--to (as Joel so well says) "put a halo" around one piece of the rubble, consigning the rest ("huddled masses") to the garbage-scow of history. Consider the reader. S/he identifies with the girder ("I am a girder") and so what does that make the rest of us? Not a brick here and a bike wheel there and a single mitt here but--mere rubble.("rabble," as Joel puns). Or s/he identifies with the rubble--so who is that jerk who thinks he's a girder and we others are undifferentiated trash? "I saw the girder first was still itself and then brick by brick and then the bike wheel, then the dead cat, each halo'd with identity" but perhaps american poetry no matter the marxism of its writer cannot transcend the cult of rugged individual ("resistant as a girder") and still be received as fine. I certainly don't care for what I just made up and put in lines. But I do care that this reznikoff girder-poem is in bad faith. David ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 19:50:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Magazine Concepts Continued Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit A number of people have back-channelled me about the issue of community and publishing. A couple people have pointed out that editors tend to get their work published elsewhere and that they think that publishing can be tantamount to the dread "self-promotion." I find this some what disturbing as I know for a fact that there are a lot MFA kids out there who get really angry that no one is publishing their poems, but are absolutely unwilling to do anything to help others get their work out. Wondering: these people who just flood the magazines by submitting to magazines they've never even seen and don't do anything for anyone else, could they be the selfish ones? On the other hand, a number of people have back-channelled me to say that they are afraid to publish "forward" "radical" "anti-this, pro-that" stuff because they don't want to be like those "power hungry" "acadominant" language poets. Whatever your opinion on those guys, I just want to say publishing your own magazines might be the only way to combat that problem. Perhaps an obvious point. In the mean time, I would like to say that as an editor/publisher, if you send out forty-seven copies of the same poem to different magazines...what is that if not self-promotion. I think it is sort of a useless notion. Also, I think people who want to be in magazines should also pay for them. Think of it as union dues. One cannot join a community by sitting alone in a room. A few others have said that they were encouraged by my post and are now going forward with their publishing plans. I think we're all for more of everything. Not very many people have e-mailed me in an effort to discuss magazine concepts. However, one idea that I particularly like re: community is the following: invite 12 of your favorite writers/friends/erstwhile-friends to send you 2 poems a month. They would send 2 poems xeroxed say 30 times. All these would be stapled together by the "editor" and then mailed back to the writers and others. At the end of the year, a sort of "best of" would be printed. I think this is an exciting concept (a bit like Open City? not sure) that could make for very interesting sort of cross-talk, conversation, collaboration, etc. A perfect way to get a snap shot of what people are doing over a given year, getting an idea of what people have tried and perhaps even failed. I'd be very interested to hear from others who have inclusive ideas for publishing. Standard ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 09:06:29 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: berrigan / whalen / koch / ashbery / v lindsay In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 1. Somewhere Ted has a poem "Old Master Story" which goes: John Ashbery heads/Philip Whalen tails (or something to that effect). 2. I agree with Jordan that Train Ride & Tambourine Life are pinnacles of achievement -- they are also not from the same "period" and are quite different works, albeit both much learned (accent on the second syllable) out of Whalen. Tambourine life is a settled existence, at home, and Train Ride is in motion, etc, etc. 3. Ted once told me that he was very influenced by Miles Davis in writing the Sonnets. (He may have also made this assertion in an interview or teaching a class, i.e., there may be a citation beyond my own memory.) (I also don't think I understood what he meant.) 4. The John Cage Interview. 5. Henry's suggestion re "grunge" or the "grittiness of the quotidienne" are part of where Ted's practice intersects with (as Mark notes) Paul Blackburn, of whom Ted often spoke. 6. Ted was a big fan of Conrad Aiken. Actually, he read all poets, and excepting some near contemporaries, liked them all. He told me how much he liked a particular poem by Richard Wilbur. He was Clark Coolidge's big champion. I.e., Ted was -- as he often said -- catholic. He also was influenced by everything he ever read, heard, saw, or said. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:05:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: npr Comments: To: left@spore.ml.org, sxe@cuenet.com MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" please sign. jeff. NPR Funding This is being forwarded to several people at once to add their names to the petition. NPR (National Public Radio) and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. It won't matter if many people receive the same list as the names are being managed. This is for anyone who thinks NPR/PBS is a worthwhile expenditure of $1.12/year of their taxes. A petition follows. If you sign, please forward on to others (not back to me). If not, please don't kill it-send it to the email address listed here: wein2688@blue.univn PBS. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and streamline their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not worthwhile. Currently,taxes from the general public for PBS equal $1.12 per person per year, and the National Endowment for the Arts equals $0.64 a year. A January 1995 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicated that 76% of Americans wish to keep funding for PBS. This percentage of people polled is surpassed only by national defense and law enforcement as the programs that are the most valuable for federal funding. Each year the Senate and House Appropriations committees each have 13 subcommittees with jurisdiction over many programs and agencies. = Each subcommittee passes its own appropriation bill. The goal each year is to have each bill signed by the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1. The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making our voices heard. Please add your name to this list and forward it to friends if you believe in what we stand for. This list will be forwarded to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and Representative Newt Gingrich, who is the instigator of the action to cut funding to these worthwhile programs. *If you happen to be the 150th, 200th, 250th, etc. signer of this petition, please forward a copy to: wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu. If that address is inoperative, please send it to: kubi7975@blue.univnorthco.edu. This way we can keep track of the lists and organize them. Forward this to everyone you know, and help us to keep these programs alive. Thank you. -------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: It is preferable that you SELECT the entirety of this letter and then COPY it into a new outgoing message rather than simply forwarding it. 515) Janet Wygal, Hoboken, NJ 516) Gene Holder, Hoboken, NJ 517) Cindy E. Brolsma, Brooklyn, NY 518) Sheryl Farber, Los Angeles, CA 519) P. David Ebersole, Silver Lake, CA 520) Todd Hughes, Silver Lake, CA 521) Betsy Hamlin, Silver Lake, CA 522) Rachel Powell, Santa Monica, CA 523) Jill & Michael Vercos, Venice, CA 524) Nikolaus Scharpf, Eatonton, GA 525) Jan Walleczek, CA 526) Joanne Hall, Kalamazoo, MI 527) Mary Williams, Kalamazoo, MI 518) Mark Nepo, Albany, NY 519) Susan McHenry, Albany, NY 520) Lillien Waller, Bronx, NY 521) Tracye Matthews, Chicago, IL 522) Martha Kathleen Zygmun, Chicago, IL 523) Catherine Tolley, CHicago, IL 524) Julie Pokorny, Chicago, IL 525) Daniel Kuruna, Chicago IL 526) Christine Kuruna, Selinsgrove PA 527)Jesse Fletcher, Lewisburg PA 528) Kasey Bohaboy, Palo Alto, CA 529) Amy Sabbadini, Santa Barbara, CA 530) Roger Sabbadini, San Diego, CA 531) Robert Engler, San Diego, CA 532) Roberta Gottlieb, San Diego, CA 533) Grant Meisenholder, San Diego, CA 534) Jennifer Post, Seattle, WA 535) Raymond Post, Seattle, WA 536) Ginnah Saunders 537) Chris Garman, San Diego, CA 538) Padmini Srikantiah, San Diego, CA 539) Jayashri Srikantiah, San Francisco, CA 540) Duane Valz, Oakland, CA 541) David Mrozek Rauch, San Francisco, CA 542) Betsy Fagin, San Francisco, CA 544) John Montesa, Southborough, MA 545) Lyn Chamberlin, Lincoln,MA 546) Mark Edwards, Lexington, MA 547) Dave Vanable, Honeoye Falls, NY 548) Susan Scheible, Pittsford, NY 549) Kim Krzyzewski, State College, PA 550) Beverly Balger, State College, PA 551) Deborah Leopold, Riverdale, MD 552) Herbert W. Ettel, Washington, DC 553) Bernadette H. Odyniec, Washington, DC Beverly Balger Registrar Palmer Museum of Art The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802 (814) 865-7672 554) Cori Parrish, Arlington, VA 555) Joshua Cohen, Amherst, MA 556) Teresa Sparks, Morgantown, WV 557) jeffrey daniel miller, Wooster, OH and Parkersburg, WV ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:20:42 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: Norma Cole & Stacy Doris, eds. RM16 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hello all, Just noticed that neither Mark's nor Jacques's posts happens to refer to Stacy Doris or Norma Cole, the editors of RADDLE MOON 16, the new French writing issue and I didn't want their work to be mis-attributed or overlooked. Norma and Stacy are responsible for discovering the writers [many of whom are un- or little-known in France] and arranging the vital translator-translatee couplings. They are the guest editors of the issue and it was a big pleasure to host them in RM. Each of them has written a note in the back of the issue on the process. [that's] *bonne* route, Susan -- ever careless of gender ... Susan Clark RADDLE MOON clarkd@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 19:33:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: The Sonnets In-Reply-To: <01BD477B.FF60DED0@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > No books here at work today, so Whalen/Berrigan will have to wait until > tomorrow or Friday, so I can quote a few things. Erik, if you really want that > copy, e-mail Pomander's pronto--I think they only have one. Do you have a copy > of Whalen's _On Bear's Head_? I think you'd probably love it. It's been out of > print, like, "forever." You can find used paperback copies every now & then, > but if you can't wait, you can get a hardback copy for $25 from Second Life > Books in Lanesborough, MA. If interested, e-mail them at: Not to gloat too much, but I scored a discarded library copy of Whalen's _On Bear's Head_ from the retired book store of the Harold Washington library for a quarter. It's sad to see a book like that being taken off the shelves, but I think I've given it a good home. Other recent finds there include Joe Ceravolo's Spring in the World of Poor Mutts, and Jonathon William's An Ear in Bartram's Tree, from which this timely poem on WCW's death, 35 years ago today... WCW: March 4, 1963 I like it that you died the month spring comes. I could also add a timely Berrigan poem about Joe Brainard's Collage about Williams ("he's not in it, the hungry dead doctor"), but my copy of _The Sonnets_ is on loan to a friend. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago So often nothing happens and then when something does noone notices. --Alan Davies ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 21:27:15 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: That's bric-a-brac, Patty Black. Give the frog a loan. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit My heading is the punch line of a joke I heard earlier today. Which reminded me of Michael Gottlieb's poem "Timing is Everything," a text composed entirely of punch lines. It first appeared in an issue of __This__. I don't recall ever seeing it collected into a book. It bears looking at. A wonderful example of composition by collage principle, not to mention Henny Youngman's principles. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 19:40:35 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: [Fwd: http://www.andyart.com/] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------8EC3AAE57C4" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------8EC3AAE57C4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I can't remember who, but someone was asking about a source for cool web graphics--this guy's worth checking out. --------------8EC3AAE57C4 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from ngcpost.ngc.com (ngcpost.ngc.com [161.69.1.1]) by baygate.bayarea.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA01113 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:30:11 -0800 (PST) From: Karen_Kelley@nai.com Received: from vegas.ngc.com (vegas [161.69.2.3]) by ngcpost.ngc.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA26857 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:28:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from internet-mail.ngc.com (internet-mail [161.69.21.10]) by vegas.ngc.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id MAA26908 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:28:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from ccMail by internet-mail.ngc.com (IMA Internet Exchange 2.11 Enterprise) id 001128DB; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:26:39 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 12:33:34 -0800 Message-ID: <001128DB.1559@ngc.com> To: kkel736@bayarea.net Subject: http://www.andyart.com/ --------------8EC3AAE57C4-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:51:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Jack Hirschman Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >From: TBeck131 >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Date: Wednesday, March 04, 1998 2:11 PM >Subject: Jack Hirschman > > >>Ron's mention of Hirschman provokes some memories. In the late 1970s I >>published a small chapbook by Jack called DOVE ROSE under the Viscerally >Press >>imprint. (Side note: the cover art was by Hirschman's pal, the actor, Dean >>Stockwell.) I don't think I even have a copy of the book any more. > > >Tom or somebody else, > >Duncan dedicates a poem to Dean Stockwell somewhere (I think it's in >_Bending the Bow_, but I'm at work and my copy's at home). What's up with >him and poetry? This is just an interesting (to me) possible side thread. > Dean is/was a very close friend to David Meltzer, Jack, Michael McClure,etc. and etc. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 23:15:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit a LitMag (or can you) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Care to share your thoughts on digital poetics? I've been pondering (yesy, the hint of slow thinking is intended) visual poetics. Have not seen much that on either that moves me but suspect and hope that these "poetics" are not simply copies of or departures from current verbal poetics, art movements, or e-poetics. tom bell At 10:29 AM 3/3/98 -0500, Matthew Kirschenbaum wrote: >Tom Bell, > >>While fascination with the new, the latest technology, the glitsy or >>zingy-zangy, etc. seems overpowering right now, it will fade away quite >>soon. I think there is quality stuff already if one looks. > >Just my point, Tom. > >>I think Joe was referring to new ways of writing (thinking) that are in >>fact not possible on the printed page or at a reading. Just because >>one can't compose hyperlinked lines for the printed page or to be read >>aloud does not mean they can't be poetry. The same applies to simultaneous >>multi-media composition: written and spoken, written and drawn, spoken >>and visual, moving and moving. > >Yes yes yes Tom -- and . . . "there is quality stuff already if one looks." > >Lots of it in fact. > >About a year ago, Chris Funkhouser said to me that it was possible -- just >barely -- for him to comprehensively survey the range of existing electronic >poetry in his dissertation. I don't think he (anyone) could do it today. > >I'm trying to get (myself) out of the habit of qualifying (all) digital >poetics with an anticipatory hypothetical and the c(h)ant of the NEW -- we >have (some) digital poetics today, right now, that can already (uh oh) be >historicized, institutionalized, materialized. E-ven enjoyed. Matt > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 00:18:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: a writer's job MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"A writer's job is to write, whatever means are at their disposal"-- > >I love poetry and wish more people loved it as much as I do-- > >But I don't think that a writer's "job" is necessarily to write-- i would say: a writers job is to exist. by definition: a writer writes. it need not be a "job", it just is. but writers must exist, and it should be their job to continue to exist. (and by writing, i do not mean the physical act of ink to paper, sound from mouth, etc.) every writer is, by extension, a thinker. and without people thinking... so: the writer's job is to exist, and (again: by extension) to further the existance (i.e. to incite others to write/think). jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 00:21:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: what's new? (was: Re: You Too Can Edit) MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >tho i'm mostly with joe amato on this thread, to me the technology is >(still) alltoo new for one to be able to come down firmly for or against. of course not. technology is neutral. it's human beings who are not. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 00:33:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: girder to poet: delete me, baby In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the girder amid the rubble, while conjuring images of odd journeys I've taken through endless piles of junk, rubble, garbage, and places like the tracks in portland's brooklyn yards where it was a mile walk to school each day (and this was the time that I really dug into Oppen and Reznikoff). not surprisingly, i also have lots of pictures of that time. everything in black and white. democratic? eh? I don't hear anyone saying anything, and as far as I know that girder can't vote. seriously, what I always got from that scene wasn't so much the rugged individualism of the any-body could be a self, with a little effort (and if you knew someone, had rich parents, etc.) but instead related to the kind of optics of seeing, which i guess is a kind of party line objectivist thinking. certainly this is different in oppen and zukofsky and niedecker and then of course the whole objectivst school as any recognizable thing comes collapsing down on anyone trying to put anything up about it. certainly you do get the patronizing "suzie had a self" in oppen in moments of his poems, although I still love those poems, the "her name was Phyllis, not neo-classic" section. The part where she's riding the bus home, her first job, etc., and there are these lines (i don't have my oppen with me, and quite frankly havent thought about him seriously in some time, so i might have this wrong) the lines after that where he writes that she steps down off the bus, something to the effect that she sees *(or is)* "a spot of light on the pavement"--in any event that oppen-esque spotlight is beaming on her--there is a beauty to the recognition, in oppen's rhetoric (I think) that she exists, that he can say that she exists, or if she can, that she will. "Speak if you can," etc. These lines were terribly important to me, and I was schooled at one point by the girder. And I love David's reading of the girder & think it quite correct. I guess I'm resistant to slam this though, because somehow I can take something away from that moment of recognition, without being blasted by oppen's "spot of light on the pavement" as if it were making an incandescent candle of her, or me, for wanting it to be. But I still don't think that it is somehow undemocratic--I think there is a version of version of democracy which is exactly this "I could win the Lotto" and "I influence elections" kind of thinking. What is the substitute for democracy implied here? Fascism? One poet rule? Also implied by this sense of the girder as individual, with the "masses" shaded in the background, is that there is a more "democratic" way to handle the trash of the vacant lot, a way that doesn't set one in front of other. Part of what I had thought he was trying to accomplish had to do with not being lost in the fuzzy glare of undifferentiated phantasmagoric sensory data. Perhaps a simple lesson in imagism, slightly (at all?) refined? I'm curious how you read the first poem I mentioned. A poem made as an "inscription over the subway entrance"and which follows roughy This is the gift of Hephestus The god man say is lame there is someone waiting to use this computer so I'll finish this another time. thanks david for the opportunity to think about this aain. what meow books did you like? best, jimmy joffa On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, david bromige wrote: > This in response to something in one of Joel Kuszai's recent posts.-- It > strikes me as an oddly undemocratic vision for Reznikoff--or Oppen, who > approved of this line--to (as Joel so well says) "put a halo" around one > piece of the rubble, consigning the rest ("huddled masses") to the > garbage-scow of history. Consider the reader. S/he identifies with the > girder ("I am a girder") and so what does that make the rest of us? Not a > brick here and a bike wheel there and a single mitt here but--mere > rubble.("rabble," as Joel puns). Or s/he identifies with the rubble--so who > is that jerk who thinks he's a girder and we others are undifferentiated > trash? > > "I saw the girder > first was still itself > and then brick by brick > and then the bike wheel, > then the dead cat, each > halo'd with identity" > > > but perhaps american poetry no matter the marxism of its writer cannot > transcend the cult of rugged individual ("resistant as a girder") and still > be received as fine. I certainly don't care for what I just made up and put > in lines. But I do care that this reznikoff girder-poem is in bad faith. > David > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 00:48:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Grant Jenkins Subject: Reznikoff's girder, Bromige's faith Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Not that Reznikoff needs to be defended at this point and not that anyone cares anymore, but the only bad faith here in this complaint about Reznikoff is Kuszai's and Bromige's infatuation with their own readings of the poem. Neither of you ever wonder if the poem might NOT set the girder in a hierarchical relation with its surroundings. Is it possible that "still itself among the rubble" means that the girder is itself still rubble but that such a denomination is not able to totalize it as object? The poem seems to say that the world exists before judgment comes along to sort things out. The identity of the individual is exactly what gets called into question as the object blurs such distinction. Another problem is that, when you read the poem in context, it seems obvious to me that there is no such halo or aura given to this image or any other detail of Reznikoff's poems. 'Profane' and 'sacred' have no place in Reznikoff's lexicon because he does not categorize the world as such. I think you are barking up the wrong girder. Grant Jenkins University of Notre Dame ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 21:55:12 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: a writer's job MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit laura and jeff wrote: > > >"A writer's job is to write, whatever means are at their disposal"-- > > > >I love poetry and wish more people loved it as much as I do-- > > > >But I don't think that a writer's "job" is necessarily to write-- > > i would say: a writers job is to exist. by definition: a writer writes. it > need not be a "job", it just is. Here's a quote from my favorite sculptor, Eva Hesse: "One of my first visions when I woke up from my operation was that I didn't have to be an artist to justify my existence, that I had a right to live without being one." Karen ************************************************************************ Interviewer: So how do you feel about the path you've chosen as a writer? Harold Brodkey: Oh, it was all a mistake but what the hell. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 01:02:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: Tripwire, Open Letter, Raddle Moon In-Reply-To: <199803050501.AAA17342@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII kevin killian writes: > Many of these young people seem to have embarked on some kind of writing > degree that presents itself, in "Tripwire," as a kind of grail of > disgust. "Writing degree" = "zero"? shd call yr-all's attention to the latest _open letter_ entitled "Disgust and Overdetermination: a poetics issue" guest edited by jeff derksen. opening sentence from derksen's eponymous introduction reads: "If, as Sianne Ngai writes in the essay that contributes to the title of this poetics issue, 'disgust, and not desire, is our most common affective response to capitalism and patriarchy,' then much of the work in this _Open Letter_ points to, addresses, and registers its disgust at the logic that creates the social relations that make us want to puke" (7). much tasty stuff (!) to be had here: work also by deanna ferguson, brian kim stephans, miles champion, clint burnham, nancy shaw & catriona strang, scott pound, louis cabri, andrew levy, rob manery, karen mac cormack, tjsnow, christian bok (from the forthcoming "eunoia" project), caroline bergvall, kevin davies, peter jaeger, darren wershler-henry, dorothy trujillo lusk, mark tadao nakada, and dan farrell. will also chime in support for raddle moon 16. highlights for me so far -- again, lots to chew on here -- the work by albane prouvost (yes to whoever said it, powerful use of repetition), kati molnar (syntax and use of caps), and oscarine bosquet (tr. michael palmer). get and enjoy, tmorange ___________________________________________ | To grasp the relation of words to matter, | | mind, process, may be the greatest task. | | -- Clark Coolidge, /The Crystal Text/ -- | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 01:11:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: a writer's job MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Here's a quote from my favorite sculptor, Eva Hesse: > >"One of my first visions when I woke up from my operation was that I >didn't have to be an artist to justify my existence, that I had a right >to live without being one." the right, yes. but can an artist, once they have started down the path, really leave it? in my experiance: no. everyone i have known who has tried to stop has gone mad, or have chosen other ways of art. so: does art have to justify existance? no. does the artist have to be an artist? yes. it is a choice, but one you get stuck with. besides: it may be a pain in the arse, but it is worth it. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 01:20:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: web publication, etc. MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>i've been following the thread relating to this with interest... >> >>methinks it comes down to this: >>the web is good for wide opportunity and collective action. but the fact is: >>we are living in a world that is quickly alienating itself from itself via >>any source it can. the web is adding to this is two major ways: >> 1) it gives the guise of communication, but with out any >>kind of physical relationship between those >>"communicating" with >> each other. so no true communication can take >place due >> to a lack of viceral stimulation between the people >>communicating (no body lang, eye contact, hearing a >>voice, etc). > >i *miss* the same things when i >read a letter from a friend or a rejection slip from a journal / so i'm >afraid the tired point has to be made that if you subsitute the word "book" >or "newspaper" or "personal letter" for "web" in your statement above, the >language of your critique sounds suddenly antiquated and reactionary -- if >no "true communication" can take place without "viceral stimulation between >the people communicating", then this pretty much damns the whole written >record, doesn't it?, and not just the web, unless you mean something more >specific by "communication" / not to sound flip, but we're communicating >here, aren't we? are we? i don't know you. i don't know what you look like, sound like, etc. i don't know how you live your life. all i have are words floating on a screen. i can make assumptions, and even learn and somewhat communicate. but to me you can only be a collection of electronic words. i assume that someone put them together, but i don't know who it is. so the annalogy of a letter from a friend is false. i know my friends. i spend as much time with them as possible. and when i get a letter: i hold it, read it. sometimes it smells like them or their home. with email: i have electic lights burning my eyes. i hold a mouse and keyboard. granted: getting this email from you is better than nothing, but it's important to realize that people are "settling" for this over going out and talking to people. i know scores of people who just sit in their houses all day on the puter. it's safe. they don't have to try to be anything. but at the same time they can't fully express themselves, and thus get to know anyone really. one fella i know, who has a phd in philosophy (and thus no job), used to be one of my favorite people to talk to. he was so animated and interesting. we'd drink tea and go all night about various subjects. but now he has no time for "talking". he doesn't come out. it's easier to sorta talk to a hundred people, than to really talk to one. okay: i don't know about anyone else: but when i'm reading (anything from whitman to herodotus) i will at times catch myself reading out loud and pacing around the room (both of which horribly annoy my wife). i feel stimulated. i get excited and further annoy laura by reading passages to her and try to get her to talk about it while she's studying or painting. this excitement is inflammed when i go to a reading, or am just being read to by a friend. on the puter i get bored after a while. and yet i sit here because at times i forget about other things. the puter becomes my world. and this world burns my eyes, leaves me alone in a room, etc. yet here i am. all of written history is not damned by this. every book is different in basic physicality, as well as in content. every book leads to a new book: others by that author, biographies, books by contemporaries, sources, etc. this leads to deeper understanding of those we can no longer go and see. (this all leads to discussion, human interaction, in most cases.) and those we can still see we should demand to see, as the last year has proved, before it's too late. it'd be one thing if the puter was just a tool to get in contact with people, but it is increasingly becoming a substitute for physical contact. and i loose coherence a little easier. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 23:33:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Looking for Address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit HELLO You prob. have this by now. In case: g. lombardo: central@quale.com --Rlevitsky ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 01:43:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" sorry. i somehow missed that post, but i'll give ya my feelings... i think a lot of people get confused because it is easy to read tb as an extension of frank and co. and so with this simple disqualification they move on to the next poet. they don't get into tb, recognize his individual qualities, etc. i think that this may be the fault of a tendency to only see a "movement" as it's founder, instead of the sum of the parts. each part being an important individual part, without which the whole would collapse. this is also why many "late beat poets" get overlooked, as well as some of the "minor black mountain poets". people just as good, if not better, than their "elders", but overlooked due to basic similarities and thus marginalized. jeff. >I recently asked you all why some poets like Ted Berrigan are ignored by the >"academy" and no-one was interested enough to reply about how they see >Berrigan's work, well I guess you all are too busy talking about the WWW!, >I suppose the academy of the future is closing its doors to argue about >publishing on the web? If anyone wants a break, write to me and explain why >some critics call Berrigan an "ardent disciple" and like some kid brother to >Frank O' Hara. An imitator. His writings mean alot to me, and I would like >some discussion on the matter. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only eyes in all heads to be looked out of -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 23:12:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: web publication, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit One of the facets of the web that I like is that writing will increasingly be able to exist, be, without attachment to a human being, i.e., no "name," no personable voice characteristics, no attractive or charismatic person attached--in short, an increase in anonymously generated language objects whose sole value will be what is on the page. One among many reasons I would like to see more of this someday is the thought of writers who have been limited in mobility (thus couldn't do a lot of readings to get people to look seriously at their writing), or limited in oral motor faculties (thus couldn't get people to hear the inflection of their "voices"), or limited by a host of social and material advantages (thus couldn't buy attention to their writing), or limited in psychological lust for attention (thus couldn't or wouldn't want more from their writing than that it exist). laura and jeff wrote: > >>i've been following the thread relating to this with interest... > >> > >>methinks it comes down to this: > >>the web is good for wide opportunity and collective action. but the fact is: > >>we are living in a world that is quickly alienating itself from itself via > >>any source it can. the web is adding to this is two major ways: > >> 1) it gives the guise of communication, but with out any > >>kind of physical relationship between those > >>"communicating" with > >> each other. so no true communication can take > >place due > >> to a lack of viceral stimulation between the people > >>communicating (no body lang, eye contact, hearing a > >>voice, etc). > > > >i *miss* the same things when i > >read a letter from a friend or a rejection slip from a journal / so i'm > >afraid the tired point has to be made that if you subsitute the word "book" > >or "newspaper" or "personal letter" for "web" in your statement above, the > >language of your critique sounds suddenly antiquated and reactionary -- if > >no "true communication" can take place without "viceral stimulation between > >the people communicating", then this pretty much damns the whole written > >record, doesn't it?, and not just the web, unless you mean something more > >specific by "communication" / not to sound flip, but we're communicating > >here, aren't we? > > are we? i don't know you. i don't know what you look like, sound like, etc. > i don't know how you live your life. all i have are words floating on a > screen. i can make assumptions, and even learn and somewhat communicate. but > to me you can only be a collection of electronic words. i assume that > someone put them together, but i don't know who it is. so the annalogy of a > letter from a friend is false. i know my friends. i spend as much time with > them as possible. and when i get a letter: i hold it, read it. sometimes it > smells like them or their home. with email: i have electic lights burning my > eyes. i hold a mouse and keyboard. granted: getting this email from you is > better than nothing, but it's important to realize that people are > "settling" for this over going out and talking to people. i know scores of > people who just sit in their houses all day on the puter. it's safe. they > don't have to try to be anything. but at the same time they can't fully > express themselves, and thus get to know anyone really. one fella i know, > who has a phd in philosophy (and thus no job), used to be one of my favorite > people to talk to. he was so animated and interesting. we'd drink tea and go > all night about various subjects. but now he has no time for "talking". he > doesn't come out. it's easier to sorta talk to a hundred people, than to > really talk to one. > okay: i don't know about anyone else: but when i'm reading (anything from > whitman to herodotus) i will at times catch myself reading out loud and > pacing around the room (both of which horribly annoy my wife). i feel > stimulated. i get excited and further annoy laura by reading passages to her > and try to get her to talk about it while she's studying or painting. this > excitement is inflammed when i go to a reading, or am just being read to by > a friend. on the puter i get bored after a while. and yet i sit here because > at times i forget about other things. the puter becomes my world. and this > world burns my eyes, leaves me alone in a room, etc. yet here i am. > all of written history is not damned by this. every book is different in > basic physicality, as well as in content. every book leads to a new book: > others by that author, biographies, books by contemporaries, sources, etc. > this leads to deeper understanding of those we can no longer go and see. > (this all leads to discussion, human interaction, in most cases.) and those > we can still see we should demand to see, as the last year has proved, > before it's too late. > it'd be one thing if the puter was just a tool to get in contact with > people, but it is increasingly becoming a substitute for physical contact. > and i loose coherence a little easier. > jeff. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, > there are only > eyes in all heads > to be looked out of > > -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 03:04:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I hope folks don't mind me banging my own tambourine, but I'd like to recommend Ted Berrigan's On The Level Everyday: Selected Talks On Poetry and the art of living, edited by me and published by Talisman House (at better book stores and thru amazon.com)-- it is wonderful example of a poet thinking thru process and letting young writers in on the serious business of being a poet. The book is a result of a vow I took when ted died--that I would do what I could to keep his work alive. That younger writers, who can only imagine his bigger-than-life personality, have taken to his work moves me. The genius of the work is how it moves easily between the radical and personal poetic. Ted, himself, came to see the Sonnets late in life as work about "growing up in a certain way." He thought that Tambourine Life was more influential as it was in a Paul Carroll anthology that did about 40,00 copies + being in Many Happy Returns that went thru two printings. Ted was amazingly catholic in his taste. He loved poets like Aiken (to whom he mailed the sonnets--see aiken's response in his selected letters) & Roethke & felt distant from poets-on-a-mission types like Ted Enslinn. Whalen was of hugh importance --especially in spatial arrangement and freedom of movement & if gary lenhart is out there lurking, he once suggested to me that whalen's decline as an influential poet has a lot to do with the demise of his biggest booster --Ted. Blackburn may have been Ted's hidden poetic influence to the point of Ted denying his poetic influence and only acknowledging a certain moral influence. And among the grunge--ashbery. Ted told me that when he met robert raushenberg for the first time, the painter said to him: "Oh, you're the guy who imitates Ashbery." Ted sd: "That wasn't so great, but if he said:'You're the guy that imitates O'Hara " -- then I'd REALLY be crushed". I was teaching some of his poems in my class and noticed his sense of shifting surface and language texture is much like the pre-self portrait ashbery. Which brings me to a point that I have never seen much discussed on the list: POETRY & CLASS. Ted was one of the few major poets to come from a working class background -- and he was constantly aware of it.,One major reason he held no non-poetry job from '66 to his death had a lot to do w/ his father, who was being trained to be classics scholar and had to give up those dreams and work in a bread factory when his dad died. Ted's dad died after a petty dispute w/ his bosses over automation. Ted said that he never wanted this to happen to him. I know among the theory crowd, these bits of personal anecdotes are no's-no's, but they go a long way in explaining ted and his poetry. I think the affinity that ted and olson shared (they once spent all night on a park bench in buffalo talking poetry!) was the shared working class/catholic/ ethnic background. In retrospect, that was part of my attraction to ted as a person was he knew from the world of scrimping and chuck steak I grew up in. This may have been the reason who moved away from being labeled an avant-garde poet and settled into a variant avant-populism of the poetry from Red wagon on. Joel Lewis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 01:17:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Macgregor S Card Subject: The Germ: a journal of poetic research MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thought we'd take advantage of the current discussion of small press magazines, and announce the second issue of our journal, The Germ, due out this April. If you haven't seen the first edition, copies are still available. Includes work from Barbara Guest, John Godfrey, Peter Gizzi, Clark Coolidge, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, Lyn Hejinian, Pam Rehm, Fanny Howe, Jena Osman, Juliana Spahr, Jackson Mac Low, Miles Champion and many others. The journal's perfect-bound, 224 pages with a smashing cover by Rikki Ducornet, and ends with reviews and commentary. Line-up for issue 2: Bernadette Mayer, Anne Waldman, Michael Palmer & Ben Watkins, Nathaniel Mackey, Aaron Shurin, Ray DiPalma, Lewis Warsh, Elfriede Czurda (trans. Rosmarie Waldrop), George Albon, Albert Mobilio, Beth Anderson, Amy England, Chris Stroffolino, Richard Kostelanetz, Brian Schorn, Lisa Samuels, Gregory St. Vincent Thomasino, Devin Johnston, Anne Tardos, David Trinidad, Gale Nelson, Jay Dillemuth, Rod Smith, Elizabeth Robinson, Marie Etienne (trans. Anne Talvaz), and two surprise features from the poetic ether! Individual subscription rates are a reasonable $12 for two issues, $20 for four, $28 for six. Make checks payable to The Germ and mail to: The Germ, P.O. Box 8501, Santa Cruz, CA 95061. We are distributed by Small Press Distribution and Bernard DeBoer; perhaps we are already available in your area. Give us a write! Macgregor Card and Andrew Maxwell, editors. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 01:18:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Macgregor S Card Subject: The Germ wants your book reviews! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just thought we'd add this note: The Germ is now accepting book reviews--critical writing has been particularly hard to come by. If you have material anywhere from 2-8 pages in length addressing contemporary poetic works or issues, we'd love to see it. Specific books we'd be interested in receiving reviews of: Fanny Howe, _One Crossed Out_ Sianne Ngai, _Discredit_ Andrew Joron's forthcoming book Lisa Robertson, _Debbie, An Epic_ Keith Waldrop, _Analogies of Escape_ Merrill Gilfillan, _Satin Street_ (though this is by no means an exhaustive list) We're currently printing reviews of Peter Gizzi's _Artificial Heart_ and Lisa Robertson's _XEclogues_, and have previously run pieces on Susan Howe's _Frame Structures_, John Clarke's _In the Analogy_, Will Alexander's _Towards the Primeval Lightning Field_. If you happen to already have uncommitted work, and could get it to us within the next week, we still have tentative space open for issue #2. Otherwise, work received will be considered for the third edition, due out in the fall. There's an unfortunate poverty of critical writing in small poetry magazines, and this is an area we'd like to expand in our own. Please send all material to: The Germ, P.O. Box 8501, Santa Cruz, CA 95061. Or drop us a note at macgregr@cats.ucsc.edu Thanks ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 02:11:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: reznikoff's girder (infatuation) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It hardly seems useful of Grant Jenkins to say of this topic "not that anyone cares anymore" while in the process of addressing it with fresh information. Nor does it seem useful to characterize my reading (& Joel Juszai's distinctly other reading) as "infatuations," then for him to offer his own reading, presumably likewise a matter of infatuation. Or if it is not, perhaps he would clarify the distinction between "infautate" and "non-infatuate" readings. I.e.,is an infatuated reading one one disagrees with? If so,there are surely more handy terms to apply in making such distinction. I'll try one more time. The phrase "still itself" is the one that strikes me as less than alert. We are not concerned with the selfhood of _girders_ here, in this poem. Surely that phrase adds something to what Grant calls "perception." "Look, a girder there among the rubble " would register perception. But because it can be read (and surely not perversely) as "Look, that girder is still itself among that rubble which isn't," I have, for cause I previously stated, found it halfbaked. An opinion I hold of very little work by either Reznikoff or Oppen. And so it has long intrigued me that Oppen singled it out (as Rez the girder) for something like praise.I agree with Grant Jenkins that Reznikiff isn't in thre habit of "haloing" objects, and that is what I object to here, where I believe Joel is correct in saying that he does. I'm willing to admit at this point that my trouble with this line =a blind spot of mine, because I don't think I can articulate my impression any further. Thanks for the debate. David ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:25:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: you and a note and you again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (I've been on nomail for the past ten days or so because I'm traveling thorugh Australia and have very poor access. But I did want to send this fairly traditional piece along because it haunts me, from Tom Clark's The Lake I think through to dreaming on and off and through the screen - and there's also the sad fact I'm returning early to the States, wandering once again, after the end of April. Or so it seems. So it's also the writing - for better or worse - of someone _unhinged,_ say, beneath the waters... - Alan) -------------------------------------------------------------- you projecting into the interior of my mind, upon the screen of my mind's interior, I see you and several others congregating around a fire or other projection of you, or mind, or waters where you will sail away and there is a projection on the sail, of you, of others on the screen of my mind's interior, in or on the waters, the drinking boat, grey sky, there the waters where you sail away and you, I call, hey you, I am on your screen, sailing away with your grey others gathered around a fire, it is beautiful in boats and fires, beautiful in waters, grey skies black with stars, with boats and fires and oceans and please make sounds, speak clearly, and I will hear your sounds, please make some images as well, there, on the boat, drunken and lurching through the seas, on the waters of our mind's interior, in the blackness of forgotten stars and you are on your sails, you are on them, and I am on you, sailing away in my mind's interior, and there's a fire, we are gathered around, watching a fire projected on the fire, you see me projected onto me, you see the others, grey and on the others, you see yourself, I say, in the middle of the waters fuelled by the blackness of forgotten stars and where is everyone, and why, and what is gathering, what do you see, you will look down, I say, look down, you do, you see me on the screen of my interior, I see your mind's interior, and you see me on the others grey and gathered near the fire, and you, you see yourself, and I see you in the middle of the waters fuelled by the blackness of forgotten stars ______________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:17:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Whalen, Berrigan, Coolidge Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Coolidge met Phil Whalen at the '63 Vancouver Poetry Festival where he also met many other folks (including one of the attendees, a then very young Michael Palmer, with whom CC would go on to edit Joglars). I can't think of where Coolidge may actually talk about his relationship to Whalen in print, although I've heard him do so in person. However, if you want to see the work that I think is almost the perfect wedding of the influences of Whalen AND Berrigan, it's THE ROAD LOG, printed in the Coolidge issue of Big Sky (ed. by Bill Berkson, intro by Tom Clark), pub. in Bolinas in 1972. Two long and "airy" to type up this late before I trundle off to work this morning. One reason why I think there's been so little critical discussion to date of Ted Berrigan is that he was such a strong personality and would have so obviously disapproved of such, that people who actually knew the man feel that inhibition internally. There was a good 15 year break after the death of Jack Spicer when I think the same general effect took place, the only person actively promoting Jack's work being Paul Mariah as part of his campaign to make room for a specifically gay poetics. But so many people in Jack's world retreated from the SF poetry scene (to Vancouver or Bolinas or just away from poetry, as Harold Dull did in spite of those fine early books) and so there wasn't the same sense of them being around to disapprove of the discourse (Can you imagine what Jack would have thought of that boundary2 issue??) when us "younger" folks who didn't know Jack personally (there's mention in the Kevin/Lew bio of Spicer -- due out now in just 8 weeks -- of a party on Etna at the Berkeley Poetry Conference in '65 that I attended where apparently Spicer was present, though I certainly was unaware of it at the time) could come forward without that restraint. When I gave my talk on Spicer's Language at 80 Langton Street I wasn't sure there would be any audience, and was shocked literally to see it become an SRO event -- there were all these "closet" Spicer afficianados out there. Just as there are now ones of Berrigan (Jordan, I personally love The Sonnets, although I agree that it was an unrepeatable work). But Ted's students, formal and otherwise, are everywhere and very active in today's poetry, and I think they all know exactly how Ted would react to a boundary2 type of treatment. We may have to wait another 10 years before such discourse really takes off. Also, even if Ted looked like Eddie Vetter's father, I don't believe you could call anyone whose music collection in 1959 centered on Arthur Godfrey "grunge." Ron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:33:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Whalen, Berrigan, Coolidge In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:17:09 -0600 from On Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:17:09 -0600 said: > >One reason why I think there's been so little critical discussion to date of >Ted Berrigan is that he was such a strong personality and would have so >obviously disapproved of such, that people who actually knew the man feel Didn't the Language Poets disapprove of him? That might be another reason. > >Also, even if Ted looked like Eddie Vetter's father, I don't believe you >could call anyone whose music collection in 1959 centered on Arthur Godfrey >"grunge." Do we have to keep using the narrow current top-40 meaning of this word to gently mock what I was saying? The term "grungy" has been honorable slang for the grittiness of street life since long before guys in Minneapolis & Seattle stopped tucking in their flannel shirts. That's all I meant & mean & an elephant's word is 100%. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 09:21:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: "I take the present" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Ted Heads: The moves, sense of humor, mock-heroics, self-questioning, and collage-effect in Berrigan's work of the mid to late sixties are all things taken, in some part, from Philip Whalen's work of the previous decade. But the crucial element Berrigan latched onto, the most interesting to me, anyway, is how Whalen's work is situated in time. Whalen described his poems as "continuous nerve movies," a fitting description of poems of Berrigan's like "Tambourine Life" and "Train Ride." Whalen's poetry, though often "chatty" and focused on the "quotidian," differs from O'Hara's in that, when O'Hara says "I do this, I do that," he's referring to the past. What I experience, reading O'Hara, is more akin to memory than to immediate experience: AT THE OLD PLACE Joe is restless and so am I, so restless. Button's buddy lips frame "L G T TH O P?" Across the bar. "Yes!" I cry, for dancing's my soul delight. (Feet! Feet!) "Come on!" Through the streets we skip like swallows. Howard malingers. (Come on, Howard.) Ashes malingers. (Come on, J.A.) Dick malingers. (Come on, Dick.) Alvin darts ahead. (Wait up, Alvin.) Jack, Earl and Someone don't come. [...] I don't imagine O'Hara writing that "as it happens," despite his persistent use of the present tense. (Hard to skip and write at the same time. Or have lunch with LeRoi Jones, etc.) Whalen, however, is not, like O'Hara, describing (or sometimes pretending to describe) his life. He is describing the act, and the situation, of writing. Or he is (forgive the enigmagism) "writing himself writing": DELIGHTS OF WINTER AT THE SHORE A little sauce having unglued me from my book I take the present (Ernest Bloch on the phonograph) I salute the fire in the fireplace The red sectional settee All the potted plants I moved onto the diningroom table so they could get more light And beyond the window North Pacific Ocean An editor writes to me, "Takes, takes, all the time takes ... what are you scared of, nobody's trying to cut your throat ... Why don't you just sit down & write a novel?" & wild with energy & power I'm curled up in the grey reclining chair Carefully writing one letter at a time Check the barometer .......... falling Check the swiss steak in the oven ..... ......turn up the heat It goes like that, all the "talent," the "promise" My mortgage very nearly foreclosed My light going out X. Keeps telling me how sad everything is (He cries all the time) Maybe he's right, but I don't *see* sad & the pursuit of happiness around a square track How loyal have I been to myself? How far do I trust .... anything? I wonder "self-confidence" vs. years of self-indulgence (am I feeling guilty?) How would anything get done if I quit? Stopped whatever it is you choose to call it? Put it as fancy & complicated as possible: Here I sit drunk beside the biggest ocean in the world Tosca destroying me on the phonograph Everybody else in the world dying of starvation, cruelty lack of my love No amount of promise or talent about to do anything to fix that. It was 20 years ago they worried about what I might do Now everybody can see what I've done, what I'm doing Everybody starves Everybody is a huge (biological) success Everybody's maybe like me: perpetually scared & not giving a shit As long as there's beef in the oven Out of jail Drunk Everybody says Horace was a two-bit snob, writing "Odi profanum vulgis" Maybe he meant he hated himself for being lazy, preferring old wine Pretty girls & sunshine To the dignity & usefulness of public office? Now the Second Act of Tosca: Big party downstairs, the cantata going on Police interrogation upstairs, Cavaradossi on the rack (These palazzi--a real idea of splendor) & topping it all off, as if it explained E V E R Y T H I N G "Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore ..." I've lived for Art, I've lived for love ..." (incontinently stabbing the villain) DIE! DIE! DIE! I eat an olive out of my glass TOSCA: "... tutta Roma!" & 1 is left Some psychiatrist says "Quotation, a relaxation for, an evasion by the id." I eat the second final olive & pretend to hurl my glass into the fireplace I don't actually throw it, the glass isn't mine & there's a screen in front of the fireplace [...] "Writing himself writing"--I think of Andrew Levy's "The shadow of the head falling over the page" ... as well as much of the last 20, 30 years of investigation. Whalen, I tend to think, is one of the least acknowledged living influences of late 20th Century American poetry. In an interview with Anne Waldman, Whalen describes his discovery of "writing like this," with "IF YOU'RE SO SMART, WHY AIN'T YOU RICH?," written in 1955: "... the first time I got out of the whole imagist kind of idea that I had been into for years, that whole thing about a poem should be short, exact, with not very many words and that it should have one complete feel or smell to it. And that poem was the first place where I could suddenly see that it didn't necessarily have to be that but it could be what I was going to be or what it was going to be itself, and it started making itself and I started having to go along behind it and write it the way it was ... To me at that time that poem 'IF YOU'RE SO SMART' was a great burst through, and all my dopey theories and hangups and things about writing and a thousand other things suddenly disappeared ..." Note how he describes the experience of writing: "it started making itself and I started having to go along behind it and write it the way it was"--though not explicitly stated, Whalen is referring here to a shift in terms of time-relation with respect to the poem. Though he didn't care much for Spicer, as a person or a poet, what Whalen seems to be describing is the "dictated poem." Or, more significantly, it suggests what he got from Gertrude Stein--a great, early hero to him as well as friend & fellow poet Lew Welch. Stein, in certain of her work, writes out of a continuous present, and one could say of much of her work that it, too, is a kind of "continuous nerve movie." (Certainly that's true of "Tender Buttons.") Writing you follow, not that follows you. This, by the way, is maybe what Coolidge got from Whalen and/or Stein--his work, certain of it, does seem to exist in a continuous present, for instance this, from his meditation on Drurer: The world a height now brine, estuaries drained to the very pole. Geometrics, a lingual dent? Drainage, albany. Where at the last stand all this sphere that herded me? My cell a corner on the filtering world, all out there herein my belts. Things in trim they belt me, beg me, array my coined veils. Brass, copse of my trends to needles never suffered their pricks. The world in anger is an angled hole? Drop my pliers, sit hemmed in, which have made has clad me in. Meld thought is as droop. [...] It doesn't "resemble" Whalen on first take, but, thought about, after having read much of both poets, an essential connection begins to seem more than plausible. But back to Berrigan & Whalen. This poem, written from 1963-1965--Berrigan or Whalen?: MY SONGS INDUCE PROPHETIC DREAMS N E C E S S I T Y is the mother of invention INVENTION leads to great wealth, responsibility, and shady politics, if there's really LOTS of money in- volved. Greatness is all. Use autosuggestion in order to obtain money and power and energy. I shall be 41 years old on 20:x:64 * Self-indulgence. Retroactive self-indulgence: ? reve d'amour * Work again. find a loss has been sustained. (Later) the city goes with us when we travel (First line of another poem) Literary muffins they skate! a mistake for Rexroth? it must be in the elevator do not bunch bunch bind too sharp bind or sag droop or sag no iridium try to write carefully. Bundestag? * It's very hard to work when I'm hungry and it doesn't seem likely that I shall have anything to eat today ... some time next week, yes. I have a tentative dinner invitation for Monday ... but that's merely possible it's just as probable that I shall receive $10,000 in the mail on Monday morning. [...] Well, a real Berrigan fan will know he rarely used "shall," but other than that, the resemblance, I think, is remarkable. Another shot of Whalen, at random (from 1962): THE SATURDAY VISITATIONS 1. Belligerence! Mixed bathing, and That was the end of the Roman Empire Which ought to have lasted at least three weeks longer ? Oh yes. 19 people, cars, a GREAT BIG Highway Patrolman on purpose. in cars. 2. ALL PEOPLE they love the/they try to tell us/we may sue ! Very tiring. * FORGET IT * I could go on, quote more of Whalen, even drag in specific turns of phrase & images later filched by Berrigan, but it's too easy, and unneccessary for anyone who can get their hands on _On Bears Head_. I don't mean to diminish Berrigan by this post; I mean merely to give Whalen his due. He's someone who definitely deserves a festschrift, as well as an in-print collected. I doubt he'll live to see either. Yours, Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:52:44 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: [Fwd: Re: sellotape poet] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Received: from mailout3.mailbase.ac.uk (mailout3.mailbase.ac.uk [128.240.226.13]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.8.7/8.8.6) with ESMTP id AAA21448 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 00:44:33 -0600 (CST) Received: from naga.mailbase.ac.uk (naga.mailbase.ac.uk [128.240.226.3]) by mailout3.mailbase.ac.uk (8.8.x/Mailout) with ESMTP id GAA04857; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:42:32 GMT Received: (from daemon@localhost) by naga.mailbase.ac.uk (8.8.x/Mailbase) id GAA28260; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:42:01 GMT Received: from post.mail.demon.net (ehp-2.mail.demon.net [193.195.0.155]) by naga.mailbase.ac.uk (8.8.x/Mailbase) with SMTP id GAA28252; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 06:41:59 GMT Received: from icarts.demon.co.uk ([158.152.74.206]) by post.mail.demon.net id aa0208565; 5 Mar 98 6:33 GMT X-Sender: icarts@pop3.demon.co.uk Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:18:44 +0000 Subject: Re: sellotape poet From: Sholto Ramsay To: liveart@mailbase.ac.uk X-List: liveart@mailbase.ac.uk X-Unsub: To leave, send text 'leave liveart' to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk Reply-To: liveart@mailbase.ac.uk Sender: liveart-request@mailbase.ac.uk Precedence: list Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I have a student who is interested in finding >out more about a poet who was apparently >featured on BBC a week or so ago. He sellotapes >his poems to lamposts. Does anyone know his >name and/or his whereabouts? Barry Edwards I believe that he is Austrian and based in Vienna. He is much disliked by the local burghers who believe that he interrupts the profitable flow of consumers into their stores. He also constructs long strings of poems and ties them on strings that are strung between lampposts. Local radio stations ask is this art? sholto Ramsay Director of New Media Institute of Contemporary Arts 12 carlton house terrace. london sw1 5ah uk 44 171 930 0493 fax 44 171 873 0051 mailto:video@icarts.demon.co.uk http://www.ica.org.uk http://www.newmediacentre.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 09:59:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Ronald Johnson 1935-1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've just gotten this message from Robert Creeley: > I've just had the sad word from Jodi Panula, Ronald Johnson's sister, that he died >Wednesday evening, March 4th, in Topeka, Kansas from the effects of his cancer. >I'd be grateful if you can get the information out to people with some >quick emphasis upon ARK and his significance to us all. Many thanks. I know the many devoted readers and admirers of Ronald Johnson's work on the Poetics List -- and I count myself as one of them -- will be detailing the remarkable and lasting achievement of Johnson’s work, culminating in the University of New Mexico publication of ARK. Literally, a flowing: a form-take-hand -with-form (That Which Faseneth Us) pillar to pillar the great dance arch itself through all that is or was or will be, 3/4 time. This will be a glade at the head of one stream and a resonant gnomon before it will stretch regions of signaling gnat-like resiliencies in the atmosphere of where we are -- or were. Or will be, when the mingled frame of mind of man is celebration Gates, which separate the wings of tiered ilex, open in caverns of atoms passing from one into another’s zenith of periodic movement, vast helicoidal shift: a vaulting of arteries beating their heads against the dark. This is the body of light. [from BEAM 30, The Garden] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 10:11:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Re: Looking for input on talk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Thread on publishing, etc. I went to a small press publishing thing at Beyond Baroque not too long ago. As opposed to Paul V. of RIBOT, most of the publishers there could not describe "what they like" at all: their publications were really outgrowths of their own taste, largely informed by the way they read their own writing. Had no way to communicate how they decided on content. A poetic? Frankly, it's like trying to decide on a B&B based on the description alone. Half the "cozy Victorian cottages" aren't anything but an older non-victorian house with a bunch of brown furniture. As someone who has spent years trying to psyche out editorial whim based on reading a journal: it's about 50-50 as far as actually being able to ascertain decision making from the result. In my experience, when I submit stuff, either its rejected or the editor takes it and asks for more. Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 10:08:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Class background is landscape ... & more MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Joel: I'd go even further here & suggest that Berrigan's class background, & constant later-life poverty, in some part explain his constant "thieving"--he borrowed &/or stole lines, images, points of view, moves, etc., the way he stole books & food, & borrowed money. I mean, it was what he did to survive. Anyway, I wrote about just this subject for Artpaper (a now-defunct Minneapolis arts journal) back in like 1992 or 1993--will send it along to you (or anyone else interested), if you like. Just lemme know. Yours, Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia.edu PS: Agree w/you & others about Blackburn's influence, too. On Thursday, March 05, 1998 3:05 AM, joel lewis [SMTP:penwaves@MINDSPRING.COM] wrote: > Which brings me to a point that I have never seen much discussed on the > list: POETRY & CLASS. Ted was one of the few major poets to come from a > working class background -- and he was constantly aware of it.,One major > reason he held no non-poetry job from '66 to his death had a lot to do w/ > his father, who was being trained to be classics scholar and had to give up > those dreams and work in a bread factory when his dad died. Ted's dad died > after a petty dispute w/ his bosses over automation. Ted said that he never > wanted this to happen to him. I know among the theory crowd, these bits of > personal anecdotes are no's-no's, but they go a long way in explaining ted > and his poetry. I think the affinity that ted and olson shared (they once > spent all night on a park bench in buffalo talking poetry!) was the shared > working class/catholic/ ethnic background. In retrospect, that was part of > my attraction to ted as a person was he knew from the world of scrimping > and chuck steak I grew up in. This may have been the reason who moved away > from being labeled an avant-garde poet and settled into a variant > avant-populism of the poetry from Red wagon on. > > Joel Lewis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:46:33 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Cuthbert Subject: Re: Ted Berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ScoutEW wrote: > >I recently asked you all why some poets like Ted Berrigan are ignored by the >"academy" and no-one was interested enough to reply about how they see >Berrigan's work, well I guess you all are too busy talking about the WWW!, >I suppose the academy of the future is closing its doors to argue about >publishing on the web? If anyone wants a break, write to me and explain why >some critics call Berrigan an "ardent disciple" and like some kid brother to >Frank O' Hara. An imitator. His writings mean alot to me, and I would like >some discussion on the matter. If you are near a university library, try to track down the latest issue (winter 97, I think, number 38.4) of the academic journal _Contemporary Literature_. It contains an excellent and fairly lengthy (31 pages) article by Libbie Rifkin entitled "'Worrying about Making It'": Ted Berrigan's Social Poetics." The essay illuminates a wide range of topics, including T.B.'s relationships with Ashbery and O'Hara and his editing of the magazine _"C"_. The focus is on how, for all their grungeiness, The Sonnets hitch their candour to a prospective stake in their future reception. One of my favourite Berrigan artifacts is the recording of him reading "Red Shift" on the CD included with the _Exact Change Yearbook_. I don't have a printed copy of the poem, so this will be inaccurately rendered, but I gasp and tremble every time I hear his voice's faltering insistence in the closing passage: I am only pronouns and I am all of them. And I didn't ask for this you did I came into your life to change it and it did so and now nothing will ever change that And that's that. Alone and crowded unhappy fate. Nevertheless, I slip softly into the air. The world's furious song flows through my costume. only pronouns, David Cuthbert ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 10:40:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Class background is landscape ... & more In-Reply-To: <01BD481E.B68DFFA0@gps12@columbia.edu> from "Gary Sullivan" at Mar 5, 98 10:08:57 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Worth thinking about O'Hara in this class/Catholic context too, not quite the same but related it seems to me - having spent years in and around Worcester, MA its hard to think of a more working class space if there ius such a thing. The lapsed-Catholic 20th century poet - is that a category? Interesting. - Mike (go lapsed catholics!) Magee. Joel said: "I think the affinity that ted and olson shared (they once spent all night on a park bench in buffalo talking poetry!) was the shared working class/catholic/ ethnic background." and According to Gary Sullivan: > > Hi, Joel: > > I'd go even further here & suggest that Berrigan's class background, & constant > later-life poverty, in some part explain his constant "thieving"--he borrowed > &/or stole lines, images, points of view, moves, etc., the way he stole books & > food, & borrowed money. I mean, it was what he did to survive. Anyway, I wrote > about just this subject for Artpaper (a now-defunct Minneapolis arts journal) > back in like 1992 or 1993--will send it along to you (or anyone else > interested), if you like. Just lemme know. > > Yours, > > Gary Sullivan > gps12@columbia.edu > > PS: Agree w/you & others about Blackburn's influence, too. > > On Thursday, March 05, 1998 3:05 AM, joel lewis [SMTP:penwaves@MINDSPRING.COM] > wrote: > > Which brings me to a point that I have never seen much discussed on the > > list: POETRY & CLASS. Ted was one of the few major poets to come from a > > working class background -- and he was constantly aware of it.,One major > > reason he held no non-poetry job from '66 to his death had a lot to do w/ > > his father, who was being trained to be classics scholar and had to give up > > those dreams and work in a bread factory when his dad died. Ted's dad died > > after a petty dispute w/ his bosses over automation. Ted said that he never > > wanted this to happen to him. I know among the theory crowd, these bits of > > personal anecdotes are no's-no's, but they go a long way in explaining ted > > and his poetry. I think the affinity that ted and olson shared (they once > > spent all night on a park bench in buffalo talking poetry!) was the shared > > working class/catholic/ ethnic background. In retrospect, that was part of > > my attraction to ted as a person was he knew from the world of scrimping > > and chuck steak I grew up in. This may have been the reason who moved away > > from being labeled an avant-garde poet and settled into a variant > > avant-populism of the poetry from Red wagon on. > > > > Joel Lewis > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:05:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear K Lederer: Today's news seemed so familiar to me. Then I realized we had published it in OINK!, New American Writing's precursor, about 1000 years ago. That was during the era when Ted taught and lived in Chicago-- a good moment. Maxine Chernoff On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > One of my favorite Berrigan books is RED WAGON-- > > Three of my favorite pieces: > > CONVERSATION (I would reproduce it, but the form is too complex for > e-mail) > > TODAY's NEWS > > My body heavy with poverty (starch) > It uses up my sexual energy > constantly, & > I feel constantly crowded > > On the other hand, One > Day In The Afternoon of > The World > Pervaded my life with a > heavy grace > today > > > I'll never smile again > > Bad Teeth > > > But > I'm dancing with tears in my eyes > (I can't help myself!) Tom > writes he loves Alice's sonnets, > takes four, I'd love > > to be more attentive to her, more > here > The situation having become intolerable > the only alternatives are: > Murder & Suicide. > > They are too dumb! So, one > becomes a goof. Raindrops > start falling on my roof. I say > Hooray! Then I say, I'm going out > > At the drugstore I say, Gimme some pills! > Charge 'em! They say > Sure. I say See you later. > > Read the paper. Talk to Alice. > She laughs to hear > Hokusai had 947 changes of address > In his life. Ha-ha. Plus everything > else in the world > going on here. > > > I USED TO BE BUT NOW I AM > > I used to be inexorable, > But now I am elusive. > > I used to be the future of America, > But now I am America. > > I used to be part of the problem, > But now I am the problem. > > I used to be part of the solution, if not all of it, > But now I am not that person. > > I used to be intense, & useful, > But now I am heavy, & boring. > > I used to be sentimental about myself, & therefore ruthless, > But now I am, I think, a sympathetic person, although easily amused. > > I used to be a believer, > But now, alas, I believe. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 09:19:34 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: NPR In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT we missed this... see if anyone taped it? > Radio Alert! > > As I type at 3:30 PM west coast time, NPR and All Things Considered is doing > a piece on the NY Public Library's show of the Poetry Project's mimeoed > magazines. Berrigan mentioned; Ron Padgett is speaking now . . . go to the > left of your dial and turn it on! > .. Christopher Alexander calexand@library.utah.edu Marriott Library Instruction 581-8323 (lv. msg.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:33:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: my terrific poem mentions this MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Gary, I have a terrific poem that mentions this connection between Whalen and Berrigan -- but I would suggest that the Whalen of Berrigan's longer poems (esp. Tambourine Life and Train Ride) is a Schuyler-modified Whalen. The way I put it in the poem is this: Philip Whalen if I may go back To my damaged-lecturer mode is In Scenes of Life at the Capitol The link from Ezra Pound to James Schuyler But you know these things these quotations from poems they don't make any sense -- why am I being so self-deprecating? is it because my reading of Berrigan is tinted by my reading of Bernstein? -- so here's what I'll do. Send me your address, and I'll drop the poem in the mail to you today or tomorrow. Take care, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:17:46 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Musical Palindrome MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit from Literature Nation debut brag sore tip radar nod. dad dotes mile van. edit non word team nor page look. cuckoo beer tred. no, who read set in bard's evil kook lives drab nites dear. oh wonder tree book. cuckoo leg apron meat. drown on tide. navel, Im set odd, add on radar pit. eros garb tubed. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:15:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Berrigan/i'm smiling Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit All the Berrigan posts have been great, just a few things.. I would be anxious to know at what park Olson and Berrigan talked at in 1963? I grew up in Buffalo and would like to know! Joel, I loved your preface to "On the Level Everyday" Why can't someone get the ball rolling and publish more of his stuff so it can be available to everyone. There are some 20 or more titles listed at the beginning of that book, titles of Berrigan's work alone and stuff with Ron Padgett (by the way that was weird yesterday that they were talking about Berrigan in that interview with Padgett (on NPR), Anne Waldman right when these posts were being read, is that Jung's Synchronicity?) It is nice to have something like "On the Level Everyday", we need more -as far as Raushenberg telling Berrigan he imitates Ashbery, I just don't see it, sounds like a painter being snotty to a poet for no particular reason? -Grunge, yes this word did not spring up into the world in 1988, but the mass of society used that word to talk about music, Mudhoney etc.. By calling Berrigan grunge I can see what anyone means, but.. that would be like calling a poet now a hippy.. they are all just labels, grunge being a label I never liked. To use it to describe dirt or the like is fine though, Berrigan was gritty.. --I also think the post about class is right on, Berrigan has working class roots, you can say this doesn't matter, but it does, you can say it didn't matter when Bethlehem Steel or Trico moved out of Buffalo, but it did, it affected the psyche of almost the whole city. Ted I think was really down to earth, one of the first poets to openly declare poetry as his FULL time profession-he would say, a doctor doesn't work another job does s/he? so I am a full time poet! Ron, I also understand why it is hard to write about someone you were close with, to go against their wishes, but in the long run, it would be nice to have more on Berrigan. So can anyone tell me where I can get Berrigan's last poems in Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts, and a copy of "The Sonnets" in case that other lead doesn't work out o yeah , and I know a student up here in Albany who knows Edmund, Berrigan's son and says he is a great poet, so look out for him! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:22:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Magazine Concepts Continued In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Standard's poet is excellent. It is indeed true: publishing, undertaken in whatever format and thru whatever kind of effort (one editor doing most of the work, a collective, a small group of friends) is a very *giving* and productive activity. If you publish people whose work you like, and which is therefore like your own, well that in large part is "your job" as an editor. (It can be fun also to include something very unlike yourself, rather like Berrigan admiring Wilbur....I have done this some and am in the process of doing more of it; but I consider a Berrigan/Wilbur involvement to be optional: I don't think Standard in Rhizome or Lowther in Syntactics (or the folks at Raddle Moon) are interested in as broad a canvas as I consider Misc. Proj. to be. I started it to fulfill a different and more eclectic mission, thus its greater emphasis on poetics and polemics than some, despite its being in the first instance a venue for poetry.) Anyway, Standard is absolutely right: those blanket submitters who hit everyone everywhere all the time, are just as "self-promoting" as we who publish and edit. And as Standard says, you can do a lot with relatively small resources; you can really have an impact on people who care about poetry. You can really have an impact on the poetry scene. Hereby, a brief list of honor of the low-budget mags that have been very helpful to me, and were crucial in encouraging Misc. Proj. (with their editors) Compound Eye (Ange Mlinko) Situation (Mark Wallace) Lower Limit Speech (Aldon Nielsen) Let a thousand mags exfoliate... Mark P. @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:36:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Re: Ronald Johnson 1935-1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I am saddened by the news of Ronald Johnson's death. His long poem RADI OS (Sand Dollar, 1977) is a volume I've returned to with renewed pleasure for the last twenty years. RADI OS was composed by making erasures in a 1892 edition of PARADISE LOST--an extraordinary example of found art. In addition to a large and moving body of literary work Mr. Johnson was an accomplished chef and wrote several wonderful cookbooks. He'll be missed. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 09:53:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: <6d60eeef.34fda92d@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII All the wonderful scoop on Ted Berrigan -- I had not thought he would be ignored by critics or readers, and he doesn't seem to be ignored by the people on this list. In terms of class, ethnicity, etc., has anyone examined the Tulsa tie between Ted, Padgett, Joe Brainard, Dick Gallup, others? I'm not sure Tulsa has ever produced so many remarkable writers. I'm not sure it's so bad to called a disciple of Frank O'Hara (or of Ted Berrigan), whatever "disciple" means. No matter what, it makes for a great first line from a Berrigan poem: I'm a disciple of Frank O'Hara Anyone care to write the next line? Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 10:17:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Gitin Subject: Philip Whalen/Clark Coolidge MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD481F.F0A56880" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD481F.F0A56880 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Whalen and Coolidge read together at San Francisco State in May 1976, on = which occasion, Philip compared Clark to Hemingway.=20 ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD481F.F0A56880 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Whalen and Coolidge read together at = San=20 Francisco State in May 1976, on which occasion, Philip compared Clark to = Hemingway.
------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD481F.F0A56880-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 10:24:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: slaves of dionysus Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i see you are choosing to ignore my last wherein i'd reputedly said i'd rather have no bio than the one you show and i made some other feeble attempt today nobody knows billy little, they say he lives in Nowhere, B.C., he could be writing poems in your name next week. Combat Plagiarism is a project he's currently working on wherein he writes the best poem he could possibly write that day and signs your name or Gerry Gilbert's name(he certainly deserves a page at the EPC), or Pierre Joris or Lily Brik or Duncan McNaughton or David McFadden. and everytime i see a used first edition by ted berrigan i sign the inside flyleaf "with the deepest regard ted good pills," ted berrigan and jack micheline were both slaves of dionysos, at one point ted berrigan could have said i never met a pill i didn't like, the gay circles were also into the pharmaceuticals, tho i can't say about ohara ted died of too many coca colas, he was a true new yorker, ted was more of an innovator ohara more traditional from the french frank laconic ted frantic frank was champagney like pasternak ted more electric cool aid like mayakofski he saw through things and enacted the simple conclusions, in reference to Charles Olson's death he said, 90% of the people who die of cancer deserve it Ted took Zukofsky's translation methods to the street the ohara affinities arise in the bebop not the beat if you're writing about the influences on poetry especially of Berrigan's generation you have to factor in the drugs, especially acid and mescaline, i'd like to hear Creeley chime in on this aspect, Ted certainly helped Bob see the light on numerous occasions, in more ways than poetry. Or anselm are you lurking? The collage element of the sonnets seemed a form of translation few practice from english to english an ur hypertext a wink ideally you'd try the drug to help you understand the poem more fully. with lowell likewise you'd have to talk about or take tranquilizers and lots of aspirin, that'd be a great anthology, poets of the headache, aspirin defines an era like heroin defines the next and bennies and coffee and amyl nitrate and cherry coke if you can't take the drug don't do the crime John Weiners are you lurking,shooting email niterate, is somebody doing your page right this minute, you could tell us lots about all of this, Olson said if he were starting over he'd rather write like Weiners or Baraka or Sanders. Weiners said he hoped to be the Baraka of the gay struggle. I surely hope someone is mining those fragile memories of johns even if he gets it wrong its only a wrong among a plethora of wrongs and his wrong will have more verve more frisson than two or three rites, me i'm one of those students of Duncan's who would rather err on the side of beauty.. Dodie Bellamy has taught me everything i've forgotten. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:43:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Berrigan/i'm smiling In-Reply-To: <47c5c08.34feddb0@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Berrigan has two wonderful sons who write--Eddie and Anselm-- Eddie (who lives in SF) has two terrific chapbooks out on Idiom Press: 1143 Hearst Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702 (Idiom also has chapbooks out by Renee Gladman, Greg Biglieri--and has some forthcoming by myself, Lauren Gudath, and many other great emerging writers--). The books are lovely to look at and to read-- Eddie has also had work recently in Arshile, ZYZZYVA, Explosive, and Gas.... He does his own journal, LOG-- Anselm has a chapbook out on Gas (I think it's sold out now...), and new work in Situation, Explosive, No Trees, BOOGLIT Mag., Mass Ave., and elsewhere. He currently lives in NYC-- He will have a full-length collection coming out this year on Rod Smith's EDGE Books--it is wonderful, and you should all take a look-- *** I have always found these two writers interesting in terms of the writing practices of their father (and mother, Alice Notley)--they allow one to think of poetry as a true profession--in the noble sense--one that can be handed down--one that can be passed along through the generations-- Eddie and Alice wrote about a million collaborations when Eddie was little. I don't want to embarass Eddie, but they are so great to read--very refreshing-- Eddie was 8 or 9 when he wrote these with Alice: POEM Ignominy, obscurity, and serenity hurl a pearl at the floor: "No presuppositions of fame after death" "No legal fees" In these parts we smoke our dinner "No pepper games" we eat with our feet and we walk with our hands THERE'S A SIGN ON THE THIRD FLOOR THAT SAYS SO we groom ourselves like cats and we end our poems like lives THOUGHT BALLOON The cloud is green My head is empty It is spring Inside this penny I meet Jenny And kid. THE BEAST OF EACH One night in America I hugged my beast The beast of each The beast was bleached And beautiful as a scarecrow But scared though. I love him plenty Though we have no money He's my beast The beast of each *** I love these..... At two recent Explosive benefit readings I've had the pleasure of witnessing readings by Brecht Gander (of Forrest and CD Wright--wonderful, all the workshoppers were very jealous...), and Danny Morice (of Dave Morice--incredible, terrific poem)-- I think that this sort of activity is on some level the best thing that can come out of poetry-- All best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 09:46:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Ronald Johnson 1935-1998 Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am also shocked and saddened by this news. Sun & Moon is publishing a complete version of RADI OS/THE OUTTAKES. It will be published in early 1999. Ron was a truly great poet, as his ARK reveals. Douglas Messerli Sun & Moon Press TBeck131 wrote: > > I am saddened by the news of Ronald Johnson's death. > His long poem RADI OS (Sand Dollar, 1977) is a volume I've returned to with > renewed pleasure for the last twenty years. RADI OS was composed by making > erasures in a 1892 edition of PARADISE LOST--an extraordinary example of found > art. > In addition to a large and moving body of literary work Mr. Johnson was an > accomplished chef and wrote several wonderful cookbooks. > He'll be missed. > > Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:55:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Early Warning: Mackey in mpls In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" and Mackey will be in Mpls april 2-5. he will be reading from his prose and poetry april 2, at 3:15, in Room 207A Lind Hall, University of MN, mpls (eastbank), 207 church st se. free and open to the public, and it'd be great to see any of you there...md At 12:23 PM -0800 3/4/98, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: >In addition to Mackey's readings at UIC, he is also reading in the series >Paul Hoover curates at Columbia College. His reading there will take >place at 3 p.m. on April 16 in the Ferguson Theater, 600 South Michigan, >where he will be introduced by Art Lange, his collaborator on the Coffee >House jazz anthology, Moment's Notice. The reading is free and open to >the public. > >Maxine Chernoff > >On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, David Zauhar wrote: > >> The distinguished poet, novelist and critic Nathaniel Mackey will visit UIC >> on April 15 and 16. Here is his schedule >> >> "A Reading of Poetry and Prose." >> April 15th, 3:00, African-American Cultural Center, 2nd Floor, Adams Hall >> >> "On the Influence of H.D. on My Poetry." >> April 16th, 11:00 a.m., Humanities Institute, Basement, Stevenson Hall >> >> Both events are free and open to the public. >> >> the University of Illinois at Chicago is not the easiest place to find >> your way around, and these aren't the most convenient of times for those >> who lead non-academic lives, but it'll be worth it if you can make it. >> Mark your calander now. >> >> Nathaniel Mackey's visit to UIC is sponsored and supported by the >> Department of African-American Studies, the African-American Cultural >> Center, the Institute for the Humanities, the Department of English, the >> Office of Access and Equity, the Department of Performing Arts, and the >> Student Activities Funding Committee. >> >> For further information contact dzauhar@uic.edu or... >> >> James C. Hall >> Asst. Professor of African-American Studies and English >> University of Illinois at Chicago >> 601 S. Morgan St. >> Chicago, IL 60607-7112 >> (312) 413-7522 >> JCHALL@uic.edu >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:57:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: from "Hilton Manfred Obenzinger" at Mar 5, 98 09:53:08 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tulsa's a fascinating little artistic secret - Oklahoma in general really - isn't Cornel West a Tulsan? and if you include Okla City you get Ralph Ellison and avant-garde trumpeter Don Cherry. -m. According to Hilton Manfred Obenzinger: > > All the wonderful scoop on Ted Berrigan -- I had not thought he would be > ignored by critics or readers, and he doesn't seem to be ignored by the > people on this list. In terms of class, ethnicity, etc., has > anyone examined the Tulsa tie between Ted, Padgett, Joe Brainard, Dick > Gallup, others? I'm not sure Tulsa has ever produced so many remarkable > writers. I'm not sure it's so bad to called a disciple of Frank O'Hara > (or of Ted Berrigan), whatever "disciple" means. No matter what, it > makes for a great first line from a Berrigan poem: > > I'm a disciple of Frank O'Hara > > Anyone care to write the next line? > > Hilton Obenzinger > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:08:25 -0500 Reply-To: jconte@acsu.buffalo.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Conte Organization: SUNY at Buffalo Subject: Re: Bruce Campbell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone have an e-mail address for Bruce Campbell at U. Cal. Riverside? Re: Jackson Mac Low and Clark Coolidge. Please backchannel me if you do. Thanks. Joseph Conte -- Joseph M. Conte (716) 645-2575 x1009 Associate Professor and FAX: (716) 645-5980 Director of Graduate Studies Department of English 306 Clemens Hall SUNY at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260-4610 http://writing.upenn.edu/~jconte/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:09:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: yet again, my poem! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII SCOUTew! my poem mentions Anselm and Eddie (who I now hear goes by Ed) as well! Send me your address -- or better still, if you don't mind reading on a screen, allow me to e-mail my poem to you. As you all must be noticing, I'm feeling exhibitionistic today. It must be the beginning of poetry season here in our city! By gum, it is! Tom Raworth and Drew Gardner will be saving the youth of America tonight at Poetry City in the offices of Teachers & Writers, 5 Union Sq W NYC. 7 pm. Come! Come by! And if you can't come by, say hi, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:18:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Berrigan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hilton Manfred Obenzinger wrote: > ... In terms of class, ethnicity, etc., has > anyone examined the Tulsa tie between Ted, Padgett, Joe Brainard, Dick > Gallup, others? I'm not sure Tulsa has ever produced so many remarkable > writers. Some years ago, introducing Kenneth Koch at a Paris reading, I suggested that the "New York School" should (retroactively) be renamed the "Tulsa" school -- KK nearly lost his usual sunny composure. & on the left wall of my study, slightly back of the chair I'm sitting on, hangs a 5 by 3 painting of Ted done by Mary Beach. Another poeta Ted was forever studying was Auden. Sometime in the middle seventies I asked him why he still bothered with that mannered Brit cocktail-chatter & he said something like: "Becaus he's got the biggest bag of cheap tricks — and as a poet you need to know all the cheap tricks of the trade." Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:38:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > I'm a disciple of Frank O'Hara > > Anyone care to write the next line? > ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ I think you already did. DZ > Hilton Obenzinger > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 15:19:00 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: ron padgett MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Has anyone read Ron Padgett's book _Creative Reading: what it is, how to do it, and why_ put out by NCTE? It's being ordered at my library and I wondered about what it was like. Elizabeth Hatmaker ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 15:48:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Clay Subject: Ted Berrigan/NYPL: Secret Location show Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Several new Berrigan books have been published recently or are in the works: Situations has published "Great Stories of the Chair" a group of poems first printed in Angel Hair in the late sixties and not collected elsewhere. Available from St. Mark's Poetry Project, SPD and Bridge Street Books (for $6) perhaps elsewhere-Out-of-print at the publisher-grab while you can. Alice Notley has just written me that Penguin has contracted to do a new edition of "The Sonnets"-no publication date announced as of yet. [That makes four editions: "C", Grove, United Artists & Penguin.] Granary Books published "In the Nam What Can Happen" by Ted Berrigan and George Schneeman-this is a simulation of an artists' book made in collaboration by these two about 1968. Beautifully produced in an edition of 70 (50 for sale at $500). Granary also has in the works "Ted Berrigan: An Annotated Checklist" by Aaron Fischer. This book chronicles Ted's life in print and is much more than a mere checklist as it is filled with accounts of publishing the books. Also included are 27 never-seen-before Berrigan/Schneeman collaborations from the late sixties (some in full color) and a fine introduction "Publishing Ted" by Lewis Warsh. This book is nearly ready to go to the printer. I'll make a formal announcement to the list upon publication in a couple of months. It'll be priced around $35, give or take. Regarding the show at the NYPL: A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980-indeed Mr. Berrigan would seem to be the presiding spirit looking out, as he does from the painting by Mr. Schneeman, over a vast sea of poetry books. We are currently finishing work on a 350 pp fully illustrated book documenting the era as well as the show-co-published by Granary and the NYPL and due out around June 1, 98. I'll announce upon publication. I'd be happy to back channel a several paragraph description of the exhibit to anyone interested. Contact me (Dear Chris, hello=8A) Steve Clay sclay@interport.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 15:44:12 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Berrigan/i'm smiling In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:15:20 EST from On Thu, 5 Mar 1998 12:15:20 EST ScoutEW said: >-Grunge, yes this word did not spring up into the world in 1988, but the mass >of society used that word to talk about music, Mudhoney etc.. By calling >Berrigan grunge I can see what anyone means, but.. that would be like calling >a poet now a hippy.. they are all just labels, grunge being a label I never >liked. To use it to describe dirt or the like is fine though, Berrigan was >gritty.. Go ahead and set yourself up as Berrigan's Defender. I never labelled anybody. I said Berrigan combined art and life, formality & informality, by letting the GRUNGE of street life seep into his work, the gritty, GRUNGY street-life of Providence, Worcester, New York, Tulsa, wherever it may be found (it's even in Minneapolis). I don't think Berrigan would disagree, myself. I find GRUNGY to be a fine evocative word for the GRUNGE I am talking about. - Henry Gould, "byt" poet ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:52:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: <34FEEC8E.9AA9E9FB@cnsunix.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE > Another poeta Ted was forever studying was Auden. Sometime in the middle > seventies I asked him why he still bothered with that mannered Brit > cocktail-chatter & he said something like: "Becaus he's got the biggest b= ag > of cheap tricks =97 and as a poet you need to know all the cheap tricks o= f > the trade." >=20 >=20 > Pierre I always liked the generosity in Berrigan's writing, (though there's a memoir/ letter in, I think, _Nice to See You_ in which TB drives up to Chicago from Iowa City to read w/ (correct me if I'm wrong, someone) Ann Sexton. He didn't seem to care much for her or her work in this letter. =09My favorite example comes from the book Joel Lewis edited, _On the Level Everyday_, where Berrigan is talking about how poets support themselves, and he says of Wallace Stevens (not exactly working class, not exactly bohemian) that "It's bad karma to work at a job fulltime and not go at it as seriously as you go at being a poet. Wallace Stevens, incidently, was not just an insurance man; he was vice-president of the Hartford Casualty Company. I mean there's no sense fooling around; if you're going to do something, you might as well be good at it" (57).=20 =09re: Auden: there's a great story in Sanders' _Tales of Beatnik Glory_ about a young lowereastsider who practices forging Auden's autograph, then goes to palm off an "autograph copy to a dealer." The great twist occurs when ol' Wystan himself walks in. The story is written w/ a degree of fondness that makes me think that Berrigan wasn't alone among the new yorkers who dug (aspects of) Auden. Dave Zauhar ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 15:23:07 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: looming Berrigan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Zauhar wrote: I'm a disciple of Frank O'Hara Anyone care to write the next line? ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ I think you already did. The mimeograph is broken & needs repair, got any parts? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:34:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Ronald Johnson 1935-1998 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Much saddened by the news of Ronald Johnson's death. Besides reading in RA DIOS tonight, I will also celebrate the man by cooking something from his THE AMERICAN TABLE --probably the HAM AND EGGPLANT PILAU MADAME BEGUE, &, if there's time, make his incredible Kentucky Pie. My copy of The American Table is falling to pieces -- when will someone reprint this one & his Southwestern Cooking Old & New. Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:55:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: web publication, etc. MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" good point. but: there have always been poets limited for one reason or another, who have still managed to get published. and poetry (obviously) is not always verbal-- doesn't have to be / need to be. and while i'm sure it's nice to have the ease of web publishing, there are other ways, and these ways should not be forgotten. as far as "egoless" poetry... poetry will always have a writer. even if the poet tries to write without ego, it is still s/he trying to be egoless. and perhaps the ego is bigger in it's attempt ((i.e. i feel (the person) jackson mac low more strongly in his unintentional texts, than in his intentional. meaning: the ego it takes to think up "unintentional" leaves it's mark)). i think a lot of people are misunderstanding my meaning: i am not "anti-web". i can just see that a world without the written or spoken word is a sad one. and i have seen a lot of people disappear into their computers in the last few years. they have forsaken tactile, vistual, audible, etc. world in favor of the stagnation of the same form, the computer. i understand the computer is a valuable tool (here i am, aren't i), but people are allowing it to become their life. and i think: when the experience of life disappears, so shall art. this upsets me. jeff. >One of the facets of the web that I like is that writing will increasingly be >able to exist, be, without attachment to a human being, i.e., no "name," no personable voice characteristics, no attractive or charismatic person attached--in short, an increase in anonymously generated language objects whose sole value will be >what is on the page. One among many reasons I would like to see more of this someday is the thought of writers who have been limited in mobility (thus >couldn't do a lot of readings to get people to look seriously at their writing), or limited in oral motor faculties (thus >>couldn't get people to hear the inflection of their "voices"), or limited by a host of social and material advantages >>(thus couldn't buy attention to their writing), or limited in psychological lust for attention (thus couldn't or wouldn't >>want more from their writing than that it exist). >> >>laura and jeff wrote: >> >>> >>i've been following the thread relating to this with interest... >>> >> >>> >>methinks it comes down to this: >>> >>the web is good for wide opportunity and collective action. but the fact is: >>> >>we are living in a world that is quickly alienating itself from itself via >>> >>any source it can. the web is adding to this is two major ways: >>> >> 1) it gives the guise of communication, but with out any >>> >>kind of physical relationship between those >>> >>"communicating" with >>> >> each other. so no true communication can take >>> >place due >>> >> to a lack of viceral stimulation between the people >>> >>communicating (no body lang, eye contact, hearing a >>> >>voice, etc). >>> > >>> >i *miss* the same things when i >>> >read a letter from a friend or a rejection slip from a journal / so i'm >>> >afraid the tired point has to be made that if you subsitute the word "book" >>> >or "newspaper" or "personal letter" for "web" in your statement above, the >>> >language of your critique sounds suddenly antiquated and reactionary -- if >>> >no "true communication" can take place without "viceral stimulation between >>> >the people communicating", then this pretty much damns the whole written >>> >record, doesn't it?, and not just the web, unless you mean something more >>> >specific by "communication" / not to sound flip, but we're communicating >>> >here, aren't we? >>> >>> are we? i don't know you. i don't know what you look like, sound like, etc. >>> i don't know how you live your life. all i have are words floating on a >>> screen. i can make assumptions, and even learn and somewhat communicate. but >>> to me you can only be a collection of electronic words. i assume that >>> someone put them together, but i don't know who it is. so the annalogy of a >>> letter from a friend is false. i know my friends. i spend as much time with >>> them as possible. and when i get a letter: i hold it, read it. sometimes it >>> smells like them or their home. with email: i have electic lights burning my >>> eyes. i hold a mouse and keyboard. granted: getting this email from you is >>> better than nothing, but it's important to realize that people are >>> "settling" for this over going out and talking to people. i know scores of >>> people who just sit in their houses all day on the puter. it's safe. they >>> don't have to try to be anything. but at the same time they can't fully >>> express themselves, and thus get to know anyone really. one fella i know, >>> who has a phd in philosophy (and thus no job), used to be one of my favorite >>> people to talk to. he was so animated and interesting. we'd drink tea and go >>> all night about various subjects. but now he has no time for "talking". he >>> doesn't come out. it's easier to sorta talk to a hundred people, than to >>> really talk to one. >>> okay: i don't know about anyone else: but when i'm reading (anything from >>> whitman to herodotus) i will at times catch myself reading out loud and >>> pacing around the room (both of which horribly annoy my wife). i feel >>> stimulated. i get excited and further annoy laura by reading passages to her >>> and try to get her to talk about it while she's studying or painting. this >>> excitement is inflammed when i go to a reading, or am just being read to by >>> a friend. on the puter i get bored after a while. and yet i sit here because >>> at times i forget about other things. the puter becomes my world. and this >>> world burns my eyes, leaves me alone in a room, etc. yet here i am. >>> all of written history is not damned by this. every book is different in >>> basic physicality, as well as in content. every book leads to a new book: >>> others by that author, biographies, books by contemporaries, sources, etc. >>> this leads to deeper understanding of those we can no longer go and see. >>> (this all leads to discussion, human interaction, in most cases.) and those >>> we can still see we should demand to see, as the last year has proved, >>> before it's too late. >>> it'd be one thing if the puter was just a tool to get in contact with >>> people, but it is increasingly becoming a substitute for physical contact. >>> and i loose coherence a little easier. >>> jeff. >>> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> >>> There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, >>> there are only >>> eyes in all heads >>> to be looked out of >>> >>> -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) >> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 17:29:38 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: Berrigan/i'm smiling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ScoutEW wrote: > > All the Berrigan posts have been great, just a few things.. > I would be anxious to know at what park Olson and Berrigan talked at in 1963? > I grew up in Buffalo and would like to know! > So would I! Betcha Delaware; they could have walked there from the University pretty easily [as a freshman or sophomore then, I don't remember]. Where did you live in Bflo? I grew up in So. Buffalo, near Cazenovia [another Olmstead baby] & the small Seneca Indian Park [where Red Jacket lay before his move to Forest Lawn, adjacent to Delaware Park]. Creeley would probably know. Let us all know if you find out! Best, Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:29:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: Berrigan/i'm smiling MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Go ahead and set yourself up as Berrigan's Defender. I never labelled >anybody. I said Berrigan combined art and life, formality & informality, >by letting the GRUNGE of street life seep into his work, the gritty, >GRUNGY street-life of Providence, Worcester, New York, Tulsa, wherever >it may be found (it's even in Minneapolis). I don't think Berrigan would >disagree, myself. I find GRUNGY to be a fine evocative word for the >GRUNGE I am talking about. butit's easy to loose people who may not know better (and perhaps some that do) in the conotations of the word. for me: i've been involved with the punk rock scene most of my life. for years grunge punk bands where the butt of many of jokes, and never taken seriously (this all before they got huge). so: when someone uses the word grunge, my first reaction is to think of a person who is trying to hard to be something -- contriving, and in need of a bath. i realize that this is a stereotype, but it is my first reaction to the word, and thus my thoughts will be tainted by this initial reaction. and so on... jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:17:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: NPR MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" if anyone taped this please backchannel how much to get a copy. jeff. >we missed this... see if anyone taped it? > >> Radio Alert! >> >> As I type at 3:30 PM west coast time, NPR and All Things Considered is doing >> a piece on the NY Public Library's show of the Poetry Project's mimeoed >> magazines. Berrigan mentioned; Ron Padgett is speaking now . . . go to the >> left of your dial and turn it on! >> > >.. > >Christopher Alexander calexand@library.utah.edu >Marriott Library Instruction 581-8323 (lv. msg.) > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 17:03:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Kirschenbaum Subject: Re: web publication, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Apropos. Does anyone know anything more about this? Matt > Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 621. > Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London > > > From: David Green > > Leading Art Site Suspended > > >One of the leading websites for the creation and distribution of >Web-specific art works, adaWeb, has been closed down by its new corporate >owners according to a report by Matthew Mirapaul in today's New York Times' >CyberTimes. > >>Source: New York Times (CyberTimes) >> >>Author: Matthew Mirapaul >>Issue: Arts >>Description: The Web site which is one of the most premier destinations for >>original Web-based art, ada'web, is being suspended. Co-founder, Benjamin >>Weil, said the reason was that ada'web's publisher, Digital City Inc., had >>canceled the Web site's financing. Skeptics had anticipate its closing since >>the selling of ada'web's founding company, WP Studio, to Digital City, owned >>primarily by America Online and the Tribune Company, 13 months ago. They >>were unable to "reconcile the site's high-minded mission with the >>mass-market orientation of other sites, and given the often- challenging >>nature of the material, commercial sponsorship was not a likely option. Weil >>agreed, saying: "For one year, it's been very difficult. We've been trying >>to find ways for our corporate parent to understand that there was value in >>this for them. It seemed like the message didn't really get through. And >>then we tried to go non-profit to remain online, but we realized there was >>very little funding available." Weil is now seeking a permanent home for >>ada'web's archives so pre-published artwork can remain accessible. >> >>********* >>(c)Benton Foundation, 1998. Redistribution of this email publication -- >>both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this >>message. >> >>The CPP News-Clipping Service is posted to the Benton e-mail lists Monday >>through Friday. The Headlines are highlights of news articles summarized by >>staff at the Benton Foundation. They describe articles of interest to the >>work of the Foundation -- primarily those covering long term trends and >>developments in communications, technology, journalism, public service >>media, regulation and philanthropy. While the summaries are factually >>accurate, their often informal tone does not represent the tone of the >>original articles. >> >>------------------------------ >>To join the Benton Communications Policy Mailing List, email the following >>command in the body of a message to listserv@cdinet.com: >> subscribe benton-compolicy YourFirstName YourLastName >> >>If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from the Benton >>Communications Policy Mailing List, email the following command in the >>body of a message to listserv@cdinet.com: >> signoff benton-compolicy >> >>If you have any problems with the listserv or any questions about the >>postings, please direct them to benton@benton.org. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:29:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Musical Palindrome In-Reply-To: <34FE89D7.5EA6@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:17 AM +0000 3/5/98, Miekal And wrote: >from Literature Nation > > >debut brag sore tip radar nod. dad dotes mile van. edit non word team >nor page look. cuckoo beer tred. no, who read set in bard's evil >kook lives drab nites dear. oh wonder tree book. cuckoo leg apron >meat. drown on tide. navel, Im set odd, add on radar pit. eros garb >tubed. why you impertinent snivel: this is definitively NOT POETRY!!! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:51:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: i'm gonna MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" be far away for two weeks, and am gonna turn off the list for that time. anyone who wants to continue to discuss, etc. please do backchannel, and i'll pick it up when i get back around. have fun! jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:10:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: after Hilton "Ted" Oberzinger Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" if it means free pills & priceless verse ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 17:54:58 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: call for additions Comments: cc: linda russo , Matthias Regan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable let me reiterate this, so's to add some news... the new version of n/formation is more or less up; archived iss. need a bit of work as does the press section (sorry to folks involved), but the node which pertains to the following call for additions is whole and available under "available nodes" @ the front door. to those who've already sent work, sorry for the delay in replying =96 redoing the site has taken up most of the past 2 days. -- topic for the most recent node of n/formation will be (since y'all are thinkin about it) . . . PUBLIC-/A(C)TIONS public / interaction / public action / publication interst'd in poems, pomes, prose, essays esp- ecially essays, hypertext, vizpo =96 meditations and mediatations on this ardently convoluted topic love and kisses, (inappropriate display) Chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 17:25:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew D Epstein Subject: Re: Berrigan In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Some thoughts on the Berrigan thread, which I'm enjoying: The question of whether Berrigan is or isn't Frank O'Hara's "disciple" (or anyone else's) is ultimately less interesting than how, why, and where he resembles, echoes, and uses his predecessors. What does he do with what he learns from or gains from O'Hara, Ashbery, Whalen, etc? How and why do their styles and even their words appear in or spur his own poems? What got me thinking about this specifically were a couple of interesting echoes/allusions in the poem Katy Lederer quoted yesterday, I USED TO BE BUT NOW I AM. When Berrigan begins the poem: I used to be inexorable, But now I am elusive. it reminded me of O'Hara speaking of what he wants he wants from his poetry in the early poem "Poetry": All this I desire. To deepen you by my quickness ... as if you would never leave me and were the inexorable product of my own time. How is Berrigan's allusion to O'Hara's poem functioning here? Is he revealing an earlier desire to be O'Hara-like, perhaps, that has now given way to wanting to be more "elusive"? When Berrigan goes on: I used to be the future of America, But now I am America. it's hard not to think of Ginsberg's "America": "it occurs to me that I am America." Also, when Berrigan writes: I used to be part of the solution, if not all of it, But now I am not that person. He again seems to deliberately echo O'Hara, particularly the last line of "How to Get There": "and we drift into the clear sky enthralled by our disappointment never to be alone again never to be loved sailing through space: didn't I have you once for my self? West Side? for a couple of hours, but I am not that person" Again, Berrigan picks up a line from O'Hara, puts it in a new context, builds on it, etc. The whole poem's structure -- "I used to be ... now I am ..." -- suggests that perhaps the poem is ABOUT negotiating with earlier influences, earlier selves ("I used to be but now .. I am not that person"). Paying attention to the echoes can open the poem in interesting ways .. So rather than dismissing comments about Berrigan's debt to O'Hara as wholly unfair, maybe we, as readers or TB, need to think about HOW he is reading and using O'Hara, Ashbery, Whalen, Ginsberg, Creeley (didn't the poem "Words For Love" come from the titles of the two Creeley books on Berrigan's desk?), specifically. It seems to me like he engages in an ongoing _conversation_ with poets like O'Hara that is really fascinating. (And the post that connected his fondness for allusion and appropriation to literal theft was a really neat idea worth considering ...) I also wanted to strongly second the recording of "Red Shift" on that Exact Change Yearbook CD. I've never heard a poem read aloud in a more powerful or moving way than that one. (Hint: I checked the Exact Change book out of the library and taped the CD and returned it). "I am 43. When will I die? I will never die. I will live To be 110 & I will never go away, & you will never escape from me who am always & only a ghost, despite this frame...." ("Red Shift") Andrew Epstein ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 20:47:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 'n Berrigan 'n Consc. Objectors Does anyone know where one (me) can get hold of any of Cha's work in film / video? I'm "doing" *Dictee* in my (borrowing Maria's great term for now) "Weird Books by Women" course, but never have seen any of her visual work except in reproduced stills or the visual / text piece in *Premonitions*. I'd also be interested to hear--b/c or on the list, either way--whether there was any interaction between Cha and Bay Area langpo's while she was living out there. Ron, or anyone? In my role as resident reference-nerd: a bit of recent academic attention to Berrigan can be found in Libbie Rifkin's essay "Worrying about Making It': Ted Berrigan's Social Poetics," Contemporary Literature 38.4 (winter 1997): 640-672. Part of her Cornell diss., which also has some real good stuff on Olson and Creeley. Joel Kuszai--backchannel me and I might be able to give you a lead re the conscientious objectors movement (in WWII, anyway, and Lowell, Everson, and Stafford's relation to it). Ace conference down home here in Louavull this past weekend: much fruitful provocation stirred up by Cary Nelson, Eavan Boland somewhere between serious historical engagement and marketable nostalgia depending on whose p-o-v you listen to, Harryette Mullen serving up a spectacular run through the whole of *Muse and Drudge*, non-stop. Some of you were here; the rest of you should have been. Well, next year in Jerusalem. Back to lurkerdom, Alan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:38:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: a secret location MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE; BOUNDARY="Boundary_(ID_1g6+RcvVOGzik7VzI5MRfA)" This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_1g6+RcvVOGzik7VzI5MRfA) Content-type: text/plain I was shocked to hear just now the voice of Ted Berrigan reciting a poem on NPR (with a line by Jeff Wright - but which one, asked Ted?). Part of a piece NPR did on a project at the NYPL called a A Secret Location on the Lower East Side. I came in in the middle and have only a muddled idea of what it's all about. Jordan Davis or other New Yawkahs - can u fill us in please? Patrick Pritchett --Boundary_(ID_1g6+RcvVOGzik7VzI5MRfA) Content-type: text/html

I was shocked to hear just now the voice of Ted Berrigan reciting a poem on NPR (with a line by Jeff Wright - but which one, asked Ted?). Part of a piece NPR did on a project at the NYPL called a A Secret Location on the Lower East Side. I came in in the middle and have only a muddled idea of what it's all about.


Jordan Davis or other New Yawkahs - can u fill us in please?

Patrick Pritchett

--Boundary_(ID_1g6+RcvVOGzik7VzI5MRfA)-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:08:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: NPR piece on "A Secret Location on the Lower East Side" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit You can hear this piece online at http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1998/980304.atc.html if you have a RealAudio player (available for download on the site). Click on "mimeo revolution." There's a tiny clip of Berrigan reading --also comment from Padgett, Clay, Waldman. Rachel Loden laura and jeff wrote: > > if anyone taped this please backchannel how much to get a copy. > jeff. > > >we missed this... see if anyone taped it? > > > >> Radio Alert! > >> > >> As I type at 3:30 PM west coast time, NPR and All Things Considered is doing > >> a piece on the NY Public Library's show of the Poetry Project's mimeoed > >> magazines. Berrigan mentioned; Ron Padgett is speaking now . . . go to the > >> left of your dial and turn it on! > >> > > > >.. > > > >Christopher Alexander calexand@library.utah.edu > >Marriott Library Instruction 581-8323 (lv. msg.) > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 21:33:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Susan Bee's Show Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I am happy to announce a solo show by SUSAN BEE Post-Americana: New Paintings from March 10 to March 28 Opening Reception on Saturday, March 14, 6-8pm A.I.R. Gallery 40 Wooster Street New York, NY 10013 212-966-0799 Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm links to Susan's works include: http://www.airnyc.org/member/artist.cfm?id=41 http://igor.lis.wisc.edu/english/bernstein/probgirl.html http://www.granarybooks.com/artists/bee/bee1.html (& keep clickiing on the images) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 21:40:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Welcome Message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Rev. 2-1-98 (This message is sent out to all new and renewing subscribers and it is sent out to the list at the beginning of every month) ____________________________________________________________________ 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 Postal Address: 438 Clemens Hall, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260 ___________________________________________________________ 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@acsu.buffalo.edu), Loss Peque=F1oGlazier (glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu), and Joel Kuszai (poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu). ___________________________________________________________ Above the world-weary horizons New obstacles for exchange arise Or unfold, O ye postmasters! 1. About the Poetics List The Poetics List was founded in late 1993 with the epigraph above. There are presently almost 600 subscribers. Please note that this is a private list and information about the list should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. The idea is to keep the list to those with specific rather than general interests, and also to keep the scale of the list relatively small and the volume manageable. 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Please keep in mind that all posts go out immediately to all subscribers, and become part of an on-line archive. *Posting to Poetics is a form of publication, not personal communication.* Participants are asked to exercise caution before posting messages! While spontaneity of response may seem the very heart of the list at its best, it also has the darker side of circulating ideas that have not been well considered (or considered by another reader -- editor or friend). Given the nature of the medium, subscribers do well to maintain some skepticism when reading the list and, where possible, to try to avoid taking what may be something close to a spontaneous comment made in the heat of exchange as if it were a revised or edited essay ("Let the Reader Beware!").=20 The "list owner" of Poetics is Charles Bernstein. Joel Kuszai is list manager. For subscription information contact us at POETICS@acsu.buffalo.edu. ___________________________________________________________ 2. 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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 glazier@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 yourword 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. 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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: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 19:06:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Berrigan/Wilbur/Auden MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Schuchat Simon wrote: > He told me how much > he liked a particular poem by Richard Wilbur. I think this must be the strangest thing I've read on this list since Ron Silliman said he had enjoyed the cinematic _English Patient_. But (as a contrarian) I love this stuff--even though I don't think I've ever liked a Richard Wilbur poem. I wish Ted Berrigan were here so I could ask him _which_ poem. Wouldn't that be a lot more fun than endlessly toeing some rigid aesthetic line? Pierre Joris writes: > Another poeta Ted was forever studying was Auden. Sometime in the middle > seventies I asked him why he still bothered with that mannered Brit > cocktail-chatter & he said something like: "Becaus he's got the biggest bag > of cheap tricks — and as a poet you need to know all the cheap tricks of > the trade." This makes perfect sense to me. Have never understood why it's okay and playful and camp to learn from (and use) BAD movies, BAD music, etc., but not (what some people may think is) BAD poetry. Why be so straitlaced? Shouldn't a poet be more like a magpie? Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:19:10 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph Subject: Re: A Secret Location on the Lower East Side Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The NPR story came on as I was driving along on a biz trip, and it was quite a pleasure to hear it. Validating. I was trying to picture the fragile mimeo- ed objects, and felt like hopping a plane. Maybe some way before July when the exhibit closes! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:18:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Berrigan/i'm smiling In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:29:25 -0500 from On Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:29:25 -0500 laura and jeff said: > >butit's easy to loose people who may not know better (and perhaps some that >do) in the conotations of the word. for me: i've been involved with the punk >rock scene most of my life. for years grunge punk bands where the butt of >many of jokes, and never taken seriously (this all before they got huge). >so: when someone uses the word grunge, my first reaction is to think of a >person who is trying to hard to be something -- contriving, and in need of a >bath. This is a good point. The whole dippy argument is a clash of generations. It's good for you to learn that "grungy" is a real word to some people who know & care little about the alternative rock scene important to their kids' generation. It's good for me to learn the limitations of my own historical perspective. But I also believe that, with regard to the example you give, EVERYONE is deeply involved in grunge. Because we are ALL TRYING HARD TO BE SOMETHING and we all NEED A BATH. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:33:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Shoemaker Subject: Re: reznikoff's girder take 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm coming in on this "girder" exchange late, and I happen to be very tired at the moment, so this is just to sort of hold my place for a while because listmemory is so short. I think you--David--are wrong about the Rez image being in bad faith. But it wld be difficult to explain why, & i just can't go into it right now. We'd have to start with the fact, tho, that the line that is being quoted is not what what Rez wrote, but what Oppen remembered. To note the difference doesn't do much to explicate my case, since what Rez wrote was "rubbish," not "rubble." But we shld at least start from the right place. More later. Steve At 04:31 PM 3/4/98 -0800, you wrote: >This in response to something in one of Joel Kuszai's recent posts.-- It >strikes me as an oddly undemocratic vision for Reznikoff--or Oppen, who >approved of this line--to (as Joel so well says) "put a halo" around one >piece of the rubble, consigning the rest ("huddled masses") to the >garbage-scow of history. Consider the reader. S/he identifies with the >girder ("I am a girder") and so what does that make the rest of us? Not a >brick here and a bike wheel there and a single mitt here but--mere >rubble.("rabble," as Joel puns). Or s/he identifies with the rubble--so who >is that jerk who thinks he's a girder and we others are undifferentiated >trash? > >"I saw the girder > first was still itself > and then brick by brick > and then the bike wheel, > then the dead cat, each > halo'd with identity" > > >but perhaps american poetry no matter the marxism of its writer cannot >transcend the cult of rugged individual ("resistant as a girder") and still >be received as fine. I certainly don't care for what I just made up and put >in lines. But I do care that this reznikoff girder-poem is in bad faith. >David > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:52:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Berrigan/Wilbur/Auden MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Rachel Loden wrote: > .. Have never understood why it's okay and > playful and camp to learn from (and use) BAD movies, BAD music, etc., > but not (what some people may think is) BAD poetry. Why be so > straitlaced? Shouldn't a poet be more like a magpie? > > Rachel Loden Oh, sure Rachel, it's just that I never had a taste for Auden, there's a fair amount of other BAD poetry I don't mind or in fact enjoy using, though finally I rather steal lines form ted than from doubleyou aitch. Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 20:13:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Berrigan/Wilbur/Auden MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Pierre Joris wrote: > there's a fair > amount of other BAD poetry I don't mind or in fact enjoy using But this is fascinating (to me, anyway). Pierre, don't hold out on us! WHICH bad poetry? Yours for guilty pleasures, Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 20:22:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: web publication, etc. In-Reply-To: <01IUAFBLSKIK95RMU5@ACS.WOOSTER.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dear jeff agree with just about everything you write here / sure, lots lost in e-communication / but obviously also lots gained / i'm more connected, definitely, now than i was a couple years ago before taking the e-plunge / and several real-virtual relationships have lead to (or at least hastened the development of, assuming we probably would've met down the line) several virtual-real ones, not to mention sustaining, extending initial how-d-do's at conferences etc. which otherwise, probably, would have fizzled / so yeah, i both know and know of more people now with the help of email -- pleased to meet ya / and gosh, i think we're still communicating (somewhat communicating?) here, even tho you can't smell my aftershave / to you i can only be "a collection of electronic words"? / i've been less on worse days bill At 01:20 AM 3/5/98 -0500, you wrote: but we're communicating >>here, aren't we? > >are we? i don't know you. i don't know what you look like, sound like, etc. >i don't know how you live your life. all i have are words floating on a >screen. i can make assumptions, and even learn and somewhat communicate. but >to me you can only be a collection of electronic words. i assume that >someone put them together, but i don't know who it is. so the annalogy of a >letter from a friend is false. i know my friends. i spend as much time with >them as possible. and when i get a letter: i hold it, read it. sometimes it >smells like them or their home. with email: i have electic lights burning my >eyes. i hold a mouse and keyboard. granted: getting this email from you is >better than nothing, but it's important to realize that people are >"settling" for this over going out and talking to people. i know scores of >people who just sit in their houses all day on the puter. it's safe. they >don't have to try to be anything. but at the same time they can't fully >express themselves, and thus get to know anyone really. one fella i know, >who has a phd in philosophy (and thus no job), used to be one of my favorite >people to talk to. he was so animated and interesting. we'd drink tea and go >all night about various subjects. but now he has no time for "talking". he >doesn't come out. it's easier to sorta talk to a hundred people, than to >really talk to one. >okay: i don't know about anyone else: but when i'm reading (anything from >whitman to herodotus) i will at times catch myself reading out loud and >pacing around the room (both of which horribly annoy my wife). i feel >stimulated. i get excited and further annoy laura by reading passages to her >and try to get her to talk about it while she's studying or painting. this >excitement is inflammed when i go to a reading, or am just being read to by >a friend. on the puter i get bored after a while. and yet i sit here because >at times i forget about other things. the puter becomes my world. and this >world burns my eyes, leaves me alone in a room, etc. yet here i am. >all of written history is not damned by this. every book is different in >basic physicality, as well as in content. every book leads to a new book: >others by that author, biographies, books by contemporaries, sources, etc. >this leads to deeper understanding of those we can no longer go and see. >(this all leads to discussion, human interaction, in most cases.) and those >we can still see we should demand to see, as the last year has proved, >before it's too late. >it'd be one thing if the puter was just a tool to get in contact with >people, but it is increasingly becoming a substitute for physical contact. >and i loose coherence a little easier. >jeff. > >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- > > There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, > there are only > eyes in all heads > to be looked out of > > -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://bmarsh.dtai.com snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 01:17:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon/Piombino Subject: March Readings at Segue @ Here Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Announcing the Segue @ Here Reading series for March, Saturdays at 3 P.M.,Here Center for Independent Art, 145 Sixth Avenue Between Spring and Broome, New York, N.Y, $5 donation- March 7: Beth Joselow, Serge Gavronsky; March 14: Corinne Robins,Fiona Templeton; March 21: Don Byrd, Madeline Gins; March 28: Chris Reiner,Jackson Mac Low. I'll be on hand to introduce the readers- if you do come, and you feel like it, please say hi to me! Nick Piombino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 01:18:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon/Piombino Subject: Ted Berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've enjoyed reading posts about Ted Berrigan by Erik, Simon Schuchat, Jordan Davis, Henry Gould and others. In 1967 I attended Ted's workshop at the Poetry Project. Some years later, as he did with many others,Ted gave me some very much appreciated support,including recommending some poems of mine to Simon Schuchat and Eileen Myles who were publishing mimeo magazines in the early to middle 70's.(By the way, Ted confided in me that he was particularly impressed by Mr. Schuchat's" brilliance" and writing talents).I had heard Ted read a few times before attending his workshop and had been deeply impressed and truly excited by his poetry and his manner of reading. Ted's readings had a special combination of humor, sincerity, affection, spontaneity and sheer poetic intensity and beauty which have been rarely equalled in contemporary poetry. Ted put great emphasis on the importance of giving poetry readings in the career of a poet. In his own way, he was a great actor. As a teacher, a reader, and a mentor he gave of himself completely. Hardly a week or two goes by in my life when I do not think about him. I go back to his work constantly and keep discovering new things. His work and his person were unforgettably inspiring.Something about his person and his approach to poetry made a great many people excited about poetry in an unusual way, perhaps because of his way of sharing his special passion and devotion to the art, perhaps because of his way of emanating and encouraging more joy and pleasure in writing and living. It is possible that later in life he paid a price for adamantly refusing to take himself, writing- or anything- seriously to the point of eliminating any possible generosity, warmth, joy and spontaneity. Perhaps he was an example of a "60's casualty", something Charles Bernstein long ago pointed out as a cautionary tale, though I don't like to think about this too much. I think I agree with Henry Gould in what he seemed to be saying about Berrigan's combining of the quotidian with high art. Berrigan's irrepressible passion for life made all passions seem more possible and more necessary. I cannot look at an exclamation point without thinking of him! Here are a few lines from a poem by Carter Ratcliff published in 1969 in "The World Anthology" edited by Anne Waldman: THINGS TO DO IN TED BERRIGAN'S WORKSHOP Arrive at eight-thirty Arrive early when the table is strewn with banners all strewn with table-shaped stars.... Notice who was there all the time Read things on the wall Dismiss this project immediately Concentrate on the poem being read.... Say that a a poem is great because the poet speaks of important things in his own voice.... Disagree with anything anybody else says,especially what Charles, Ted, Nick and Scott say Agree with everything anybody says.... Be jealous of everybody Approve of this sentiment and its intensity.... * Hope to hear more from others about Ted Berrigan. Nick Piombino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 02:13:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" from my conversations with alice notley, their appears to be little left in manuscripts of ted's for publication--although if some ambitious grad students would haunt collections w/ mineo books, they'd probably find plenty of uncollected ted. geoff young was intersted in publishing waiting for chris --but i understand that the manuscript is missing parts. yes, ted loved richard wilbur & lot of folks that this list would consider cornballs. he loved lowell's "To Speak of the Woe that is in marriage" and once recited Joyce Kilmer (& not Trees) when someone put down one of jersey's bards. i guess i learned to be open to all sorts of stuff -- ted dug the langyage poets & i even remeber a manuscript homasge to bruce andrew's Film Noir that seems to have never seen print i wish there was some official issue of ted on tape -- there is a complete raeing ofthe sonnets at langton street & tons of stuff at the po project. what still comes thru in the poems is the intense devotion to "poetry" not craft or poetics. like a rock musician playing an out of the way gig -- he did one of my poorly paying gigs in jersey, as it gave him a chance to test out new material he would be reading in nyc the next week w/ old pal padgett. also some more attention must be paid to great writers like mauren ownen, bob rosenthal, john godfrey, yuki hartman, tony towle, jim brodey, bill berkson, ted greenwald and others of that era and where is regina beck? --last heard: a lubavitch chasid joel lewis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 23:23:11 -0800 Reply-To: ttheatre@sirius.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen and Trevor Organization: Tea Theatre Subject: Re: Magazine Concepts Continued MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit SSSCHAEFER wrote: > Also, I think people who want to be in magazines should also pay for them. > Think of it as union dues. One cannot join a community by sitting alone in a > room. > > Standard Thank you for saying this! I have had the opportunity this year to be editor-in-chief for Fourteen Hills: The SFSU Review, a literary magazine funded by San Francisco State University. I would like to acknowledge the funding openly: without it the magazine would be dead. But we get about 500 submissions an issue. If every submitter sent $5 for a sample copy, the magazine would get $2500--almost the cost of printing--easily ensuring the survival. (And they would also understand the caliber of work we publish.) Now of course I understand that writers cannot afford to send $5 with every submission--but I have certainly become more aware of the plight of magazines and I'm left asking: why do writers want magazines to publish their work (support them) if they aren't willing to support the magazine? Or maybe what you meant that the writers published in the magazine should pay...self-promotion...publish themselves...as an editor I don't consider work with a check attached any more or less than one without, and I wouldn't want any other magazine to do the same with me. Ready for the fire, Karen McKevitt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 02:28:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: hole chapbooks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Awhile ago Tom Beckett mentioned Alan Davies's chapbook from hole books, and I think he wondered whether it was still available. There are five copies of Alan's chapbook available. Each one has been hand-made; cover is from a linocut. Here's the list of available chapbooks from hole: Alan Davies, Sei Shonagon $5 Clint Burnham, Pandemonium $5 Deanna Ferguson, ddilemma $5 You can email Rob Manery at geschwitz@intergate.bc.ca if interested. Forthcoming this summer, chapbooks from: Jackson Mac Low Jeff Derksen To reserve your copy, please email me. All best, l PS Of course we predated the band. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:25:28 +1000 Reply-To: M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Mark Roberts Subject: (Fwd) AWOL: New Books From Five Island Press MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:01:59 +1100 To: awol@ozemail.com.au From: awol@ozemail.com.au (Australian Writing On Line) Subject: AWOL: New Books From Five Island Press New titles from Five Island Press availabe through the AWOl Virtual Bookshop. To order complete the order form at the end of this email. LES WICKS NITTY GRITTY ISBN 0 86418 457 3 Loosely assembled under the days of the week this book chronicles a universal journey towards a hint of weekend peace. It's a vivid, inclusive dance celebrating the lives of a range of characters from school kids to parents, young graduates to carnival workers. RRP $12.95 John Millett Dragonfly Tie ISBN 1 875604 54 4 The last collection of poetry from the author of the award winning View From the Turret. RRP $12.95 Kevin Brophy Seeing Things ISBN 0 86418 449 2 Brophy's poems...outstare the icy blasts of inner suburban Melbourne's cold, or evidence of the world's madness...they have wit and memorability -Thomas Shapcott RRP $12.95 Charlotte Clutterbuck Soundings ISBN 0 86418 453 0 Childhood, migration, parenting, aging and loss: Clutterbucks embraces these big, silent issues with openness and honesty. Her slowly gathered work also reflects deep religious faith and is shot through with moments of simple beauty. - Peter Boyle RRP $12.95 Coral Hull Broken land: 5 Days in Bre 1995 ISBN 0 86418 450 6 Country towns - those least known places in our country - have their life and lore mapped for them in Coral Hull's Bre. It is a desolation filled with voices of patent authenticity, with generations of jokes and put downs, epiphanies, hatred, stars, cattle and secret knowledge. Coral is passionately and restlessly at home here. She has never written better. - Judith Rodriguez. RRP $12.95 Marcella Polain Dumbstruck ISBN 1 875604 52 9 Marcella Polain's first collection is one that matters. it is informed by a deeply compassionate feminism, a marvelously dynamic imagination, a courage to move beyond ready-made ideological mappings to a sheer verbal inventiveness which, for me, makes practically every poem delivery a shiver of utter recognition. - Marion Campbell Ludwika Amber Our Territory English/Polish Edition ISBN 0 86418 448 4 Australian poetry needs work of this stature, from a poet who sets about defining traces of Eden which remain in the world, by naming them with such loving skill..... - Bruce Dawe RRP $12.95 Postage and handling $2.00 for two books $5 for three to six books. If you order all seven books then there is no charge for postage. International orders please email us your order and we well check postage costs. complete this order form and mail it with your checque to: AWOL PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Note: International orders please email your order and we will calculate costs. ****************************************************************** Name:................................................................. Address:............................................................... email: ................................................................. Order Quantity __ LES WICKS NITTY GRITTY @ Aust$12.95 each _____ __ John Millett Dragonfly Tie @ Aust$12.95 each ____ __ Kevin Brophy Seeing Things @ Aust$12.95 each ____ __ Charlotte Clutterbuck Soundings @ Aust$12.95 each ____ __ Coral Hull Broken land: 5 Days in Bre 1995 @ Aust$12.95 each ____ __ Marcella Polain Dumbstruck @ Aust$12.95 each _____ __ Ludwika Amber Our Territory @ Aust$12.95 each _____ Postage Postage and handling $2.00 for two books $5 for three to six books. If you order all seven books then there is no charge for postage. ______ TOTAL ________ *************************************************************************** Australian Writing On Line Internet services, publicity, distribution http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/ awol@ozemail.com.au PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Phone 015063970 Fax 61 2 97472802 Mark Roberts SIS website: http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/sis/ SIS Team Building G05 Maze Crescent University of Sydney Phone 61 2 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax 61 2 93517711 ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** Albert Einstein: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 01:53:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think I hear people griping that Ted Berrigan is not on the silly-bus of university English courses. Dont sweat it. You dont very often learn about what's been happening on course lists. You do what we all do--read what the profs got us to read, and then spend MORE time reading the good stuff. People who want to know what's happened will read Berrigan, and Hollo, and Padgett. Padgett is a terrific poet, and if I were to say that someone was the best in something i would maybe nominate him as the best poet in the USA, but I dont do such things. Suffice it to say that Ron Padgett is the David McFadden of the USA. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:40:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Ted vs. Ted-ism Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii To Henry Gould's question below, One reason why I think there's been so little critical discussion to date of >Ted Berrigan is that he was such a strong personality and would have so >obviously disapproved of such, that people who actually knew the man feel Didn't the Language Poets disapprove of him? That might be another reason. > I think that quite the opposite is the case. When Ted came to the Bay Area, he would sometimes stay with Alan Bernheimer or I believe Kit Robinson. Tom Mandel & I had Ted read at our series at the Grand Piano -- with George Stanley. It drew 110 people as I recall (I'm always counting audiences), divided almost equally between those whom had never heard of Ted and those whom had never heard of George. Actually, an event (or interlinkage of events) related to that evening may suggest what filters down to someone like Henry, perceptive, well-read, but at a distance at least from the SF scene of the 70s, as a sense of "disapproval" or whatever. After the reading at the Piano, there were not one but two parties, one for George in from BC held nearby on the other side of the Panhandle, and a second one for Ted which, as I remember, was somewhere South of Market (a few miles away). As co-host I spent some time at each. At the one for Ted's several of his young ephebes, particularly of the bent then known as Actualists, were telling him how great his reading was (both were fabulous that night) by way of telling him how much better he was than George. That sort of contestatory tone was constant with those guys. Nolan, Gray, Kratz, Nisbet were just a few of the folks standing around. But it was Ted who shut that nonsense down instantly. "George Stanley's a great poet. Didn't you hear that reading!" he responded. None of them replied although I've always thought that the correct answer to that must have been, no, they hadn't. Listening was never what they were about. I've never figured out where that disjunction between those generations came from, why Ted would listen and hear and these other folks wouldn't and somehow presumed (wrongly, as it proved here) that he had given them permission for that behavior. I think that somewhere disapproval for that behavior by those other guys got (gets?) translated into some sense that Ted is still being blamed, wrongly, for it. But actually all the so-called langpos I know always were fond and close readers of Ted Berrigan. And still are. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 08:58:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: "I take the present" M.P.Follett Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" May be way of track but came across someone who's history has parallels with Whalen's. By chance I came across M. P. Follett's _Creative Experience_ He seems to have been a popular social critic early in the century. I have never seen his name and haven't found any lines of thought leading to him or coming from him. He appears to be one of those byways of thought that are in danger of disappearing completely from print, cultural ruts, and soon even libraries. We have a fairly well-read group here. Anyone ever heard of him? The quote below is curiously prescient of current computer/chaos theory discourse. tom bell "You can tear it [the unity of experience] to pieces if ypu will and find subject and object, stimulus and response. or - you can refuse to: you can claim the right to see it as a rational interplay of forces, as the functioning of a self-creating coherence. Consciousness is the living interplay of a self-generating activity." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:17:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Deborah Thomas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" SEGUE @ HERE: FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, & MAY READINGS HERE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT ART 145 SIXTH AVENUE BETWEEN SPRING AND BROOME SATURDAY AFTERNOON READINGS BEGIN AT 3:00 PM $5 DONATION AT THE DOOR Coordinators for this series are Dan Machlin, Nick Piombino, Andrew Levy, Melanie Neilson, and Deirdre Kovac. Continuing support for this series is provided by the Segue Foundation. Funding is made possible by support from the Literature Program of the New York Stare Council on the Arts. Help support HERE--come early and lunch stay late for drinks! Segue @ Here: February & March Readings FEB 7: RACHEL BLAU DUPLESSIS, JEN HOFER Rachel Blau DuPlessis has written criticism [The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice; Writing Beyond the Ending: Narrative Strategies of 20th Century Women Writers; H.D.: The Career of That Struggle] and poetry [Tahuiet Rosa; Drafts 3-14; and Drafts 15-XXX; The Fold]. She also edited The Selected Letters of George Oppen. Jen Hofer is a poet and translator from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently working on an anthology of contemporary avant-garde poetry by Mexican women. Her work can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of Arshile, Explosive, Mandorla, Mirage #4/Period(ical), Proliferation, and Torque. FEB 14: LESLIE SCALAPINO, YUNTE HUANG Leslie Scalapino is the author of 12 books of poetry, fiction, essays, and plays, including Way (North Point Press), which received numerous awards. Her recent hooks include Defoe (Sun & Moon) and The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan). Talisman House has recently released a selected works, Green & Black. Yunte Huang was born in China and is currently a doctoral candidate at The Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. His poetry has appeared in End-of-Century, Prairie Schooner, and Tinfish. He is the Chinese translator of Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos and co-translator of Selected Language Poems, and his Shi: A Radical Reading of Chinese Poetry was just published by Roof Books. FEB 21: MEl-MEl BERSSENBRUGGE, MIKE KELLEHER Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of The Heat Bird (Burning Deck) and Random Possession (Ishmael Reed Books), both American Book Award recipients, as well as many other titles. She is also the author of several collaborations with artists, Hiddenness (Whitney Museum) and Sphericity (Kelsey Street), both with Richard Tuttle, and the just released Endocrinology (Kelsey Street) with Kiki Smith. Mike Kelleher has worked as a Catholic missionary in Ecuador, NYC high school teacher, and archivist for The Segue Foundation. He is Managing Director of the NYSCA Independent Publishers Initiative and a Curator of Readings and Residencies at the Just Buffalo Literary Center. He is currently working towards his masters in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. FEB 25: ANSELM HOLLO, GARRETT KALLEBERG A native of Helsinki, Finland, Anselrn Hollo has lived in the U.S. since 1967, teaching poetics and translation at the Naropa Institute and many other colleges and universities. He is the author of 35 books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently, Near Miss Haiku and West is Left on the Map. He has translated Klee, Brecht, and Genet, among others, and has received an NEA fellowship. Garrett Kalleberg's poems have appeared in Sulphur, First Intensity, American Letters & Commentary, and elsewhere. His Limbic Odes was published by Heart Hammer Books in 1997. He is editor of a new journal, The Transcendental Fiend, premiering in Feb1998. MARCH 7: BETH JOSELOW, SERGE GAVRONSKY Beth Joselow teaches at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington DC., and is the author of 5 books of poetry. Serge Gavronsky is the author of L'Obscur d'ici, a book of poems to be published in Paris by Phillipe Millereau. He is included in the forthcoming anthology A Poem A Day (Sun and Moon). MARCH 14: CORINNE ROBINS, FIONA TEMPLETON Corinne Robins, art critic and poet, is the author of The Pluralist Era (Harper Collins). She has published two books of poems from Pratt Press, Art In The Seventh Power and Facing It. Fiona Templeton, internationally renowned performance artist and poet, wrote Cells of Release (Roof) onsite at Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, April-May, 1995. MARCH 21: DON BYRD, MADELINE GINS Don Byrd is the author of five books, including The Great Dime Store Centennial and The Poetics of the Common Knowledge. He teaches at SUNY (Albany). Madeline Gins--probably not a Martian. Her latest books are Helen Keller or Arakawa (Burning Books) and the catalogue of her collaboration with Arakawa, Reversible Destiny (Abrams), exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum June-August 1997. MARCH 25: CHRIS REINER, JACKSON MAC LOW Chris Reiner edits Witz: A Journal of Contemporary Poetics. He is author of A Coward's Libretto (Texture Press) and Ogling Anchor, forthcoming from Avec Books. Jackson Mac Low's 75th birthday festschrift is the first issue of a new journal, Crayon. Sun and Moon published his Barnesbook in 1996. APRIL 4: ANSELM BERRIGAN, TONYA FOSTER Anselm Berrigan is the author of two chapbooks: On the Premises (Gas Editions) and They Beat Me Over The Head With A Sock (Edge Books). He lives in Brooklyn and teaches English at Brooklyn College. Tonya Foster is a poet who hails from New Orleans. She makes little wax male figures when she's at bars. APRIL 11: ALAN DAVIES, DAVID CAMERON Alan Davies is the author of Active 24 Hours, Signage (essays), Name, Candor, Rave, as well as other volumes of poetry and criticism. David Cameron is at work an a complete false translation of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, and he is editor of Cocodrilo. APRIL 15: JULIE PATTON, CHRIS MANN Julie Patton is a visual artist, performer, and poet. Her publications include Teething on Type (Rodent Press), limited edition letter press books, and 2 CD's with her performance work are available from Knitting Factory and Audio Literature. According to Chris Mann, who hails from Melbourne, Australia, "Language is when you correct the grammar of your oppressor." APRIL 25: ELIZABETH WALDNER, MELISSA RAGONA Elizabeth Waldner is the author two chapbooks, Memo (Lo)mento (Texture Press) and Bus Stop (Meow Press); Homing Devices is forthcoming from 0 Books. Melissa Ragona is currently writing a script for ITVS (Independent Television) and has a book of poetry forthcoming with REM Press--Cambridge, England. MAY 2: BRUCE ANDREWS, DAN FARRELL Bruce Andrews's latest collection of poetry, Designated Heartbeat, is forthcoming from Sun & Moon. Also forthcoming is Aerial magazine's collection on his work. Dan Farrell is the author of Thimking of You and ape . He is a foundless member of KSW, a foundling editor of Boo magazine, and currently a member of Brooklyn, NY. MAY 9: HEATHER FULLER, HEATHER RAMSDELL Heather Fuller is the author of perhaps this is a rescue fantasy (Edge Books, 1997). She is literary editor of The Washington Review and coordinator of the "In Your Ear, poetry performance series in D.C. Heather Ramsdell's first book of poetry, Lost Wax, is due out from University of Illinois Press in spring of 1998. She lives tin) writes in Brooklyn. MAY 16: DEIRDRE KOVAC, ROD SMITH Deirdre Kovac is associate editor of Big Allis. Her poetry and criticism have appeared in Torque, Object, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Rod Smith is the author of In Memory of My Theories, Protective Immediacy, and The Boy Poems. He edits Aerial and publishes Edge Books in Washington, D.C. MAY 23: JEAN DAY, ANDREW LEVY Jean Day's latest book, The Literal World, is just out from Atelos. Her previous books of poetry include The I and the You, A Young Recruit, Flat Birds, and Linear C. She lives in Berkeley, California. Andrew Levy's books include Elephant Surveillance to Thought (Meow, 1998) and Continuous Discontinuous (Potes & Poets, 1997). "Andrew Levy is a Buddha" (Rod Smith). MAY 30: No READING (SEE YOU IN THE FALL) THE SEGUE FOUNDATION 303 East 8th Street New York, NY 10009 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:41:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism In-Reply-To: <19983673138611478@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > Actually, an event (or interlinkage of events) related to that evening may > suggest what filters down to someone like Henry, perceptive, well-read, but > at a distance at least from the SF scene of the 70s, as a sense of > "disapproval" or whatever. Being at a distance from those events myself (I think I had a little league baseball game in Galesburg, Illinois, the night Berrigan & George Stanley read in SF), I can still put a finger on one source for the impression of disapproval. Specifically, I remember a line in Tom Clark's memoir about Berrigan in which he says something to the effect that "Ted was given a hard time by the language poets" during his last (or one of his last swings through San Francisco). Not bringing this up so we can debate Tom Clark's ethics again, nor to dispute Ron Silliman's account of events: merely to point out where I (for one) got the impression that some of the poets associated w/ L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E were not big fans of Berrigan. Dave Zauhar ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:43:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Susan Bee's Show In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980305213248.006b4258@bway.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" you go girl At 9:33 PM -0500 3/5/98, Charles Bernstein wrote: >I am happy to announce a solo show by > >SUSAN BEE > >Post-Americana: New Paintings > >from March 10 to March 28 >Opening Reception on Saturday, March 14, 6-8pm > >A.I.R. Gallery >40 Wooster Street >New York, NY 10013 >212-966-0799 > >Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm > >links to Susan's works include: > >http://www.airnyc.org/member/artist.cfm?id=41 > >http://igor.lis.wisc.edu/english/bernstein/probgirl.html > >http://www.granarybooks.com/artists/bee/bee1.html >(& keep clickiing on the images) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:44:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 'n Berrigan 'n Consc. Objectors In-Reply-To: <19980305.204750.ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hi alan, uc berkeley's art museum has the Cha archives, it might be worth a trip out there to research it and set up viewing sessions etc. i've never seen any of her video stuff except in stills myself; there're a coupla mentions and a photo in Lucy Lippard's book Mixed Blessings. i teach cha in that course; some students adore it; some "can't follow the story." do check out walter lew's exquisite Excerpts from Dikte for Dictee (or something like that) a "critical collage" responding to cha's book. At 8:47 PM -0500 3/5/98, ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU wrote: >Does anyone know where one (me) can get hold of any of Cha's work in >film / video? I'm "doing" *Dictee* in my (borrowing Maria's great term >for now) "Weird Books by Women" course, but never have seen any of her >visual work except in reproduced stills or the visual / text piece in >*Premonitions*. I'd also be interested to hear--b/c or on the list, >either way--whether there was any interaction between Cha and Bay Area >langpo's while she was living out there. Ron, or anyone? > >In my role as resident reference-nerd: a bit of recent academic >attention to Berrigan can be found in Libbie Rifkin's essay "Worrying >about Making It': Ted Berrigan's Social Poetics," Contemporary >Literature 38.4 (winter 1997): 640-672. Part of her Cornell diss., which >also has some real good stuff on Olson and Creeley. > >Joel Kuszai--backchannel me and I might be able to give you a lead re >the conscientious objectors movement (in WWII, anyway, and Lowell, >Everson, and Stafford's relation to it). > >Ace conference down home here in Louavull this past weekend: much >fruitful provocation stirred up by Cary Nelson, Eavan Boland somewhere >between serious historical engagement and marketable nostalgia depending >on whose p-o-v you listen to, Harryette Mullen serving up a spectacular >run through the whole of *Muse and Drudge*, non-stop. Some of you were >here; the rest of you should have been. Well, next year in Jerusalem. > >Back to lurkerdom, > >Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:38:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Susan Bee's Show MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Congratulations Susan!!!! Charles Bernstein wrote: > > I am happy to announce a solo show by > > SUSAN BEE > > Post-Americana: New Paintings > > from March 10 to March 28 > Opening Reception on Saturday, March 14, 6-8pm > > A.I.R. Gallery > 40 Wooster Street > New York, NY 10013 > 212-966-0799 > > Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm > > links to Susan's works include: > > http://www.airnyc.org/member/artist.cfm?id=41 > > http://igor.lis.wisc.edu/english/bernstein/probgirl.html > > http://www.granarybooks.com/artists/bee/bee1.html > (& keep clickiing on the images) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 11:28:55 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:41:08 -0600 from On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:41:08 -0600 David Zauhar said: > >Being at a distance from those events myself (I think I had a little >league baseball game in Galesburg, Illinois, the night Berrigan & George >Stanley read in SF), I can still put a finger on one source for the >impression of disapproval. Specifically, I remember a line in Tom Clark's >memoir about Berrigan in which he says something to the effect that "Ted >was given a hard time by the language poets" during his last (or one of >his last swings through San Francisco). Not bringing this up so we can >debate Tom Clark's ethics again, nor to dispute Ron Silliman's account of >events: merely to point out where I (for one) got the impression that some >of the poets associated w/ L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E were not big fans of Berrigan. Here's the full extent of Tom Clark's remarks on this issue in the memoir Dave mentions [LATE RETURNS]: "The final year of his life, though, I was in contact with him only by mail and telephone. I heard from friends about a visit of his to San Francisco, where he had been given a hard time by some language-poets." That's it - not much to go on there. Clark is probably referring to Berrigan's residency in 1981 at 80 Langton St for a few days. This residency garners a couple mentions in Anne Waldman's memoir-anthology NICE TO SEE YOU. There Stephen Rodefer has this in his entry: "The year before last, at a Langton St. residency in SF, how he groused or pricked the vauntingly guarded crowd ("80 Language Street" as Michael Palmer was calling it)." Renny Pritikin's piece in the anthology gives his take on the residency and quotes Berrigan's long statement before his reading, beginning with: "...at 80 Langton Street I stand in the dock in judgement, condemned, and also to become informed..." Pritikin attempts to analyze the situation in sort of a detached, "guarded" way, implying that Berrigan was doing some ego-poet grandstanding but not exactly criticizing him for that. He's very reserved, it seems to me, in this little memoir - understandably considering the context (a memorial volume). These are my sources for the idea that language poets "disapproved" of Berrigan. Along with Dave Zauhar I agree this is a long way from the action; decades, centuries away from the rivalry or whatever - the baiting, the criticizing, the suspicion, the whatever - that went on in those days between various poetry clubs on the coasts. If it went on, even. If there were clubs. It doesn't matter. Berrigan may have been baiting the language poets whom he saw as a threat - unfairly. Or he may actually have been given a chilly, demanding, critical reception. I sure don't know. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:08:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rosemary Ceravolo Subject: Re: npr In-Reply-To: <01IUA4CIYJS895SAYT@ACS.WOOSTER.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, laura and jeff wrote: > please sign. > jeff. > > > NPR Funding > This is being forwarded to several people at once to add their names > to the petition. NPR (National Public Radio) and the arts are facing > major cutbacks in funding. > > It won't matter if many people receive the same list as the names are > being managed. This is for anyone who thinks NPR/PBS is a worthwhile > expenditure of $1.12/year of their taxes. A petition follows. If > you sign, please forward on to others (not back to me). If not, > please don't kill it-send it to the email address listed here: > wein2688@blue.univn PBS. > > In spite of the efforts of each station to > reduce spending costs and streamline their services, some government > officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs > is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as not > worthwhile. > Currently,taxes from the general public for PBS equal $1.12 per > person per year, and the National Endowment for the Arts equals $0.64 > a year. > A January 1995 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicated that 76% of > Americans wish to keep funding for PBS. This percentage of people > polled is surpassed only by national defense and law enforcement as > the programs that are the most valuable for federal funding. Each > year the Senate and House Appropriations committees each have 13 > subcommittees with jurisdiction over many programs and agencies. = > > Each subcommittee passes its own appropriation bill. The goal each > year is to have each bill signed by the beginning of the fiscal year, > which is October 1. > The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of > support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making > our voices heard. > Please add your name to this list and forward it to friends if you > believe in what we stand for. This list will be forwarded to the > President of the United States, the Vice President of the United > States, and Representative Newt Gingrich, who is the instigator of the > action > to cut funding to these worthwhile programs. > *If you happen to be the 150th, 200th, 250th, etc. signer of this > petition, please forward a copy to: > wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu. > If that address is inoperative, please send it to: > kubi7975@blue.univnorthco.edu. This way we can keep track of the > lists and organize them. Forward this to everyone you know, and help > us to keep these programs alive. > Thank you. > -------------------------------------------------------- > NOTE: It is preferable that you SELECT the entirety of this letter > and > then COPY it into a new outgoing message rather than simply > forwarding it. > 515) Janet Wygal, Hoboken, NJ > 516) Gene Holder, Hoboken, NJ > 517) Cindy E. Brolsma, Brooklyn, NY > 518) Sheryl Farber, Los Angeles, CA > 519) P. David Ebersole, Silver Lake, CA > 520) Todd Hughes, Silver Lake, CA > 521) Betsy Hamlin, Silver Lake, CA > 522) Rachel Powell, Santa Monica, CA > 523) Jill & Michael Vercos, Venice, CA > 524) Nikolaus Scharpf, Eatonton, GA > 525) Jan Walleczek, CA > 526) Joanne Hall, Kalamazoo, MI > 527) Mary Williams, Kalamazoo, MI > 518) Mark Nepo, Albany, NY > 519) Susan McHenry, Albany, NY > 520) Lillien Waller, Bronx, NY > 521) Tracye Matthews, Chicago, IL > 522) Martha Kathleen Zygmun, Chicago, IL > 523) Catherine Tolley, CHicago, IL > 524) Julie Pokorny, Chicago, IL > 525) Daniel Kuruna, Chicago IL > 526) Christine Kuruna, Selinsgrove PA > 527)Jesse Fletcher, Lewisburg PA > 528) Kasey Bohaboy, Palo Alto, CA > 529) Amy Sabbadini, Santa Barbara, CA > 530) Roger Sabbadini, San Diego, CA > 531) Robert Engler, San Diego, CA > 532) Roberta Gottlieb, San Diego, CA > 533) Grant Meisenholder, San Diego, CA > 534) Jennifer Post, Seattle, WA > 535) Raymond Post, Seattle, WA > 536) Ginnah Saunders > 537) Chris Garman, San Diego, CA > 538) Padmini Srikantiah, San Diego, CA > 539) Jayashri Srikantiah, San Francisco, CA > 540) Duane Valz, Oakland, CA > 541) David Mrozek Rauch, San Francisco, CA > 542) Betsy Fagin, San Francisco, CA > 544) John Montesa, Southborough, MA > 545) Lyn Chamberlin, Lincoln,MA > 546) Mark Edwards, Lexington, MA > 547) Dave Vanable, Honeoye Falls, NY > 548) Susan Scheible, Pittsford, NY > 549) Kim Krzyzewski, State College, PA > 550) Beverly Balger, State College, PA > 551) Deborah Leopold, Riverdale, MD > 552) Herbert W. Ettel, Washington, DC > 553) Bernadette H. Odyniec, Washington, DC > > Beverly Balger > Registrar > Palmer Museum of Art > The Pennsylvania State University > University Park, PA 16802 > (814) 865-7672 > > 554) Cori Parrish, Arlington, VA > 555) Joshua Cohen, Amherst, MA > 556) Teresa Sparks, Morgantown, WV > 557) jeffrey daniel miller, Wooster, OH and Parkersburg, WV 558) Rosemary Ceravolo, Bloomfield, NJ > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, > there are only > eyes in all heads > to be looked out of > > -charles olson, from "letter 6" (of the maximus poems) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:13:04 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: NPR piece on "A Secret Location on the Lower East Side" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit thanks for turning me on to the NPR RealAudio archives, Rachel. I had heard about, but missed, an interview with Diane DiPrima on Feb 18. They even let her read two poems! http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/archives/1998/980218.atc.html I'm enjoying the Berrigan thread very much. Especially the attentive readings. & am very very saddened by the news of Ron Johnson's death. Ark on! all best, Charles ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:14:22 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: blah blah blah etc... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit yeah i agree, but it seems such a waste that such crap is sold off in graduate classes and "the Sonnets" sits out of print or somewhere in some person's attic. I personally find alot in the "sonnets" that is original, although much criticism of Berrigan's work centers around some idea that he is a "thief"/ how ingenius that he borrows lines from other poets etc./ it is so much more than that- Ted was proving that it is already there already, the words etc, and it was his job and pleasure to put them together into "Sonnets" in the way he felt fit- The repeating of lines"Dear Chris" and "it is 5:15" etc makes a full reading of the Sonnets interesting, instead of looking at it as a reference point to move out and look for the lines he"lifted" from ashbery , i feel it is self- contained, you do not have to know what lines are Padgetts, or Berrigan's or Auden's etc, it just works when you read it aloud. It's funny, I made a request earlier to have someone email me an address to find a copy of the Sonnets I could own (my copy is out from the university library) someone gave me an address on this list and I spoke to the person selling the books, "sorry the sonnets has been sold!" damn! well, she also asked me why this week alone she got 4 requests for the sonnets, must be people on this board trying to snake that copy well its gone! (poets are like crows )I swear anyways if anyone else would like to sell me a copy I would love to buy it please let me know- Oyeah , I read Libbie Rifkin's article in Contemporary Lit on Berrigan. Its good but I don't think she knows the deal behind who "chris" is she should read Ron Padgetts memoir on TEd. about whether or not the "languagepoets" like Berrigan, yeah who cares, I am sure no one group(although i doubt poets associated with "languagepoetry" even want to be part of any group) can speak together, i am sure poets of all traditions can appreciate Berrigan and how he lived the 24 hr life of the poet later gators erik ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:18:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Berrigan is a pivotal figure in a number of ways. One of the threads running through 1st generation New York School poetries is a veering off from the "confessionalism" so prevalent at the time. Interesting, then, how TB negotiated quotidian realities in his work. Interesting also what an important precedent __The Sonnets__ constitutes for L=poetry. I would imagine that, on some level, Ron Silliman's long poem __Ketjak__is in debt to the fractured narratives and gorgeous repetition based musics of __The Sonnets__. At its best, Berrigan's work stands up there with anyone's. At its worst, it tends toward some of the same self-indulgences Bukowski practiced--a kind of formulaic sensationalism that can be fun to read but analogous to the "empty calories" of ________(Fill in the blank with your favorite junk commestible but be aware of the severe penalties which may obtain under current food libel laws.). Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 11:34:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Berrigan/Sonnets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear List The new edition of the Sonnets that Steve Clay referred to should be in bookstores sometime in March of 2000. The book will be annotated (by Alice Notley), & will also contain six sonnets that haven't appeared in any of the first three editions -- poems Ted decided/instructed to include in any further reprintings after the United Artists edition. Anselm Berrigan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:43:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Clay Subject: Spicer/Duncan/Blaser Circle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Granary Books has prepared a list of books for sale of nearly 300 items containing rare and obscure manuscripts, books, posters, prints, letters etc. by Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, Jess, George Stanley, Harold Dull, Stan Persky among others-and such magazines and presses as "J" "Open Space" "White Rabbit" to name a few. The list is available by email, if interested contact me via back channel and I'll send you a copy. Steve Clay sclay@interport.net Granary Books ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:57:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism Then again, this is how Barrett Watten remembers it in "After Ted" (_Aerial 8): "Berrigan's reading of _The Sonnets_ at Langton Street contained some of the greatest verbal moments in American language." And, in fact, wasn't it Watten himself who curated that event? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:56:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Foley Subject: Who Hired Bill Moyers to Destroy American Poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Who Hired Bill Moyers to Destroy American Poetry? asks carlo PARCELLI in the new FLASHPOINT (http://webdelsol.com/FLASHPOINT/ "Along the frontier where the arts & politics clash ..." and joe BRENNAN wonders: "Why Is Parcelli So Angry?" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:17:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Stadler Subject: Re: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha 'n Berrigan 'n Consc. Objectors In-Reply-To: <19980305.204750.ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley has all of Theresa Cha's videos. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:06:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: "The world has my flesh on" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Erik: Sorry, I should have back-channeled you the Sonnets ordering info. I'll keep my eyes peeled for another. "Some dim frieze," which opens the book, refers to something Berrigan saw on the Columbia University campus, so in return, Columbia will pick up the tab if you'd like a photocopy of that edition in the meantime. (Or, if any of the "crows" want one.) Just lemme know. I also have the poems from Arshille, if you want a photocopy of that. Of course, it doesn't finally matter what lines are from where, so long as the poem works. But, it's also interesting, interesting to me anyway, to think of his thievery in the contexts of: (a) his class & the extent to which his aesthetic impulses might be thought of as class-based; and (b) what his prolific re-use of others's lines (including his own) means in terms of how he experienced language: "The world has my flesh on," as Vincent Ferrini once wrote. I think this ties in very nicely with another sub-thread on this list: His openness to a relatively wide spectrum of poetries. That's a specific form of being, a particular way of moving through the world, & through the world of letters. I'm going to see the woman who runs Pomander Books tonight & so I'll see if I can get the name of the crow who swept off with your _Sonnets_--then you or I can build an altar or whatever & Berrigan's ghost (which truly will never die) will go beat him or her up. Have fun, Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:15:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Gary A. Lenhart" Subject: Berrigan Ted Berrigan taught a class at Naropa on Whalen, Hollo, and James Schuyler. I don't recall what year. But if Ashbery, Denby, and O'Hara were the early inspirations, W/H/S were the enthusiasms when I knew him. Does anyone know if those lectures were taped? I still have copies of a ten-year old issue of Transfer that includes Joel Lewis's 26-page essay on The Sonnets. They're available for $5 (that includes postage). Gary Lenhart ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:37:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: Ted MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Jacques said: > Then again, this is how Barrett Watten remembers it in "After Ted" > (_Aerial > 8): "Berrigan's reading of _The Sonnets_ at Langton Street contained some > of > the greatest verbal moments in American language." And, in fact, wasn't > it > Watten himself who curated that event? > I'm glad Barry said that; this residency was the only time I ever met Ted "in the flesh," as they perhaps still say, and his reading of _The Sonnets_ on the Friday night WAS truly remarkable -- it took my breath away. Less remarkable was the panel discussion the following night with Barry, Ted, and three others holding forth on "the world" (not the literary magazine, the space we all share). I agree that it makes little sense to argue over who liked who -- one of the great things about Ted, as some have stated in this thread, was that he was so inclusive (catholic with a small c) and could find good in everything. (Rachel, wasn't it Wilbur who wrote "Love brings us to the things of this world" or some such?) I think the best teachers act in that fashion, widening our narrow prejudices, making generosity part of poetics; I remember vividly when Lowell died and I made some cynical crackpot comment and Ed Dorn severely upgraded me -- rightly. Scholars eager to associate Ted with anti-langpo sentiment, however, may also remember a one paragraph dismissive "review" of Ted's on a book by Steven Rodefer that was a source of consternation among some, bemusement among others. But so what, really? What I actually wanted to comment on was Tom Beckett's post about Ted, when he praised him at his best, but at his worst said he was full of "formulaic sensationalism," "fun to read but . . . empty". Now come on. What, really, is BETTER than "fun to read"? What else is there? Why is pleasure ever denigrated? This made me think of O'Hara's "Personalism" when he says (not exactly, don't have it around) "What are we building people up for? For what?" Folks, poetry is not "good for us" -- thank the Gods! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:23:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Several lines from Watten's MFA thesis, "white yellow" (submitted to the University of Iowa, early seventies): I guess I want this to be a kind of "Tambourine Life" but I am not that nervous Irish mother fucker who put me down in Iowa City. Someone who has this text on hand, or more-or-less immediate access to it (Katy?) should quote it verbatim. (The above is nearly word-for-word, but line-breaks are no doubt wrong & there's maybe a missing word or two.) I always wondered whether his (Watten's) sentiment was genuine, there, or not. Anyone know? Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia.edu On Friday, March 06, 1998 12:57 PM, Jacques Debrot [SMTP:JDEBROT@AOL.COM] wrote: > Then again, this is how Barrett Watten remembers it in "After Ted" (_Aerial > 8): "Berrigan's reading of _The Sonnets_ at Langton Street contained some of > the greatest verbal moments in American language." And, in fact, wasn't it > Watten himself who curated that event? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 11:02:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: tardy re berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One needs rise early on the west coast to be abreast of hot threads. I posted re-berrigan as soon as I'd read ron silliman's post. but my post hasnt yet appeared and meanwhile, i've read thru the rest, and while i take comfort in the amount of overlap between what i wrote and what others of you posted, i mourn the instant redundancy of my own remarks. My post will probably appear to be made entirely of appropriations--fitting yet regrettable. david ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:51:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Ted In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:37:47 -0800 from On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:37:47 -0800 Safdie Joseph said: >full of "formulaic sensationalism," "fun to read but . . . empty". Now come >on. What, really, is BETTER than "fun to read"? What else is there? Why is >pleasure ever denigrated? This made me think of O'Hara's "Personalism" when >he says (not exactly, don't have it around) "What are we building people up >for? For what?" Folks, poetry is not "good for us" -- thank the Gods! Joseph is pointing toward another aspect of Berrigan's work that has always struck me - he has a charismatic community organizer's energy (much like the catholic organizers out of Holy Cross, Bridgeport, Worcester, and other seedy [note: not grungy] New England places I spent many years amongst) which establishes a vortex zone or playpen for poetry - and the playpen changes the flavor of the poetry. It is "not good for us" outside of the zone of its own reality. It is "for" that reality & self-sufficient of itself. It is not didactic - it is playFUL. People DO get tired of playing sometimes, tired of the zone. Then they get "serious" and avoid the petty, the self-centered, the superficial... become ponderous, self-centered, superficial... I have ground this axe about Berrigan before on the list (see back a few months to the "Teddy Bear" discussions), and I acknowledge & apologize for its projectivism & broad-brushism & lack of close readerism of poemism. I apologize. But what you are reading is an effect of Berrigan, just another aspect. end of post. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:09:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Responses Comments: To: Jack Foley MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE; BOUNDARY="Boundary_(ID_/z2BC9V+H8naTm8JNzRogg)" This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_/z2BC9V+H8naTm8JNzRogg) Content-type: text/plain Jack - thanks for posting this info on Flashpoint. Have already read Mark Wallace's excellent piece on the anxieties and vagaries of defining a post-Language moment and recommend it to all. I'd also like to bring to the attention of the List a compelling piece by Dan Featherston (Dan are you still on the List?) on the Holocaust poetry of Reznikoff and Rothenberg in the latest issue of Response. ____ Great thread everyone on Ted Berrigan. I immediately ran out and got Joel Lewis's wonderful book of Ted's talks. Anselm Hollo has worked weird and splendid wonders with Ted's talks in his "Lines From Ted" in _Corvus_. Here's a sample from one of them: "... what I think happens when a poem works is That it rises into the air of its own powers And in doing so it has formed a circle And it becomes something like the sun or a star Or a planet... I have to go now I have to go and think about this for at thousand years." ____ Ron Silliman - I was talking last night to Andrew Schelling about Ronald Johnson and he recalled a series of talks Ron gave in Berekely one of which you participated in. Though it was Andrew's impression that RJ was a little less than kindly disposed toward LangPo. Another scurrilous barb? He also mentioned a book of concrete poetry that Johnson produced - which I found very curious indeed. Has anyone heard of this -- or read it? Johnson was simply a magnificent poet. One of the greatest. I can't help but feel his early passing has deprived us of who knows what great work. During a talk I gave today on Hopkins I segued into a brief eulogy for Johnson - though no one, including my professor, had ever heard of him. (I'm learning - as Don Byrd alluded to some time back - just what a dearth of poetic knowledge exists in my English Dept). Here's some lines from his AIDS elegy, "Blocks To Be Arranged in a Pyramid": Then with a sweep blindly eradicate perception itself afire with egress everything a gift after Totentanz set fire to expanse sight interminable mountains' blue divide nugget cloud prised cakset of song cast off Tomb Patrick Pritchett --Boundary_(ID_/z2BC9V+H8naTm8JNzRogg) Content-type: text/html

Jack - thanks for posting this info on Flashpoint. Have already read Mark Wallace's excellent piece on the anxieties and vagaries of defining a post-Language moment and recommend it to all.


I'd also like to bring to the attention of the List a compelling piece by Dan Featherston (Dan are you still on the List?) on the Holocaust poetry of Reznikoff and Rothenberg in the latest issue of Response.

____
Great thread everyone on Ted Berrigan. I immediately ran out and got Joel Lewis's wonderful book of Ted's talks. Anselm Hollo has worked weird and splendid wonders with Ted's talks in his "Lines From Ted" in _Corvus_. Here's a sample from one of them:


"... what I think happens when a poem works is
That it rises into the air of its own powers
And in doing so it has formed a circle
And it becomes something like the sun or a star
Or a planet...
I have to go now
I have to go and think about this for at thousand       years."
____
Ron Silliman - I was talking last night to Andrew Schelling about Ronald Johnson and he recalled a series of talks Ron gave in Berekely one of which you participated in. Though it was Andrew's impression that RJ was a little less than kindly disposed toward LangPo. Another scurrilous barb? He also mentioned a book of concrete poetry that Johnson produced - which I found very curious indeed. Has anyone heard of this -- or read it?


Johnson was simply a magnificent poet. One of the greatest. I can't help but feel his early passing has deprived us of who knows what great work. During a talk I gave today on Hopkins I segued into a brief eulogy for Johnson - though no one, including my professor, had ever heard of him. (I'm learning  - as Don Byrd alluded to some time back - just what a dearth of poetic knowledge exists in my English Dept). Here's some lines from his AIDS elegy, "Blocks To Be Arranged in a Pyramid":


Then with a sweep
blindly eradicate
perception itself
afire with egress

everything a gift
after Totentanz
set fire to expanse
sight interminable

mountains' blue divide
nugget cloud prised
cakset of song
cast off Tomb

Patrick Pritchett

--Boundary_(ID_/z2BC9V+H8naTm8JNzRogg)-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:34:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: NPR piece on DiPrima In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >thanks for turning me on to the NPR RealAudio archives, Rachel. > >I had heard about, but missed, an interview with Diane DiPrima on Feb 18. They >even let her read two poems! > It wasn't an interview with DiPrima. We should only be so lucky. They (= Susan Stamberg?) talked to some scholar, a certain lack of vibrancy in the response shall we say ("DiPrima believes..." locutions, as if she is fixed forever) but there was more time given to Diane reading than to this other woman talking, and the pleasure of running errands and flipping on the radio and suddenly hearing DiPrima reading --- that was great! The brief description in the beginning of DiPrima was also pretty good. It went something like "beatnik Buddhist revolutionary mother of five." I always find it weird to read about people I know even a little, or hear them discussed, in that detached and "objective" way. Always the essence is missing. Makes me wonder why I believe what I read or hear about people I don't know. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 11:28:35 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Mark Wallace in FlushPoint MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Wallace's piece, Definitions in Process, etc. etc.in FlushPoint magazine is much ado about nothing; a transparent attempt to get some names out there. He sets up Language poetry as a straw dog and then instead of pouring the gasoline and lighting the match he snuggles up to it. One is left with the distinct knowledge that there is no unread pile of hard disks and no post-pepsi generation of scribblers that can be called Post-Language. Besides what a weak branch to graft onto. Where do we go from here but toward the light? "[P]ostlanguage poetry as a distinct moment in the history of poetry."?! Give me a break. The Language poets put the critical cart before the imaginative horse. Mark wants to go them one better. Horsemeat anyone? As regards my comment in Moyer's piece concerning Messerli/Perloff interview in Aerial: I was demonstrating that Doug readily acquiesced to a return to the nostalgic and narrative impulse of his poem. He seemed to love the psychological moment of creation (and by extension himself) more than the langpo formula. I simply noted that this rush to solpisism was difficult to distinguish from the example from Robert Hass I sighted. In this instance it revealed to this reader that Langpo might be simply one step from the confessional and a contrived step at that. Does the silly honesty of a Hass drive us to pedantic excess and denial? And Furthermore re Poem in Regress---anybody who objects to Herman Kahn, (e.g. On Thermonuclear War, Hudson Institute, RAND Corp.), being profiled in Hell doesn't know his/her Herman Kahn.-Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:36:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Ted In-Reply-To: Safdie Joseph "Re: Ted" (Mar 6, 10:37am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 6, 10:37am, Safdie Joseph wrote: > What I actually wanted to comment on was Tom Beckett's post > about Ted, when he praised him at his best, but at his worst said he was > full of "formulaic sensationalism," "fun to read but . . . empty". Now come > on. What, really, is BETTER than "fun to read"? What else is there? Why is > pleasure ever denigrated? This made me think of O'Hara's "Personalism" when > he says (not exactly, don't have it around) "What are we building people up > for? For what?" Folks, poetry is not "good for us" -- thank the Gods! >-- End of excerpt from Safdie Joseph Rightly said Joe wrt fun & plezhure in poetry. It does appear that pleasure is devalued at times hereabouts. Perhaps this is just another manifestation of making light of the lite (as in lite poetry which has almost always been looked down upon). Perhaps too any denial of pleasure is only a public one. Poetry is good for us in as much as it is good for the heart -- makes us laugh or smile (wryly perhaps as we watch it subvert and civilize the wholesome). Just as long as the pleasure paradigm doesn't itself become a cliche. Funny too is that much of langpo has often been seen by Yo as being quite fun, funny, lite, etc (you know: no ideas but in thingys). I can scarcely read Coolidge, for ex., without a big, cracked smile from ear-to-ear. William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:51:56 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JBCM2 Subject: Re: Who Hired Bill Moyers to Destroy American Poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Jack: I have a dentist appointment on Monday, and it looks as though I have to have a tooth extracted, so it will be later in the week. I'm going to forward to you, fyi, a post I had from Steve Tills re: Wallace & my response. I told Steve that he should send any work of his that he thinks is exciting. Joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:17:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism In-Reply-To: <01BD4903.1A4D3940@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'll go see if I can find his thesis-- I've always thought it more polite, perhaps, not to check these out-- So many graduates are ashamed of their theses-- Best, Katy On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, Gary Sullivan wrote: > Several lines from Watten's MFA thesis, "white yellow" (submitted to the > University of Iowa, early seventies): > > I guess I want this to be > a kind of "Tambourine Life" > but I am not that nervous > Irish mother fucker > who put me down > in Iowa City. > > Someone who has this text on hand, or more-or-less immediate access to it > (Katy?) should quote it verbatim. (The above is nearly word-for-word, but > line-breaks are no doubt wrong & there's maybe a missing word or two.) > > I always wondered whether his (Watten's) sentiment was genuine, there, or not. > Anyone know? > > Gary Sullivan > gps12@columbia.edu > > On Friday, March 06, 1998 12:57 PM, Jacques Debrot [SMTP:JDEBROT@AOL.COM] > wrote: > > Then again, this is how Barrett Watten remembers it in "After Ted" (_Aerial > > 8): "Berrigan's reading of _The Sonnets_ at Langton Street contained some of > > the greatest verbal moments in American language." And, in fact, wasn't it > > Watten himself who curated that event? > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:20:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eric Blarnes Subject: no subject RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING The boys all wanta be teddy bears today in the playpen and bearish girls are gonna growl I wanta man - Eric Blarnes ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:24:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re [private]:"The world has my flesh on" Hi Gary, I'd love a photocopy of the edition you mention -- & of the _Arshille_. You have my s-address, right? Is there anything not available in Butler that you'd like me to photocopy for you from Widener/Lamont? Just let me know. Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:27:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: ooooops!! meant to back-channel last message, sorry. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:28:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks, Katy: But, tentativeness with respect to reading theses? They're written w/the knowledge they'll be more-or-less "available" to the public, & are usually housed in libraries. Journals & letters--*very* private things--might be more worthy of second thoughts prior to looking into . . . thinking back to an earlier thread . . . Yours, Gary On Friday, March 06, 1998 3:17 PM, k. lederer [SMTP:klederer@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU] wrote: > I'll go see if I can find his thesis-- > > I've always thought it more polite, perhaps, not to check these out-- > > So many graduates are ashamed of their theses-- > > Best, > Katy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:10:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: langpo & berrigan (this seems not to have gone thru--my later note re-this post did. so i try again.) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >To:poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu >From:dcmb@metro.net (david bromige) >Subject:langpo & berrigan > >I second Ron Silliman's post this a.m. re this topic. I recall the >Berrigan/Stanley "Grand Piano" reading fairly well--Ted and George were in >the lion's den of langpo in that place and series, amnd it was a huge >audience, we were sitting on the floor, on knees, on laps (just what >you've heard about San Francisco)...It was either that visit or one next >year that Berrigan had a residency or at least a reading at 80 Langton >Street, then the most langpo of institutions. This was equally >well-attended. > >I'm not saying the perception of a langpo/Berrigan oppositive split is >wrong. I would locate it in that wonderful sentence of Frank O'Hara, "When >someone is chasing you down the street with a knife you dont turn round >and shout 'Give it up, I was a track star for Minneola Prep' ". There was >that tough, streetwise, pose among many of the 'children of Frank' aka >2nd gen NY School, and one can see how it could also becom >anti-intellectual, in hands less capable than Berrigan's. Langpos werent >necessarily declaring themselves intellectuals first, poets second, but >many of them were attempting a large-scale renovative program that >demanded systematic analysis of one might call it The Poem Today. > > The NY endeavor also involved a cult of personality, as Ron remarks (more >or less), which was confusing if not offensive to other young poets who >were coping with the Death of the Author. But Berrigan's work displaced >any Lowellean sense of "I". And there was certainly much overlapping of >technique between these tribes. You can appropriate lines from other poets >towards both ends, both kinds of poetry. For what these terms are worth >(and IMHO they fade in usefulness as one approaches specific texts), both >NY further gens and langpo could claim "The Sonnets" as ur-work. I talked >with a seminar somewhere this year about that book, which is considerably >easier to read today than it was in 1964, and for that reason, even more >compelling. Glad to know its coming out with Penguin. > >As a P.S., I'd say that the case of Tom Clark is illustrative here. When >Alan Sondheim posted Clark's poem "you" the other day, I read the header >and remembered a wonderful poem of that title by Clark, and was surprised >to find that he had written another fine poem of the same title. The "You" >I know was in an early book, I think _Stones_ . It has a spacious range >thru its quotings of many poets from several eras; Hoelderlin I think is >much used, and gives a tone to the piece that withstands what is merely >smart-ass. It knocked me out of my tree when I read it and I believed >there would be more to come of that multi-layered risk-taking from Tom >Clark. In the event, I haven't been able to congratulate myself on my >perspicacity on that matter. And in the meantime, Clark has used >intellectual-baiting ((rather than considered engaged argument) in his >journalistic attacks on langpo. > >It's a huge subject. Class attitudes are important in it also. Ted has >that blue-collar tone as part of his poetry's appeal, a 'cut-right-thru' >ability that reminds me of my brother-in-law saying, when he evaluated my >disintegrating '72 Caddy Grand Prix, "there's only so many things you can >do with a Nehru jacket." The brilliance of the American language sometimes >doesnt appear to leave space for dialectical appeals. But Ted went to >college and was omnivorous. I agree with Ron that certain acolytes derived >more import from that tone than Ted himself did. > >But he did remain mindful that in his potential audience would be such >expectations. He wanted to be the greatest, didnt he? If it's true that by >now, only other poets read poetry, then we're all poets' poets, and I >suppose some are poets'-poets' poets. I think Ted was that, but that >wasn't all he was. He broadened his base. Could be that this >hard-to-digest stuff we've been hearing here lately re-moral stands of the >necessarily isolato poet continues this intention to carry The Word to >people who won't read Adorno or Deleuze. But it wouldnt surprise me to >learn Ted had read either. I'm just not aware that he incorporated any of >their material in his poems. David > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:13:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: ashamed of our theses Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Toilet-training leaves a lot to be desired. George Bowering 34768 The Gt. Hiway Spuzzum BC Ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:23:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: ashamed of our theses In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm not sure how to take this witty reply-- I guess, though--to clarify. Turning in a thesis is not the same as publishing-- One has to turn a thesis in order to get the degree-- One does not have to publish a book-- Some of the theses turned in here are, in fact, books (Doug Powell's wonderful book, Tea, just out on Wesleyan, is basically his "thesis"--). Others are simply first attempts at organizing peoms--or compendiums or whatever-- Martin Corless-Smith's thesis is nothing like his recent and incredible book Of Piscator-- etc. Best, Katy On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, david bromige wrote: > Toilet-training leaves a lot to be desired. > > > > > > > > > George Bowering > 34768 The Gt. Hiway > Spuzzum BC Ca > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:25:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua N Schuster Subject: CFP: Other Voices - Psychoanalysis and Culture (5/31; Journal Issue) (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit a friend asked me to forward this to the list. Vance Bell wrote: > > CFP: Other Voices - Psychoanalysis and Culture (5/31; Journal Issue) > > The editors of the electronic journal Other Voices are seeking papers on > Psychoanalysis and Culture for a forthcoming issue of the journal. We are > interested in psychoanalytic interpretations of a variety of cultural > events, relations and artifacts. Papers employing diverse strategies are > welcome; purely theoretical, specifically literary, oppositional or > dialogic. Submissions may address, but are not limited to: > > * psychoanalytic interpretations of cultural artifacts and > manifestations > * the role of psychoanalysis at the end of the century > * cultural/commodity fetishism > * mass or event psychology > * the use of schizoanalysis > * integrating object-relation theory and cultural analysis > * the practice of psychoanalysis > * reviews essays of recent secondary literature > > > Traditional academic essays should generally fall between 3500 and 7000 > words. We are also seeking non-traditional submissions, interviews, > hypertext/multimedia projects and book reviews. > > All submissions are due April 30, 1998. Please email one hard copy and > one electronic copy (floppy disc, or email attachment) to: > > Other Voices > Attn: Vance Bell > P.O. Box 31907 > Philadelphia, PA 19104 > vbell@dept.english.upenn.edu > > Direct all questions/comments to the same. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:16:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: langpo & berrigan (this seems not to have gone thru--my later note re-this post did. so i try again.) In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:10:28 -0800 from On Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:10:28 -0800 david bromige said: >> >>But he did remain mindful that in his potential audience would be such >>expectations. He wanted to be the greatest, didnt he? If it's true that by >>now, only other poets read poetry, then we're all poets' poets, and I >>suppose some are poets'-poets' poets. I think Ted was that, but that >>wasn't all he was. He broadened his base. Could be that this >>hard-to-digest stuff we've been hearing here lately re-moral stands of the >>necessarily isolato poet continues this intention to carry The Word to >>people who won't read Adorno or Deleuze. But it wouldnt surprise me to >>learn Ted had read either. I'm just not aware that he incorporated any of >>their material in his poems. David Remarkable post from DB. Actually Berrigan seems the complete opposite of isolato poet. But perhaps it's not for nothing that this ego lives near the "Cranston Line". I firmly believe I got into college because of Ted Berrigan [my college application included an extended adolescent imitation of "Tambourine Life". I'm sure Jeff Hansen will be happy to dig it up out of Blake School TALISMAN]. So he can't be all anti- intellectual if he gets kids into college. But speaking of carrying the Word - isolato is trying to carry it to all them poet's poet's poet's poet's poet's [infinity] poets who DO read Adorno etc., Lawdy hep em. - Henry Gould >> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:30:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: ashamed of our theses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit And Desire TP leaves, too. Hi, David! See ya Monday with the other Troubadors. Steve david bromige wrote: > Toilet-training leaves a lot to be desired. > > George Bowering > 34768 The Gt. Hiway > Spuzzum BC Ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:34:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: Heybabe (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII what follows is info. about a fiction reading series hosted by Lara Stapleton in New York. For more info. please contact her directly. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:58:58 -0500 (EST) From: LaraStap@aol.com To: Kuszai@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: Heybabe -- as we discussed on the phone, here is the info for my second reading -- in which I'm reading. The first one went well, about forty people, and I think it can only build from here!!!! The Golden Room : A Gathering Place for New York's Finest Young Fiction Writers and Readers To be held the last Saturday of every month at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe. Bring copies of work for a swap table. Our goal is to create a community of writers who believe in interesting work; the subtle, the complex, the absurd. Second Reading: Charlotte Warren and Lara Stapleton 4pm Saturday, March 28th Nuyorican Poets' Cafe 236 E. 3rd St. tw. B & C (take the F to 2nd Ave.) $6 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:51:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: ashamed of our theses In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > I'm not sure how to take this witty reply-- > > I guess, though--to clarify. > > Turning in a thesis is not the same as publishing-- > > One has to turn a thesis in order to get the degree-- > > One does not have to publish a book-- > Well, to my knowledge no one has ever been forced to get a degree, either. DZauhar ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 17:48:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Shoemaker Subject: Re: reznikoff's girder take 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well this little mini-thread may have completely unspooled by now, BUT I think one way of looking at the Rez poem is as being about *survival*. It's one of the ones Oppen remembered when he was lying in the foxhole, wounded, among some others who were dead. Was it "anti-democratic" of Oppen to be alive? He *did* feel guilty, but there it was, a fact. dizzily, steve-with-an-inner-ear-infection ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 17:05:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: In Memoriam MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE; BOUNDARY="Boundary_(ID_vPrH/ktKY05MwT3orDnM9Q)" This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_vPrH/ktKY05MwT3orDnM9Q) Content-type: text/plain In Memoriam Ronald Johnson, 1935-1998 In ark-dive, grey encomium. Grey imperium of the all-day rust-dawn -ed day. If amen, then a willow & its sibilance too. Or water bluster in stone-cracked creek. Force of lone stone empty on an earth swept wide. And stricken by late winter-sun-and-lance. By this tide, great gong: ever-and-a-going gone. We go so -- in measure- less tread, dividing song from wing. Particle-cleave, (parousia) your run is ended. A nascent valence resumes. Foremost among foot- falls and sober in Elysium to be going if light there is ever sober or windonsea any- thing but claritas, supra urbem, supra sapientia, bells building spire on spire in the true font of soul+s un- encrypted in- scription. (Hover a while. Breathe this and be glad of it. Patrick Pritchett --Boundary_(ID_vPrH/ktKY05MwT3orDnM9Q) Content-type: text/html

In Memoriam

                Ronald Johnson, 1935-1998


In ark-dive,
grey encomium.
Grey imperium of
the all-day rust-dawn
 -ed day.
If amen, then a willow
& its sibilance too.
Or water bluster
in stone-cracked creek.
Force of lone stone empty
on an earth swept
wide.
And stricken by
late winter-sun-and-lance.
By this tide, great gong:
ever-and-a-going
gone.
We go so -- in measure-
less tread, dividing
song from wing.
Particle-cleave, (parousia)
your run is ended.
A nascent valence
resumes.
Foremost among foot-
falls and sober
in Elysium to be going
if light there is ever sober
or windonsea any-
thing but claritas,
supra urbem, supra sapientia,
bells building spire
on spire in the true
font of soul+s un-
encrypted in-
scription.

        (Hover a while.
        Breathe this and be glad
        of  it.

Patrick Pritchett

--Boundary_(ID_vPrH/ktKY05MwT3orDnM9Q)-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:02:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: ashamed of our theses In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Boring.... On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, David Zauhar wrote: > On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > > > I'm not sure how to take this witty reply-- > > > > I guess, though--to clarify. > > > > Turning in a thesis is not the same as publishing-- > > > > One has to turn a thesis in order to get the degree-- > > > > One does not have to publish a book-- > > > Well, to my knowledge no one has ever been forced to get a degree, > either. > > DZauhar > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:42:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John Norton (650-506-2834)" Subject: CrossConnect Web 'zine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi all, I want to call your attention to CrossConnect, a tri-quarterly electronic magazine of contemporary writing based at U. of Penn. You can find the current issue at the following URL: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/xconnect/ FYI, I have a couple of pieces in it. Regards-- John Norton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:20:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Berrigan's bedfellows MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tom Beckett wrote: > At its best, Berrigan's work stands up there with anyone's. At its worst, it > tends toward some of the same self-indulgences Bukowski practiced--a kind of > formulaic sensationalism that can be fun to read but analogous to the "empty > calories" of ________(Fill in the blank with your favorite junk commestible Hmm, not new formalists but new formulaic sensationalists! I might just enlist--any relation to Ashbery's sect of "ascetic sensualists" with its eleven funerals? I do think comparing Bukowski with Berrigan (even at his weakest) is pretty wide of the mark, even though they're both dead. Apparently I haven't been able to lure Pierre out of lurkerdom long enough to name his favorite bad poets. No intent (at all) to tweak him--I really wanted to know (and think this would be an important clue to the work of any significant writer). My point was a serious one, and it's that we don't learn only where we think we SHOULD learn. That learning, perhaps a bit like "falling in love," is cheerfully random, and makes for odd bedfellows. I only wish Berrigan's catholicity of taste were more fashionable today--inbreeding, seems to me, makes for pale and squeamish poetry. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 08:39:50 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism In-Reply-To: <19983673138611478@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A couple more notes. Ron S. remarks in his first post that Ted B would have disapproved of certain kinds of attention, and thus former students have not written as much about him as about others. First, I don't think Ted objected to attention to either his poetry or his person, and second, there is actually an enormous memoir literature about Ted, as well as the Scalapino interview book and the Joel Lewis lectures book, so that I would say he is reasonably well documented. Don't getme wrong, I would be overjoyed to have a collected complete poems, I would be interested in published volumes or selections from Ted's notebooks/journals, and I would love to read a biography ala Unterecker on Hart Crane or a critical study like Perloff onO'Hara. But among non-academic post WWII poets, besides Ginsberg, O'Hara, Spicer, Snyder, Baraka and Ashbery, who has received more attention? Second, there has been some surprise about Ted's liking for certain academic poets (the Wilbur poem Ted told me he liked was the one about laundry, in which the line "Love calls us to the things of this world" appears, I think) and some discussion whether "language poets" approved of him or not. First, the Berrigan of the language poets (author of The Sonnets) is not everybody's Berrigan. Second, among the poets whose work Ted did not like so much were several important language ancestors, e.g., Jackson MacLow and Louis Zukofsky. Partly this was Ted responding to the downtown fashions around the time he first "came on the scene," and partly because he did his real appropriations (not lines, but structural ideas) from these guys -- he said that Jackson was too serious about himself and that Zukofsky's Catullus wasn't funny, when it ought to have been. But at least the education I absorbed from Ted, after the obvious like Denby O'Hara Schuyler Whalen Hollo Ashbery, was tilted towards certain academic poets -- F.T. Prince and not Richard Howard -- and based on the idea that if you could get away with it, it was better to be influenced by and steal from Shakespeare than Ezra Pound. In philosphy, Ted read assiduously and was influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, not some jackoff German or Frenchman! Finally, how about Bean Spasms (the book)? That book is totally great! Why doesn't somebody reprint it! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 21:47:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: ashamed of our theses In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > Boring.... Gee, I'm sorry: how 'bout this: look at a thesis as an extremely limited edition of your work. Dave Zauhar, the typhoid mary of narcolepsy > On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, David Zauhar wrote: > > > On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > > > > > I'm not sure how to take this witty reply-- > > > > > > I guess, though--to clarify. > > > > > > Turning in a thesis is not the same as publishing-- > > > > > > One has to turn a thesis in order to get the degree-- > > > > > > One does not have to publish a book-- > > > > > Well, to my knowledge no one has ever been forced to get a degree, > > either. > > > > DZauhar > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 23:19:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Shoemaker Subject: Re: "The world has my flesh on" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The speculations on Berrigan's class background that have come up seem to me pretty fruitful ones. But this connection between his "lower class" status and "thievery" has come up a couple of times now--and without wanting to sound righteous or anything, it has always seemed to be that the wealthy do the best stealing. You may not notice the book missing from your shelf--it probably just didn't get written in the first place. steve At 01:06 PM 3/6/98 -0500, you wrote: >Hi, Erik: > >Sorry, I should have back-channeled you the Sonnets ordering info. I'll keep my >eyes peeled for another. "Some dim frieze," which opens the book, refers to >something Berrigan saw on the Columbia University campus, so in return, >Columbia will pick up the tab if you'd like a photocopy of that edition in the >meantime. (Or, if any of the "crows" want one.) Just lemme know. I also have >the poems from Arshille, if you want a photocopy of that. > >Of course, it doesn't finally matter what lines are from where, so long as the >poem works. But, it's also interesting, interesting to me anyway, to think of >his thievery in the contexts of: (a) his class & the extent to which his >aesthetic impulses might be thought of as class-based; and (b) what his >prolific re-use of others's lines (including his own) means in terms of how he >experienced language: "The world has my flesh on," as Vincent Ferrini once >wrote. I think this ties in very nicely with another sub-thread on this list: >His openness to a relatively wide spectrum of poetries. That's a specific form >of being, a particular way of moving through the world, & through the world of >letters. > >I'm going to see the woman who runs Pomander Books tonight & so I'll see if I >can get the name of the crow who swept off with your _Sonnets_--then you or I >can build an altar or whatever & Berrigan's ghost (which truly will never die) >will go beat him or her up. > >Have fun, > >Gary Sullivan >gps12@columbia.edu > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 23:09:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: re : the typhoid mary of narcolepsy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I propose we give the self-characterization of the week award to dave zauhar for the above. Not that it's accurate to him, but it's accurate to someone, maybe someone you havent met yet. It's wild! As my teenager says, "Cool". Woody Allen will appropriate it, I suppose : "Wh-wh-who you think I am? Y-y--you treat me like I'm the . . ." But he should pay dave zauhar a lot of money for its use. Thank you, Dave! David ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 10:35:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: berriganagain/sacred cows? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I'm hardly anti-fun & I'm not anti-Berrigan. However, biography is put to use as part of Berrigan's poetic methodology. Sometimes the results are sublime, but the pitfalls are there to be seen. Bukowski and Berrigan--I don't want to belabor this. TB's obviously the better writer. There is, however, a broad comparison to be made on the basis of the presentation of self in the work. Bukowski: I woke up, threw up, drank a beer, went to the track, got laid, threw up, drank a beer...etc. Berrigan: I woke up, drank a Pepsi, popped some pills, did this, did that, drank a Pepsi, popped some pills, etc. Sometimes a manner comes to matter too much and gets in the way. I was pointing to this when I used the phrase "formulaic sensationalism." Wrapping his work with his biography makes it difficult to criticize the work without seeming to criticize the author. I think that this is a modest but important point. Berrigan took a lot of risks --in his work and in his life. He wasn't always successful. Who is? Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 16:44:05 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: npr petitions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I'm fairly sure the pubcasting petitions being circulated on this list = are about 4 years old (and thus no longer applicable). NPR has acutally = had its appropriations for 1999-2000 *increased*... throne a bone as it = were for that new-and-smooth *fresh* sound, hieghtened awareness of the = major issues facing corporate America (half of peak-time newscasts set = aside for "the business report"), and its general improved understanding = of which side of its bread is buttered. Newt's threat brought NPR to hee= l even if it didn't kill it. (Not that it was stirringly better beforehan= d.) Lovingly, Martin _________________________________________ Martin Spinelli SUNY Buffalo English Department Granolithic Productions spinelli@pavilion.co.uk LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak ENGAGED http://www.engaged.demon.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 11:37:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael McColl Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Subject: Berrigan/Thievery/Acker MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Just curious--what is it that Kathy Acker's fiction was taken up by some critics and championed precisely because she "plagiarized," attacked the idea of the "true, original voice," etc. while the dis- cussion of Berrigan seems to suggest that he is somehow still under suspicion of having committed crimes. Also, I think it's good to remember when these issues come up that way back when in English poetry (please, someone with a bit of scholarship, help me out here) it was accepted practice to take over a line of poetry from a contemporary and rewrite it for your own poem. Mike McColl ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 07:52:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: reading Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Douglas Messerli and Chris Reiner will be reading at Canessa Park Art Center on Sunday at 4:00 in San Francisco. That's March 8th. If you're in San Francisco, see you there! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 14:21:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: ted & langpo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i do feel there was mutual respect between ted & many of the language poets --why invite him to 80 langton street, just to harass him. the idea that langpoets where hostile to ted is part tom clark's comments and part of the politics around the po project in the early 80's. there was a great deal of hostility between ted'd accolytes and langpoets in those days. in those days, wed readings would team up a st, mark's poet and a lnag poet (i remember elinor nauen & diane ward as an example). Depending on who read first, there would be a walkout by many of the followers of teh first reader. this was repeated in smaller venues and earinn had entirely different audeinces based on who was curating the series. in addition to poetry wars, there were style clashes. st. marks poets where still doing mimeo books, while language poets had moved onto perfect bound books and mags. there was a vast economic difference--many st. marks poets had no visible means of support, while some langauge poets, like james sherry, worked day gigs and a poet Bruce Andrew was a tenured professor. and then there was politics--st. marks ranged from apolitical to a nostalgic romanticism for the poet-warriors of nicaragua/ laanguage poetry was fairly identified with neo-marxism and post-structuralism. and then there was cultural prefernces -- while many st markers where forming punk bands, poets like charles b. & bruce a. where working with zorn, sally silvers, arakawa & others ted did not get that involved with much of the above. i do remeber that he like l=a=ng magazine & that he marked up his copies of poetics journal and was engaging the work of writers like barret watten. it is worth tracking down (or someone reprinting) the whole of the pritikin 80 lang st report (that was published in their annual summaries) that gives the flavor of the residency that seems equal parts of ted poking and trying to statrt arguements and folks like barret trying to engage him. joel lewis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 13:04:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: ted & langpo In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was one of the ear curators when a young language poet (I forget who) took over some of the saturdays (I think it was saturdays--age creepeth...). What you say about the different audiences is certainly true, and it didn't matter who was reading. I regularly had Jackson read. Only one or two language poets would show up. Likewise for Wieners and others. This was mysterious to me. The well-defined avant-garde that existed in NY before the advent of language poetry didn't seem to interest the langpo crowd except when it was on its own turf. Of course, the explanation may be as simple as the social reality of an ongoing series as a floating party--if you know the host you get to hang out with a predictable crowd of friends. >there was a great deal of hostility between ted'd accolytes and langpoets >in those days. in those days, wed readings would team up a st, mark's poet >and a lnag poet (i remember elinor nauen & diane ward as an example). >Depending on who read first, there would be a walkout by many of the >followers of teh first reader. this was repeated in smaller venues and >earinn had entirely different audeinces based on who was curating the >series. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 14:04:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Travis Andrew Ortiz Subject: Atelos / The Literal World by Jean Day Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Literal World by Jean Day Atelos, a newly founded publishing project, announces the publication of _The Literal World_ by Jean Day. About the book: In response to a commission from Atelos, Jean Day has written a sequence of poems exploring the public and private worlds of vernacular adventure. Entitled _The Literal World_, the book's sections play off various American genres -- Protestant sermons (and the idea of a lost paradise), Lewis and Clark's journals of exploration, and the Western among them. As contributions to the invention of American identity, these genres constitute formative narratives -- accounts of an America its 'fathers and mothers' sought to create. As a private parallel to the experience of this public view, Day concludes The Literal World with a section entitled "Narratives from the Crib" -- offering an intimate but wry, tender but individualistic (and hence quintessentially American), account by an infant of the person he or she is meant someday to be. Using experimental techniques, and informed by a wide range of historical and philosophical detail, the poetry in this book is about the very expectations it challenges. The result is 'the literal world' that is named in the title -- an adventure in the sublimities of invention. About the author: Jean Day grew up in Rhode Island and moved to San Francisco in the mid-1970s. She is the author of four previous books of poetry (_Linear C_, _Flat Birds_, _A Young Recruit_, _The I and the You_) and the recipient of grants from the California Arts Council and the Fund for Poetry. Her own works have been translated into Finnish, Swedish, Russian, French, and Spanish, and her translations of works by the contemporary Russian poet, Nadezhda Kondakova, have appeared in anthologies. She lives in Berkeley, California, where she works as Associate Editor for the journal _Representations_. About the project: Atelos was founded in 1995, as a project of Hip's Road and devoted to publishing, under the sign of poetry, writing which challenges the conventional definitions of poetry, since such definitions have tended to isolate it from intellectual life, arrest its development, and curtail its impact. All the works published as part of the Atelos project are commissioned specifically for it, and each is involved in some way with crossing traditional genre boundaries, including, for example, those that would separate theory from practice, poetry from prose, essay from drama, the visual image from the verbal, the literary from the non-literary, and so forth. The Atelos project when complete will consist of 50 volumes. The project directors and editors are Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz; the director for production and design is Ree Hall. Ordering information: _The Literal World_ may be ordered from Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710-1403; phone 510-524-1668 or toll-free 800-869-7553; e-mail: spd@igc.apc.org. Or, it may be ordered directly from Atelos, P. O. Box 5814, Berkeley, CA 94705-0814; e-mail: ortiz@ncgate.newcollege.edu. Title: _The Literal World_ Author: Jean Day Price: $12.95 Pages: 102 ISBN: 1-891190-01-6 Coming Soon: _Bad History_, by Barrett Watten _True_, by Rae Armantrout _Cable Factory 20_, by Lytle Shaw _Pamela: A Novel_, by Pamela Lu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 16:21:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Can someone back channel with Melissa Wolsak's e-address. I'd be much obliged. Tom B. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 16:13:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: berriganagain/sacred cows? In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 7 Mar 1998 10:35:07 EST from On Sat, 7 Mar 1998 10:35:07 EST TBeck131 said: > >Wrapping his work with his biography makes it difficult to criticize the work >without seeming to criticize the author. I think that this is a modest but >important point. Berrigan took a lot of risks --in his work and in his life. >He wasn't always successful. Who is? Seems like every poet establishes a unique relation between work & biography. Look at Villon, for example. One would think a poet who is self-indulgent and exhibitionist & self-centered is taking the risk of making the work dependent on the personality & the immediate local, so that it will soon fade from interest. But the reason Villon remains of interest is he brings the 13th century or whatever to life just by being so narrowly focused on what he's doing & egotistical about it. I know this is an exaggeration & Villon remains interesting basically because he was a great lyric poet & craftsman of the ballads of his time. Mandelstam has a whole essay about Villon's curiously impersonal sense of his own person. I am not gonna compare Berrigan & Villon at the moment; just that these issues are really complicated & every reader of poetry has the same problem quantum physicists do in "taking measurements": their shadow gets in the way of the lens. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 13:24:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Lucas Subject: ronald johnson I'd like to invite those interested in submitting work for a section on Ronald Johnson in my magazine ANGLE. The work can either be poetry, short essays, apprecitions, etc. If I recieve enough work I may do a special issue rather than just a section. There is a deadline of June 1st. I look forward to hearing from anyone out there regarding this. Thanks! Brian Lucas Angle 253 Rose St San Francisco CA 94102 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 18:43:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: love in the air again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Famished on claim in repeat-lock bloat code in- duct error, really stuffed up, genuinely courting the brim, chock-full. Hope's blossoming everywhere, sprayed like a pledge in the Schoolyard, zoom at n-rate via bent detail-boost iuxta Dentures On Dashboard glide through browse out. Blank. The flitter of earth in her subsides, routed per disin- fected depiction, back to arrest and staleness. Blink. She's bribed to mix with fucked air flaccid exit-drive 1!, planet-averting. Frayed shame trails back at her wing, blacked out its former peach, altmodisch. It is not lust for arrayed rot or its fanzine idyll never (wait) what figures her smacked-up repetition as (2) cramp pasted (3) dead on her knees say please and revert. Today Only. Raindrops pall and patter on addicted gravel, simplified, they're a load of libation vouchers. Shacked up re: ex gun-ho wish n Degeneracy-End floss (wait) re: that over and over and over, in a prank of (WAIT) picted alliance with over allayed redress, we wept and made love then in the cove-mouth. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 22:01:49 -0500 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: ronald johnson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brian: Would you be interested in previously published material? One of my mathematical poems was a tribute to Ronald. It's been published in several zines and is now up at Karl Young's Light & Dust site at: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm I'd be really pleased if you could use it in your magazine--but would understand if not. All best, Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 22:36:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Ahearn Subject: Re: Looking for input on talk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hey Tim, I have been having computer problems and am just now getting to this. I'll be galad to help out if there is anything specific that I can help with. Best, joe At 07:11 PM 3/3/98 -0600, you wrote: >I've been asked to give a talk this summer to help poets try to understand >what publishers are looking for, etc. I'm planning to push it a little bit >and, where appropriate, talk from the opposite view point: how publishers >(primarily those of periodicals such as journals) can do a better job of >communicating to potential submitters. I would love any suggestions any of >you might have on points, nits & grand schemes to make sure I hit. > >thanks, >Tim > > >______________________________________________________________ >Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com > >poetry is the shock of insight's drive-by > > Joe Ahearn _____________ joeah@mail.airmail.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 23:06:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: Looking for input on talk In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19980307223736.480716fe@mail.airmail.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just may avail myself of that offer. thanks, Tim At 10:36 PM 3/7/98 -0600, you wrote: >Hey Tim, > >I have been having computer problems and am just now getting to this. I'll >be galad to help out if there is anything specific that I can help with. > >Best, >joe > > >At 07:11 PM 3/3/98 -0600, you wrote: >>I've been asked to give a talk this summer to help poets try to understand >>what publishers are looking for, etc. I'm planning to push it a little bit >>and, where appropriate, talk from the opposite view point: how publishers >>(primarily those of periodicals such as journals) can do a better job of >>communicating to potential submitters. I would love any suggestions any of >>you might have on points, nits & grand schemes to make sure I hit. >> >>thanks, >>Tim >> >> >>______________________________________________________________ >>Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com >> >>poetry is the shock of insight's drive-by >> >> > > > >Joe Ahearn >_____________ >joeah@mail.airmail.net > > > > ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 00:20:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Logan M Esdale Subject: copytext MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII could someone inform on the location of the 1892 PARADISE LOST Ronald Johnson used for and in RADI OS ? i have heard that much of Johnson's work has already been archived somewhere in kansas, and therefore it may be there, but don't know that for sure or where exactly that archive is. and could someone back channel Peter O'Leary's address. thanks -- LE ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 01:10:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Berrigan/i'm smiling In-Reply-To: <01IUBF96EP3Y95SO8C@ACS.WOOSTER.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Go ahead and set yourself up as Berrigan's Defender. I never labelled >>anybody. I said Berrigan combined art and life, formality & informality, >>by letting the GRUNGE of street life seep into his work, the gritty, >>GRUNGY street-life of Providence, Worcester, New York, Tulsa, wherever >>it may be found (it's even in Minneapolis). I don't think Berrigan would >>disagree, myself. I find GRUNGY to be a fine evocative word for the >>GRUNGE I am talking about. > >butit's easy to loose people who may not know better That's okay. Why tie them up if they want to be free? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 10:06:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Murdochworld has my flesh on In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980307041942.0066d564@pop.wfu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Take, for instance, Murdoch kabashing a book critical of China because he is trying to expand his empire there. Steven M. On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, Steve Shoemaker wrote: > The speculations on Berrigan's class background that have come up seem to > me pretty fruitful ones. But this connection between his "lower class" > status and "thievery" has come up a couple of times now--and without wanting > to sound righteous or anything, it has always seemed to be that the wealthy > do the best stealing. You may not notice the book missing from your > shelf--it probably just didn't get written in the first place. steve > > > > At 01:06 PM 3/6/98 -0500, you wrote: > >Hi, Erik: > > > >Sorry, I should have back-channeled you the Sonnets ordering info. I'll keep my > >eyes peeled for another. "Some dim frieze," which opens the book, refers to > >something Berrigan saw on the Columbia University campus, so in return, > >Columbia will pick up the tab if you'd like a photocopy of that edition in the > >meantime. (Or, if any of the "crows" want one.) Just lemme know. I also have > >the poems from Arshille, if you want a photocopy of that. > > > >Of course, it doesn't finally matter what lines are from where, so long as the > >poem works. But, it's also interesting, interesting to me anyway, to think of > >his thievery in the contexts of: (a) his class & the extent to which his > >aesthetic impulses might be thought of as class-based; and (b) what his > >prolific re-use of others's lines (including his own) means in terms of how he > >experienced language: "The world has my flesh on," as Vincent Ferrini once > >wrote. I think this ties in very nicely with another sub-thread on this list: > >His openness to a relatively wide spectrum of poetries. That's a specific form > >of being, a particular way of moving through the world, & through the world of > >letters. > > > >I'm going to see the woman who runs Pomander Books tonight & so I'll see if I > >can get the name of the crow who swept off with your _Sonnets_--then you or I > >can build an altar or whatever & Berrigan's ghost (which truly will never die) > >will go beat him or her up. > > > >Have fun, > > > >Gary Sullivan > >gps12@columbia.edu > > > > > __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 11:15:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: warsh/equi reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Monday March 9th at 7:30 pm, Lewis Warsh and Elaine Equi will be reading at KGB (85 East 4th Street, NYC, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) Admission is free. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 11:12:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbuuck Subject: address inquiry Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm looking for up-to-date address or email info for the following: jen hofer jeff derkson maria galvez-breton back-channel is fine. many thanks-- david buuck ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 15:12:08 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Doublespace A week or so ago there were a couple of posts regarding my book _Doublespace_. Patrick Pritchett and Jacques Debrot had raised some questions about the form of the book. I had hoped to reply sooner, but was unable to. _Doublespace: Poems 1971-1989_ (Segue, 1992, 192 pages) is an odd book. It opens in two directions, is _not_ a collected or selected, but is instead a deliberately made book in a conflicted or multiple manner, including under one cover seemingly incompatible modes of writing, from more "mainstream" narratives & lyrics to a range of more fragmented and collaged material. Book Two, which consists of three sections including the eight poem cycle of Law-Poems (which incorporates material from the Alabama Legal Code), opens (like a Hebrew book) from the back and moves inward to blank middle. I've written at some length about _Doublespace_ (in the Gale Research autobiography series, Volume 27), so I don't want to repeat all that's there, but will excerpt a few passages. Various blurbers-- back cover includes statements by Susan Howe and David Ignatow--have different takes on the book. I'll cite two responses that didn't get on the book jacket. George Starbuck wrote, "I was handed this as a finest, newest specimen of 'Language' Poetry, which it is, which it is. And I had been wondering if 'Language' 'Poetry' would be getting over its Molierian amazement at itself. And so I trudged, clambored, sauntered, stooped, for a long ways, tracking H Lazer's ingenuities and discoveries, a long way into it all before I woke up to where (and how) I had been taken. What a lovely, capacious, populous poem- of-America surrounded me. Hailed me, corralled me, jargoned at me. Jazzy and matter-of-factly apocalyptic." David Antin writes that _Doublespace_ "appears to present two ways of thinking and working that contend for the same (doubled space): a modernist way the way of collage that fragments and assembles langauge registers and styles in a junkyard of mediated texts, and an older narrative way taht tracks its meaning through life experience under the fitful lights of memory and desire; moving from right to left like Hebrew or left to right like English, the two ways refuse to blend, each exhibiting its own excellences and insufficiencies." None of which answers Patrick and Jacques's questions about the blank section in the middle, which for me represents a period of three years of writing which I've thrown away, writing which allowed me to move away from modes of Book One and begin the work of Book Two. (Though now I do not feel such a separation.) The structure of the overall book poses various questions: are the modes of reading for Book One at all compatible with Book Two? once sincerity has been understood as a trick of rhetoric, what contexts remain available for personal expressiveness? _Doublespace_ was the first book of poetry that I had published. I was 42 when it appeared. The book will soon go out of print. List price is $12. If you'd like a copy, I'll sell what I have for $9 each (which includes postage). If you want to order a copy, please back-channel me at hlazer@as.ua.edu Make checks payable to Hank Lazer / 2945 N. Hampton Dr. / Tuscaloosa, AL 35406-2701. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 16:31:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: *Berrigan / self / writing / Bernstein Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" As long as everybody remembers to associate Pepsi and Gem Spa with Berrigan, everything should keep moving nicely. The brand name in poetry, there's a study for an enterprising MBA/PhD. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always read Charles Bernstein's remark that "It's a mistake to posit the self as the center of one's writing" (I think I must have butchered that) as a remix of Ted Berrigan's apparently self-centered project. Looking today at Reading at Berkeley (picked up at St Marks for $15 -- a year into my and Larry Fagin's bookstore boostering and they're still keeping the poetry shelf stocked -- if you're in town, stop by and smile, maybe even find the nerve to mention how good the section is to the staff) and I can't help but think Berrigan was as much influenced by Olson's public persona as by Whalen's poetics. Human Universe made it onto at least one of Ted's Top Ten Books of the Year poems. Bigman? At any rate, someone to contend with -- poetry as friendly competition? Re: Tom Beckett's freaky connection of Berrigan with Bukowski; sure, and Patchen and Ferlinghetti and cummings and Corso and Brautigan.. but Berrigan is a lighter touch, becomes available to people later in their lives, no way could I have read Berrigan and got it at 14 (in 1984) the way I got Ferlinghetti (and Patchen?), or for that matter a year or so later, Paul Violi.. or Edwin Denby and Fiona Templeton a year or so after that.. and Tom Raworth. If you have to compare artists in terms of their "projects", in terms of what, for each, was the deal, then there's a little Matisse in Ted, that art should be comforting? and also Olson (the Tony Door side of Olson, not the Susan Howe side), that the poet is always "on". am I really saying Berrigan shouldn't be thought of as a "gateway drug"? Kim Lyons' poem "Eon" in the Jarnot/Schwartz/Stroffolino anthology is where I point you today. Love, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 18:17:05 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: *Berrigan / self / writing / Bernstein Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit yes, very much Olson and Berrigan, I see them very differently but they were both very much into the technique of writing, possibly Berrigan didn't express this as much as Olson but I see it there. I would love to get more on what Olson and Berrigan talked about all night on that park bench in Buffalo, I KNOW that there are some people on this list who know all about it! so tell... Jordan, in almost every picture of Berrigan I have seen there is a Pepsi can lingering somewhere near bye, well what can I say, Coke doesn't taste as great, they probably should have left the cocaine in ...!! P.S. anyone know any real good places to go in New Mexico, I will be visiting there soon and have never been to the Southwest or anywhere really away from New York State so let me know where to go what to see, I will be there the week of March 13-20, back channel me then thanks all, erik ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 17:50:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Steve McCaffery shafted Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Listmates, Steve McCaffery has been shafted -- seriously so -- for the second time in one y ear by Temple University. Last fall, the English Department at Temple conducted a major search for a poet, bringing in applications from many major writers, including several on this list, before sel ecting Steve for a tenure track position. Then the Department learned that funding for the position would not be made available and Steve was dehired. As appalling as that scenario was, this wasn't the first time that Temple has done this. Andrew Levy, I believe, was on the receiving end of a virtually ident ical set of circumstances a couple of years ago. And, as friends of Douglas Messerli and Dav id Bradley know, Temple also has a track record of being less than good to the writers it does ha ve, once it employs them. To be hired and then "dehired" by a school is a totally disruptive act for the p erson who is treated like so much chattel. In addition to the sheer psychic abuse, it also takes the write r off the market during precisely the period when other, alternative academic jobs might become availabl e. Apparently, the department realized that poets of McCaffery's stature aren't jus t sitting around on trees and an effort was made to secure the budget line and undo the damage creat ed by the original dehiring. Steve was finally hired and set to arrive in Philadelphia in June. MIT Press is even advertising him as Associate Professor of English at Temple in his ads for Imagi ning Language (an anthology he co-edited with Jed Rasula that is due out later this Spring). At l east, this was the scenario until, as I understand it, the president learned of an appointment and again stopped it cold. The rationale behind stopping the appointment is that the school's enrollment ha s dropped some nine percent. But, given Temple's treatment of faculty, and especially of poets, this is sort of a "duh" kind of an excuse. The amazing thing is that Temple's enrollment hasn't dropped much further, given the active role the administration seems to be taking in driving good teachers and s tudents away. I haven't spoken with Steve or Karen -- only with students and faculty literally spitting with anger and frustration over this -- but my understanding is that when they left for a tempo rary gig in the UK, they gave up their apartment in Toronto and may even have turned down real work under the illusion that Temple meant what it said in hiring Steve. What can be done? There are different opinions. Some think that the university administration has so screwed up that it can be shamed into reversing itself this time. That's the opt imistic view. Presuming, for the moment, optimism, people should write letters to the followin g administrators: Peter Liacouras President 2nd Floor, Sullivan Hall Temple University Philadelphia, PA 19122 Susan Albertine Vice President for Undergraduate Studies 4th Floor, Conwell Hall Temple University Philadelphia, PA 19122 Corinne Caldwell Acting Provost 4th Floor, Conwell Hall Temple University Philadelphia, PA 19122 People should stress the following: Temple University will not reverse enrollment declines by deepening a reputation as a place that good students and teachers should avoid. Teaching positions are not where economies s hould be taken if increasing enrollment is a serious concern. (In my line of work, the company tha t spends 15 percent of revenues on SG&A -- sales and administration -- goes out of business; I'd lov e to see how much Temple spends.) Steve McCaffery is not a yo-yo. He's a major poet with an international reputati on earned over decades of innovative work. At the height of his career. Go into detail about wh at this means. Folks on the wr-eye-tings list ought to think about having Steve on tenure track at a major school would mean for contemporary vizpo, not to mention performance poetry etc etc. Steve McCaffery would prove especially inspiring to undergraduate students (an a rea of particular sensitivity here). Anybody who took a course with him at Buffalo or elsewhere wo uld have great credence. Frankly, I think that anyone who's ever seen read in person knows that this would be true. I'd also appreciate it if anyone who sends a letter would send me a copy. Thanks, Ron Silliman 262 Orchard Road Paoli, PA 19301 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 16:28:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Berrigan/Bukowski/biography MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Bukowski: I woke up, threw up, drank > a beer, went to the track, got laid, threw up, drank a beer...etc. Berrigan: > I woke up, drank a Pepsi, popped some pills, did this, did that, drank a > Pepsi, popped some pills, etc. Yes, clearly a similar sort of reportage goes on. But inside the poems (I think Tom would agree) these reports function in a very different way. Bukowski's posture is heroic and the details are there to document his (vomit-spattered) glory. In Berrigan the details are folded in as a sort of counterpoint. They are dull, they are giddily romantic, they don't want only one thing for the poem. Some first thoughts anyway-- Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 19:48:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Kirschenbaum Subject: Workplace Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY TO ACADEMIC LISTS *N*O*W *A*V*A*I*L*A*B*L*E (free free free) www.workplace-gsc.com a WEBsite+ an electronic JOURNAL+ a place to get DATES W~O~R~K~P~L~A~C~E a _peer-reviewed_ journal addressing the political historical and aesthetic conditions of a/c/a/d/e/m/i/c l/a/b/o/r in north america *brought to you by the graduate.student.caucus an allied organization of the modern.language.assocation www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com Workplace 1.1 ( Feb. 1998) www.workplace-gsc.com www. workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com Foreword by Marc Bousquet: "The degree holder is the waste product of a job system that produces Ph.D holders but does not use them. In language and literature more than any other field the teaching machine runs on non-degreed labor. . . ." F^E^A^T^U^R^E^S "What Hath English Wrought" by Cary Nelson: "The astonished gaze that MLA casts on recent history suggests the windswept visage of a profession no longer in control of its fate. Eyes bulging, the figure is nearly swept away by forces it cannot comprehend. In stark terror at their oncoming fury, it dares not turn to glance at their destination. . . ." "This Old House: Renovating CUNY's House of Labor" by Barbara Bowen "The Future of an Illusion" by Christian Gregory "Unionizing Against Cutbacks" by Paul Lauter "What is an Organization like the MLA?" by Steve Watt "Resistance is Fruitful: Coalition-building in Ontario" by Victoria Smallman www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com I^N^T^E^R^V^I^E^W "Jobless Higher Ed: An interview with Stanley Aronowitz" by Andrew Long www.workplace-gsc.com www. workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com F^O^R^U^M !~! Organizing Our Asses Off !~! "Cannibals, Star Trek, and Egg-timers" by Anthony M. Navarrette and Kate Burns, UCSD "Unions, Universities, and the State of Texas" by Kirsten Christensen and Ray Watkins, UT-Austin "5,000 Down, 200,000 to Go: Organizing City University of New York" by Eric Marshall, CUNY "Critical Year" by Ed Fox and Curtis Anderson, Indiana U. "What's Next? Organizing After the COGS Union Affiliation Vote" by Julie Schmid, U. Iowa "Institutional Memory and Changing Membership" A Response by Alan Kalish, Indiana U. "Beyond the Campus Gates: The Personal is Still Political" A Response by Vinny Tirelli, City U. New York "Organizing Democracy:" A Response by Karen Thompson, Rutgers U. www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com C^O^N^V^E^N^T^I^O^N R^E^P^O^R^T^S MLA Annual Convention, Toronto, Canada, December 1997 by Mark Kelley, CUNY Graduate School 6th National GTA Conference, Minneapolis, November 1997 by Alan Kalish, Indiana University www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com P^E^R^S^O^N^A^L C^R^I^T^I^C^I^S^M "Looking Forward In Anger" by Barbara White "The Good Professors of Szechuan" by Gregory Myerson: "Until last spring, I was assistant professor of critical theory at UNCG. I didn't get tenure. Now I'm unemployed and competing with my students for one-year jobs around town. . . ." "Performing Shakespeare: Writing and Literacy on the Job" by Leo Parascondola: "I arranged to take the test for bus operator, and I began a 21-year odyssey in a public conveyance around the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. . . ." www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com D^A^T^E^S Fight rationalization by filing a WORKPLACE personal ad (free) services available at the website discounted book purchases hot links to academic labor and student orgs. personals FREE FREE FREE classified listings FREE FREE FREE www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com Future Issues of _Workplace_: Oct '98 1:2 The Melodrama of Difference: The University in Tiers Issue Editor: Tony O'Brien, Queens College, CUNY. Feb '99 2:1 The Political is the Personal: Life Narratives of Academic Labor. Issue Editor: Cheryl Torsney, West Virginia University Oct '99 2:2 Academic Labor, Social Policy, and the Law. Issue Editor, Randy Martin, Pratt Institute Feb '00 3:1 Political Economy and Higher Ed. Pedagogies. Issue Editor: Wendy Hesford, Indiana University. Oct '00 3:2 New Hegemony Studies: Illiberalism and Academic Labor Issue Editor: Marc Bousquet www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com www.workplace-gsc.com --and watch for a WORKPLACE SPECIAL COMING SOON: E*L*A*I*N*E W*A*T*C*H Showalter's War on Graduate Students ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 20:10:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aviva99999 Subject: Re: Doublespace Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-08 16:13:27 EST, you write: << hlazer@as.ua.edu Make checks payable to Hank Lazer / 2945 N. Hampton Dr. / Tuscaloosa, AL 35406-2701 >> Hank, I'd like to buy a copy. My address is: Aviva W. Vogel P.O. Box 1085 Norwich, VT 05055 (802) 649-1805 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998 20:31:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Kootenay School of Writing's Operating Grant cut. Please help. Comments: cc: geschwitz@intergate.bc.ca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poets: The City of Vancouver has turned down the Kootenay School of Writing's 1998 application for an operating grant. This is the first time in more than eight years that the city has decided not to award KSW a grant. In fact, last year the city increased KSW's grant. This makes for a crisis which threatens the continued existence of the Kootenay School, as this one grant has provided roughly half of KSW's annual income. The Kootenay School of Writing was founded fifteen years ago by a group of writers who had moved to Vancouver when funding for the school where they taught and learned, the David Thompson University Centre in Selkirk, B.C., in the Kootenay Mountains, was eliminated from the budget of the (Social Credit) government of British Columbia. The School has been a completely volunteer-run, collectively administered organization throughout its fifteen year history. During that time KSW has sponsored writing workshops and seminars and maintained a venue for new and interesting writing, where writers from Vancouver and surrounding communities, from other parts of British Columbia and across Canada, from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries have read their work. The Kootenay School maintains a full schedule: during the past few weeks, Jeff Derksen and Susan Holbrook have read; the latest issue of _Open Letter,_ edited by Jeff Derksen, was launched; a memorial reading for Kathy Acker to benefit the Breast Cancer Foundation was held with readers including Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Sharon Thesen, Kate Van Dusen and Deanna Ferguson; and (last night) Rob Manery, Bill Luoma and Juliana Spahr read from recent work. Many of you on this list have read or given workshops at the Kootenay School of Writing; others have been pleased to be members of the audience or have taken KSW workshops. The Kootenay School has survived and flourished on very little money. The operating grant application to the City of Vancouver is a very small one, about $4000.00. This money is used to support a reading space and an office which is staffed year-round by volunteers. The space is shared with the Or Gallery at 112 West Hastings in Vancouver (not a high-rent area). The City gave as a reason for turning down this grant application that the Kootenay School's "audience base" is not broad enough. KSW members are asking the city to clarify this judgement, particularly since recent and past programming has emphasized building and increasing cultural diversity in reading programs. Audiences are consistently as large as those of most other reading series in Vancouver, if not larger. And I can't think of any series (other than those sponsored by the Public Library) which are as long-lived as KSW's. The Kootenay School is now asking for support from as many people as are willing to write a letter. If you have read at KSW, or given a talk or a workshop, or if you have taken a workshop or been an audience member and you feel moved to help KSW, please write a letter urging the City of Vancouver to restore grant funding. You can send an e-mail to Rob Manery, who is coordinating the effort to persuade the City to reverse its decision. His e-address is geschwitz@intergate.bc.ca. Or you can write directly to the City of Vancouver, Mayor Philip Owen, Vancouver City Hall, 453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V5Y 1V4. Or you can write, care of the same address, to any of Vancouver's ten city councillors: Don Bellamy, Nancy A. Chiavario, Jennifer Clarke, Alan Herbert, Lynne Kennedy, Daniel Lee, Don Lee, Gordon Price, George Puil, or Sam Sullivan. E-mail can be addressed to: info@city.vancouver.bc.ca. PLEASE DO NOT WRITE TO THIS LIST, OR TO MY ADDRESS, BUT BACKCHANNEL OR BY REGULAR MAIL TO THE ADDRESSES GIVEN ABOVE. For more information, write to Rob Manery. Thanks for whatever support you can give to the Kootenay School. P.S. I'll be at work on various projects for the next few weeks, so I'll be off the poetics list for that time. People who want to be in touch backchannel can reach me via my e-address. Best to you all, Charles Watts E-mail: cwatts@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 07:09:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: kootenay funding Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit When I published The Difficulties I never received any of the grants I applied for. I went into debt. Depend on grants at your peril. If even half of the people on this list contributed 10-20 dollars to Kootenay, we could eliminate its 4000 dollar deficit. I've never benefited from the school directly but believe that we all benefit in the end when we support such projects. When we support one another. I'm hoping that someone will post how to make contributions. I can manage 10 bucks and hope that others will help out too. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 09:13:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Steve McCaffery shafted MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Steve McCaffery has asked me to post the following clarification to the list in relation to Ron Silliman's post -- Pierre To All Concerned: A short corrective to Ron Silliman's recent post on my "shafting by Temple." Ron acted a little prematurely and, not having contacted me, communicated a somewhat erroneous state of events. Actually, I had already decided in favour of York University and Toronto over Temple and Philadelphia. Without going into detail, in the past few weeks Temple's bureaucracy had given both Karen and myself cause for increasing frustration and misgiving. Last fall I had also applied for an advertised position at York University in Toronto. When York's offer arrived it was competitive and appealing, so on Feb. 26th the decision was made. This, of course, is no excuse for Temple's action and no condemnation of Ron's zealous call to action. However, I hope it clarifies that I accepted York over Temple before final news of the freezing of the position came into effect Happily at this point Canada is immune to the style of gun-boat diplomacy that the so-called paragon nation of democracy conducts so frequently and effectively. Recall, perhaps, the shafting of Susan Stewart by Havard. So be it publicly known. Ron's other comments on giving up our place in Toronto are similarly unfounded; all is well with us in Toronto and I look forward to offering exciting courses in contemporary literature and poetics at a fine institution. Steve McCaffery -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 09:51:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph Subject: Re: kootenay funding Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I support Tom B's suggestion that contributions be made to Kootenay. I will be pleased to contribute, as well. Although I have not personally participated in activities there, it is my perception that they are contributing in a terrific way to things that many of us hold as high values. Give us an address, and we'll get this (contribution) thing moving ahead. Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:45:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: 20th. C. American Women Poets; Call for articles (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This was received at the poetics home office. FYI. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 06:17:05 +0000 From: John Amador Bedford Reply-To: jbedford@ulll.es To: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: 20th. C. American Women Poets; Call for articles As guest editor for the "Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses" I am preparing a special issue on "XXTH. CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN POETS" to be published in November 1998 and am seeking articles on any aspect, theme, author, or work which might be relevant to this theme, particularly readings which take into consideration gender, race and class issues and experimentation. The deadline for reception of manuscripts is June, 1, 1998, articles being a maximum 25 pages long with 30 lines per page. Additional information for contributors is available by sending me a request by email to jbedford@ull.es The "Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses" is published twice yearly, in April and November, by the University of La Laguna. Five hundred copies are published of each issue and, up to the present, thirty-five issues have been published. It is scanned, indexed, or abstracted by the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, BD-ISOC, Institute for Scientific Information, MLA International Bibliography and Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, among others. We have an exchange program with 223 other journals and institutions. Every contributor receives one copy of the issue and 15-20 offprints. Direct all questions to: Prof. John Amador-Bedford Dept. of Modern Philology University of La Laguna Tenerife Spain e-mail: jbedford@ull.es ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 09:59:12 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: kootenay funding I too would like to support Kootenay. An address? I've not been, but have heard raves about Kootenay activities. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 11:08:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Beth Joselow Subject: generosity & readings Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd like to publicly thank Nick Piombino and Liz Fedowksi for arranging for me to read in the Seque/Here series in NYC this past Saturday. Arranging readings, publicizing them, setting up chairs, and all that is something of a thankless task, and takes a generous spirit to provide the energy. So thank you, Liz and Nick, and all others who provide stages for our work. In Washington, it seems, little would happen without the seemingly endless energy and good spirit of people like Mark Wallace, Heather Fuller, Buck Downs Ann Wallace and Rod Smith. Thank you all. ***----***----***----***---- Say It With Words Beth Joselow bjoselow@cais.com voice: 202/966-5998 fax: 202/364-5349 2927 Tilden Street NW Washington DC 20008 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 11:17:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: (Fwd) SAWSJ Conference, April 24-26 (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- I'm forwarding the following message to the list at the request of Kent Johnson, who I guess is off-list right now..... Mark P. ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:47:11 EST Reply-to: H-NET List for Labor Studies From: DavidA2647 Subject: SAWSJ Conference, April 24-26 To: H-UCLEA@H-NET.MSU.EDU This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_889220832_boundary Content-ID: <0_889220832@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part0_889220832_boundary ------------------ Below is the initial call for the SAWSJ Teach-In and First Annual Meeting, along with a registration form to be mailed in. You will be receiving a more detailed program schedule, but at this time we invite you to pass the word along and, of course, to register. We look forward to seeing you in Washington. Onward, SAWSJ! ************************************************************************** DEMOCRACY AND THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE: A NATIONAL LABOR TEACH-IN April 24-26, 1998 George Washington University Washington, D.C. Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice is sponsoring an important public event this spring, entitled "Democracy and the Right to Organize: A National Labor Teach-in." This convocation, which will be held April 24-26 on the George Washington University campus in Washington, D. C., will bring together hundreds of academics, students, trade unionists, and social activists to explain, advocate, debate, and celebrate the right of all Americans to organize, both on the job and off. Plenary speakers on the evening of Friday, April 24, include Julian Bond, civil rights activist recently elected chair of the NAACP board of directors; John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO; Kimberle Crenshaw, Columbia University professor of law; Steve Fraser, editor and writer; Juliet Schor, Harvard University economist; and Robin D. G. Kelley, New York University historian. More than a dozen workshops, plus the first annual meeting of Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice, will be held on Saturday, April 25. SAWSJ, whose members have sponsored more than a score of labor teach-ins at universities and colleges across the country, believes that democracy and dignity at work and in American society requires the right to self-organization. But tens of millions of American workers are today denied this essential right. SAWSJ insists that whatever legal, political, managerial, or bureaucratic obstacles stand in the way of a genuinely unfettered right to organize must be swept aside in the interests of American democracy itself. This is a task, not only for the labor movement, but for all those who want to make the Bill of Rights a living document in the 21st century. Saturday workshops will include sessions on labor and political action, the future of the Teamsters union, organizing the South, labor and the law, student activism, labor's connection to other social movements, and more. Among those who will be speaking at these workshops are legal scholar Karl Klare; Ken Paff of Teamsters for a Democratic Union; historians Gary Gerstle, David Brody, Andor Skotnes, and Nelson Lichtenstein; student activist Ligaya Domingo; sociologists Allen Hunter, Dan Clawson, Stanley Aronowitz, and Lynn Chancer; American studies scholar Nikhil Singh; labor educators Elaine Bernard, Kate Bronfenbrenner and Tom Juravich; and numerous trade unionists, including Bruce Raynor, Lane Windham, and Joe Uehlein. Tami Gold and Kelly Anderson, co-producers of the documentary film _Out at Work_, will also participate. SAWSJ will hold its first annual meeting on Sunday, April 26, where it will elect its first set of officers. The group envisions a movement that can reshape the nation's political culture and foster the growth of a vibrant, militant, multicultural working-class movement. The labor movement needs an academic, cultural, and intellectual community that helps shape the terms of public debate, contesting corporate dominance of politics and culture. In turn, professors, students, artists, and writers need a progressive unionism that can provide a powerful voice for social justice. The time is ripe to restore that mutually empowering relationship that once gave hope and dynamism to the labor movement and its allies in the academic and cultural communities. To register, to join SAWSJ, and/or to be added to our e-mail mailing list, please print out a copy of the form below and mail it in with your check (made payable to SAWSJ), to: SAWSJ 2565 Broadway, #176 New York, NY 10025 For more information, or if you would like to volunteer to work on the conference, please contact Tami J. Friedman: tjf3@columbia.edu You can also check our website: http://www.sage.edu/html/SAWSJ If your organization would like to have a display table at the conference, please fax your request to Michael Kazin at 301-656-8145. We will do our best to accommodate you. **************************************************************************** 1. CONFERENCE REGISTRATION "Democracy and the Right to Organize," April 24-26, Washington, D.C. Name: Street address: City, state and zip: Organizational affiliation: Home phone: Work phone: E-mail: FAX: CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FEE: $5 student/low income (circle one) $10 Friday night session only $20 all others 2. SAWSJ MEMBERSHIP MEMBERSHIP DUES: $10 student/low income (circle one) $25 others with incomes below $40,000 $40 for those with incomes of $40,000 or above 3. SAWSJ E-MAIL MAILING LIST: You will receive timely information about SAWSJ activities and other labor-related programs, resources, etc. ___ I am currently on the list. ___ I am not on the list. Please add my e-mail address. ___ Please do not add my e-mail address to the list. Make checks payable to SAWSJ (Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice). Mail them to SAWSJ, 2565 Broadway, #176, New York, NY 10025 . ****************************************************************************** * --part0_889220832_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:44:46 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: kootenay funding MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit $10 is a week of food for me, but Xexoxial would gladly donate some copies of Hannah Weiner's WEEKS (which sell for $9 american) that maybe could be resold, or perhaps auctioned in a fundraiser. maybe the funding climate is different canada ways, but depending on government funding for half of the orgs support seems mighty unsustainable, XE even tho it is a 501(c)3 has maybe gotten a thousand or 2 toward publishing & events in its 12 years of existence & maybe another 5 toward renovation of buildings, even tho it owns 4 houses & a 28,000 sq ft old school. then again we live in wisconsin where funding for the arts is 48th with only arkansas & alaska behind us. I also agree with Tom B's sentiments (I seem to find myself nodding with a lot of what Tom has been saying) that "I've never benefited from the school directly but believe that we all benefit in the end when we support such projects. When we support one another." & further that when an organization can be supported directly, that its continued presence makes a decided mark on the culture outside of its institutions. & how many incredible projects have we seen go down the tubes when the nea took a dive. _____________________________________ Dreamtime Village http://www.net22.com/dreamtime/index.shtml QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza/index.html email for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:59:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aviva99999 Subject: Re: 20th. C. American Women Poets; Call for articles (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In case you're interested, April. << Reply-To: jbedford@ulll.es To: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: 20th. C. American Women Poets; Call for articles As guest editor for the "Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses" I am preparing a special issue on "XXTH. CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN POETS" to be published in November 1998 and am seeking articles on any aspect, theme, author, or work which might be relevant to this theme, particularly readings which take into consideration gender, race and class issues and experimentation. The deadline for reception of manuscripts is June, 1, 1998, articles being a maximum 25 pages long with 30 lines per page. Additional information for contributors is available by sending me a request by email to jbedford@ull.es The "Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses" is published twice yearly, in April and November, by the University of La Laguna. Five hundred copies are published of each issue and, up to the present, thirty-five issues have been published. It is scanned, indexed, or abstracted by the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, BD-ISOC, Institute for Scientific Information, MLA International Bibliography and Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, among others. We have an exchange program with 223 other journals and institutions. Every contributor receives one copy of the issue and 15-20 offprints. Direct all questions to: Prof. John Amador-Bedford Dept. of Modern Philology University of La Laguna Tenerife Spain e-mail: jbedford@ull.es >> ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:48:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Ted vs. Ted-ism In-Reply-To: <01BD4903.1A4D3940@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Gary and all--I hate to say it, but I can't seem to find Watten's thesis here--it's in some kind of permanent storage--or is otherwise not in the computer (neither is Alice Notley's)--I'll keep my eyes open, but c'est la vie-- All best, Katy *** On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, Gary Sullivan wrote: > Several lines from Watten's MFA thesis, "white yellow" (submitted to the > University of Iowa, early seventies): > > I guess I want this to be > a kind of "Tambourine Life" > but I am not that nervous > Irish mother fucker > who put me down > in Iowa City. > > Someone who has this text on hand, or more-or-less immediate access to it > (Katy?) should quote it verbatim. (The above is nearly word-for-word, but > line-breaks are no doubt wrong & there's maybe a missing word or two.) > > I always wondered whether his (Watten's) sentiment was genuine, there, or not. > Anyone know? > > Gary Sullivan > gps12@columbia.edu > > On Friday, March 06, 1998 12:57 PM, Jacques Debrot [SMTP:JDEBROT@AOL.COM] > wrote: > > Then again, this is how Barrett Watten remembers it in "After Ted" (_Aerial > > 8): "Berrigan's reading of _The Sonnets_ at Langton Street contained some of > > the greatest verbal moments in American language." And, in fact, wasn't it > > Watten himself who curated that event? > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:48:04 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: T. Wood's query re publishing How can poets find publishers? How can publishers find poetry? How can the world find literature? (In a world of half-starved adjunct professors and non-English speaking reader-students - the only lovable ones!) Every writer confronts his or her OWN illiteracy. (How to read "unrefined" experience?) Every word is a dictionary entry followed by... blank. Every writer writes for the NON-artistic world - the world of our parents: in which the "free word" of literature, on which nothing depends, is sacrificed to the "functional" word, the word in harness, the directions in the backhoe manual. That forsaken world where language (and our parents) have been humbled. And carved in stone. Literature learns how to litter a tree. And you want to become the tree. You can't become the tree unless you are food for the soil. The key is in your own missing words. The words for what you don't understand: what happened yesterday. Your life in the world of illiterate action (i.e. silence). The Great American Shovel. (Dig up a story.) I'm sure these musings will be of practical value to Tim Wood & everyone!! - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 18:03:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: favorite bad poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My favorite bad poet is myself. My favorite terrible poet used to be Berrigan, but then I realized he was a great poet. My favorite mediocre poet is Auden, but only when he is truly mediocre, when he is bad I don't like him and when he is great then he is not a mediocre poet. My least favorite great poet is Pound, but only when he is great, when he is bad I like him and when he is mediocre I am indifferent to him. My favorite pretty good poet is Kenneth Koch, except when he is great and then he is one of my favorite great poets. When he is bad he is still Kenneth Koch. Doesn't this sum it up pretty much? What I like about Berrigan is the sense of being given permission to be a poet; his capaciousness and generosity of taste is part of this, and I'm glad to see the list is generous to him, as I'm trying to catch up with the 95 posts I missed over the weekend being away from my computer. Wow!! I've always enjoyed Joe Brainard's drawings, and I notice that the sonnets are dedicated to him. Does anyone have any recent news of him. I assume he is alive and well? Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:01:09 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: The Kootenay School of Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello all, Thanks for your messages of support for the Kootenay School. They are much appreciated. The address of the Kootenay School is: The Kootenay School, 112 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC V6B 1G8 [v6b 1g8] CANADA ** note of US $ cheques : Because the School has no US$ bank account and exchange and bank charges will be heavy on small cheques, US$ cheques/checks should be made out RADDLE MOON and flagged "for KSW" on the memo line. RM will deposit them in our US$ account and pay KSW the exchange on the amount from our Cdn$ chequing account. These cheques can be sent to RM at 518-350 East Second Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 or to the School. .... Otherwise: money orders or book donations [thanks, Miekal] can be sent directly to the School. Letters of support are also welcome. Writers of letters should please remember that the mandate of the City of Vancouver is to look out for **local** orgs and audiences, and should slant their letters accordingly. To say that Vancouver is internationally renown as a centre for leading edge [buzz words are fine in bureaucratic circles!] poetries is good but better to say what this might mean for the city, and for local audiences.... Not to put words in anyone's mouth. Letters should be addressed to : Beverly Yahp City of Vancouver Office of Cultural Affairs 250 West Heritage Bldg City Sqare, Box 96, 555 West 12th Avenue Vancouver BC V5Z 3X7 CANADA with cc: KSW at the address above for safety's sake [misfiling and all, you know]. Or email [second best option] the school at ksw@radiant.net and we can print out and fwd. Thanks again for your support -- apologies for any duplication of Charles' post which I haven't read completely [have been out of town for a couple of days and am wading through email backlog] I wanted to get the address to those people asking. Please email me if you have questions. good wishes, Susan Susan Clark RADDLE MOON clarkd@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 20:37:27 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Re: Query In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone have contacts for John Yau or Myung-Mi Kim? Email is preferred, but any information is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Summi Kaipa ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 20:40:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: favorite bad poets In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Joes Brainerd sadly died of AIDS a few years ago. Ron Padgett cared for him during his decline. Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 00:44:44 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: pomo metaphoracity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT dear listpeople i've been thinking abt. metaphor as a(n) '(as)socia(tiona)l force' in (political) poetry, & also abt. a (healthy) poststructuralist skepticism that extinguishes the fire of/ turns off the ignition on/ & derails the vehicle, metaphor. Was wondering if any of you all had thoughts, or could point me to some recent essays on a-metaphorical carrying over, which also deal directly with the absence of metaphor thx. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 23:24:31 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: Charles' post MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd just like to second Charles' suggestion that letters be sent to City Councillors -- perhaps with copies of letters to the City's Cultural office [their address in my first note]. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 05:37:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: favorite bad poets In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 6:03 PM -0600 3/9/98, MAYHEW wrote: >My favorite bad poet is myself. My favorite terrible poet used to be >Berrigan, but then I realized he was a great poet. My favorite mediocre >poet is Auden, but only when he is truly mediocre, when he is bad I don't >like him and when he is great then he is not a mediocre poet. My least >favorite great poet is Pound, but only when he is great, when he is bad I >like him and when he is mediocre I am indifferent to him. My favorite >pretty good poet is Kenneth Koch, except when he is great and then he is >one of my favorite great poets. When he is bad he is still Kenneth Koch. > this is terrific, jonathan. keep up the good spirit on this unbelievably soggy and wind-pelted night. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 06:36:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: <199803100738.AAA24585@yoop.oz.cc.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well this may not be what yr looking for, and it's kinda old hat too, but in the 80s poststructuralist crit metaphor seemed to be in decline in popularity and metonymy on the rise; metaphor was said to be a mystification while metonymy revealed the relations that connected the twoterms; metaphor was "mystical" while metonymy was "historical," etc. This preoccupation and devaluing of metaphor seems to have abated in the 90s, see intro to Apex of M 1,for example, though it's still kicking around. At 12:44 AM +0000 3/10/98, linda russo wrote: >dear listpeople > >i've been thinking abt. metaphor as a(n) '(as)socia(tiona)l force' in >(political) poetry, & also abt. a (healthy) >poststructuralist skepticism that extinguishes the fire of/ >turns off the ignition on/ & derails the vehicle, metaphor. > >Was wondering if any of you all had thoughts, or could point me >to some recent essays on a-metaphorical carrying over, which also >deal directly with the absence of metaphor > >thx. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 06:33:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: T. Wood's query re publishing In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry, You've always got a wonderful way of putting things. Even better because the semi-readerly writters of backhoe manuals probably not follow it, let all think it practical. thanks, Tim At 01:48 PM 3/9/98 EST, you wrote: >How can poets find publishers? How can publishers find poetry? > >How can the world find literature? (In a world of half-starved adjunct >professors and non-English speaking reader-students - the only lovable ones!) > >Every writer confronts his or her OWN illiteracy. (How to read "unrefined" >experience?) Every word is a dictionary entry followed by... blank. > >Every writer writes for the NON-artistic world - the world of our parents: >in which the "free word" of literature, on which nothing depends, is >sacrificed to the "functional" word, the word in harness, the directions >in the backhoe manual. That forsaken world where language (and our parents) >have been humbled. And carved in stone. > >Literature learns how to litter a tree. And you want to become the tree. >You can't become the tree unless you are food for the soil. The key >is in your own missing words. The words for what you don't understand: >what happened yesterday. Your life in the world of illiterate action (i.e. >silence). The Great American Shovel. (Dig up a story.) > >I'm sure these musings will be of practical value to Tim Wood & everyone!! > >- Henry Gould > ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:44:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nuyopoman Subject: IN WITH THE OUT CROWD Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I have a few advance cassettes of my new album, IN WITH THE OUT CROWD, prod, by Hal Willner, featuring Chris Spedding, Wayne Kramer, Bobby Neuwirth and K Elmslie's longtime harpster Ken Deifik. The CD comes out in April. but backchannel me and I'll shoot one of these advances off to you now. Bob Holman nuyopoman@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:00:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: pomo metaphoracity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The metaphor/metonymy opposition comes from Jakobson via Lacan and deconstruction. As Maria points out, it had a lot of play in the 1980s. I remember a lot of things like metaphor is modern and metonymy is postmodern also. There was a whole sort of tropological approach to poetry--remember all those essays about catachresis? I read a book trying to demonstrate the chiasmus was the central trope of lyric poetry. A lot of this has died out or been played out to its logical conclusion. I don't see a lot of point in seeing metaphor as the opposite of any other trope, kind of like seeing cats as the opposite of dogs or oranges from apples or men from women. The Jakobson essay could be looked at with a cold hard eye, in my view: for example, I don't see that metonymy (this spelling looks wrong to me) is syntactic and horizontal. If I say "tin pan alley" instead of "popular songwriting of the 1920s" I am substituting one expression for another, not linking the two expressions syntactically. Jakobson bases his opposition on brain-impairment, aphasia. But some of this metomymies aren't really that: for example one aphasiac said knife instead of fork, but this is not a good example of metonymy in my book. Sorry to be so pedantic so early in the morning. Wallace Stevens has some interesting poems about metaphoracity, such as the motive for metaphor. Also along these lines William Bronk, perhaps. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:32:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: jayne cortez/amiri baraka MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I made the trip down to NYC from Albany last friday night to meet a friend and see Amiri Baraka's reading at the Dia Center for the arts. I heard him read in Chicago a couple years ago but the sound was bad and the trumpet was loud and Baraka could barely be heard. The friend that invited me didn't say that Jayne Cortez was also reading friday, and it was a damn good thing because Baraka was apparently stuck in traffic all night and never showed. But Cortez was incredible! I don't know if I've ever seen a reading where the audience responded so enthusiastically, and where the poet was so moving. There was so much music and rhythm, politics, anger, celebration, power, intellect.... I had to drive back to Albany friday night, arrived about two in the morning with so much energy left I couldn't sleep right away. They sold every copy of her book before the reading was over, I ordered from Amazon. Her latest book is _Somewhere in Adavance of Nowhere_, High Risk Books. Live from Albany, Eryque ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:13:44 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Online Poetry Workshop through UCLA Extension Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I would like to announce (and open the topic up discussion, if anyone wants to talk about distance learning, online workshopping, & related) my first formal poetry writing workshop ever, through UCLA Extension. Rather leadenly called "Introduction to Poetry Writing: Workshop (Online)", the course will be nothing like the course description, which is trite and humiliating. UCLA Extension Online Courses http://unex.ucla.edu/on_line.htm It's a straightforward workshop, based on participant work and critique of same, no assignments except for the stuck, but a weekly poem deadline. This quarter (UCLA is on a quarter system), we will be using modern poetry written in English as "examples". Summer quarters will feature post WWII and contemporary poets, respectively. How did I arrive at the reading list? Ten a term from the list of poets writing in English I expect any poet to have read. As you know, there is the Alien Flower Poetry Workshop Online, there are service provider workshops (I'm a mentor through AOL, but they offer some $40 workshops), etc. My course is the beginning of what I hope will become a second series of accredited online workshops (the first is at New School). The reason to take one of mine would be that you are isolated, in the country/on the road or at a school with no writing workshops, and want to pursue undergrad writing or a writing certificate. You would want something serious and fun, to practice poetry writing with an audience without resorting to a lot of nonsense about creative activity. UCLA Writers Program http://unex.ucla.edu/certprgms/writers/homepage.htm The reason I'm teaching this is that I'm an intranet/extranet developer with an MFA. While I don't have a book published, I have more than 70 individual poems published, including some at these locations online: Agnieszka's Dowry (http://www.enteract.com/~asgp/agd-poems/jar8.html), ECLECTICA Magazine Archives (http://www2.polarnet.com/~eclectic/archives.html), etc. My info (it's a bad web site, sorry): http://members.aol.com/cadaly/free.htm Regards, Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:55:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: With all due respect Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I can't help but think that this list is overly preoccupied with dead poets. That's pretty safe. Meanwhile, metaphor is like sex: there is always leakage. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:41:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Undue Respect MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Let's not discuss him, he's dead." In my mind I don't really make the distinction, I guess. I was thinking of R. Silliman's essay "New Hope for the Disappeared," in which he talks of how fast we forget about poets; his examples were Ceravolo and Lew Welch--I can add Joe Brainard to the list now much to my chagrin. If the point is that we should be discussing poets While they are still alive then I couldn't agree more. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:53:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph Subject: Re: jayne cortez Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-10 10:35:52 EST, you write: << But Cortez was incredible! I don't know if I've ever seen a reading where the audience responded so enthusiastically, and where the poet was so moving. There was so much music and rhythm, politics, anger, celebration, power, intellect.... I had to drive back to Albany friday night, arrived about two in the morning with so much energy left I couldn't sleep right away. They sold every copy of her book before the reading was over, I ordered from Amazon. Her latest book is _Somewhere in Adavance of Nowhere_, High Risk Books. >> We had Jayne Cortez out in Scottsdale not too very long back, and she provided a STUNNING performance. Her work and her presence are marvelous. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:31:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: IN WITH THE OUT CROWD Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bob, Please send to tom bell 2518 Wellington Pl. Murfreesboro, TN 37128 if any are left. Thank you. tom bell At 09:44 AM 3/10/98 EST, Nuyopoman wrote: >I have a few advance cassettes of my new album, IN WITH THE OUT CROWD, prod, >by Hal Willner, featuring Chris Spedding, Wayne Kramer, Bobby Neuwirth and K >Elmslie's longtime harpster Ken Deifik. The CD comes out in April. but >backchannel me and I'll shoot one of these advances off to you now. > >Bob Holman >nuyopoman@aol.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 16:49:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo Subject: Hilda Morley Comments: To: Tropos@aol.com Comments: cc: bernstei@bway.net, hkhfound@igc.apc.org, mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca, dcmb@metro.net, miles@dircon.co.uk, maxpaul@sfsu.edu, ACodrescu@aol.com, chp@chbooks.com, 103326.2404@compuserve.com, bigal@sonicnet.com, dorn@stripe.colorado.edu, daf09@grofn.org, DGANSZ@umi.com, Suantrai@iol.ie, rlhogg@ccs.carleton.ca, bholland@ed.clpccd.cc.ca.us, hollo@husc.HARVARD.EDU, jarnot@pipeline.com, joris@cnsunix.albany.edu, "mindspring.com 104047.2175"@compuserve.com, rloden@concentric.net, BLHawkins@aol.com, arnaut31@hotmail.com, tmandel@screenporch.com, djmess@sunmoon.com, f1kiol@uta.fi, perelman@english.upenn.edu, simonp@pipeline.com, LaurieP@compuserve.com, pritchpa@silverplume.iix.com, gquasha@stationhill.org, raworth@dial.pipex.com, jrothenb@carla.ucsd.edu, jsafdie@MAILNT.CTC.EDU, arshile@earthlink.com, edsanders@mhv.net, harris4@idt.net, schuchat@mail.ait.org.tw, spd@igc.apc.org, AERIALEDGE@aol.com, dwsouthern@worldnet.att.net, TNCIvan@aol.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, chrisv@acpub.duke.edu, a.waldman@mindspring.com, Ctfarmr@aol.com, laura@naropa.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable HILDA MORLEY To Hilda Morley=92s friends, associates, and readers: Poet Hilda Morley, who recently moved from the U.S. to London, has been= =0Ahospitalized and is in critical condition. She has surfaced from a coma and is able to receive messages read out lou= d to=0Aher by friends at her bedside (Josephine Clare and Tamsin Hollo). = Faxes can be sent to her at: 011 -- 44 -- 171 -- 830 -- 2029. ********************************************************* Entry in POSTMODERN AMERICAN POETRY, ed. Paul Hoover: =93HILDA MORLEY b. 1919 Born in New York City and educated there and in Haifa, Israel, London,=0A= England, and Wellesley, Massachusetts, Hilda Morley has taught at New Yor= k=0AUniversity, Rutgers University, and Black Mountain College [...] Mor= lay did=0Anot begin to publish her poems in any number until the death of= her husband,=0Acomposer Stefan Wolpe, in 1971; since then her work has a= ppeared widely. Her first major collection, *What Are Winds & What Are Waters=94 (1983), = is a=0Abooklength threnody for Wolpe. In the preface, Denise Levertov wr= ites, =93her=0Apoetry so truly (and intuitively, I think) manifests the r= eal meaning of the=0Aoften-abused concept of =91composition by field,=92 = that many other presences are=0Aas vivid around that central figure [of W= olpe]: birds, flowers, landscapes,=0Astreet scenes, animals, whatever ent= ers perception, however peripheral, is=0Agiven its due.=94 In her musica= l use of the poetic line, Morley is associated=0Awith Black Mountain poet= ics. Her other collections include {...] *A Blessing Outside Us* (1976), *To H= old=0Ain My Hand: Selected Poems* (1983), and *Cloudless and First* (1988= ).=94 Hilda Morley is a wonderful poet and person. I feel privileged to have s= pent=0Asome time in animated conversations with her, one long-ago summer = at Yaddo. Anselm Hollo =0A ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:12:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Suzanne Burns Subject: Re: Hilda Morley In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This is sad news-- I LOVE Morley's work and have for a long time. I've always meant to write to her to tell her that. Suzanne ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:19:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hzinnes Subject: Re: Hilda Morley Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit To Whom It May Concern: Though I have no fax available will you be good enough to extend my best wishes to Hilda Morley and tell her, please, that I am thinking of her, wishing her a recovery, and remembering her wonderful poems. Thank you. Harriet Zinnes HZinnes@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 17:43:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: Re: Undue Respect Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit bet -ter read when not dead TomB ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 18:57:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rosmarie Waldrop speaks to this in her essay, "Form and Discontent," in the fall/winter '96 issue of Diacritics. She speaks, among many other things, of Olson referring to the vertical tendency of metaphor as "the suck of symbol." Waldrop: "Metaphor as a hotline to transcendence, to divine meaning, which casts the poet in the role of a special being, a priest or prophet." In short, Romanticism. On metonymy: "composition and syntax," "stess on how the elements were combined on the surface, how they sat next to each other on the page, how they followed each other in the theater." Or, "the Neoclassical aesthetic." Metaphors: hotline, casts in the role, sat next to each other, theater Metonymy: priest?, prophet? Metaphors 4 Metonymy 2 or is it? Metaphors 6 Metonymy 0 metonymy: the Red Sox of the Trope Major leagues it's confusing Steven On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Maria Damon wrote: > well this may not be what yr looking for, and it's kinda old hat too, but > in the 80s poststructuralist crit metaphor seemed to be in decline in > popularity and metonymy on the rise; metaphor was said to be a > mystification while metonymy revealed the relations that connected the > twoterms; metaphor was "mystical" while metonymy was "historical," etc. > This preoccupation and devaluing of metaphor seems to have abated in the > 90s, see intro to Apex of M 1,for example, though it's still kicking around. > > At 12:44 AM +0000 3/10/98, linda russo wrote: > >dear listpeople > > > >i've been thinking abt. metaphor as a(n) '(as)socia(tiona)l force' in > >(political) poetry, & also abt. a (healthy) > >poststructuralist skepticism that extinguishes the fire of/ > >turns off the ignition on/ & derails the vehicle, metaphor. > > > >Was wondering if any of you all had thoughts, or could point me > >to some recent essays on a-metaphorical carrying over, which also > >deal directly with the absence of metaphor > > > >thx. > __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 19:44:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Anyone have Mary Burger's e-mail address? I could sure use it. Also Franklin Bruno. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 20:18:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I don't see any point in dramatizing this metaphor vs metonymy thing. They are both basic, essential elements of ALL LANGUAGE [sorry poets, ALL LANGUAGE]. Metaphor has to do with paradigmatic relations, metonymy with syntagmatic relations. Take away this set of relations and you deprive yourselves of a significant tool for understanding how the mind works, how ALL MINDS WORK [not just poetic minds]. This is not a matter of politics or poetics. GT ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 00:48:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 8 Mar 1998 to 9 Mar 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Re Berrigan/Watten. Don't know anything about the MFA thesis but the his piece in Aerial 8 is genuinely appreciative. Also, the reading of The Sonnets, Complete, at 80 Langton is possibly the single greatest poetry reading I've ever heard. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 23:03:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: metaphor et al Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I agree with George Thompson, with the rider that whenever there is invention of language, that is what is meant by poesis. It isnt always done by demarcated-off _poets_ , but they have made it their business to preserve such innovation and to create as 'twere websites where such generative play keeps us conscious of precisely that which George indicates in his post. David ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 08:00:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 10 Mar 1998 18:57:46 -0500 from On Tue, 10 Mar 1998 18:57:46 -0500 Steven Marks said: >Rosmarie Waldrop speaks to this in her essay, "Form and Discontent," in >the fall/winter '96 issue of Diacritics. She speaks, among many other >things, of Olson referring to the vertical tendency of metaphor as "the >suck of symbol." Waldrop: "Metaphor as a hotline to transcendence, to >divine meaning, which casts the poet in the role of a special being, a >priest or prophet." In short, Romanticism. On metonymy: "composition and >syntax," "stess on how the elements were combined on the surface, how they >sat next to each other on the page, how they followed each other in the >theater." Or, "the Neoclassical aesthetic." I also agree with George Thompson. I think Rosmarie Waldrop's piece is only one among a great many which used this opposition to defend (sort of after-the-fact) the whole stream of open, experimental, documentary poetics stemming mainly from Pound, and also to support what is seen as a feminist, secular, "anti-logocentric" worldview. It is a simple fact that 20th century poetry explores whole new regions via metonymy, parataxis, and collage, so it is understandable that people would remark on the special resources of these aspects of language use. But this idea that metaphor rather than metonymy can be put to vatic, religious use - that one is sacred, the other secular - is there any evidence of this? Or is Waldrop's real target the attempt to provide any single, stable "meaning" in poetry? The Russian Formalists sort of codified these two axes of composition in poetry, and various poets have been drawn to their theories for technical explanations of what they're doing. As I've said before here & have tried to point out in a couple web essays (in Mudlark & in a response to Joe Brennan in Flashpoint), I prefer the theories of one of the Formalists' percursors and antagonists, A. Potebnia. Potebnia emphasized that words have an "inner form" or "inner image" - psychological, etymological, symbolic. Actually not a single image - words are concentrated sources, via this inner form, of infinite meanings. Poetry is not analyzable simply on a R. Formalist grid or axis of metaphor/metonymy, because the inner form of the word per se is always generating new clusters of meaning & effect. Potebnia as you might guess shows some kinship with the ideas of Annensky and Mandelstam, in particular. I'm not a scholar myself & admit these are hunches rather than researches, but they're useful orientations for me anyway. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:11:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Suzanne Burns Subject: Re: Hilda Morley In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Anselm: I accidentally deleted the posting that had her fax number-- I really would love to send my appreciation and good wishes. Carolyn Kizer introduced me to her work years ago, and Cloudless at First is a book I have always had in my bag when I have travelled. Could you email me her number? Thanks? Suzanne Suzanne ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:40:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I agree that metonymy should have no privilege over metaphor and that both are parts of all languages. What I found interesting in the Waldrop quotes that I provided was that she couldn't get away from using metaphors. And who can? Or would want to? I remember about 25 years ago, I vowed to rid my writing of all metaphor. I'm not sure why. I think I thought of metaphors as being somehow "false." Well, this project didn't last long. I soon realized that common, everyday words themselves were metaphors. For example, "metaphor," which comes from roots meaning change and to bear. I always had this image of an old man carrying bundles of similarities across a bridge from one word to another. Still, this all said, I still wonder why language is this way. Could it have gone another route? I suppose these are more anthropological questions than political ones, although that line has to be blurry at some point as well. Maybe they are even physiological questions. Some researchers believe we developed speech because we, as a species, are predominately right-handed. Thus, we used the left side of our brain for picking fruits, nabbing grubs and just generally hanging around. This freed the right side of our brain to do what it does best -- speech. Can we blame it all on a gene that decided to favor right-handedness? What if it had decided left-handedness? Or split right down the middle? Some early morning thoughts. cheers, Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:55:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: from "Steven Marks" at Mar 11, 98 09:40:08 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I certainly agree that I wouldn't want to get rid of metaphor, & its a mistake, I think, to associate it primarily, immediately, etc, with poetry. There's almost no vernacular expression which doesn't include it. Zora Neale Hurston's fascinating essay, "Characteristics of Negro Expression," has some great examples of how metaphor and simile gets employed in African-American vernacular English. My favorites: "One at a time, like lawyers going to heaven;" "I'll beat you till you smell like onions;" calling deceivers "cloakers," and Molasses "mule blood," this latter being a fine example of the way metaphor can act, not to transcend but to do precisely the opposite, bring thing back down to earth, materiality, production, politics. -m. According to Steven Marks: > > I agree that metonymy should have no privilege over metaphor and that > both are parts of all languages. What I found interesting in the Waldrop > quotes that I provided was that she couldn't get away from using > metaphors. And who can? Or would want to? I remember about 25 years ago, I > vowed to rid my writing of all metaphor. I'm not sure why. I think I > thought of metaphors as being somehow "false." Well, this project didn't > last long. I soon realized that common, everyday words themselves were > metaphors. For example, "metaphor," which comes from roots meaning change > and to bear. I always had this image of an old man carrying bundles of > similarities across a bridge from one word to another. Still, this all > said, I still wonder why language is this way. Could it have gone another > route? I suppose these are more anthropological questions than political > ones, although that line has to be blurry at some point as well. Maybe > they are even physiological questions. Some researchers believe we > developed speech because we, as a species, are predominately right-handed. > Thus, we used the left side of our brain for picking fruits, nabbing grubs > and just generally hanging around. This freed the right side of our brain > to do what it does best -- speech. Can we blame it all on a gene that > decided to favor right-handedness? What if it had decided left-handedness? > Or split right down the middle? > > Some early morning thoughts. > > cheers, > Steven > > __________________________________________________ > Steven Marks > > http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html > __________________________________________________ > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:12:39 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:40:08 -0500 from On Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:40:08 -0500 Steven Marks said: Some researchers believe we >developed speech because we, as a species, are predominately right-handed. >Thus, we used the left side of our brain for picking fruits, nabbing grubs >and just generally hanging around. This freed the right side of our brain >to do what it does best -- speech. Can we blame it all on a gene that >decided to favor right-handedness? What if it had decided left-handedness? >Or split right down the middle? I like Vico's idea that nabbing grubs & speech are basically THE SAME activity. That writing came before speech because the 1st speech ("grasping") was gesture - which became drawing - which became writing - which eventually became verbal "signs". - Henry G.(definitely lefthanded) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 08:40:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: McCaffery & the breaking of the Temple Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's really good to hear that Steve McCaffery is better off than we at first thought, although Temple still has a lot to answer for. But, parochially, it's kinda nice that he'll still be around in Canada to shake things up. It's been far too long & hard a road for him, but maybe the deserving do get something eventually. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ thot we'd raise jerusalem here ripple this surface with the wind bpNichol ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 11:48:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, i'm left handed. curious about others (ashbery is; my two least favorite beatles are, hendrix. during the 1992 pres. debates i was SHOCKED to see Clinton, Bush and Perot writing with their left hands. Is this true? or was i hallucinating again coz i was too busy using the wrong side of my brain to pick money disguised as lettuce.......chris On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Henry wrote: > On Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:40:08 -0500 Steven Marks said: > Some researchers believe we > >developed speech because we, as a species, are predominately right-handed. > >Thus, we used the left side of our brain for picking fruits, nabbing grubs > >and just generally hanging around. This freed the right side of our brain > >to do what it does best -- speech. Can we blame it all on a gene that > >decided to favor right-handedness? What if it had decided left-handedness? > >Or split right down the middle? > > I like Vico's idea that nabbing grubs & speech are basically THE SAME activity. > That writing came before speech because the 1st speech ("grasping") was > gesture - which became drawing - which became writing - which eventually > became verbal "signs". - Henry G.(definitely lefthanded) > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 11:00:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm left-handed! And yes, so were all of the possible presidents you listed, Chris-- Of note: Though language "resides" in the right hemisphere as a general rule--this residence is split in left-handers (like a summer house and winter house)-- When left-handed people have strokes or other maladies that cause aphasia, they have a far better chance of retaining their linguistic abilities (as aphasias generally mess with one side or the other)-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 11:06:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: sinister and gauche MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Me too! I bet a large proportion of the poetics list subscribers are "leftists" I haven't read the scientific literature on handedness and brain hemispheres and the like, but I definitely do sense my brain working both sides of the street on language. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 12:07:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: knife, phor/nymy, Cortez In-Reply-To: <01IUIQHVE14Y8WXUCF@po.muohio.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jonathan, Why don't you think knife for fork is a good example of metonymy? Waldrop's equation of metonymy with the neoclassical aesthetic surprises me since I can just as easily think of metaphor used in a cool and witty way to take emotion out of things by unexpected analogies (as in Pope) and metonymy as a manifestation of the heated romantic mind's wandering openness to synchronistic suggestions of meaning through juxtaposition (as in Ode to a Nightingale). Linda--another tip--I think there is an essay by Hayden Carruth from the mid-80's callled something like "Against Metaphor," explaining why he thought poems were better without it, which might be a good document of the 80's turn if that interests you. Thanks for the inspiring report on Cortez! Annie Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:00:32 -0600 From: MAYHEW Subject: pomo metaphoracity The metaphor/metonymy opposition comes from Jakobson via Lacan and deconstruction. As Maria points out, it had a lot of play in the 1980s. I remember a lot of things like metaphor is modern and metonymy is postmodern also. There was a whole sort of tropological approach to poetry--remember all those essays about catachresis? I read a book trying to demonstrate the chiasmus was the central trope of lyric poetry. A lot of this has died out or been played out to its logical conclusion. I don't see a lot of point in seeing metaphor as the opposite of any other trope, kind of like seeing cats as the opposite of dogs or oranges from apples or men from women. The Jakobson essay could be looked at with a cold hard eye, in my view: for example, I don't see that metonymy (this spelling looks wrong to me) is syntactic and horizontal. If I say "tin pan alley" instead of "popular songwriting of the 1920s" I am substituting one expression for another, not linking the two expressions syntactically. Jakobson bases his opposition on brain-impairment, aphasia. But some of this metomymies aren't really that: for example one aphasiac said knife instead of fork, but this is not a good example of metonymy in my book. Sorry to be so pedantic so early in the morning. Wallace Stevens has some interesting poems about metaphoracity, such as the motive for metaphor. Also along these lines William Bronk, perhaps. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ ________________________ Annie Finch http://muohio.edu/~finchar Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45220 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 11:19:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: knife and fork MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Why is not knife for fork a good metonymy? My reasoning is as follows: metonymies and synechdoches are usually things like part for whole, whole for part, container for thing contained, cause for effect, effect for cause, etc... That is there is a connection between the two things, one substituted for another. The work "contiguity," sometimes used to describe metonymy, is misleading, because it leads Jakobson to think that "thing lying next to another thing" is a metonymy. Bacon would not be a good metonymy for eggs, for example, though it could stand in for food in general or for breakfast. The test would be if you could understand the substitution instantly. Metonymy is usually highly conventional. If someone said knife meaning fork we would be confused. This is perhaps a pedantic distinction. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:24:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: sinister and gauche In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I too am left-handed, but neither the right nor the left half of my brain operate. I think only a small puddle of residue on the bottom keeps the whole pile burbling. Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:31:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Re: kootenay funding In-Reply-To: from "Shemurph" at Mar 9, 98 09:51:27 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Sheila, Tom, Miekal and all: Thanks for your wonderful words of support; thanks too to those, like Doug Barbour, who have written letters to the city of Vancouver and sent them either to City Hall or to Rob Manery. Again, Rob's e-mail address is geschwitz@intergate.bc.ca. If you want to make a financial contribution to the Kootenay School, please make out your cheque (check) to the Kootenay School of Writing. The mailing address is: Kootenay School of Writing 112 West Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6B 1G8 I've suggested to Rob to subscribe to the list so that he can answer people's questions and comments about KSW; he should be on within a day or so. Best, Charles Watts E-mail: cwatts@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 13:34:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: sinister and gauche In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:24:05 -0800 from On Wed, 11 Mar 1998 10:24:05 -0800 Hilton Manfred Obenzinger said: >I too am left-handed, but neither the right nor the left half of my brain >operate. I think only a small puddle of residue on the bottom keeps the >whole pile burbling. That's called ambidexterity. Your right hand "holds up" your brain while your left hand tries to right what's wrong with you. Just look in the mirror. You'll see naem I tahw. Righty hold-up. Lefty quick on the draw. - Genry Hould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 09:08:15 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: sinister and gauche In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm ambidextrous, which is the only thing I have in common with Bill Gates and Ken Griffey, Jr. Would that! I do notice that poets and athletes tend toward the sinister side. (This is _not_ to say that Gates is a poet, which my parallel structure is doing to me here.) Susan ______________________________________________ Susan M. Schultz Dept. of English 1733 Donaghho Road University of Hawai'i-Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/schultz http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/tinfish ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 11:41:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: sinister and gauche In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Also left-handed. Maxine Chernoff On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, MAYHEW wrote: > Me too! I bet a large proportion of the poetics list subscribers are > "leftists" > > I haven't read the scientific literature on handedness and brain > hemispheres and the like, but I definitely do sense my brain working both > sides of the street on language. > > Jonathan Mayhew > Department of Spanish and Portuguese > University of Kansas > jmayhew@ukans.edu > (785) 864-3851 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:48:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: knife and fork Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jonathan Mayhew's distinction is interesting, but I'm not sure I understand metonymy in the same way. I would have thought that metaphor is more typically conventional than metonymy is [and maybe that's why pomo's started opting for metonymy? -- that's just a guess, I don't know]. Fork for knife seems like a good example of metonymy for me, even if it is confusing. When I was a kid I hated it when my tottering old grandfather would call me by my brother's name. He also had a habit of mixing up the names of all my aunts and uncles [his own children]. A little confusing, I suppose, but basically we all understood what he meant. It was metonymy, no? The contiguity relation is interesting. A footprint is a metonymy, a sign of the creature who left it there in the sand [think of Robinson Crusoe's first encounter with Friday's footprints]. I hope that I am not being too simple here, because I agree with Jonathan that things can get rather complicated. I was once in a classroom teaching the difference between metaphor and metonymy. As an example of the latter I found myself referring to a murder scene from, I think, one of the Godfather movies. Some gangster types sitting at a restaurant table, one of them smoking a cigarette. The hit man bursts in, all hell breaks loose, blood everywhere, bodies draped all over the place. Cut to the cigarette sitting quietly in the ash tray. Hold on it for some fifteen seconds. A typical scene we've seen over and over again I suppose [conventional?]. What's with the cigarette? I asked, hoping to get the students to see the relationship between the cigarette and the dead man, who moments ago had held it to his lips [contiguity]. Well, they got the metonymy thing right away. But they kept on going. It was also metaphorical, they insisted. They showed me in fact that there was a kind of Homeric metaphor here about the length of a man's [a gangster's] days being analogous to the length of a cigarette's very short day. Metaphor. Interesting discussion about smoke as spirit, transience of spirit, of life, of consciousness, etc. [this was before Paul Auster's movie 'Smoke", BTW]. We finally came to the collective conclusion that the fifteen second hold on the ashtray may have begun as a metonymy but it surely ended as a metaphor. This experience drove home the point, often made in the literature on these terms, that while separating them out in theory is useful, in practice it is hard to keep them apart. Sorry if this is long-winded. Something got into me. GT >Why is not knife for fork a good metonymy? My reasoning is as follows: >metonymies and synechdoches are usually things like part for whole, whole >for part, container for thing contained, cause for effect, effect for >cause, etc... That is there is a connection between the two things, one >substituted for another. The work "contiguity," sometimes used to describe >metonymy, is misleading, because it leads Jakobson to think that "thing >lying next to another thing" is a metonymy. Bacon would not be a good >metonymy for eggs, for example, though it could stand in for food in >general or for breakfast. The test would be if you could understand the >substitution instantly. Metonymy is usually highly conventional. If >someone said knife meaning fork we would be confused. > >This is perhaps a pedantic distinction. > >Jonathan Mayhew >Department of Spanish and Portuguese >University of Kansas >jmayhew@ukans.edu >(785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:54:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881 Subject: Re: The Kootenay School of Writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit It's a terrible thing for KSW not to get that grant. It's a vital space for a bunch of hard working free-radically inclined good folks. What can we do? During my recent trip there I did hear that certain items were for sale and that they are gorgeous. All real looking. Good enough to fool any corporate HR manager or academic dean. They are KSW sheepskins. The following KSW degrees are still available: BA : a dime a dozen plus $10 for photocopying Hons BA: $15 MA : $2n PhD : $50 Honorary PhD : $100 I'm going for the Phd myself and I urge you all to do so as well. And I'll give you a tip on how to use it since I'm such a generous guy (I hear there's an opening at Temple). Send away for your degree today at the address indicated below. Sincerely, Bill Luoma -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:01:09 -0800 From: Susan Clark Subject: The Kootenay School of Writing Hello all, Thanks for your messages of support for the Kootenay School. They are much appreciated. The address of the Kootenay School is: The Kootenay School, 112 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC V6B 1G8 [v6b 1g8] CANADA ** note of US $ cheques : Because the School has no US$ bank account and exchange and bank charges will be heavy on small cheques, US$ cheques/checks should be made out RADDLE MOON and flagged "for KSW" on the memo line. RM will deposit them in our US$ account and pay KSW the exchange on the amount from our Cdn$ chequing account. These cheques can be sent to RM at 518-350 East Second Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 or to the School. .... Otherwise: money orders or book donations [thanks, Miekal] can be sent directly to the School. Letters of support are also welcome. Writers of letters should please remember that the mandate of the City of Vancouver is to look out for **local** orgs and audiences, and should slant their letters accordingly. To say that Vancouver is internationally renown as a centre for leading edge [buzz words are fine in bureaucratic circles!] poetries is good but better to say what this might mean for the city, and for local audiences.... Not to put words in anyone's mouth. Letters should be addressed to : Beverly Yahp City of Vancouver Office of Cultural Affairs 250 West Heritage Bldg City Sqare, Box 96, 555 West 12th Avenue Vancouver BC V5Z 3X7 CANADA with cc: KSW at the address above for safety's sake [misfiling and all, you know]. Or email [second best option] the school at ksw@radiant.net and we can print out and fwd. Thanks again for your support -- apologies for any duplication of Charles' post which I haven't read completely [have been out of town for a couple of days and am wading through email backlog] I wanted to get the address to those people asking. Please email me if you have questions. good wishes, Susan Susan Clark RADDLE MOON clarkd@sfu.ca ------------------------------ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:54:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: It's getting betta In-Reply-To: Henry Gould "Re: sinister and gauche" (Mar 11, 1:34pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hey there listservfolks in quiet listcountry, another of our very own has a poem featured in the APR (This in the latest edition). It's Chris Stroffolino on the back cover with his (nice) poem "Lingua Franca." I believe Ray DiPalma was in the previous issue or so. William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 15:11:39 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: Re: sinister and gauche MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'm a lefty as well. In my formative years, I used to write to the midpoint of a page with my left hand and then switch. Same with coloring, etc. E. Hatmaker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:31:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: knife and fork Comments: To: George Thompson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII George's point points to a belief I've long held, that is that, Metonymy, by virtue of its drifting into Metaphor consistently in practice, is a sub-set of Metaphor, like the simile. Get it? Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, George Thompson wrote: > Jonathan Mayhew's distinction is interesting, but I'm not sure I understand > metonymy in the same way. I would have thought that metaphor is more > typically conventional than metonymy is [and maybe that's why pomo's > started opting for metonymy? -- that's just a guess, I don't know]. Fork > for knife seems like a good example of metonymy for me, even if it is > confusing. > > When I was a kid I hated it when my tottering old grandfather would call me > by my brother's name. He also had a habit of mixing up the names of all my > aunts and uncles [his own children]. A little confusing, I suppose, but > basically we all understood what he meant. It was metonymy, no? > > The contiguity relation is interesting. A footprint is a metonymy, a sign > of the creature who left it there in the sand [think of Robinson Crusoe's > first encounter with Friday's footprints]. > > I hope that I am not being too simple here, because I agree with Jonathan > that things can get rather complicated. I was once in a classroom teaching > the difference between metaphor and metonymy. As an example of the latter I > found myself referring to a murder scene from, I think, one of the > Godfather movies. Some gangster types sitting at a restaurant table, one of > them smoking a cigarette. The hit man bursts in, all hell breaks loose, > blood everywhere, bodies draped all over the place. Cut to the cigarette > sitting quietly in the ash tray. Hold on it for some fifteen seconds. A > typical scene we've seen over and over again I suppose [conventional?]. > > What's with the cigarette? I asked, hoping to get the students to see the > relationship between the cigarette and the dead man, who moments ago had > held it to his lips [contiguity]. Well, they got the metonymy thing right > away. But they kept on going. It was also metaphorical, they insisted. They > showed me in fact that there was a kind of Homeric metaphor here about the > length of a man's [a gangster's] days being analogous to the length of a > cigarette's very short day. Metaphor. Interesting discussion about smoke as > spirit, transience of spirit, of life, of consciousness, etc. [this was > before Paul Auster's movie 'Smoke", BTW]. We finally came to the > collective conclusion that the fifteen second hold on the ashtray may have > begun as a metonymy but it surely ended as a metaphor. > > This experience drove home the point, often made in the literature on these > terms, that while separating them out in theory is useful, in practice it > is hard to keep them apart. > > Sorry if this is long-winded. Something got into me. > > GT > > > > > > > > >Why is not knife for fork a good metonymy? My reasoning is as follows: > >metonymies and synechdoches are usually things like part for whole, whole > >for part, container for thing contained, cause for effect, effect for > >cause, etc... That is there is a connection between the two things, one > >substituted for another. The work "contiguity," sometimes used to describe > >metonymy, is misleading, because it leads Jakobson to think that "thing > >lying next to another thing" is a metonymy. Bacon would not be a good > >metonymy for eggs, for example, though it could stand in for food in > >general or for breakfast. The test would be if you could understand the > >substitution instantly. Metonymy is usually highly conventional. If > >someone said knife meaning fork we would be confused. > > > >This is perhaps a pedantic distinction. > > > >Jonathan Mayhew > >Department of Spanish and Portuguese > >University of Kansas > >jmayhew@ukans.edu > >(785) 864-3851 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:56:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I suppose my definition (of metonymy) is more classically based, that is based on actual metonomies used in language. These are mostly conventional, e.g.: "the suits" for the upper management (clothing for the men wearing it) "wall street" for the financial industry (place for the activity there) "thirty sails" for thirty ships (part for whole [synechdoche]) "I drank two glasses" (container for thing contained, material for object made of this material) "the pentagon" (shape for building made in this shape, building for department housed there) "Hey, slim" (characteristic of person in place of person's name) etc... The use of the word metonymy to refer to a narrative detail (a character's cigarette) is the result of a wider application of the term in Jakobson's essay and the influence of this essay on literary critics. Jakobson's contention that realist novels were metonymical, for example, did not mean necessarily that there were filled with the figure of metonymy, but that they work in a way ANALOGOUS to metonymy, by exploiting relations of contiguity. This, I would contend, is a metaphorical extension of the original concept of metonymy as a trope--though a metaphorical extension that has gained wide acceptance, so much acceptance that I don't think it wise to press the point. I don't believe that metonymy is a syntagmatic operation, however; this is also a metaphorization of the figure of metonymy (one word is connected to another word just as a knife is lying next to a fork). metonymy ="a naming instead," substituting a noun for some other noun or adjective connected to it in some way. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 13:13:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: sinister and gauche MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lefties write good poetry, but never the poetry of old age. A psych prof at UBC for years attended readings at the Kootenay School, noticed the absence of aged lefties, then published his research proving that lefties die young. Sophocles, a righty, wrote that to have been born leftie was next best to never having been born. Who was the Blue Jays' first first baseman who threw left but batted right? Noticeable hitch in his swing. What a LANGUAGE poet he would've been. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 16:12:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm a dyed in the wool lefthander too, and i'm glad to know i've got a chance of surviving aphasia with my yakking abilities unphased; the best news i've gotten in aa while. At 11:00 AM -0600 3/11/98, k. lederer wrote: >I'm left-handed! And yes, so were all of the possible presidents you >listed, Chris-- > >Of note: Though language "resides" in the right hemisphere as a general >rule--this residence is split in left-handers (like a summer house and >winter house)-- > >When left-handed people have strokes or other maladies that cause aphasia, >they have a far better chance of retaining their linguistic abilities (as >aphasias generally mess with one side or the other)-- > >Best, >Katy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 17:34:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: left ee's Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit My twin sister Tanya is a lefty, and I am a righty Both my grandmothers are left-handed, is this inerited down the female line? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:53:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Well, i'm left handed. curious about others (ashbery is; my two > least favorite beatles are, hendrix. during the 1992 pres. debates > i was SHOCKED to see Clinton, Bush and Perot writing with their > left hands. Is this true? Not only them, but also Reagan. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:55:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >When left-handed people have strokes or other maladies that cause aphasia, >they have a far better chance of retaining their linguistic abilities (as >aphasias generally mess with one side or the other)-- > >Best, >Katy Not only that (and the discovery was made at McGill Univ., by the way), but right-handed people from left-handed families have a better chance that ordinary righthanders, though not as good as lefthanders. Fortunately, my sister, my brother and my daughter are lefthanded. My wife also comes from a lefthanded family, though she is righthanded. Roy Miki the poet/critic is lefthanded. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 18:04:33 -0500 Reply-To: Dean Taciuch Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dean Taciuch Subject: Re: metonymy In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII It's been awhile since I've read Jakobson on metaphor/metonymy, but I recall a comment to the effect that metonymy yielded less easily to analysis. Metonymy has always seemed the slippery trope, less "conventional: perhaps than metaphor. But as others have pointed out, making distinctions in actual usage is difficult--the cigarette example from George Thompson, for example, seems to me to function as both metaphor and metonym. I recall analyzing a number of Edward Taylor's religious poems this way--to unpack many of the images, one had to look at them metaphorically (often the leap from secular to spiritual) and metonymically (once he got to the spritual level, he could substitute freely, often metonymically, there). The images sound irrational at first (the only example I can think of offhand, amd its been a very long time since I've read these poems) is "wicker cage of rusted wire" to refer to the mortal body. I see metaphor there, in the substitution of cage for body which holds the soul, but wicker and wire is not a methaphorical substitution, and seems to me a metomyn, though not a conventional one (part for whole, container for thing contained, etc). Like substituting "knife" for "fork" . . .? Dean ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 15:02:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sinister and gauche In-Reply-To: <3506FE79.20CE@bc.sympatico.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, Stan Persky is a leftist in all regards, and he'd better watch out. He is well into muddle age. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 15:30:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: Sinister & Gauche Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's like many of us share the same firm of attorneys. Mark Baker's post worries me, though. In my sixties, mainly a leftie, & still trying to write? who am I fooling? On the other hand (groan), it's only this one UBC professor says so. I took psych at UBC and they lost my final -- gues their left hand didnt know what their right hand was doing! It was lucky for me : they had to give me a passing grade (just 50%), but it was a saturday a.m. class which I hardly ever made, (btw, the only person I knew whose notes I could borrow was also, I believe, a leftie) so I would likely have failed, had they found it. Like others who have testified, I can be ambidextrous, if you have the time to spare. Other leftie writers I've noticed : Cydney Chadwick, Cole Swensen. I used to have memorized dozens more, but the names are wandering through the blackberry patches in one of the lobes of my brain, browsing but hidden from view. My father was born a leftie, but it was the 19th C and he was beaten until he surrendered. He had admirable, copperplate handwriting with, of course, his right hand. (But he dealt cards with the left). My wife is a leftie, so natch our daughter is. We guys should team up and demand some rights (ouch). Back in the liberal 70s, we all of a sudden had lefthanded chair armrests for LH notetakers. By the Reagan era, these had all vanished. Stolen by LH students? I doubt it. Stowed on campus somewhere, taking up space but preventing Sonoma State from being thought bleeding heart? We should all lean on Bill for some breaks while he can still sign something official with his left hand. While it's really interesting to me to learn who is and who isnt, I feel a bit frivolous when so much heavy stuff is going down. The McCaffery news was exhausting, not the least for being like a saturday matinee for kids, with evil Temple being foiled at the last minute by noble York--thanks to the perspicacity of our hero. I am so glad for Steve that that deal came through, and I echo Doug Barbour's sentiments re-its being good for Canada in general and Toronto in particular. But still, a huge disappointment for people in Philly. And what a way to treat a genius! Or any human being. News re the Kootenay School is sad and frustrating also; lets hope there can be a happy ending there. I'm writing my letters tonight, Charles Watts; good to see your energy on the List. I dont know whether the KSW is still able to grant advanced degrees for a consideration; as I recall, a doctorate cost CAN$50. I myself would like an Hon. D. Litt. Also, I refer KSWers to my repeated posts about yard sales as sources of funds for such organizations. If writing to city council persons (too bad Jenny Shaw didnt win election to that body!), shouldnt one suggest that all one has heard about their fair city has made it likely that one will shortly be re-locating thither? And in due course, voting there? I heard that lefties are more literal-minded than the other camp. Seems to me there's a part missing in that rumor. But what is it makes one susceptible to the possibility of nonsense turning meaningful? E.g. If youre knife to me, we can have a spoon and maybe even a fork. Is that a syntagmic chain? Charles Simic has a fine poem about a fork. I think it's in _Dismantling the Silence_ . Oh, is that the time? Must dash-- David . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 15:26:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Farr Subject: Re: sinister MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Phyllis Webb, Canada's greatest living poet, started a book in the 70's called "The Left-Handed Poems", but it was never published. See her "Kropotkin Poems" in "Wilson's Bowl" for a few ref.'s to left-handedness and poetry . . . Roger ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 15:40:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: sinister and gauche MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I know a fellow who's mostly righthanded, but masturbates lefthanded, says he likes that hand better for couple sex, too. Always thought that was a quite interesting idiosyncracy. Stills Mark Baker wrote: > Lefties write good poetry, but never the poetry of old age. > A psych prof at UBC for years attended readings at the Kootenay > School, noticed the absence of aged lefties, then published > his research proving that lefties die young. Sophocles, a righty, > wrote that to have been born leftie was next best to never > having been born. > > Who was the Blue Jays' first first baseman who threw left > but batted right? Noticeable hitch in his swing. > What a LANGUAGE poet he would've been. > > Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 17:12:35 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: Re: sinister MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I once worked in a company where the whole art department and a lot of the editorial department -- most of them poets -- were left-handed. So, register me -- the only left-hander in my family [when it's not genetic it's birth trauma they say] and Michael Gregson (Cdn mock-epicist), Lewis Carroll, Jean Genet and Pres.s Gerald Ford, Hoover and Garfield, too, if I remember correctly -- scary, isn't it? a sinisterly run country to be sure... (Harry Truman wrote right-handed but threw southpaw) Keep the KSW support coming: the lives of untold birth-traumatized maladroit poets are at stake. Susan Susan Clark RADDLE MOON Vancouver BC clarkd@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 19:33:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: <199803112326.PAA03631@fraser.sfu.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 3:26 PM -0800 3/11/98, Roger Farr wrote: >Phyllis Webb, Canada's greatest living >Roger wow, never heard of her; is this a general consensus? tell me more, if this isn't too elementary and boring for everyone else on the list.--md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 20:45:15 -0500 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: sinister and gauche MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------6F0467FE340A" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6F0467FE340A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Okay, I've just added another box to my survey at Comprepoetica, for handedness. NOW will you guys send me biographical information? Actually, I DO think the handedness, eye-color, height, etc., of people in various vocations are interesting. I wonder if there's a difference in handedness between lonaguage poets and mainstream poets, or between language poets and visual poets, or between visual and mainstream poets. Or between literary critics and poets. I'm right-handed, by the way. --Bob G. --------------6F0467FE340A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="sig.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="sig.txt" Bob Grumman BobGrumman@Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site --------------6F0467FE340A-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 19:47:08 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: [Fwd: Rejected posting to POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------45FA7532532" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------45FA7532532 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit wrote a whole post about how my granny sed lefthanded ness was a sign of the devil but somehow the rightbrain of the listserv turned it into the fwded. --------------45FA7532532 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from theta.acsu.buffalo.edu (theta.acsu.buffalo.edu [128.205.7.183]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.8.7/8.8.6) with SMTP id SAA00824 for ; Wed, 11 Mar 1998 18:30:37 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803120030.SAA00824@westbyserver.westby.mwt.net> Received: (qmail 12984 invoked from network); 12 Mar 1998 00:30:04 -0000 Received: from listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.35) by theta.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 12 Mar 1998 00:30:04 -0000 Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 19:30:04 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University at Buffalo (1.8c)" Subject: Rejected posting to POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU To: Miekal And Content-Type: text LISTSERV does not allow the distribution of empty messages to a mailing list, because some users are unable to see the "Subject:" field from the original message. ------------------------ Rejected message (17 lines) -------------------------- Received: (qmail 2260 invoked from network); 12 Mar 1998 00:30:03 -0000 Received: from westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (156.46.73.3) by listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 12 Mar 1998 00:30:03 -0000 Received: from 156.46.73.194 (ppp94.westby.mwt.net [156.46.73.194]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.8.7/8.8.6) with SMTP id SAA29025 for ; Wed, 11 Mar 1998 18:16:37 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <3506D57F.5DCF@mwt.net> Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 18:18:44 +0000 From: Miekal And X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: UB Poetics discussion group Subject: Re: sinister and gauche References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------45FA7532532-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 20:45:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: knife and fork MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------6B6B5DDB579862B69112562D" --------------6B6B5DDB579862B69112562D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd say rather that there's a fractional dimension between metaphor and metonymy -- i.e., that either one of these terms is always (?) encountered in the process of being folded over into the other. Jakobson is actually quite suggestive on this, and much less rigidly schematic than many current "readings" give him credit for: ". . . the new doctrine rejects the absolute character of time, and therefore the existence of 'world' time as well. Every identical self-moving system has its own time; the speed of time-flow is not identical in each system" ("Futurism"). [Contiguity (i.e., the temporal series) becomes substitution -- one can name and know the "self-moving system" as a characterizable whole. This, in turn depends upon the (metonymic) serialization of a range of such systems, articulated against the (again metaphoric) totality of "world" time.] ". . . shifting and change are not only historical statements . . . but . . . shift is also a directly experienced synchronic pheonmenon, a relevant artistic value" ("The Dominant"). "What is the empirical linguistic criterion of the poetic function? . . . To answer this question we must recall the two basic modes of arrangement used in verbal behavior, selection and combination. . . . [S]election is produced on the basis of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymy and antonymy, while the combination, the build-up of the sequence, is based on contiguity. The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence" ("Linguistics and Poetics"). [Both the becoming-metaphor of metonymy, and the becoming-metonymy of metaphor. Of course, this is a matter of the "poetic function," so one might argue that this disposition of linguistic space around two dimensions (Jakobson frequently refers to the metonymic axis as "horizontal" and the metaphoric as "vertical") and the fraction of a third in which these integer dimensions fold / evolve / involve toward each other -- (long sentence) that this disposition is simply a matter of aesthetic distance from or distortion of everyday language. I'd argue, myself, that the "poetic function" is at least as much a matter of reading as it is the aesthetic intent of a writer.] ". . . a linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronisms" (ibid). [Here Jakobson seems to allow for the possibility of what I've written above. In other words, the sort of absolute distinction between poetic and everyday language which is the result of a certain canonical reading of Jakobson's work might be itself simply the product of a too-stringent disciplinarity -- one which Jakobson himself felt (in 1958) to be already obsolete. This is not necessarily an attempt to liquidate the difference between, say, poetry and headlines (though one might read Shklovsky for productive suggestions in this direction), but more the claim that such differences are not so categorical as we might think, depending for their maintenance on more "conjunctural" (or even conjectural) complexes of attention and intention on the part of writers and readers (and publishers and printers, etc.). This understanding of linguistic space as 2.n-dimensional -- a space of partial differences and partial correspondences -- allows one to envision a possibility for the work of verbal art other than that of the "conduit metaphor" which Jakobson himself finally and infamously gives himself over to. (For better critiques of this organizing metaphor than mine, see Barrett Watten, "The Conduit of Communication in Everyday Life" (Aerial 8), and Michael Reddy, "The Conduit Metaphor," cited therein). Rather than the two-dimensional narrative of composition -- i.e., the poet converts a (metonymic) historical / factical time-sequence into a (metaphoric) literary artifact, which is then metonymically "unpacked" into a reader's physical and historical time of reading -- one arrives at a sense of language-objects which are always already cross-cut by time, which is itself scored with / by words. Vertiginous and often frightening, but (I think) better suited to an accurate sense of what poetry -- both as and as apart from language -- might do. Sadly, I'd count myself among the population of the second half of Jakobson's anachronism -- not indifferent, but certainly unconversant]. To vastly oversimplify, one might read "language" or even "life" for "poetry" in the following passage, also from "Linguistics and Poetics": ". . . anything sequent is a simile. In poetry, where similarity is superinduced upon contiguity, any metonymy is slightly metaphoric and any metaphor has a metonymic tint." A final tangent: I seem to remember reading something in which various Romantic / Decadent / early Modernist orientations toward the problematics of the sublime and / vs. the beautiful were aligned with "sets" toward these Jakobsonian axes of selection and combination. The beautiful, I think, was horizontal and combinatory (metonymic -- it had something to do with the guy in Pater's The Renaissance who preferred fondling sculpture to looking at it), while the sublime was vertical and singular (selected / selective) -- think of Ruskin's Gothic cathedral, which is always aspiring toward that which it cannot yet (ever) be. Interesting, if a bit overly-schematic. Anyone have any idea who might have written this? Taylor Brady editor, Cartograffiti http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/cartograffiti (a publication of the Small Press Collective) http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc Patrick F. Durgin wrote: > George's point points to a belief I've long held, that is that, > Metonymy, by virtue of its drifting into Metaphor consistently in > practice, is a sub-set of Metaphor, like the simile. Get it? > > Patrick F. Durgin > > ` > ` > ` > ` ----->*<----- > ` K E N N I N G| > ` anewsletterof| > ` poetry&poetic| > ` s418BrownSt.#| > ` 10IowaCityIA5| > ` 2245USA\/\/\/| > > On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, George Thompson wrote: > > > Jonathan Mayhew's distinction is interesting, but I'm not sure I understand > > metonymy in the same way. I would have thought that metaphor is more > > typically conventional than metonymy is [and maybe that's why pomo's > > started opting for metonymy? -- that's just a guess, I don't know]. Fork > > for knife seems like a good example of metonymy for me, even if it is > > confusing. > > > > When I was a kid I hated it when my tottering old grandfather would call me > > by my brother's name. He also had a habit of mixing up the names of all my > > aunts and uncles [his own children]. A little confusing, I suppose, but > > basically we all understood what he meant. It was metonymy, no? > > > > The contiguity relation is interesting. A footprint is a metonymy, a sign > > of the creature who left it there in the sand [think of Robinson Crusoe's > > first encounter with Friday's footprints]. > > > > I hope that I am not being too simple here, because I agree with Jonathan > > that things can get rather complicated. I was once in a classroom teaching > > the difference between metaphor and metonymy. As an example of the latter I > > found myself referring to a murder scene from, I think, one of the > > Godfather movies. Some gangster types sitting at a restaurant table, one of > > them smoking a cigarette. The hit man bursts in, all hell breaks loose, > > blood everywhere, bodies draped all over the place. Cut to the cigarette > > sitting quietly in the ash tray. Hold on it for some fifteen seconds. A > > typical scene we've seen over and over again I suppose [conventional?]. > > > > What's with the cigarette? I asked, hoping to get the students to see the > > relationship between the cigarette and the dead man, who moments ago had > > held it to his lips [contiguity]. Well, they got the metonymy thing right > > away. But they kept on going. It was also metaphorical, they insisted. They > > showed me in fact that there was a kind of Homeric metaphor here about the > > length of a man's [a gangster's] days being analogous to the length of a > > cigarette's very short day. Metaphor. Interesting discussion about smoke as > > spirit, transience of spirit, of life, of consciousness, etc. [this was > > before Paul Auster's movie 'Smoke", BTW]. We finally came to the > > collective conclusion that the fifteen second hold on the ashtray may have > > begun as a metonymy but it surely ended as a metaphor. > > > > This experience drove home the point, often made in the literature on these > > terms, that while separating them out in theory is useful, in practice it > > is hard to keep them apart. > > > > Sorry if this is long-winded. Something got into me. > > > > GT > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Why is not knife for fork a good metonymy? My reasoning is as follows: > > >metonymies and synechdoches are usually things like part for whole, whole > > >for part, container for thing contained, cause for effect, effect for > > >cause, etc... That is there is a connection between the two things, one > > >substituted for another. The work "contiguity," sometimes used to describe > > >metonymy, is misleading, because it leads Jakobson to think that "thing > > >lying next to another thing" is a metonymy. Bacon would not be a good > > >metonymy for eggs, for example, though it could stand in for food in > > >general or for breakfast. The test would be if you could understand the > > >substitution instantly. Metonymy is usually highly conventional. If > > >someone said knife meaning fork we would be confused. > > > > > >This is perhaps a pedantic distinction. > > > > > >Jonathan Mayhew > > >Department of Spanish and Portuguese > > >University of Kansas > > >jmayhew@ukans.edu > > >(785) 864-3851 > > --------------6B6B5DDB579862B69112562D Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd say rather that there's a fractional dimension between metaphor and metonymy -- i.e., that either one of these terms is always (?) encountered in the process of being folded over into the other. Jakobson is actually quite suggestive on this, and much less rigidly schematic than many current "readings" give him credit for:
 

". . . the new doctrine rejects the absolute character of time, and therefore the existence of 'world' time as well. Every identical self-moving system has its own time; the speed of time-flow is not identical in each system" ("Futurism").

[Contiguity (i.e., the temporal series) becomes substitution -- one can name and know the "self-moving system" as a characterizable whole. This, in turn depends upon the (metonymic) serialization of  a range of such systems, articulated against the (again metaphoric) totality of "world" time.]
 
 

". . . shifting and change are not only historical statements . . . but . . . shift is also a directly experienced synchronic pheonmenon, a relevant artistic value" ("The Dominant").
 
 

"What is the empirical linguistic criterion of the poetic function? . . . To answer this question we must recall the two basic modes of arrangement used in verbal behavior, selection and combination. . . . [S]election is produced on the basis of equivalence, similarity and dissimilarity, synonymy and antonymy, while the combination, the build-up of the sequence, is based on contiguity. The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination. Equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence" ("Linguistics and Poetics").

[Both the becoming-metaphor of metonymy, and the becoming-metonymy of metaphor. Of course, this is a matter of the "poetic function," so one might argue that this disposition of linguistic space around two dimensions (Jakobson frequently refers to the metonymic axis as "horizontal" and the metaphoric as "vertical") and the fraction of a third in which these integer dimensions fold / evolve / involve toward each other -- (long sentence) that this disposition is simply a matter of aesthetic distance from or distortion of everyday language. I'd argue, myself, that the "poetic function" is at least as much a matter of reading as it is the aesthetic intent of a writer.]
 
 

". . . a linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronisms" (ibid).

[Here Jakobson seems to allow for the possibility of what I've written above. In other words, the sort of absolute distinction between poetic and everyday language which is the result of a certain canonical reading of Jakobson's work might be itself simply the product of a too-stringent disciplinarity -- one which Jakobson himself felt (in 1958) to be already obsolete. This is not necessarily an attempt to liquidate the difference between, say, poetry and headlines (though one might read Shklovsky for productive suggestions in this direction), but more the claim that such differences are not so categorical as we might think, depending for their maintenance on more "conjunctural" (or even conjectural) complexes of attention and intention on the part of writers and readers (and publishers and printers, etc.). This understanding of linguistic space as 2.n-dimensional -- a space of partial differences and partial correspondences -- allows one to envision a possibility for the work of verbal art other than that of the "conduit metaphor" which Jakobson himself finally and infamously gives himself over to. (For better critiques of this organizing metaphor than mine, see Barrett Watten, "The Conduit of Communication in Everyday Life" (Aerial 8), and Michael Reddy, "The Conduit Metaphor," cited therein). Rather than the two-dimensional narrative of composition -- i.e., the poet converts a (metonymic) historical / factical time-sequence into a (metaphoric) literary artifact, which is then metonymically "unpacked" into a reader's physical and historical time of reading -- one arrives at a sense of language-objects which are always already cross-cut by time, which is itself scored with / by words. Vertiginous and often frightening, but (I think) better suited to an accurate sense of what poetry -- both as and as apart from language -- might do. Sadly, I'd count myself among the population of the second half of Jakobson's anachronism -- not indifferent, but certainly unconversant].

To vastly oversimplify, one might read "language" or even "life" for "poetry" in the following passage, also from "Linguistics and Poetics":
 

". . . anything sequent is a simile. In poetry, where similarity is superinduced upon contiguity, any metonymy is slightly metaphoric and any metaphor has a metonymic tint."
 
 

A final tangent: I seem to remember reading something in which various Romantic / Decadent / early Modernist orientations toward the problematics of the sublime and / vs. the beautiful were aligned with "sets" toward these Jakobsonian axes of selection and combination. The beautiful, I think, was horizontal and combinatory (metonymic -- it had something to do with the guy in Pater's The Renaissance who preferred fondling sculpture to looking at it), while the sublime was vertical and singular (selected / selective) -- think of Ruskin's Gothic cathedral, which is always aspiring toward that which it cannot yet (ever) be. Interesting, if a bit overly-schematic. Anyone have any idea who might have written this?

Taylor Brady
editor, Cartograffiti
 http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/cartograffiti

(a publication of the Small Press Collective)
 http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc
 
 
 

Patrick F. Durgin wrote:

        George's point points to a belief I've long held, that is that,
Metonymy, by virtue of its drifting into Metaphor consistently in
practice, is a sub-set of Metaphor, like the simile.  Get it?

        Patrick F. Durgin

`
`
`
`  ----->*<-----
`  K E N N I N G|
`  anewsletterof|
`  poetry&poetic|
`  s418BrownSt.#|
`  10IowaCityIA5|
`  2245USA\/\/\/|

On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, George Thompson wrote:

> Jonathan Mayhew's distinction is interesting, but I'm not sure I understand
> metonymy in the same way. I would have thought that metaphor is more
> typically conventional than metonymy is [and maybe that's why pomo's
> started opting for metonymy? -- that's just a guess, I don't know]. Fork
> for knife seems like a good example of metonymy for me, even if it is
> confusing.
>
> When I was a kid I hated it when my tottering old grandfather would call me
> by my brother's name. He also had a habit of mixing up the names of all my
> aunts and uncles [his own children]. A little confusing, I suppose, but
> basically we all understood what he meant. It was metonymy, no?
>
> The contiguity relation is interesting. A footprint is a metonymy, a sign
> of the creature who left it there in the sand [think of Robinson Crusoe's
> first encounter with Friday's footprints].
>
> I hope that I am not being too simple here, because I agree with Jonathan
> that things can get rather complicated. I was once in a classroom teaching
> the difference between metaphor and metonymy. As an example of the latter I
> found myself referring to a murder scene from, I think, one of the
> Godfather movies. Some gangster types sitting at a restaurant table, one of
> them smoking a cigarette. The hit man bursts in, all hell breaks loose,
> blood everywhere, bodies draped all over the place. Cut to the cigarette
> sitting quietly in the ash tray. Hold on it for some fifteen seconds. A
> typical scene we've seen over and over again I suppose [conventional?].
>
> What's with the cigarette? I asked, hoping to get the students to see the
> relationship between the cigarette and the dead man, who moments ago had
> held it to his lips [contiguity]. Well, they got the metonymy thing right
> away. But they kept on going. It was also metaphorical, they insisted. They
> showed me in fact that there was a kind of Homeric metaphor here about the
> length of a man's [a gangster's] days being analogous to the length of a
> cigarette's very short day. Metaphor. Interesting discussion about smoke as
> spirit, transience of spirit, of life, of consciousness, etc. [this was
> before Paul Auster's movie 'Smoke", BTW].  We finally came to the
> collective conclusion that the fifteen second hold on the ashtray may have
> begun as a metonymy but it surely ended as a metaphor.
>
> This experience drove home the point, often made in the literature on these
> terms, that while separating them out in theory is useful, in practice it
> is hard to keep them apart.
>
> Sorry if this is long-winded. Something got into me.
>
> GT
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Why is not knife for fork a good metonymy?  My reasoning is as follows:
> >metonymies and synechdoches are usually things like part for whole, whole
> >for part, container for thing contained, cause for effect, effect for
> >cause, etc...  That is there is a connection between the two things, one
> >substituted for another. The work "contiguity," sometimes used to describe
> >metonymy, is misleading, because it leads Jakobson to think that "thing
> >lying next to another thing" is a metonymy. Bacon would not be a good
> >metonymy for eggs, for example, though it could stand in for food in
> >general or for breakfast.  The test would be if you could understand the
> >substitution instantly. Metonymy is usually highly conventional. If
> >someone said knife meaning fork we would be confused.
> >
> >This is perhaps a pedantic distinction.
> >
> >Jonathan Mayhew
> >Department of Spanish and Portuguese
> >University of Kansas
> >jmayhew@ukans.edu
> >(785) 864-3851
>

  --------------6B6B5DDB579862B69112562D-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 19:58:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've asked this before here without much response so i'll ask again. What does 'parataxis' mean in literary circles? Psychologically it has a sense that i think is now pretty much limited to Harry Sullivan's works where it means prelogical or non-verbal action tendencies. It could, by extension, be applied in other 'systems' but I like the more delimited formulation and i think it works better in that framework. tom bell At 08:00 AM 3/11/98 EST, henry gould wrote: >On Tue, 10 Mar 1998 18:57:46 -0500 Steven Marks said: >>Rosmarie Waldrop speaks to this in her essay, "Form and Discontent," in >>the fall/winter '96 issue of Diacritics. She speaks, among many other >>things, of Olson referring to the vertical tendency of metaphor as "the >>suck of symbol." Waldrop: "Metaphor as a hotline to transcendence, to >>divine meaning, which casts the poet in the role of a special being, a >>priest or prophet." In short, Romanticism. On metonymy: "composition and >>syntax," "stess on how the elements were combined on the surface, how they >>sat next to each other on the page, how they followed each other in the >>theater." Or, "the Neoclassical aesthetic." > >I also agree with George Thompson. I think Rosmarie Waldrop's piece is only >one among a great many which used this opposition to defend (sort of >after-the-fact) the whole stream of open, experimental, documentary >poetics stemming mainly from Pound, and also to support what is seen as >a feminist, secular, "anti-logocentric" worldview. It is a simple fact >that 20th century poetry explores whole new regions via metonymy, parataxis, >and collage, so it is understandable that people would remark on the >special resources of these aspects of language use. But this idea that >metaphor rather than metonymy can be put to vatic, religious use - that one >is sacred, the other secular - is there any evidence of this? >Or is Waldrop's real target the attempt to provide any single, stable >"meaning" in poetry? > >The Russian Formalists sort of codified these two axes of composition >in poetry, and various poets have been drawn to their theories >for technical explanations of what they're doing. As I've said >before here & have tried to point out in a couple web essays (in >Mudlark & in a response to Joe Brennan in Flashpoint), I prefer the >theories of one of the Formalists' percursors and antagonists, A. >Potebnia. Potebnia emphasized that words have an "inner form" or >"inner image" - psychological, etymological, symbolic. Actually not >a single image - words are concentrated sources, via this inner form, >of infinite meanings. Poetry is not analyzable simply on a R. Formalist >grid or axis of metaphor/metonymy, because the inner form of the word >per se is always generating new clusters of meaning & effect. Potebnia >as you might guess shows some kinship with the ideas of Annensky and >Mandelstam, in particular. > >I'm not a scholar myself & admit these are hunches rather >than researches, but they're useful orientations for me anyway. >- Henry Gould > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 20:13:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: sinister and gauche Comments: To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I write right and draw left poetry depends on where i'm coming from. i right write and draw to an inside straight tom bell Bob, you can add to my bio? At 08:45 PM 3/11/98 -0500, Bob Grumman wrote: >Okay, I've just added another box to my survey at Comprepoetica, for >handedness. NOW will you guys send me biographical information? > >Actually, I DO think the handedness, eye-color, height, etc., of people >in various vocations are interesting. I wonder if there's a difference >in handedness between lonaguage poets and mainstream poets, or between >language poets and visual poets, or between visual and mainstream poets. >Or between literary critics and poets. > >I'm right-handed, by the way. > > --Bob G. >Bob Grumman > >BobGrumman@Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 > > Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 21:19:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Varrone Subject: Philly reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For those in the Philadelphia area: 5 Corners Poetry Series Presents: Jenny Gough & Paul Muldoon Thursday, March 19th, 8 p.m. @ george's 5th Street Cafe (5th & Gaskill Streets between Lombard & South Sts) Call Kevin @ 238-8511 for more info. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:41:31 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit some off the cuff meditations: parataxis (rhetorically a figure of speech) used to describe paratactic verbal constructions and opposed to normative subject predicate syntax such as "man sees horse." Examples include series of phrases, marked by repetiton and variation (parallelisms, coordination); read by pattern recognition, analyzed by classification rather than by qualification, modification, subordination; often thought of as non-hierarchical, except that series nest within series. Best ready example Whitman. one truism: paratactic constructions, like chants appeal to the emotions; syntactic to reason, rationality elements within a paratactic structure can be syntatcatically complete: "caldorn boil" but "caldron boil and caldron bubble" is a highly marked example of parataxis (marked by syntatctic parallelism, repetition, and assonance." "the apparition of these faces in the crowd; petal on a wet, black bough" is a lightly marked, syntactically incomplete, example of parataxis. You have the bare bones of a series; each untit syntactically dissimilar, each unit marked by assonance in the musical phrase, arriving by different routes at the strongly marked assonance (in parallel position) of the /ow/ and /ou/ sounds at th end of each line. Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:44:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980312015830.00938fbc@pop.usit.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom Bell, The Princeton Ency. of Poetry and Poetics sez: "P. is a stylistic term referring to a relative paucity of linking terms between juxtaposed clauses or sentences, often giving the effect of piling up, swiftness, and sometimes compression. A paratactic style is one in which a lang.'s ordinary resources for joining propositions are deliberately underused..." Interestingly, the definition includes an example from Pope's "Essay on Criticism." To wit: Pride, Malice, Folly against Dryden rose, In various shapes of Parsons, Critics, Beaus The Pr. Ency. says that the presence of "and" in the two lines would prevent us from making both single pairs between the faults in line 1 and the enemies in line 2 (Pride - Parsons) and between the two groups in relationship to each other. Now, I would even say that perhaps the pairings are metonymical. What would you all say? Steven On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Thomas Bell wrote: > I've asked this before here without much response so i'll ask again. What > does 'parataxis' mean in literary circles? Psychologically it has a sense > that i think is now pretty much limited to Harry Sullivan's works where it > means prelogical or non-verbal action tendencies. It could, by extension, > be applied in other 'systems' but I like the more delimited formulation > and i think it works better in that framework. > tom bell > > At 08:00 AM 3/11/98 EST, henry gould wrote: > >On Tue, 10 Mar 1998 18:57:46 -0500 Steven Marks said: > >>Rosmarie Waldrop speaks to this in her essay, "Form and Discontent," in > >>the fall/winter '96 issue of Diacritics. She speaks, among many other > >>things, of Olson referring to the vertical tendency of metaphor as "the > >>suck of symbol." Waldrop: "Metaphor as a hotline to transcendence, to > >>divine meaning, which casts the poet in the role of a special being, a > >>priest or prophet." In short, Romanticism. On metonymy: "composition and > >>syntax," "stess on how the elements were combined on the surface, how they > >>sat next to each other on the page, how they followed each other in the > >>theater." Or, "the Neoclassical aesthetic." > > > >I also agree with George Thompson. I think Rosmarie Waldrop's piece is only > >one among a great many which used this opposition to defend (sort of > >after-the-fact) the whole stream of open, experimental, documentary > >poetics stemming mainly from Pound, and also to support what is seen as > >a feminist, secular, "anti-logocentric" worldview. It is a simple fact > >that 20th century poetry explores whole new regions via metonymy, parataxis, > >and collage, so it is understandable that people would remark on the > >special resources of these aspects of language use. But this idea that > >metaphor rather than metonymy can be put to vatic, religious use - that one > >is sacred, the other secular - is there any evidence of this? > >Or is Waldrop's real target the attempt to provide any single, stable > >"meaning" in poetry? > > > >The Russian Formalists sort of codified these two axes of composition > >in poetry, and various poets have been drawn to their theories > >for technical explanations of what they're doing. As I've said > >before here & have tried to point out in a couple web essays (in > >Mudlark & in a response to Joe Brennan in Flashpoint), I prefer the > >theories of one of the Formalists' percursors and antagonists, A. > >Potebnia. Potebnia emphasized that words have an "inner form" or > >"inner image" - psychological, etymological, symbolic. Actually not > >a single image - words are concentrated sources, via this inner form, > >of infinite meanings. Poetry is not analyzable simply on a R. Formalist > >grid or axis of metaphor/metonymy, because the inner form of the word > >per se is always generating new clusters of meaning & effect. Potebnia > >as you might guess shows some kinship with the ideas of Annensky and > >Mandelstam, in particular. > > > >I'm not a scholar myself & admit these are hunches rather > >than researches, but they're useful orientations for me anyway. > >- Henry Gould > > > > > __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:43:40 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: metaphoracity redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT boy, this sure has drifted from my initial inquiry. I'm aware of the metaphor/metonymy distinction. Perhaps there is no answer to my q. as there is no essay that tells me exactly what i want to know! which is (to rephrase) I'm wondering if anyone's written abt. post-metaphoric "political" poetry -- specifically abt. the absence of metaphor. as John Berger writes in _A Painter of Our Time_ (and I paraphrase) a poet Yannos used pigeons as a symbol of the revolutionaries' spirits after they were slaughtered in a square when upon the gunshots these pigeons flew off the window sills where they routinely sat; John remarked they had returned peacefully the next day, and said "the only image for man fighting is man" [double sic] it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:43:40 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: Hilda Morley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT i too love hilda morley whom i only recently "discovered" wondering who had been hiding her from me. please do tell her so if possible. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 00:46:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:43:40 +0000 from On Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:43:40 +0000 linda russo said: >I'm wondering if anyone's written abt. post-metaphoric >"political" poetry -- specifically abt. the absence of metaphor. > >as John Berger writes in _A Painter of Our Time_ (and I paraphrase) >a poet Yannos used pigeons as a symbol of the revolutionaries' spirits after >they were slaughtered in a square when upon the gunshots these pigeons >flew off the window sills where they routinely sat; John remarked they had >returned peacefully the next day, and said "the only image for man fighting is >man" >[double sic] > >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. In my view if you're writing poetry you're already involved in the power structure. And indirect or direct speech are EQUIVALENT techniques. Indirect speech is often the most powerful. It is someone saying something too terrible to use words directly about. The metaphor or synecdoche or whatever only adds to the shock. Whereas in an (an)aesthetized cultural situation "direct" speech SEEMS more "political". The irony is that those who think poetry is a political tool are the ones most comfortable with the status quo, whether they realize it or not. Those outside the status quo use poetry politically in order to join the establishment. And those REALLY outside the establishment - are totally outside poetry too. - Edgar Allan Poe, Southern Gentleman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:31:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kasey Silem Mohammad Hicks Subject: Re: Knife & Fork In-Reply-To: <199803120504.VAA04388@leland.Stanford.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" By way of bringing the metonymy/metaphor discussion more closely to bear on individual verse passages, I'd like to point out how the knife = fork metonymy operates in a specific literary application. I'm reminded of that timeless lyric, whose author, if known, I've forgotten (it isn't Ogden Nash, is it?): I eat my peas with honey: I've done it all my life. It may taste kind of funny, But it keeps them on my knife. Here, the knife would be a fork if "fork" rhymed with "life." Thus the rhetorical function of metonymy, in this instance, doubles as a principle of formal expedience. The end result (once we come to terms with the problems of figurative categorization) is a frustration of the reader's expectations that produces either a disturbing experience of lexical slippage or an equally unsettling image of gustatory incompetence--or rather, a radical flickering between both possible aesthetic fields, and hence the GREATNESS of the poem. K ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 05:34:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Ambi-ducks-trous Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Being the dense sort, when they put a pen or pencil or crayon into my right hand, I used it there. It wasn't until around age seven, when (in the days before mini-T-ball leagues) playing baseball with my dad's right-handed glove I simply couldn't throw, so got into the habit of taking the glove off first and then throwing (a la Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher) until I could convince my folks to invest in a left-handed glove. When I tried batting left-handed, suddenly I could hit, and in fact I now do all sports as a leftie (even kick with my left foot). But I still write right-handed and my pen-person-ship demonstrates for all to see that this is not a "natural" mode. One twin (Colin) is a lefty with a pen, tho a switch hitter. Jesse is strictly a righty. I've been told that such a division is almost standard with twins. Count Erica Hunt among the lefties. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 19:56:46 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: Ambi-ducks-trous In-Reply-To: <199831262451541@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am usually left handed, e.g., writing, scratching, daily tasks, knife and fork using, etc. when I went to Shanghai however I was not allowed (I mean this literally) to use chopsticks with my left hand -- they would be physically taken from my left hand and put into my right hand. so the only major task in which I am right handed is eating with chopsticks. at one point a friend was going to teach me calligraphy with a brush; he said that I would have to do it with my right hand, otherwise the stroke order would be wrong. I decided not to learn to use the brush. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 13:03:25 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: sinister MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > i was SHOCKED to see Clinton, Bush and Perot writing with their > > left hands. Is this true? > > Not only them, but also Reagan. Not only Reagan, but also Attila the Hun, Benito Mussolini, Robert Bly, and Collin Staplehurst (my butcher) were/are all lefties! Could the "sinister" conflation have a grain of truth!?!?! With such overwhelming evidence perhaps someone should table a motion to forcibly eject all lefties from this list on the grounds of gen= eral degeneracy. Besides, who can understand them? (I tried once, I really did, in 4th grade, to write with my left hand. = Heather Bell, a girl whom neither my left nor my right brain had a crush on, was ordered to write righty by our evil principle Mrs. Topsic. She cried for almost an hour until Topsic left, then she resumed lefty. In = a show of solidarity I too tried to write lefty. But alas my right brain would not be ruled and what resulted was a significant degradation of my already "N" for "needs-improvement" handwriting. I gave up after a day, Heather grew up and entered a convent, and Valley School didn't catch my dyslexia until I was 15. Does dyslexia count for anything?) Apoplexically, Martin ________________________________________ Martin Spinelli SUNY Buffalo English Department Granolithic Productions spinelli@pavilion.co.uk LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak ENGAGED http://www.engaged.demon.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 15:12:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "DANIEL L. COLLIER" Subject: Re: sinister and gauche Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Bob, Maybe you should add a box to your survey for cases like Steve's friend? Everyone else, Since language and handedness are physiologically connected, what effects might a forced switch to the right hand have had on (for example) David Bromige's father? Sound off: how many on this list are Adult Children of Repressed Lefties? (I'm serious about the forced switch question.) Danny. "Oh, how you live there./You have your hippopotamus/while we're in the storeroom/with holes in our pockets/and here it's funny, simply funny." -- Boris Grebinshikov ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 15:40:02 -0800 From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: sinister and gauche I know a fellow who's mostly righthanded, but masturbates lefthanded, says he likes that hand better for couple sex, too. Always thought that was a quite interesting idiosyncracy. Stills ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 07:19:50 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steven Marks wrote: > > I agree that metonymy should have no privilege over metaphor and that > both are parts of all languages. What I found interesting in the Waldrop > quotes that I provided was that she couldn't get away from using > metaphors. And who can? Or would want to? I remember about 25 years ago, I > vowed to rid my writing of all metaphor. I'm not sure why. I think I > thought of metaphors as being somehow "false." Well, this project didn't > last long. I soon realized that common, everyday words themselves were > metaphors. For example, "metaphor," which comes from roots meaning change > and to bear. I always had this image of an old man carrying bundles of > similarities across a bridge from one word to another. Still, this all > said, I still wonder why language is this way. Could it have gone another > route? I suppose these are more anthropological questions than political > ones, although that line has to be blurry at some point as well. Maybe > they are even physiological questions. Some researchers believe we > developed speech because we, as a species, are predominately right-handed. > Thus, we used the left side of our brain for picking fruits, nabbing grubs > and just generally hanging around. This freed the right side of our brain > to do what it does best -- speech. Can we blame it all on a gene that > decided to favor right-handedness? What if it had decided left-handedness? > Or split right down the middle? > > Some early morning thoughts. > > cheers, > Steven > > __________________________________________________ > Steven Marks > > http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html > __________________________________________________ Both my kids are lefties, though their mothers andy parents and sister and I are all right-handed [my paternal gransfather was ambidextrous]. Check out famous lefties at: http://stekt.oulu.fi/~mjh/lefties.html !yojne [btw: Lisa Simpson last week wrote right to left in one scene--when she worried that the "Simpson gene" would doom her to the intellectual level of Homer and Bart--but after she learned that the gene affected only male Simpsons, she wrote left to right]... Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 07:31:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: <199803120536.WAA23871@gos.oz.cc.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:43 PM +0000 3/11/98, linda russo wrote: >boy, this sure has drifted from my initial inquiry. I'm aware of the >metaphor/metonymy distinction. Perhaps there is no answer to my q. as >there is no essay that tells me exactly what i want to know! which >is (to rephrase) >I'm wondering if anyone's written abt. post-metaphoric >"political" poetry -- specifically abt. the absence of metaphor. > >as John Berger writes in _A Painter of Our Time_ (and I paraphrase) >a poet Yannos used pigeons as a symbol of the revolutionaries' spirits after >they were slaughtered in a square when upon the gunshots these pigeons >flew off the window sills where they routinely sat; John remarked they had >returned peacefully the next day, and said "the only image for man >fighting is man" >[double sic] > >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. while i suspect the answer could be construed to be yes, the most famous example of this is not a postmodern one: Neruda i think, said something like "the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of the children ran in the streets." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 07:31:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" when i teach my favorite example of parataxis is the "Old Testament," because many students are familiar w/ the style if not the detailed contents thereof. then i move to stein, j bowles, etc. erich auerbach, in mimesis, has a chapter on the OT and how the parataxis (this and this and this happened, rather than this caused this to happen, and then that in turn caused a reaction, etc) creates a sense of timelessness or mythos rather than a sense of a narrative developing through time. gertrude said that the OT shd a a model for "new American writing" (in 1935), and auerbach's work is generally seen as a muted, if pointed, emphasis on the importance of Jewish culture to European culture; he also was writing (in exile) during WWII --so identitarian that i am, i tend to give this particular lecture an ethnic spin, though of course it goes beyond that as well. At 10:44 PM -0500 3/11/98, Steven Marks wrote: >Tom Bell, > >The Princeton Ency. of Poetry and Poetics sez: > >"P. is a stylistic term referring to a relative paucity of linking terms >between juxtaposed clauses or sentences, often giving the effect of piling >up, swiftness, and sometimes compression. A paratactic style is one in >which a lang.'s ordinary resources for joining propositions are >deliberately underused..." > >Interestingly, the definition includes an example from Pope's "Essay on >Criticism." To wit: > >Pride, Malice, Folly against Dryden rose, >In various shapes of Parsons, Critics, Beaus > >The Pr. Ency. says that the presence of "and" in the two lines would >prevent us from making both single pairs between the faults in line 1 and >the enemies in line 2 (Pride - Parsons) and between the two groups in >relationship to each other. > >Now, I would even say that perhaps the pairings are metonymical. > >What would you all say? > >Steven > >On Wed, 11 Mar 1998, Thomas Bell wrote: > >> I've asked this before here without much response so i'll ask again. What >> does 'parataxis' mean in literary circles? Psychologically it has a sense >> that i think is now pretty much limited to Harry Sullivan's works where it >> means prelogical or non-verbal action tendencies. It could, by extension, >> be applied in other 'systems' but I like the more delimited formulation >> and i think it works better in that framework. >> tom bell >> >> At 08:00 AM 3/11/98 EST, henry gould wrote: >> >On Tue, 10 Mar 1998 18:57:46 -0500 Steven Marks said: >> >>Rosmarie Waldrop speaks to this in her essay, "Form and Discontent," in >> >>the fall/winter '96 issue of Diacritics. She speaks, among many other >> >>things, of Olson referring to the vertical tendency of metaphor as "the >> >>suck of symbol." Waldrop: "Metaphor as a hotline to transcendence, to >> >>divine meaning, which casts the poet in the role of a special being, a >> >>priest or prophet." In short, Romanticism. On metonymy: "composition and >> >>syntax," "stess on how the elements were combined on the surface, how they >> >>sat next to each other on the page, how they followed each other in the >> >>theater." Or, "the Neoclassical aesthetic." >> > >> >I also agree with George Thompson. I think Rosmarie Waldrop's piece is >>only >> >one among a great many which used this opposition to defend (sort of >> >after-the-fact) the whole stream of open, experimental, documentary >> >poetics stemming mainly from Pound, and also to support what is seen as >> >a feminist, secular, "anti-logocentric" worldview. It is a simple fact >> >that 20th century poetry explores whole new regions via metonymy, >>parataxis, >> >and collage, so it is understandable that people would remark on the >> >special resources of these aspects of language use. But this idea that >> >metaphor rather than metonymy can be put to vatic, religious use - that one >> >is sacred, the other secular - is there any evidence of this? >> >Or is Waldrop's real target the attempt to provide any single, stable >> >"meaning" in poetry? >> > >> >The Russian Formalists sort of codified these two axes of composition >> >in poetry, and various poets have been drawn to their theories >> >for technical explanations of what they're doing. As I've said >> >before here & have tried to point out in a couple web essays (in >> >Mudlark & in a response to Joe Brennan in Flashpoint), I prefer the >> >theories of one of the Formalists' percursors and antagonists, A. >> >Potebnia. Potebnia emphasized that words have an "inner form" or >> >"inner image" - psychological, etymological, symbolic. Actually not >> >a single image - words are concentrated sources, via this inner form, >> >of infinite meanings. Poetry is not analyzable simply on a R. Formalist >> >grid or axis of metaphor/metonymy, because the inner form of the word >> >per se is always generating new clusters of meaning & effect. Potebnia >> >as you might guess shows some kinship with the ideas of Annensky and >> >Mandelstam, in particular. >> > >> >I'm not a scholar myself & admit these are hunches rather >> >than researches, but they're useful orientations for me anyway. >> >- Henry Gould >> > >> > >> > >__________________________________________________ > Steven Marks > > http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html >__________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 08:27:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: Henry Gould Comments: Originally-From: Henry Gould From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 11 Mar 1998 22:43:40 +0000 from In my view if you're writing poetry you're already involved in the power structure. And indirect or direct speech are EQUIVALENT techniques. Indirect speech is often the most powerful. It is someone saying something too terrible to use words directly about. The metaphor or synecdoche or whatever only adds to the shock. Whereas in an (an)aesthetized cultural situation "direct" speech SEEMS more "political". The irony is that those who think poetry is a political tool are the ones most comfortable with the status quo, whether they realize it or not. Those outside the status quo use poetry politically in order to join the establishment. And those REALLY outside the establishment - are totally outside poetry too. - Edgar Allan Poe, Southern Gentleman Edgar's being vague and simplistic here. Making of poetry takes place on more than one level. There's the widespread impulse to make art, irrespective of talent or social position. It's a way of life and a gift economy. Then there's Literature as an economic activity and cultural institution. Edgar himself promoted the ideal of the Cosmopolitan, Aristocratic Man of Letters and Genius as a literary or staged property (while the status of the southern aristocracy and human "property" was in deep crisis) - the Author vs. the Rabble. This has been an abiding theme since the end of feudalism, just about. The question of common property or common good in every society and in world society - what is private, what is public, what is allowed as luxury, what is deemed necessary for survival - and how decisions like this are made, if they are made - affects the Literature Industry and every work of writing. So a poet might choose to "deny art" - to "not use metaphor" - to do "straight reporting" or use "transparent, functional language" - "include documentary material" - etc. not only to "be political", but to change the dynamic of the literary contract between author and readers. To try to import an immediate, didactic element into a poem. Or a poet might try to carefully DISTORT "transparent language" in a way that brings out what such language conceals. Or a poet might design an allegory or symbol of a many-sided political situation - this seems like the function of metaphor on a "macro" level. Or a poet might "be political" by NOT being political - by foregrounding emotion, sensibility, aesthetics, in order to substantiate these evidences of life and humanity outside of any power situation, or, conversely, to present a reality that SHOULD exist if there were justice in the world. All these forms of communication in poetry seem to be happening all the time in very complex ways. To "not use metaphor" seems sort of isolated to me as a literary "strategy". Isolated or abstract or something. But these questions of a writer's "contract" or position or strategy within the larger environment of what a society is doing - whether or not a particular writer can consciously manipulate these issues and remain an artist at all - these issues are the pivot around which the political aspect of someone's work revolve. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 23:13:02 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nada Gordon Subject: VIRUS WARNING Comments: To: ahinny@aol.com, khalid@cc.u-tokai.ac.jp, beckysan@pipeline.com, Maz881@aol.com, bmalcolm@nagoya-wu.ac.jp, cf2785@csc.albany.edu, Zorlook@aol.com, PXQ00753@niftyserve.or.jp, damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU, damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU, cyanosis@slip.net, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM, Dgmclarty@aol.com, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, ewan , FUSCO FAMILY , frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp, "GLENN. GORDON" , I.LIGHTMAN@UEA.AC.UK, jazzman@twics.com, HAERTLINGJ@boulder.lib.co.us, KEvans6000@aol.com, Ken S Wolf , Lppl@aol.com, LUCY HILLIER , desakayu@indosat.net.id, Marilyn Gordon , pegw@SIRIUS.COM, POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM, rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM, benoit_sta@lsi.supelec.fr, tnoyama@interramp.com, tmandel@cais.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:50:52 +0900 >From: Max Woollerton >Reply-To: maxim@twics.com >MIME-Version: 1.0 >To: Achim Rottger , KIFLTU Nada Gordon , > >Subject: VIRUS WARNING > >Dear Friends, > >I have just received a virus warning from a member of my family. I'll >copy the message, which is clearly important, expecially for PC users. I >am not sure >whether this affects Macs as well as PCs. The message reads: > >NEW VIRUS WARNING > >If you receive an e-mail titled "WIN A HOLIDAY', DO NOT open it. It >will >erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out to as many > >people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many >people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning >from Microsoft. Please share it with everyone who might access the >Internet. Once again, pass this along to EVERYONE in your address book >so that this may be stopped. > > Also, do not open or even look any mail that says 'RETURNED OR UNABLE >TO >DELIVER'. This virus will attach itself to your computer components and > >render them useless. Immediately delete any mail items that say this. >American Online has said that this is a very dangerous virus and that >there is NO remedy for it at this time. Please practise cautionary >measures and forward this to all your on-line friends. End of >message. > >The message seems to have been sent originally on March 5th and has been > >through the Carribean, USA and Canada. I hope you find it helpful. > >With best wishes, > >Max Woollerton. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:07:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: Hoxha & Salazar Rules! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** 'Wag the Dog' tickles Albanian prime minister Albania's prime minister hasn't seen the film "Wag the Dog" yet, but he says he isn't afraid of life imitating art. In the movie, a U.S. president enlists the help of a filmmaker and spin doctor to stage a make-believe military assault on Albania to distract public attention from a presidential sex scandal. Prime Minister Fatos Nano, on a three-day visit to Israel, said he wasn't offended by the movie's choice of Albania as an obscure target for a fake U.S. attack. See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2553290221-184 _______________________ *** Portugal to break record on Europe's longest bridge Portugal plans to cook its way into the Guinness Book of records by seating 15,000 people at the longest dinner table ever laid, to celebrate the opening of Europe's longest bridge. The table will stretch 3 miles along Lisbon's Vasco da Gama suspension bridge, which is due to open officially at the end of the month, and beat the previous world record by half a mile, organizers said Wednesday. Cooks are already at work preparing the 6,750 tons of "feijoada," a heavy southern Portuguese stew of beans, onions and assorted meat that will be served at the massive eat-in on March 22. The 11-mile bridge across the River Tagus opens two months before the launch of Expo'98, the Lisbon world fair which marks the 500th anniversary of navigator Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 09:40:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Ambi-ducks-trous Comments: To: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE; BOUNDARY="Boundary_(ID_Sr6oKh8vlTbt0iAeOzqytw)" This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_Sr6oKh8vlTbt0iAeOzqytw) Content-type: text/plain CNN factoid last night - which before this whimsical thread I would have ignored - who is the all-time leading left-handed scorer in the NBA? Answer: Artis Gilmore - over 24,000 points. Just curious though - wouldn't the root meaning of ambidextrous imply having two right hands rather than a parity between the left and the right? Also, what's the Pound reference in _Cantos_ to "O Sinistro" which comes flooding back now unbidden? Desperately awating the onset of spring, Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Ambi-ducks-trous Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 5:34AM Being the dense sort, when they put a pen or pencil or crayon into my right hand, I used it there. It wasn't until around age seven, when (in the days before mini-T-ball leagues) playing baseball with my dad's right-handed glove I simply couldn't throw, so got into the habit of taking the glove off first and then throwing (a la Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher) until I could convince my folks to invest in a left-handed glove. When I tried batting left-handed, suddenly I could hit, and in fact I now do all sports as a leftie (even kick with my left foot). But I still write right-handed and my pen-person-ship demonstrates for all to see that this is not a "natural" mode. One twin (Colin) is a lefty with a pen, tho a switch hitter. Jesse is strictly a righty. I've been told that such a division is almost standard with twins. Count Erica Hunt among the lefties. Ron --Boundary_(ID_Sr6oKh8vlTbt0iAeOzqytw) Content-type: text/html

CNN factoid last night - which before this whimsical thread I would have ignored - who is the all-time leading left-handed scorer in the NBA? Answer: Artis Gilmore - over 24,000 points.


Just curious though - wouldn't the root meaning of ambidextrous imply having two right hands rather than a parity between the left and the right? Also, what's the Pound reference in _Cantos_ to "O Sinistro" which comes flooding back now unbidden?


Desperately awating the onset of spring,
Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: Ambi-ducks-trous
Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 5:34AM

Being the dense sort, when they put a pen or pencil or crayon into my right
hand, I used it there. It wasn't until around age seven, when (in the days
before mini-T-ball leagues) playing baseball with my dad's right-handed
glove I simply couldn't throw, so got into the habit of taking the glove off
first and then throwing (a la Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher) until I
could convince my folks to invest in a left-handed glove. When I tried
batting left-handed, suddenly I could hit, and in fact I now do all sports
as a leftie (even kick with my left foot). But I still write right-handed
and my pen-person-ship demonstrates for all to see that this is not a
"natural" mode.

One twin (Colin) is a lefty with a pen, tho a switch hitter. Jesse is
strictly a righty. I've been told that such a division is almost standard
with twins.

Count Erica Hunt among the lefties.

Ron

--Boundary_(ID_Sr6oKh8vlTbt0iAeOzqytw)-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:16:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Dahlen/Campbell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, Everyone: Can someone backchannel me with e- or s- addresses for Beverly Dahlen and Bruce Campbell? Many kind thanks in advance. Yours, Gary Sullivan gps12@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:32:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Books by JH Prynne (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE should anybody be interested.. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 14:28:16 +0000 From: Peter Riley To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Subject: Books by JH Prynne Until the new collected poems is published only the following booklets are available--- Not-You. Equipage 1993. =A32.50 Her Weasels Wild Returning. Equipage 1994 =A32.50 For the Monogram. Equipage 1997 =A32.50 2nd hand/1st editions--- Kitchen Poems. 1968 Paperback =A310 Into the Day, 1972 =A315 The Oval Window 1983 =A312 Also Poetical Histories No.22, a 2-page leaflet by JHP =A32.00. This may prove a difficulty to some readers because it's entirely in Chinese, but those (other than Chinese-speakers) who delight in difficulty will find it a truly challenging opportunity to exercise their inability to read. These prices include postage from Peter Riley (Books) 27 Sturton Street, Cambridge CB1 2QG ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 08:39:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Thu, 12 Mar 98 09:59:56 -0500 >From: >To: , >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Mime-Version: 1.0 > > > > from your friend/aunt shelly. > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: Sam Bunch at INTL1 >Date: 3/11/98 9:57 AM > > >For your information > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: NANCY MOREL at INTL1 >Date: 3/10/98 11:38 AM > > > >Just for your information > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: BRENDA SHAW at INTL1 >Date: 3/10/98 10:55 AM > > > FYI. This message has been forwarded to everyone in the department. > > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: HOLLY HARPER at MUNI1 >Date: 3/10/98 9:33 AM > > > > > > > > > > VIRUS WARNING !!!!!! > > FIRST ONE > "If you receive an email titled "WIN A HOLIDAY" DO NOT open it. It > will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out to > as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus and not > many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday > morning from Microsoft." > > SECOND ONE > "Also, do not open or even look at any mail that says "RETURNED OR > UNABLE TO DELIVER" This virus will attach itself to your computer > components and render them useless. Immediately delete any mail items > that say this. AOL has said that this is a very dangerous virus and > that there is NO remedy for it at this time." > > LAST ONE > "If you receive an E-mail titled "JOIN THE CREW" DO NOT open it. It > will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this mail to as many > people as you can. This is a new, very advanced virus and not many > people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning > from IBM." > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:46:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Ambi-ducks-trous & Spahn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" who is the all-time leader in wins for a left-hander, most home runs by a left-handed pitcher? Spahn returns to haunt the list once more. At 09:40 AM 3/12/98 -0600, Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume wrote: >CNN factoid last night - which before this whimsical thread I would have >ignored - who is the all-time leading left-handed scorer in the NBA? >Answer: Artis Gilmore - over 24,000 points. > >Just curious though - wouldn't the root meaning of ambidextrous imply >having two right hands rather than a parity between the left and the >right? Also, what's the Pound reference in _Cantos_ to "O Sinistro" >which comes flooding back now unbidden? > >Desperately awating the onset of spring, >Patrick Pritchett > ---------- >From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Ambi-ducks-trous >Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 5:34AM > >Being the dense sort, when they put a pen or pencil or crayon into my >right >hand, I used it there. It wasn't until around age seven, when (in the >days >before mini-T-ball leagues) playing baseball with my dad's right-handed >glove I simply couldn't throw, so got into the habit of taking the glove >off >first and then throwing (a la Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher) until >I >could convince my folks to invest in a left-handed glove. When I tried >batting left-handed, suddenly I could hit, and in fact I now do all >sports >as a leftie (even kick with my left foot). But I still write >right-handed >and my pen-person-ship demonstrates for all to see that this is not a >"natural" mode. > >One twin (Colin) is a lefty with a pen, tho a switch hitter. Jesse is >strictly a righty. I've been told that such a division is almost >standard >with twins. > >Count Erica Hunt among the lefties. > >Ron > > > > > > > > >

CNN factoid last night - which before this whimsical thread I would have ignored - who is the all-time leading left-handed scorer in the NBA? Answer: Artis Gilmore - over 24,000 points.

>
>

Just curious though - wouldn't the root meaning of ambidextrous imply having two right hands rather than a parity between the left and the right? Also, what's the Pound reference in _Cantos_ to "O Sinistro" which comes flooding back now unbidden?

>
>

Desperately awating the onset of spring, >
Patrick Pritchett >
 ---------- >
From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM >
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >
Subject: Ambi-ducks-trous >
Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 5:34AM >
>
Being the dense sort, when they put a pen or pencil or crayon into my right >
hand, I used it there. It wasn't until around age seven, when (in the days >
before mini-T-ball leagues) playing baseball with my dad's right-handed >
glove I simply couldn't throw, so got into the habit of taking the glove off >
first and then throwing (a la Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher) until I >
could convince my folks to invest in a left-handed glove. When I tried >
batting left-handed, suddenly I could hit, and in fact I now do all sports >
as a leftie (even kick with my left foot). But I still write right-handed >
and my pen-person-ship demonstrates for all to see that this is not a >
"natural" mode. >
>
One twin (Colin) is a lefty with a pen, tho a switch hitter. Jesse is >
strictly a righty. I've been told that such a division is almost standard >
with twins. >
>
Count Erica Hunt among the lefties. >
>
Ron >

> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:50:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: sinister and gauche In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ok: my mother was right-handed, my father was left-handed... but my father was forced to write (he printed, all uppercase) right-handed by, as he called them, the nuns... me, i'm right-handed (as a writer too), with the exception that i shovel, sweep, etc. left-handed... which is to say, heavy work of that sort i do left-handed, and a few minor tasks as well (from what i've been able to determine)... i figure it musta been my father's doing, unwittingly... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:01:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII When I was little I wrote with both hands-- When I came to the midpoint of a page, I would switch-- The thing is, though, that I had some sort of brain dysfunction--my two hemispheres were, apparently, not connected properly (the connection, which I believe takes the form of a kind of tendon-like rope of brain matter, was not fully devloped or something)-- Thus, I would not only switch hands, but I would write backwards with the right hand--producing a mirror-like effect-- This problem went away on its own--but I too was sometimes forced to erase my homework and re-do it with my right hand-- This was part of some sort of experiment on the parts of some curious school administrators--not part of any study or anything--it was just terrible-- Katy *** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 12:11:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: There ARE NO email viruses: these are hoaxes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit These so-called "viruses" do not exist. All three of the below-listed "viruses" are listed as hoaxes on the McAfee virus hoax web page [http://www.nai.com/services/support/hoax/hoax.asp] . FYI: Viruses CANNOT be contained in an email message, only in an attachment which is opened through an application. These messages just take up bandwidth (unfortunately, so do corrective messages such as this one). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Program in Writing and Rhetoric (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ -----Original Message----- From: david bromige To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 11:49 AM Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >>Date: Thu, 12 Mar 98 09:59:56 -0500 >>From: >>To: , >>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >>Mime-Version: 1.0 >> >> >> >> from your friend/aunt shelly. >> >>______________________________ Forward Header >>__________________________________ >>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >>Author: Sam Bunch at INTL1 >>Date: 3/11/98 9:57 AM >> >> >>For your information >> >>______________________________ Forward Header >>__________________________________ >>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >>Author: NANCY MOREL at INTL1 >>Date: 3/10/98 11:38 AM >> >> >> >>Just for your information >> >>______________________________ Forward Header >>__________________________________ >>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >>Author: BRENDA SHAW at INTL1 >>Date: 3/10/98 10:55 AM >> >> >> FYI. This message has been forwarded to everyone in the department. >> >> >>______________________________ Forward Header >>__________________________________ >>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >>Author: HOLLY HARPER at MUNI1 >>Date: 3/10/98 9:33 AM >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> VIRUS WARNING !!!!!! >> >> FIRST ONE >> "If you receive an email titled "WIN A HOLIDAY" DO NOT open it. It >> will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out to >> as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus and not >> many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday >> morning from Microsoft." >> >> SECOND ONE >> "Also, do not open or even look at any mail that says "RETURNED OR >> UNABLE TO DELIVER" This virus will attach itself to your computer >> components and render them useless. Immediately delete any mail items >> that say this. AOL has said that this is a very dangerous virus and >> that there is NO remedy for it at this time." >> >> LAST ONE >> "If you receive an E-mail titled "JOIN THE CREW" DO NOT open it. It >> will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this mail to as many >> people as you can. This is a new, very advanced virus and not many >> people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning >> from IBM." >> > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:50:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: forwarded: Virus FYIs... Comments: To: david bromige MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: MULTIPART/ALTERNATIVE; BOUNDARY="Boundary_(ID_iL6fAZBKUiqTlvBIMhKe1Q)" This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --Boundary_(ID_iL6fAZBKUiqTlvBIMhKe1Q) Content-type: text/plain FYI - these viruses and the warnings about them are bogus. Do us all a favor and don't circulate them. Thank you. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: david bromige To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 10:39AM >Date: Thu, 12 Mar 98 09:59:56 -0500 >From: >To: , >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Mime-Version: 1.0 > > > > from your friend/aunt shelly. > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: Sam Bunch at INTL1 >Date: 3/11/98 9:57 AM > > >For your information > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: NANCY MOREL at INTL1 >Date: 3/10/98 11:38 AM > > > >Just for your information > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: BRENDA SHAW at INTL1 >Date: 3/10/98 10:55 AM > > > FYI. This message has been forwarded to everyone in the department. > > >______________________________ Forward Header >__________________________________ >Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs... >Author: HOLLY HARPER at MUNI1 >Date: 3/10/98 9:33 AM > > > > > > > > > > VIRUS WARNING !!!!!! > > FIRST ONE > "If you receive an email titled "WIN A HOLIDAY" DO NOT open it. It > will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out to > as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus and not > many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday > morning from Microsoft." > > SECOND ONE > "Also, do not open or even look at any mail that says "RETURNED OR > UNABLE TO DELIVER" This virus will attach itself to your computer > components and render them useless. Immediately delete any mail items > that say this. AOL has said that this is a very dangerous virus and > that there is NO remedy for it at this time." > > LAST ONE > "If you receive an E-mail titled "JOIN THE CREW" DO NOT open it. It > will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this mail to as many > people as you can. This is a new, very advanced virus and not many > people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning > from IBM." > --Boundary_(ID_iL6fAZBKUiqTlvBIMhKe1Q) Content-type: text/html

FYI - these viruses and the warnings about them are bogus. Do us all a favor and don't circulate them. Thank you.

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: david bromige
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs...
Date: Thursday, March 12, 1998 10:39AM

>Date: Thu, 12 Mar 98 09:59:56 -0500
>From: <shelly_harris@mcgraw-hill.com>
>To: <dcmb@metro.net>, <hydrogined@aol.com>
>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs...
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>
>
>
>        from your friend/aunt shelly.
>
>______________________________ Forward Header
>__________________________________
>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs...
>Author:  Sam Bunch at INTL1
>Date:    3/11/98 9:57 AM
>
>
>For your information
>
>______________________________ Forward Header
>__________________________________
>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs...
>Author:  NANCY MOREL at INTL1
>Date:    3/10/98 11:38 AM
>
>
>
>Just for your information
>
>______________________________ Forward Header
>__________________________________
>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs...
>Author:  BRENDA SHAW at INTL1
>Date:    3/10/98 10:55 AM
>
>
>     FYI.  This message has been forwarded to everyone in the department.
>
>
>______________________________ Forward Header
>__________________________________
>Subject: forwarded: Virus FYIs...
>Author:  HOLLY HARPER at MUNI1
>Date:    3/10/98 9:33 AM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     VIRUS  WARNING !!!!!!
>
>     FIRST ONE
>     "If you receive an email titled "WIN A HOLIDAY" DO NOT open it.  It
>     will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter out to
>     as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious virus and not
>     many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday
>     morning from Microsoft."
>
>     SECOND ONE
>     "Also, do not open or even look at any mail that says "RETURNED OR
>     UNABLE TO DELIVER"  This virus will attach itself to your computer
>     components and render them useless. Immediately delete any mail items
>     that say this. AOL has said that this is a very dangerous virus and
>     that there is NO remedy for it at this time."
>
>     LAST ONE
>     "If you receive an E-mail titled "JOIN THE CREW" DO NOT open it. It
>     will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this mail to as many
>     people as you can. This is a new, very advanced virus and not many
>     people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning
>     from IBM."
>

--Boundary_(ID_iL6fAZBKUiqTlvBIMhKe1Q)-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:39:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux Comments: To: Henry Gould In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Those outside the status quo use poetry to gain acceptance . . . or some such problematic and seemingly facile assesment?! Could you provide an example or some sort of situation for this statement? Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:41:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux Comments: To: Henry Gould In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Whoops! Came without explanation the first time. Pardon. PFD ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Henry Gould wrote: > In my view if you're writing poetry you're already involved in the power > structure. And indirect or direct speech are EQUIVALENT techniques. > Indirect speech is often the most powerful. It is someone saying > something too terrible to use words directly about. The metaphor or > synecdoche or whatever only adds to the shock. Whereas in an (an)aesthetized > cultural situation "direct" speech SEEMS more "political". The irony is > that those who think poetry is a political tool are the ones most comfortable > with the status quo, whether they realize it or not. Those outside the > status quo use poetry politically in order to join the establishment. > And those REALLY outside the establishment - are totally outside poetry too. > - Edgar Allan Poe, Southern Gentleman > > Edgar's being vague and simplistic here. Making of poetry takes place on > more than one level. There's the widespread impulse to make art, irrespective > of talent or social position. It's a way of life and a gift economy. Then > there's Literature as an economic activity and cultural institution. Edgar > himself promoted the ideal of the Cosmopolitan, Aristocratic Man of Letters > and Genius as a literary or staged property (while the status of the > southern aristocracy and human "property" was in deep crisis) - the Author > vs. the Rabble. This has been an abiding theme since the end of > feudalism, just about. The question of common property or common good > in every society and in world society - what is private, what is public, > what is allowed as luxury, what is deemed necessary for survival - and > how decisions like this are made, if they are made - affects the > Literature Industry and every work of writing. So a poet might choose > to "deny art" - to "not use metaphor" - to do "straight reporting" or > use "transparent, functional language" - "include documentary material" - > etc. not only to "be political", but to change the dynamic of the > literary contract between author and readers. To try to import an > immediate, didactic element into a poem. Or a poet might try to > carefully DISTORT "transparent language" in a way that brings out what > such language conceals. Or a poet might design an allegory or symbol > of a many-sided political situation - this seems like the function > of metaphor on a "macro" level. Or a poet might "be political" by > NOT being political - by foregrounding emotion, sensibility, aesthetics, > in order to substantiate these evidences of life and humanity outside > of any power situation, or, conversely, to present a reality that > SHOULD exist if there were justice in the world. > > All these forms of communication in poetry seem to be happening all the > time in very complex ways. To "not use metaphor" seems sort of > isolated to me as a literary "strategy". Isolated or abstract or > something. But these questions of a writer's "contract" or position > or strategy within the larger environment of what a society is doing > - whether or not a particular writer can consciously manipulate these > issues and remain an artist at all - these issues are the pivot around > which the political aspect of someone's work revolve. > - Henry Gould > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 10:52:26 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: A.BACUS 1998 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Peter Ganick asked me to post this annonce to the list... Potes & Poets announces A.BACUS / 1998 eight iss. of exciting, experimental poetry printed on acid- free paper, mailed to you via 1st class post. every 6 wks. #111 1 january Sianne Ngai #112 15 february Rosmarie Waldrop #113 1 april L. Scalapino / L. Hejinian #114 15 may Ron Silliman #115 1 july Jessica Grim #116 15 august Mark Wallace #117 1 october Jefferson Hansen #118 15 november Johanna Drucker send $30 for all eight iss. of A.BACUS; $5 for an individual iss. to: Potes & Poets Press 181 Edgemont Avenue Elmwood CT 06110 all other Potes & Poets materials are now available solely through Small Press Distribution... .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:39:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: memorization MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On another topic altogether, I was wondering whether others share my particular form of insanity: A couple of years ago I started to memorize poetry almost obsessively. I had done this fairly casually throughout the years but soon I started to memorize as much as possible; I am obliged to drive across the state of Missouri every week and I use the five hours to rehearse as many poems as I can, though after about 35 or 40 I get mentally fatigued. I noticed that I began to pay much more attention to the distinctive intonational patterns of different poets and texts. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 09:27:22 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: Re: Books by JH Prynne (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Anyone interested in the latest scholarship on Prynne should of course check out Edgar Allen Poe's eight-page review of *Not-You* in RADDLE MOON 15. = Susan Clark RADDLE MOON Vancouver, BC clarkd@sfu.ca > Subject: Books by JH Prynne > Until the new collected poems is published only the following booklets = are available--- > = > Not-You. Equipage 1993. =A32.50 > Her Weasels Wild Returning. Equipage 1994 =A32.50 > For the Monogram. Equipage 1997 =A32.50 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 12:53:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Sinister & Gauche In-Reply-To: david bromige "Sinister & Gauche" (Mar 11, 3:30pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Ambidextrous for me too--all seventeen flailing tentacles. Once worked at corney island as a batting machine. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 12:56:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:39:02 -0600 from On Thu, 12 Mar 1998 11:39:02 -0600 Patrick F. Durgin said: > Those outside the status quo use poetry to gain acceptance . . . >or some such problematic and seemingly facile assesment?! Could you >provide an example or some sort of situation for this statement? > Patrick F. Durgin Apologies for long turgid double post on this. I was out at the Century Lounge until way late last night, playing harp & drinking Old Grandad. My excuse for the semi-pseudo-rationalism. I was referring to the general phenomenon of "co-optation". Knowledge and literacy are power. The institutions of knowledge are the cream of the established order. I'm not judging that order as good or bad; just remarking on a system in which voices of alienation, protest, satire, subversion, condemnation - voices formalized in art - are rewarded with honorary degrees, faculty positions, grants, attention, and all the perquisites of membership in that establishment. - Henry Gould (writes left, bats right, throws left, tennis right, kicks left, guitar right, harmonica both hands, brain confused) (Sonny Terry was blind and played the harp upside down.) "Official literature is trash. The rest is stolen air." - Mandelstam I harbor no resentment, hold no one in contempt, wish for the overthrow of no status quo, believe you get what you deserve, like what I like, and that does not include stale granola. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 14:46:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: Re: sinister -Reply i haven't had chance to read all the sinisterial emails, so this fact may already have been posted: we are running an item in Publishers Weekly this week about a forthcoming autobiography by longtime publisher Barney Rosset (Grove Press co-founder). His title is "The Subject is Left-Handed," and derives from a comment found in Rosset's FBI file. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 17:11:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: China Conference 1999 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thought this might be of interest to the Poetics List. Does anyone know, off (left) hand, what a flight from NYC might cost? Approx.? Don't think I'll be able to go, but it is tempting. Thanks, Sylvester >The 18th International Ezra Pound Conference will be held in Beijing, China, >July 16-19, 1999. Although Pound never visited the Far East, he drew much >of his inspiration from Chinese poetry, Japanese haiku and Noh drama, and >Confucian philosophy, which is threaded through _The Cantos_ In fact, in >1934, to answer Eliot's question, "What does Mr. Pound believe?" Pound said, >"I believe the _Ta Hio_," that is, _The Great Learning_, a Confucian classic. > >The site of the Conference will be Beijing Foreign Studies University in a >western suburb of Beijing. Participants can stay at a three-star hotel on >campus for a special rate of $55 single, $60 double, per night, or at >another campus hotel for $30 per night. Excursions will be made to such >major attractions as the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall, >Taishan, and Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. There will be a special >performance of the Peking Opera during the Conference. > >The Committee invites proposals for papers on this (or other) topic: > > EZRA POUND AND THE ORIENT > >Committee: Zhaoming Qian, University of New Orleans > William McNaughton, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong > William Pratt, Miami University of Ohio > Richard Taylor, University of Bayreuth > Jian Zhang, Beijing Foreign Studies University > >If you are interested in giving a paper at the Conference, send a synopsis >of your proposal (about 250 words) to the Convenor: Professor Zhaoming >Qian, Department of English, University of New Orleans, LA 70148, U.S.A. >(FAX: 504-280-7334; E-mail: zq01@gnofn.org). Limit for completed papers >will be 30 minutes delivered, allowing time for discussion afterwards. > >Deadline for proposals: October 28, 1998. > >If you wish to submit a proposal for a paper, please write to Professor Qian >directly. If you wish details of the Conference, E-mail Professor Zhang at: >zhangjn@public.bta.net.cn > >A registration fee of $120 (1,000 yuan), payable upon official registration >will cover admission to all events: > 1. Social gathering on the evening of July 16 > 2. Breakfasts and lunches from July 17-19 > 3. Peking Opera performance on July 17 > 4. Banquet (offered by co-sponsor BFSU) on July 19 > 5. Afternoon tour of the Summer Palace and day tour of the >Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square > >Limited additional charges will be made for the excursion to the Great Wall >on July 20, and for the excursion to Taishan/Qufu, July 22-25. Bookings may >be made during the registration period, March 15-June 10, 1999, with full >advance payment possible by bank transfer or credit card. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 17:03:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:27 AM 3/12/98 EST, Henry Gould wrote: >southern aristocracy and human "property" was in deep crisis) - the Author >vs. the Rabble. This has been an abiding theme since the end of >feudalism, just about. The question of common property or common good >in every society and in world society - what is private, what is public, >what is allowed as luxury, what is deemed necessary for survival - and >how decisions like this are made, if they are made - affects the >Literature Industry and every work of writing. So a poet might choose >to "deny art" - to "not use metaphor" - to do "straight reporting" or >use "transparent, functional language" - "include documentary material" - >etc. not only to "be political", but to change the dynamic of the >literary contract between author and readers. To try to import an >immediate, didactic element into a poem. Or a poet might try to >carefully DISTORT "transparent language" in a way that brings out what >such language conceals. Or a poet might design an allegory or symbol >of a many-sided political situation - this seems like the function >of metaphor on a "macro" level. Or a poet might "be political" by >NOT being political - by foregrounding emotion, sensibility, aesthetics, >in order to substantiate these evidences of life and humanity outside >of any power situation, or, conversely, to present a reality that >SHOULD exist if there were justice in the world. > >All these forms of communication in poetry seem to be happening all the >time in very complex ways. To "not use metaphor" seems sort of >isolated to me as a literary "strategy". Isolated or abstract or >something. But these questions of a writer's "contract" or position >or strategy within the larger environment of what a society is doing >- whether or not a particular writer can consciously manipulate these >issues and remain an artist at all - these issues are the pivot around >which the political aspect of someone's work revolve. >- Henry Gould > > I can't tell if you are advocating tendentious poetry here, but this might be because of my reading or misreading here. It does seem to me that "conscious manipulation"'s tendency toward adherence to predetermined form leaves little space for 'slack' (play) in the material's potential influence on the writer. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 18:27:47 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: Hilda Morley Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" I just want to add my best wishes and love for Hilda Morley. Hilda Morley is a great poet with a magnificent ear. Her work is wonderful, wonderful music. Joseph ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 20:08:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kcglowworm Subject: metaphor metonymy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable I for one still find the metaphor-metonymy distinction useful in terms of= its=0Aapplication to how the mind works, in terms of poetic processes, a= nd in terms=0Aof ideological-political questions. This distinction plays = a key role in my=0Aarticle, "Althusser Metonymy China Wall," which Barry = Watten and Lyn Hejinian=0Aare reprinting in the next Poetics Journal. My = use of these terms, however, is=0Aitself metaphorical in the common sense= (terms from one realm operating within=0Aanother). Before printing the appropriate passages from that article, however, I wa= nt to=0Asay that I am troubled by the idea that because structuralism, ma= rxism,=0Apoststructuralism, and other such movements had their moments of= glory in past=0Adecades, they are now no longer of interest. I believe t= here is still a lot to=0Alearned by continuing those and other decade-ide= ntified projects, despite=0Atheir no longer being particularly faddish or= academically marketable. George Hartley ------------------------ Two passages from the above-mentioned article: 1. But I first want to pose a strategic distinction between metaphor and=0Am= etonymy. Metaphor might be seen as a transcendental movement; through=0Am= etaphor we translate the terms from one field into the terms of another, = the=0Arelationship or positioning between these terms seen as vertical, a= =0Asubstitution from above to below, inside to outside. Metaphor assumes = a=0Acertain equivalence, a reduction of differences, between the two term= s in=0Aorder for this substitution to be possible. Metonymy, on the other= hand, works=0Alaterally, establishing relationships of contiguity throug= h pairings and=0Adisplacements. This shift from metaphor to metonymy move= s us from=0Atranscendence to immanence. As both Althusser and Kafka will = suggest, metaphor=0Ais inherently theological in its structuring of media= tion itself as a=0Arelationship to something outside or above the structu= re or terrain, and by=0Aits positioning of the mediator as one who inhabi= ts a space or opening between=0Aus and some external power. 2. The building of the wall presents an enigma: why would the high command, = if=0Atheir intention is to safeguard us from the fierce nomads of the Nor= th, plan=0Athis piecemeal method of construction which leaves gapse in th= e protective=0Astructure? The answer to this leads to more enigmas. The h= igh command, in its=0Ainfinite wisdom, really intended to produce the sid= e-effects of the wall-=0Abuilding process=97the sense of purpose, the uni= ty, the cooperation, the=0Awillful, even enthusiastic, submission to the = dictates of the high=0Acommand=97rather than the wall itself. Or, as the = scholar in the story explains,=0Athey really wanted to build a foundation= for a tower that would complete the=0Aabandoned project of the Tower of = Babel. But how can a quarter-circle=0Astructure with extensive gaps provi= de such a base? Hence the conclusion that=0Athe tower must be meant spiri= tually, metaphorically. Which raises the next=0Aquestion, Why then build = the wall itself if the tower is only a metaphor? The=0Anarrator's answer,= which comes later in the tale and with no explicit=0Aconnection, is that= the tower is a metaphor for the "superficial culture=0Amounting sky-high= around a few precepts that have been drilled into people's=0Aminds for c= enturies, precepts which, though they have lost nothing of their=0Aeterna= l truth, remain entirely invisible in this fog of confusion." The=0Abuild= ing of the wall, the enclosure of a political and ideological space,=0Aso= mehow provides a base for the installations of the high command itself in= =0Athe tower, elevating them above the people like the mysterious and abs= ent gods=0Athey appear to be to the common people. The building of the wa= ll, in other=0Awords, maintains and constantly reproduces the conditions = of hierarchy which=0Amake the high command, the imperial sun itself, poss= ible in the first place in=0Aits metaphoric transcendence beyond the worl= d of the village. "But it is=0Aprecisely this question of empire," the na= rrator tells us, "which in my=0Aopinion the common people should seek to = answer, since they after all are the=0Aempire's final support." The suppo= rt of the tower, then, is not the wall at=0Aall but the people in their p= rocess of building it as an enclosure.=0A ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 18:01:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: near miss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" so now our date with the asteroid has been called off -- the groom's still waiting at the altar -- xf11, we hardly knew ye metonymically yours, Lefty ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 21:43:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Scott Pound Subject: Re: sinister Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 3:26 PM -0800 3/11/98, Roger Farr wrote: >>Phyllis Webb, Canada's greatest living >>Roger > >wow, never heard of her; is this a general consensus? tell me more, if this >isn't too elementary and boring for everyone else on the list.--md Well, Phyllis Webb is a marvellous poet, who in addition to the Left Hand Poems wrote _Naked Poems_ circa 1965. e.g. I use the word groves light falling found in the orchard finding what fell by a breath Talon books published a selected in 1982. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 19:58:11 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > From: Maria Damon > > > >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR > >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. > > while i suspect the answer could be construed to be yes, the most famous > example of this is not a postmodern one: Neruda i think, said something > like "the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of the > children ran in the streets." or, a little closer to home, "So much depends . . ." or any number of wcw poems where the gesture is "look" and not "compare" or "look at me looking at that!" (which perhaps next natural gesture is to compare "you look at that different than i look at that )(granted this maybe oversimplifying b/c (so much lyric) poetry already says "see me looking"). But there's a way in which metaphor doesn't just let things be in the world and be seen there in whatever "chance" association. metaphor forces association (which forces universality -- this poem is so you see like me) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 21:14:17 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Interesting point. If I understand you right, you are saying metaphor is more directive and "guides" the auditor in a particular direction. This is true of metaphor in therapy and hypnosis, but I hadn't made the same connection for literature. tom bell At 07:58 PM 3/12/98 +0000, linda russo wrote: >> From: Maria Damon >> > >> >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR >> >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. >> >> while i suspect the answer could be construed to be yes, the most famous >> example of this is not a postmodern one: Neruda i think, said something >> like "the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of the >> children ran in the streets." > >or, a little closer to home, "So much depends . . ." or any number of >wcw poems where the gesture is "look" and not "compare" or "look at >me looking at that!" (which perhaps next natural gesture is to >compare "you look at that different than i look at that )(granted >this maybe oversimplifying b/c (so much lyric) poetry already says >"see me looking"). But there's a way in which metaphor >doesn't just let things be in the world and be seen there in whatever >"chance" association. metaphor forces association (which forces >universality -- this poem is so you see like me) > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 14:04:51 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Philip Mead Subject: Re: Steve McCaffery shafted In-Reply-To: <3503EB5D.38A6CDBC@cnsunix.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" that's reassuring to hear, I was just about to hit the keyboard in response to Ron Silliman's account of the situtation. Best wishes, Steve and Karen, hope you're well. Philip >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> School of English & European Languages & Literatures University of Tasmania GPO Box 252-82 Hobart TAS 7001 Australia (03) 6226 2352 (tel) (03) 6226 7631 (fax) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 22:21:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: gaudy joy and other double-deckers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ON THE OCCASION A REPAST 1. Swoops in from the annex rip out his teeth and swearing God all this modish gladness is a crank tacit municipal pre- tence i.e. that, not quite everyone falls asleep at the fact-end rewound lulls and shudders into what is after all ideal to the core, he's ogling a bunged aggregate. After what or, which ever undwindlingly abated where was it she knelt - memory evades what was where she would, impartial hence, my feelings were propagated like prawn shells amongst packing foam. Ideal to the bone splintered and showered with rust and spry calc- sinter in surprise aggregate protraction back-up all the bright historic use-maneuvres and their payoffs in a speckled blend a romance, clipped wings restored peicemeal. Every thing. So many things rubbish ideal to the beginning heart hung partly aroused, partly wished like a plastic fish in fixed glass admirable anticipating further ideal or for a split life we sauntered down to the paddock, aware was our word, we divined that dainty flesh have kids as yet unmilked. Yet their barn is frankly they bleat, "ideal". 2. A monumental petrol stop by the track-side 10 million snacks all conflated one hell of a mess here, better to run through the options vote in some order of sun beam bonded by overt minimalised distraction to its chorelessness lighting the repute outpost by the kitchenette window seen through which crows and goats squirm, not themselves apprehended as with number one strict darkly beheld contrariness but likewise they're threatened and getting so, so tired of just this, seived joy / once or twice again / glo in the dark esteem piled beneath each chance-stop like a latent grin-voucher. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 22:35:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 12 Mar 1998 17:03:59 -0600 from On Thu, 12 Mar 1998 17:03:59 -0600 Thomas Bell said: > >I can't tell if you are advocating tendentious poetry here, but this >might be because of my reading or misreading here. It does seem to >me that "conscious manipulation"'s tendency toward adherence to >predetermined form leaves little space for 'slack' (play) in the >material's potential influence on the writer. >tom bell Every piece of writing is marked by a worldview and motivated to "get across" something. The decision to "let the poem take me where it leads or write itself" is no less motivated than any other. In my own experience the desire to "make a picture" in poetry involves welding together more than I expected or knew about when I began - this is the poem's own momentum. But the direction of the momentum is determined beforehand as clearly as possible. This welding process is a kind of play - but there are only 22 players in a soccer game. And there's a field they're playing on. On another note: I regret the paranoia implicit in previous post today about "co-optation". I think that was basically wrong-headed. One would hope that society is not some determining Leviathan providing niches for the opposition. And the struggle to achieve a place to stand and criticize the problems facing the world does not equal being "co-opted". I will say though that it's important to look a gift horse in the mouth, if it comes from the Greeks. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 22:58:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: <199803130251.TAA26338@bobo.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've never "bought" the anti-metaphor line, at least in any rigid sense (to say there are limits to metaphor or to any linguistic tool is one thing, but to say "metaphor forces association" and doesn't just let the world BE is quite another... for to condemn metaphor (or symbols, etc.) on the grounds of the latter, wouldn't one have to condemn POETRY on the grounds of the latter more generally? I mean, poetry, if it is referential (as the simple readings of WCW go), itself doesn't let the world BE, nor do I think it is necessary that we claim it should. By the way, I think that KARSTEN HARRIES essay in the SHeldon Stacks book ON METAPHOR (which touches on WCW and others), though I do not always agree with it, is very useful in addressing how WCW does NOT avoid metaphor, but rather employs it precisely to show its own (and the poem's) insufficiency....and THEN, only after engaging in what Stevens might call the act of the mind defending us from itself (in this Stevens and WCW are actually aligned--despite the well-publicized divisions between them), may be let the world BE (in a way perhaps we couldn't beforehand and is maybe why we 'turn to poetry'). Anyway, that's a simplisitc reading of Harries, but it at least points towards a view that allows for metaphor in 20th century poetry--- though I like the Neruda line too. Chris On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, linda russo wrote: > > From: Maria Damon > > > > > >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR > > >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. > > > > while i suspect the answer could be construed to be yes, the most famous > > example of this is not a postmodern one: Neruda i think, said something > > like "the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of the > > children ran in the streets." > > or, a little closer to home, "So much depends . . ." or any number of > wcw poems where the gesture is "look" and not "compare" or "look at > me looking at that!" (which perhaps next natural gesture is to > compare "you look at that different than i look at that )(granted > this maybe oversimplifying b/c (so much lyric) poetry already says > "see me looking"). But there's a way in which metaphor > doesn't just let things be in the world and be seen there in whatever > "chance" association. metaphor forces association (which forces > universality -- this poem is so you see like me) > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 23:02:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In response to Linda Russo's post: >> From: Maria Damon >> > >> >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR >> >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. >> >> while i suspect the answer could be construed to be yes, the most famous >> example of this is not a postmodern one: Neruda i think, said something >> like "the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of the >> children ran in the streets." > >or, a little closer to home, "So much depends . . ." or any number of >wcw poems where the gesture is "look" and not "compare" or "look at >me looking at that!" (which perhaps next natural gesture is to >compare "you look at that different than i look at that )(granted >this maybe oversimplifying b/c (so much lyric) poetry already says >"see me looking"). But there's a way in which metaphor >doesn't just let things be in the world and be seen there in whatever >"chance" association. metaphor forces association (which forces >universality -- this poem is so you see like me) This is very interesting. I think I see what you mean now. That is a good and desirable thing: to see a red wheelbarrow as what it is, instead of comparing it to something else. But I'm not so sure that we can ever see things as they really are. Ever. I think that's, like, god's territory [as Yeats or that Spandrift rogue has already said somewhere, somewhat more lyrically]. And besides, who's god? Not me. Does that make me a popomo? or just another pomo? or just a mo? GT ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 22:54:46 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: metaphor metonymy In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 12 Mar 1998 20:08:58 EST from On Thu, 12 Mar 1998 20:08:58 EST George Hartley wrote: > >Two passages from the above-mentioned article: > >1. >But I first want to pose a strategic distinction between metaphor and=0Am= >etonymy. Metaphor might be seen as a transcendental movement; through=0Am= >etaphor we translate the terms from one field into the terms of another, = >the=0Arelationship or positioning between these terms seen as vertical, a= >=0Asubstitution from above to below, inside to outside. Metaphor assumes = >a=0Acertain equivalence, a reduction of differences, between the two term= >s in=0Aorder for this substitution to be possible. Metonymy, on the other= > hand, works=0Alaterally, establishing relationships of contiguity throug= >h pairings and=0Adisplacements. This shift from metaphor to metonymy move= >s us from=0Atranscendence to immanence. As both Althusser and Kafka will = >suggest, metaphor=0Ais inherently theological in its structuring of media= >tion itself as a=0Arelationship to something outside or above the structu= >re or terrain, and by=0Aits positioning of the mediator as one who inhabi= >ts a space or opening between=0Aus and some external power. On the other hand, if one wanted to dismantle the concept of theology or transcendence, one could use metonymy rather than metaphor as the wall- breaker in just as strategic a fashion. As follows: "Metonymy might be seen as a transcendental movement: the Play of Dionysus moving with exquisite Randomness through the materiality of Smoke, Cigarette, Barstool, Dead Detective, Mirror, creating a Noir Cosmos out of Contiguity. Metaphor, on the other hand, by implying a pedestrian, rationalistic Likeness between disparate things, will never transcend the humdrum humanist willfulness of associations inherent in the earthbound gluing together (by means slime from the Babel Tower) of "similar" things." - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 23:31:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Furthermore, when EP says "make it new", what does he mean? Does he mean "take a good long look and don't compare -- just put it there next to the wheelbarrow"? I don't think so. I think he's talking about metaphor. Make it new. See it new, Metaphor. No? GT ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 22:31:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carolyn Guertin Subject: Webb/metaphor/indirect speech In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 'Edgar Allan Poe' wrote: >In my view if you're writing poetry you're already involved in the power >structure. And indirect or direct speech are EQUIVALENT techniques. >Indirect speech is often the most powerful. It is someone saying >something too terrible to use words directly about. The metaphor or >synecdoche or whatever only adds to the shock. Phyllis Webb wrote: Treblinka Gas Chamber "Klostermayer ordered another count of the children. Then their stars were snipped off and thrown into the centre of the courtyard. It looked like a field of buttercups." -- Joseph Hyams, _A Field of Buttercups_ fallingstars 'a field of buttercups' yellow stars of David falling the prisoners the children falling in heaps on one another they go down Thanatos showers his dirty breath they must breathe him in they see stars behind their eyes David's 'a field of buttercups' a metaphor where all that's left lies down (1980) ________________________________________________ Carolyn Guertin, Department of English, University of Alberta E-Mail: cguertin@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca; Tel/FAX: 403-432-2735 Website: "Language is a virus." -- Laurie Anderson ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 01:41:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: a l y r i c m a i l e r number 2 Comments: To: "core-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu" , Garrett Kalleberg MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Attention Poets and Friends! a l y r i c m a i l e r NUMBER 2, an a l y r i c e-chap, featuring: Limbic Odes by Garrett Kalleberg is up and running at: http//writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/alyricmailer/alyric.htm Garrett Kalleberg's is the publisher and editor of the new e-po-zine, The Transcendental Friend and is also editing at present a section on younger poets upcoming in Talisman. His work has appeared in Sulfur and American Letters & Commentary (among others) and appears also in the Anthology of New (American) Poets just out from Talisman. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, his place of birth. Pass it on! Print it out! Hand it out! Just make sure it gets out! Issues forthcoming will feature: Eleni Sikelianos, Laird Hunt, Carrie Tocci, Ben Friedlander, Stephen Mounkhall, Rod Smith and Heathers Fuller and Ramsdell, et al. Until then, I remain Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 01:51:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: a l y r i c m a i l e r #2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------230BB5785BDDBC313B357D08" --------------230BB5785BDDBC313B357D08 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Attention Poets and Friends! a l y r i c m a i l e r NUMBER 2, an a l y r i c e-chap, featuring: Limbic Odes by Garrett Kalleberg is up and running at: http//writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/alyricmailer/alyric.htm Garrett Kalleberg's is the publisher and editor of the new e-po-zine, The Transcendental Friend and is also editing at present a section on younger poets upcoming in Talisman. His work has appeared in Sulfur and American Letters & Commentary (among others) and appears also in the Anthology of New (American) Poets just out from Talisman. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, his place of birth. Pass it on! Print it out! Hand it out! Just make sure it gets out! Issues forthcoming will feature: Eleni Sikelianos, Laird Hunt, Carrie Tocci, Ben Friedlander, Stephen Mounkhall, Rod Smith and Heathers Fuller and Ramsdell, et al. Until then, I remain Mike --------------230BB5785BDDBC313B357D08 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Attention Poets and Friends!

a l y r i c m a i l e r   NUMBER 2,  an   a l y r i c   e-chap,
featuring:

Limbic Odes

by Garrett Kalleberg

is up and running at:

http//writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/alyricmailer/alyric.htm

Garrett Kalleberg's is the publisher and editor of the new e-po-zine,
The Transcendental Friend and is also editing at present a section on
younger poets upcoming in Talisman. His work has appeared in Sulfur and
American Letters & Commentary (among others) and appears also in the
Anthology of New (American) Poets just out from Talisman. He lives and
works in Brooklyn, New York, his place of birth.

Pass it on!
Print it out!
Hand it out!
Just make sure it gets out!

Issues forthcoming will feature: Eleni Sikelianos, Laird Hunt, Carrie
Tocci, Ben Friedlander, Stephen Mounkhall, Rod Smith and Heathers Fuller
and Ramsdell, et al.

Until then,

I remain

Mike --------------230BB5785BDDBC313B357D08-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 01:05:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: left ee's In-Reply-To: <8046655b.3507116f@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >My twin sister Tanya is a lefty, and I am a righty >Both my grandmothers are left-handed, is this inerited down the female line? That's common between twins, at least fraternal twins. Same thing with my brother's twin daughters. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 01:11:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sinister In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 3:26 PM -0800 3/11/98, Roger Farr wrote: >>Phyllis Webb, Canada's greatest living >>Roger > >wow, never heard of her; is this a general consensus? tell me more, if this >isn't too elementary and boring for everyone else on the list.--md She is a great poet. Her _Naked Poems_ of three decades ago is the best short long poem I know of. She had a long correspondence with Robert Duncan, to give her a USAmerican context. But she doesnt need one. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 01:17:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Ambi-ducks-trous In-Reply-To: <199831262451541@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron's baseball story is interesting. My left-handed kid brother learned his baseball from me, a rightie, so he throws and bats right handed. But writes, etc lefthanded. He plays gold every day now, and hits right handed. One summer day 3 years ago I set up a golf game between him and my Australian writer buddy Brian Edwards. Brian is a righthander who plays gold lefthanded, and my brother Roger is a lefthander who golfs righty. They played 18 holes, and were dead even going inmto the spectacular 18th at Fairview in Oliver, B.C. One of them wonm by a stroke but I forget which. Incidentally, among the young, almost 50% of tennis players play lefthanded now, and about 1.5% of golfers do. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 06:27:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: TBeck131 Subject: goodbye Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I'm not sure what I hoped to find on the poetics list but I'm sure that I haven't found it. What I have encountered is a professorial smugness (people who can't or won't distinguish between living and dead poets; people who scoff at the political efficacy of writing) propped up by extraordinary silences (most of the list is voiceless most of the time). There's way too much concern with position--with laurels, with "winning", with self-congratulation and self-promotion. The sound of one hand (who gives a damn if it is left or right) clapping one's self on the back. You folks have a powerful tool at your disposal. One can only hope that you figure out how to make better use of it. Signing off. Tom Beckett ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 06:32:34 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux In-Reply-To: <199803130251.TAA26338@bobo.oz.cc.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 7:58 PM +0000 3/12/98, linda russo wrote: >> From: Maria Damon >> > >> >it seems that some postmodern poetry disregards metaphor FOR >> >political reasons -- i'm wondering abt. this distinction. >> >> while i suspect the answer could be construed to be yes, the most famous >> example of this is not a postmodern one: Neruda i think, said something >> like "the blood of the children ran in the streets like the blood of the >> children ran in the streets." > >or, a little closer to home, "So much depends . . ." or any number of >wcw poems where the gesture is "look" and not "compare" or "look at >me looking at that!" (which perhaps next natural gesture is to >compare "you look at that different than i look at that )(granted >this maybe oversimplifying b/c (so much lyric) poetry already says >"see me looking"). But there's a way in which metaphor >doesn't just let things be in the world and be seen there in whatever >"chance" association. metaphor forces association (which forces >universality -- this poem is so you see like me) i was responding to the political aspect of the issue. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 09:02:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: virus In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >________________________________________________ >Carolyn Guertin, Department of English, University of Alberta >E-Mail: cguertin@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca; Tel/FAX: 403-432-2735 >Website: > >"Language is a virus." >-- Laurie Anderson The quote is actually from Burroughs: "Language is a virus from outer space." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 07:17:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Comprepoetica on sinister & gauche Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bob G You're irrepressible or is that incorrigible... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ thot we'd raise jerusalem here ripple this surface with the wind bpNichol ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 11:22:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Urgent Message re TIAA-CREF Campaign Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Social Choice for Social Change: Campaign for a New TIAA-CREF a call to invest 5-10% of Social Choice Account assets ($100-200 million) in companies that are models of social and environmental responsibility MC Box 135, Manchester College 603 E. College Ave., N. Manchester, IN 46962 (219) 982-5346/5009, aaf@manchester.edu, njw@manchester.edu Abigail A. Fuller and Neil Wollman, Co-Chairs Hello Colleagues: We are writing because we have just learned that the TIAA-CREF Committee on Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility will be meeting this coming Tuesday (3/17), and are asking you to EMAIL CEO JOHN BIGGS BEFORE TUESDAY in support of the campaign. This is the group that has considered our proposal before. Coincidentally, we have telephoned a number of the people on the committee recently and found at least some support from some of them--or at least an openness to explore the situation further. Besides going over our basic arguments, we are urging them to at least bring in someone who has specific knowledge on positive investing to present that position. We thank those of you who responded to our recent postal mailing and sent an email to TIAA-CREF and sent a copy to us. It would help enormously if those who have not yet written could send a brief email message to John Biggs, with copies to Albert Wilson and Martin Leibowitz, at feedback@tiaa-cref.org: ask them to do positive investing for the Social Choice Account, or at least allow someone knowledgable in that specific area to be involved the discussions. Ask that the message be forwarded to Biggs BEFORE TUESDAY. Send copies to us at aaf@manchester.edu or njw@manchester.edu. There are over a hundred people around the country who have expressed interest in the campaign, and if all could write now, it might really be productive. Thanks much, Neil and Abby p.s. If at any time you wish to be taken off our mailing list, please let us know ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ ________________________ Annie Finch http://muohio.edu/~finchar Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45220 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 11:23:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: anthology of new american poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dear list, everyone is invited to a party for An Anthology of New (American) Poets from Talisman House edited by Lisa Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz and Chris Stroffolino at Teachers and Writers Collaborative 5 Union Square West New York City Tuesday March 17th 6-9 PM ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:06:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Forks and Honey Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit <> Interestingly, this poem has entered pop culture (and children's songs), as "fact": how peas were eaten before the fork was invented. Forks were first used to drain sauce off food. And were only available to artistocrats for a few hundred years. What about spoons? Regards, Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:53:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: "metaphor" on a bus: deconstructing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I remember Geoffrey Hartmann and/or Paul deMan drawing a picture of a bus on a blackboard at Yale in 1978. It was a bus he had seen in Greece, and on the side it said "metaphor" in Greek letters. Apparently that was a standard word on Athens busses; the busses "carried things over" or something. He (whichever man it was) thought that was marvellous, and he drew an adorable bus. It was one of the rare times in the course that I saw him evince joy at something. The bus was so REAL, I now realize. I think it somehow let him (DeMan, I think it was, actually) off the hook. That minute was the first time that I heard the word trope. Tropes were absolutely the cat's pajamas (now that's a good metonym-metaphor combination) then. We read a Nietzsche essay that used how metaphors work to show that nothing meant anything, and my friends and I had our minds duly blown, blown down to the bottom. And, moreover, we felt terror at having our minds blown, as we were supposed to. I can't help wondering if the 80's turn away from metaphor was a backlash reaction to such overmystification of metaphor. SO much (or the lack of so much) depended on metaphor. Metaphor, not metonymy, was the hardcore trope of choice in that particular "Lit X" classroom. Obviously, this has nothing to do with Linda's original query (I think not, anyway. On the other hand, such machinations with metaphor obviously didn't help the perception that metaphor would be helpful for poems that wanted to engage with the world politically). Annie ____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________ ________________________ Annie Finch http://muohio.edu/~finchar Assistant Professor of English/Creative Writing Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45220 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:09:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: goodbye Comments: To: TBeck131 In-Reply-To: <64db2253.35091829@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom, If your still with us, I'd suggest that you take advantage of the list to make an intervention, to assert, question, and reconfigure your stance(s) and do the daring, as does Keston Sutherland by actually posting poems, by speaking with instead of speaking against. Silence, for myself at least, probably has more to do with folks just being too busy . . . but those same busy-bodies return to the list as a resource when they need it. You'll find these self-congradulatory cryptics wherever you go. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, TBeck131 wrote: > I'm not sure what I hoped to find on the poetics list but I'm sure that I > haven't found it. > What I have encountered is a professorial smugness (people who can't or won't > distinguish between living and dead poets; people who scoff at the political > efficacy of writing) propped up by extraordinary silences (most of the list is > voiceless most of the time). > There's way too much concern with position--with laurels, with "winning", with > self-congratulation and self-promotion. The sound of one hand (who gives a > damn if it is left or right) clapping one's self on the back. > You folks have a powerful tool at your disposal. One can only hope that you > figure out how to make better use of it. > > Signing off. > > Tom Beckett > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:39:11 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: goodbye MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit tom, Im saddened that youve left the list, have felt similarly to you, that there is amazing potential on lists such as this one (& wri-eye-tings) bandwidth that is largely unexplored, & tho no medium is perfect, actions such as networking & extending one's own works into a public medium, & even learning, are goals that are quite reachable here. I wonder (if you are still here) if you would speak more to the failed hopes that you had, & wonder if there is any sense of an emotional overwhelmance, (which more than anything else with list participation, I become discouraged by, & usually a few days of space makes be hungry again for jumping back into the muck} Id like to make it clear, that you were shaking the tree & fruit was falling within reach, tho, unfortunately, effects are sometimes the inverse of intent... miekal ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 13:24:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: virus Comments: To: Judy Roitman In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Judy Roitman wrote: > >________________________________________________ > >Carolyn Guertin, Department of English, University of Alberta > >E-Mail: cguertin@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca; Tel/FAX: 403-432-2735 > >Website: > > > >"Language is a virus." > >-- Laurie Anderson > > The quote is actually from Burroughs: "Language is a virus from outer space." > Judy is right, of course. I almost pointed out the same thing, until I realized that, just because WSB said it FIRST, doesn't mean that Laurie Anderson didn't SAY IT herself. And if Carolyn wants to quote Laurie Anderson's version, what the hell (esp. Since LA is still alive and can actually say the words) (and since so far as I know she (anderson) never appeared in a Nike commercial). "Fresh" from a 14 hour overnight train ride... Dave Zauhar ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 14:59:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: goodbye In-Reply-To: <35092889.3A41@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Miekal, I think you should send this back-channel. I sent him one that way this morning. otherwise, i think we're talking to each other--not that we shouldn't also. sylvester At 12:39 PM +0000 3/13/98, Miekal And wrote: >tom, Im saddened that youve left the list, have felt similarly to you, >that there is amazing potential on lists such as this one (& >wri-eye-tings) bandwidth that is largely unexplored, & tho no medium is >perfect, actions such as networking & extending one's own works into a >public medium, & even learning, are goals that are quite reachable >here. I wonder (if you are still here) if you would speak more to the >failed hopes that you had, & wonder if there is any sense of an >emotional overwhelmance, (which more than anything else with list >participation, I become discouraged by, & usually a few days of space >makes be hungry again for jumping back into the muck} > >Id like to make it clear, that you were shaking the tree & fruit was >falling within reach, tho, unfortunately, effects are sometimes the >inverse of intent... > > >miekal ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 15:28:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Forks and Honey In-Reply-To: Cadaly "Forks and Honey" (Mar 13, 12:06pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 13, 12:06pm, Cadaly wrote: > Subject: Forks and Honey > < I've done it all my life. > It may taste kind of funny, > But it keeps them on my knife. > > Here, the knife would be a fork if "fork" rhymed with "life.">> > > Interestingly, this poem has entered pop culture (and children's songs), as > "fact": how peas were eaten before the fork was invented. Forks were first > used to drain sauce off food. And were only available to artistocrats for a > few hundred years. > > What about spoons? Charles Simic has this to say about the ignoble spoon, Spoon An old spoon, Chewed, Licked clean, Polished back To its evil-eyed Glow, Eying you now >From the table, Ready to scratch Today's date And your name On the bare wall. -Charles Simic ------------------------------- Fork This strange thing must have crept Right out of hell It resembles a birds foot Worn around the cannibal's neck As you hold it in your hand, As you stab with it into a piece of meat, It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird: Its head which like your fist Is large, bald, beakless, and blind. -Charles Simic -------------------------------- William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:52:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Carpenter Subject: UK query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm going to be in England for all of April and May. As its my first trip over there, I'd be very appreciative of any information regarding interesting places for readings or current reading series, good bookstores for small press material, and so forth--anywhere in England really. Anything will be helpful. Many thanks. BC ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 16:50:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: goodbye Comments: cc: TBeck131 In-Reply-To: <64db2253.35091829@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom, I've a good guess re why so little responsiveness to postings to the list lately: it's spring break at many US universities these days. Purdue's in the middle of its, Cornell's starts next week, some were last week. I just got back in town myself. But there's also this: Professorial smugness is really half the fun of being in the academy. It's one of the perqs (sp?), the plusses, the bonuses (boni?). But really in my experience smugness is much more a phenomenon associated with the literati, not necessarily the academy. Even if this list were composed of mostly non-academics (which I think is _not_ the case), you'd have that smug silence, self-congratulation and condescension -- common symptoms of writers and a certain kind of habitual reader. Vitriol, egotism, and ostracism are the three pillars of the canon. Furthermore, a listerv is like an open sore for those sorts of bacteria: it's more difficult to make a good joke or make a good gesture via email than it is to make a wise-crack or a witty riposte that might be a bit off-base and a bit off-topic and a bit hardy-harrh-har. The simple fact that we are writing to a vast and potentially immediately responsive group of strangers is a bit hard to ignore -- whihc makes the silence that follows a posting even harder to ignore. Consider a political podium, say at a televised national convention: you never find much chit-chat, much of anything of importance discussed, much of anything but backscratching and hand-clasping: podiums nad rostrums just aren't the place for a good raging discussion: that takes intimacy. There is a tendency, that is to say, to mistake, I think, ecommunication as something that can be or become private or intimate. It can't. You say it's a potentially important tool: maybe so. But it's a privatizing tool: that's what it's REALLY good at. It's not a public tool, not a public-making or community-making tool. It's more on the order of a hacksaw than a screwdriver: it cuts us apart rather than squishing us together. With all that said, I have to sayt hat I DO find a great deal of worth on this here listserv: much humor, great jokes, really brilliant exchanges, high wit, shocking insights (yours included), and, yes, raunchy and rancorous and petty invective. But hey: like any good anthology, you gotta pick and choose. You chose to close the book. That's okey dokey. Just know, footnote to headline: you were a good read. gg On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, TBeck131 wrote: > I'm not sure what I hoped to find on the poetics list but I'm sure that I > haven't found it. > What I have encountered is a professorial smugness (people who can't or won't > distinguish between living and dead poets; people who scoff at the political > efficacy of writing) propped up by extraordinary silences (most of the list is > voiceless most of the time). > There's way too much concern with position--with laurels, with "winning", with > self-congratulation and self-promotion. The sound of one hand (who gives a > damn if it is left or right) clapping one's self on the back. > You folks have a powerful tool at your disposal. One can only hope that you > figure out how to make better use of it. > > Signing off. > > Tom Beckett > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 16:35:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: goodbye In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" gabriel, i don't follow you at all: email *can't* be intimate?... what do you mean?---do you mean that if i establish what i think is an intimate relationship with someone online, intimate in the sense of a mutual plumbing of emotions and convictions---i'm self-deceived?... i've seen that word "intimacy" used to describe sexual relationships between strangers... again, i can't understand how any medium excludes the possibilities of intimacy---assuming intimacy is itself mediated... at the same time, there is something about *this* medium---as a public medium---that can be used to promote one-on-one intimacies... if i backchannel you, and we get to talking, you may very well feel inclined to reveal more of yourself than you might f2f... it's happened to me and to many i know... on the other hand, you might not feel this way---up to you... i suspect though that the nature of this medium has something to do with being able to spatialize thought, and figure thinking, with some care---not quite the same as the telephone... not quite the same as a hard-copy letter, either... but reaching across distances faster, across different walks of life faster, in a more synchronous setting... public, and not so... does this mean that we needn't meet f2f?... no---having just met keith tuma after knowing him online for a few years, i feel our f2f connection helped to solidify our friendship... i could say the same for many other folks, who themselves might say the same... and i've met folks f2f, whom i've grown closer to after having met them again online... again, depends on how you come to this medium, any medium... i wouldn't come here expecting a utopia, i might come here trying to push or pull toward something better... i've always found, when it comes to social organizations, that the whole is less than the sum of the individual beings, even if its greater than any one individual... so i always see something to shoot for... too bad tom left... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 06:07:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: Alanxy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - I am Alanxy why am I Alanxy because that is because when I send you a message, that is when I because, when I send you a message it must be control-x then y, that is control-x to send, then y for yes, yes yes to send the message to you, yes yes but Alanxy, yes, well, then when this happens, the control key is moved, not where I want it to be! or no longer operates or is missing in the first place or never was there, then when I type control-x y to send you the message yes yes to send you the message, then I become Alanxy then I am Alanxy after signing Alan, after signing love, Alan and you see my Alanxy sometimes or I return and write back to you as Alan or as love, Alan not as love Alan no imperative, not even love Alanxy or maybe love Alanxy that is an algebra of existence, is it not that is an algebra of existence ___________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 05:34:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Readings in San Diego Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I will be in San Diego the week of April 6 through 10. Does anybody know of readings there that week? If so, please back (or front) channel. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 14:03:11 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: London po Comments: To: bricarp@PAUL.SPU.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable In response to Brian Carpenter's UK query: Exceptionally good bookstore in London, particularly for small press, con= crete & audio poetry: workfortheeyetodo 63 Charterhouse St. EC1M Good reading series: Sub Voicive Poetry Irregular Tuesdays at 8 pm The Three Cups (pub) Sandland Street (Holborn tube) 21 April - Cydney Chadwick 5 May - Bob Perelman 12 May - Carlyle Reedy / Alaric Summer 19 May - Anne Waldman 6 June - Paul Dutton The Ugly American, Martin _________________________________________ Martin Spinelli SUNY Buffalo English Department Granolithic Productions spinelli@pavilion.co.uk LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak ENGAGED http://www.engaged.demon.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 14:08:57 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: Fw: subVoicive : Cayley : Spinelli [Glazier] : 17 Mar. London UK In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; X-MAPIextension=".TXT" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > Date: Wednesday, March 11, 1998 15:30:59 > From: John Cayley > To: John Cayley > Subject: subVoicive : Cayley : Spinelli [Glazier] : 17 Mar. London UK > > Reading at Sub Voicive Poetry > > Tuesday 17 March 1998, 8.00 pm > Upstairs at The Three Cups > Sandland Street (Holborn Tube), London, UK > Admission 5 or 2.50 pounds > > John Cayley & Martin Spinelli > with Spinelli reading for, from and with > the work of Loss Pequen~o Glazier > (who couldn't make it across the pond) > and from his own > > Cayley is a transl(iter)ator/editor/poet/ > administra(i/nsla)tor of pURLs, increasingly > caught up with writing in programmable and networked media. > Aging web site: http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/in/ > > Spinelli is a writer and radio producer residing in Lewes. > His LINEbreak radio series brought the work of Creeley, Howe, > Templeton, Auster, Mac Low, and many other formally innovative > poets and prose writers to public radio listeners in the US in > '96 and '97. (Sample LINEbreak at the Electronic Poetry Center > http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak.) Recently, he guest- > edited the current, radio-broadcast issue of the London-based > multi-media arts magazine, Engaged (http://www.engaged.demon.co.uk). > > Spinelli will also read from the work of Loss Pequen~o Glazier, > and from his own poetic & critical responses to it. Glazier is a poet = whose > publications include: Leaving Loss Glazier, The Parts (Meow) and > the forthcoming, Tenoshhteetla'n. He also is the webmaster of the > Electronic Poetry Center (http://writing.upenn.edu/epc). > > > **** Apologies if you get this message more than once **** > > **** next bit only works if you can see ... **** > |<------this many monospaced chars on your window without line wrap----= ->| > > -----------------------------------------------------------------------= --- > Going a little | e e e | > a c a c egfg | cha hs c=AAa =AA=AA =89le | =81=89 = =A7s =A7=A3 =AE=A3 =A7H > egfg egfg egfg egfg | e e e e ete e e | > Leav | line e | alone > | | > fca d f dcac fcbc | a is.anda a a a | island > g bc gcbc g b g | e a ea a e e | > The sun is in the cloud | le non anai atre k*oud | (will not)= see > #dcbc # fcbc gbab ( | #dkbk # fhbk jbab ( | > f | dp o i | =B6=9B =AAD =A7= H =AAy =89T > MARTIN | | > SPINELLI Fairly co | saillu ko | hear > cfef cfef efef efef efe | kfes hfef afef efeq efe | (your) = echoes > | | > Little purr. | .ittle porr. | > d g b a g a d | | =81=95 =A5=86 = =A7J =BE` =81L > efdf egdf # cfdf # cfdf | Tues 17 Mar'98, 8pm | > | | return JOH= N > g 7 | S u b V o i c i v e | CAYL= EY > dede g 7 g. 7 g. | | light > d 7 dede g de | Upstairs | lake= side > d | The Three Cups | > e e | Sandland Street | =A5_ =85" =B4C = =82a =A7W > #7 # 7 (.)b #7 fb | (Holborn Tube) | > 7d#c d g 7 e#d | Admission GBP 5/2.50 | mos= ses > f d c# * | | > -----------------------------------------------------------------------= ---- > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 11:06:09 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kcglowworm Subject: Hartley on Mac Low Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Please note that my article on Jackson Mac Low is now online at EPC. http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ George Hartley ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 13:30:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Long Subject: _The 2River View_, 2_3 (Spring 1998) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I thought ya'll might be interested in reading the most recent, Spring issue of _The 2River View_, with poems by Charles Albano, Kate Bergen, Pat Boran, C. E. Chaffin, Michael Hoerman, billy little (of this list), Peter Munro, David M. Somerfleck, Marc Swan,and Rochelle Randel. Well, hopefully Spring. It is snowing here (at last) in Buffalo. My best, Richard Richard Long 2River Poetry 2River@helman.daemen.edu http://www.daemen.edu/~2River ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 13:31:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: goodbye In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Mar 1998, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > gabriel, i don't follow you at all: email *can't* be intimate?... what do > you mean?---do you mean that if i establish what i think is an intimate > relationship with someone online, intimate in the sense of a mutual > plumbing of emotions and convictions---i'm self-deceived?... Yah, Joe, that's basically what I'm saying. I think it's a rather _convivial_ medium. But it's not intimate. There's nothing very intimate about the movies or about television: broadcasting isn't intimate. Reading broadcasts isn't intimate. 600 people read this stuff, and most, I imagine, give the material here well-deserved distinterest. And though you're right to say that one-to-one letters (backchanneling, I see it's called) can serve an intimacy: but it can't _create_ one. Not a genuine one, anyway. You must be able to see, smell, touch, at times taste, embrace, have coffee with -- and yada yada yada with -- anybody with whom you are to become intimate. > > i've seen that word "intimacy" used to describe sexual relationships > between strangers... I'm not sure, but I think that's, like, Irony. If not, I'd have to say that whoever uttered those words was either purposefully or ignorantly embracing an idea that can only be characterized as an abomination. > again, i can't understand how any medium excludes the possibilities of > intimacy---assuming intimacy is itself mediated... That's my point: intimacy is not mediated. I know that as an educated person I'm expected to believe, as they cliche goes, that Everything's mediated. But that's frankly a load of codswallop. >if i backchannel you, and we get to > talking, you may very well feel inclined to reveal more of yourself than > you might f2f... it's happened to me and to many i know... "getting to talking" and talking itself does not an intimacy make. Look, I'm not saying anything new or profound here: the origin and basis of intimacy, of friendship, as ol Cicero said (and about which he was probably right) is love and goodwill. I, yes, _do_ happen to avow the old medieval idea of the Word -- both verbum and verbum dei. Where love and goodwill are present, there is intimacy; I certainly don't believe that epistolary relationships preclude intimacy, insofar as they don't preclude love and goodwill: but letters (epistles, not the alphabetical dingies) aren't great packhorses: they can't bear, often, very much love and goodwill -- and this is simply because the principle way a human being lies is through the word: we _see_ the truth about someone, or _know_ the truth about someone, or _recognize_ it, but we rarely _read_ it, and if we do read it, we certainly aren't very inclined to trust it. Though the National Inquirer is one of my favorite newspapers. Anyway, I'm belaboring, like, the obvious, I think. Look, reading this stuff, these posts from the former Tom and from you and from others -- the great Silliman et alii -- I learn a great deal about myself and about the play of ideas, but I frankly learn nothing about the people who type this stuff into the 600 various computers linked by this listserv. I learn about what they think nad sometimes about what they feel, but nothing about who they are. > does this mean that we needn't meet f2f?... no---having just met keith tuma > after knowing him online for a few years, i feel our f2f connection helped > to solidify our friendship... i could say the same for many other folks, > who themselves might say the same... and i've met folks f2f, whom i've > grown closer to after having met them again online... I would say that your intimacy or friendship did not begin until you actually shook tuma's hand, right? I'd frankly go so far as to say that prior to that handshake each of you was, in a sense, talking only to himself: that each of you facilitated a rather common kind of self-inquiry for the other. Anyway, all best, Joe. At ten eastern tonight I'll put my two lips on the upper right hand of my screen: I'd like to believe you'll be doing the same. Gabriel, smiling. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 13:43:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Deceased Poet Semenovich In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear List: Do any of you know of a poet named Semenovich. Either Joe Semenovich or Joel Semenovich? He has apparently died. He lived in Brooklyn. He died sometime after october of 1997. He sent three brilliant and, like, very weird poems to the Sycamore and I sat on them for four months hemming and hawing: they were about how jealous he was of Sharon Olds and how good she looks in her photographs and how he'd like to, like, get really intimate with her (f-word). I wrote him last month apologizing for the delay and explaining why we weren't going to run his poems, which were about not ever getting published and how sick he was of never getting published and about how jealous he was of successful poets and about how he was getting older and obsessed with his total failure to be recogized and read. They were great poems, but there was an aesthetic donnybrook in the offices about running them (people insisting I had lost my taste etc) -- it got complicated. Anyway, the letter I wrote came by return to sender and the big black word DECEASED scrawled across Semenovich's address. My question is: did anybody know him? If so, could you backchannel me and tell me briefly about him, who he was, if in fact he is dead or if this was, like, a joke, or if this guy really wasn't known at all? I'd appreciate it. It's sort of eating me. Gabriel GUdding ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 13:17:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: goodbye In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" gabriel, part of my deepest (as 'twere), most essential nature (as 'twere) is right here, in these words... the ones you're reading on your screen and the ones i'm reading on mine... no shit, really... i don't say the world is mediated b/c it's fashionable to say so... i say it's mediated b/c this is how i've found it out... the actual, physical touch of a human being is mediated by our *own* flesh---which has all to do with how we come to it... i mean, the understanding or lack thereof we bring to it ('learn how to listen to your body')... else my own flesh & blood, say, would be the same as any other's, no?... my father's touch---not different, but different again, not simply b/c he was different, but b/c of how i imagine or feel his being, as my father... a matter of distance---physical distance, that marks two separate entities, and a matter of resolving such distance, or trying to... like death perhaps... and again, since i bring such meaning to *this* stuff, i say things become intimate... quickly in fact, in fact sometimes too quickly... which is why the intimacy my wife and i had developed over 3-4 months online had, for a future, to become a matter of flesh in order to become lasting... i mean, as husband and wife---and perhaps it needn't be this way either... both of us understood how this medium, like all media, can make a fool of you... but we had become intimate prior to meeting in the flesh... you may rather say that we laid the groundwork for intimacy---but from where i sit, this groundwork was part & parcel of our intimacy... like you say, words (can) lie... so do bodies, how we come to understand them... i just don't see anyway around this... but again, words (can) speak truth... again, like the body... i never mistake words for bodies, or bodies for words... i would of course "trash" the words sooner than "trash" the bodies... but assigning such priority to bodies is not to assign bodily interactions the sole site of intimacy... b/c such interaction of necessity includes communication of some sort... and you can take the latter with you, as 'twere... isn't this what makes us social creatures?... occasionally i've found bodily presence to exceed or supplant words in my relations with others---often this has created real problems for me in establishing intimacy... words can do this too, i.e., create problems... i would say that for intimacy you really need it all, gabriel---words and bodies, some sort of communicative understanding... so for me this stuff is part of that intimacy, just as words of yore (so to speak)... but they work differently around t/here, and in this era... in any case, words, significant words, are vital to my sense of what intimacy is, can be... all best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 13:42:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Deceased Poet Semenovich In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" wow what a tale. one for the archives for all kinds of reasons. can you run those poems over this list? you've, as my students write, "peaked" my interest. At 1:43 PM -0500 3/14/98, Gabriel Gudding wrote: >Dear List: > >Do any of you know of a poet named Semenovich. Either Joe Semenovich or >Joel Semenovich? He has apparently died. He lived in Brooklyn. He died >sometime after october of 1997. > >He sent three brilliant and, like, very weird poems to the Sycamore and I >sat on them for four months hemming and hawing: they were about how >jealous he was of Sharon Olds and how good she looks in her photographs >and how he'd like to, like, get really intimate with her (f-word). I >wrote him last month apologizing for the delay and explaining why we >weren't going to run his poems, which were about not ever getting >published and how sick he was of never getting published and about how >jealous he was of successful poets and about how he was getting older and >obsessed with his total failure to be recogized and read. They were great >poems, but there was an aesthetic donnybrook in the offices about running >them (people insisting I had lost my taste etc) -- it got complicated. >Anyway, the letter I wrote came by return to sender and the big black word >DECEASED scrawled across Semenovich's address. > >My question is: did anybody know him? If so, could you backchannel me and >tell me briefly about him, who he was, if in fact he is dead or if this >was, like, a joke, or if this guy really wasn't known at all? > >I'd appreciate it. It's sort of eating me. > >Gabriel GUdding ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 14:54:18 -0500 Reply-To: Gabriel Gudding Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Deceased Poet Semenovich In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Maria, well, the poems _should_ be in a pile in my office and I pray they're still there. But I have to say that I'd feel a little freaky about doing that just now: I don't even know if the guy's actually Dead, you know? It sort of at this point feels like rifling a dead guy's wallet or taking a dead guy's boots or something. Can anybody verify if this guy has passed on? For now, I'd just like to learn about him: can anybody help me out here? He lived on Glenwood Rd in Brooklyn. I don't have a clue about Brooklyn. Anybody know this guy? Gabriel On Sat, 14 Mar 1998, Maria Damon wrote: > wow what a tale. one for the archives for all kinds of reasons. can you > run those poems over this list? you've, as my students write, "peaked" my > interest. > > At 1:43 PM -0500 3/14/98, Gabriel Gudding wrote: > >Dear List: > > > >Do any of you know of a poet named Semenovich. Either Joe Semenovich or > >Joel Semenovich? He has apparently died. He lived in Brooklyn. He died > >sometime after october of 1997. > > > >He sent three brilliant and, like, very weird poems to the Sycamore and I > >sat on them for four months hemming and hawing: they were about how > >jealous he was of Sharon Olds and how good she looks in her photographs > >and how he'd like to, like, get really intimate with her (f-word). I > >wrote him last month apologizing for the delay and explaining why we > >weren't going to run his poems, which were about not ever getting > >published and how sick he was of never getting published and about how > >jealous he was of successful poets and about how he was getting older and > >obsessed with his total failure to be recogized and read. They were great > >poems, but there was an aesthetic donnybrook in the offices about running > >them (people insisting I had lost my taste etc) -- it got complicated. > >Anyway, the letter I wrote came by return to sender and the big black word > >DECEASED scrawled across Semenovich's address. > > > >My question is: did anybody know him? If so, could you backchannel me and > >tell me briefly about him, who he was, if in fact he is dead or if this > >was, like, a joke, or if this guy really wasn't known at all? > > > >I'd appreciate it. It's sort of eating me. > > > >Gabriel GUdding > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 14:26:14 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to those who posted re: paratactic. Does seem to be an analogue to psychological meaning although not exact: prelogical (not in a pejorative way), implicit (not conscious) actions, in particular actions toward someone in an intimate (attachment) relationship. metaphor/metonym discussion suggests that metonym may be similiar move back away from logical discourse but the question then is whether there is another direction that can be taken besides a return to metaphor. ?related to 'revival of formalism'? tom bell morning thoughts to clear out the cobwebs ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 16:05:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: discon Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" re-entry --- > to err, to um --- > chuff daddy --- > frequent flier miles | | | | | | \ / \ / the hell! --- > take it --- > > > bonus bouillabaise --- > white gloves | | | | | | \ / \ / Gator Bowl Insight.com Bowl | | | | | \ / \ / soft hits 8 point aught truth is beauty ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 16:19:34 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: pomo metaphoracity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The emotional appeal of parataxis like that of drumming is surely pre logical (and I think some in the Eshleman wing of deep subject poetics have used pre-conscious in order to describe this effect ... If I remember Jakobsen drew hos thoughts on metonomy from work with aphasics--which could be defined as a contiguity disorder ???? On the other hand--to invoke something in common to holographic, fractal, and maybe genetic models --each slice of the string seems to have metaphoric potentials of expansion ... if you drop a stone in a pool and watch the rings spread on the surface--it is because of replicant seriality expanding that one notices the rose pattern ... metaphor + insight and it is surely not as logical as analogy and in a digital world, there is a poetic place for the analog ... Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 17:13:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: sininster metaphors vs. dextrous metonymies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For the (burgeoning) record I'm a lefty too, but I hit right-handed and dribble right-handed, prefer to drive the basket from the right side, but have a left-handed jumpshot, yet throw a football right-handed. Make what you will of all that (hint: I've *never* had a guaranteed contract). I type with both hands. The following is for those who would actually like to understand metaphor and metonymy. I have no idea why, but one of the received ideas of our poetic time, has someone else mentioned this? intanced this?, is that metaphor is bad metonymy good. Comparing one thing to another, tsk tsk. How could you? Don't you see the uniqueness the singularity of all? The general singularity I mean. This highly-reduced sauce is too thick to pour on anything anyone really cooks up, alas, and metaphor (see the previous one) is cool! (a metaphor) For example *all* theory is metaphor -- see Riemannian geometry, relativity, gravity as "bent" space (metaphor), string theory, you get the idea (how could you from this fragmentary address?) (<-- metaphor), or did you think the Krebs Cycle was a real geometric form? Has someone mentioned the extraordinary work of George Lakoff on metaphor? I liked someone suggesting that fork might be a good metonymy for knife -- actually, the peas are a better metonymy for the knife, tho it is the spoonness of a knife to which the peas attach. Note that knife, fork, and spoon began life as "stick." Metaphor moved them on (look at your hand). A serious section: favored though was the citation from (suggestion by?) someone (G. Hartley?) that metaphor is inherently transcendental---no need to open the bus door at that stop---and metonymy imminent---because it is busy "establishing relationships of contiguity." I hope it is obvious that this cart won't pull a horse. Metonymy *relies on,* it doesn't establish, relationships of contiguity (or other existing connection---flag for country, boat, patriotism, etc.). That's why a spoon is *not* a metonymy for a knife, run away though they did together. Your uncle may be your lover, your uncle may even be a metaphor for your lover, but your uncle will *never* be a metonymy for your lover, not even if they're roommates. Metaphor *establishes* relationships---including those of contiguity---between things which are different. Providing Kafka, btw, as evidence that metaphor means transcendence imposes a particular interpretation on his work; indicating that reading "Kafka will suggest (that) metaphor is inherently theological in its structuring of mediation itself as a relationship to something outside or above the structure or terrain, and by its positioning of the mediator as one who inhabits a space or opening between us and some external power" is not more than 180 degrees off, since the play of metaphor in Kafka balances on the non-realizability, non-translatability of all that metaphor makes available as its intention. The trial is precisely not a trial, the castle not a place of high degree. I.e. these are precisely *not* theological and non-transcendant. They are what you are flattened against in the most imminent fashion, and the metaphor stands in for an inability to conceptualize your life. Gregor Samsa as beetle, no mediator available. For Hartley (or whoever I'm standing him in for metaphorically, some poor straw man) to suggest that "Metaphor assumes a certain equivalence, a reduction of differences, between the two terms in order for this substitution to be possible" indicates a pretty deep misunderstanding of what goes on in this area of language. Metaphor precisely extends our understanding of X *out* of its meaning space by framing it against another meaning space. It is metonymy that reduces difference. "Red sails in the sunset" -- the sail is being substituted metonymically for the ship. There is *intentionally* no semantic difference between them. When bigmouth talks, we are identifying the fellow (me in this instance it seems) metonymically. On the other hand, "rosy-fingered dawn" does not "assume a certain equivalence" between dawn and fingers, it extends the semantics of "dawn." That metonymy might get us out of transcendeance and theology is particularly amusing in the light, for example, of Xtianity's *utterly* metonymic structure: worship cross, god is actually son of god, etc. etc. or as the Rabbis used to say "do you believe these people? One end of the stick they burn for heat, the other end they carve and they bow down before it?" (that's in Absence Sensorium somewhere I think btw) Oh well, just more left-handed arrogance from one of the cognoscenti.... I suppose. Perhaps on the other hand, there's someone to agree with me that like poets critics ought to know something about language? More likely, my friends on this list are now grinning as they see me try to pick a fight for the umpteenth time and those who don't know me either are stunned at my brilliance or think this post was actually written by Dale Smith. Oh well, divide and conquer I always say -- to the peas under the mattress of my knife's pod, that is). Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 17:55:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: sininster metaphors vs. dextrous metonymies In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 14 Mar 1998 17:13:10 -0600 from Mandel's really poppin with his left (metaphymitly speaking). Exactly right on about the tropes. Didn't Kenneth Burke say metonymy is a kind of metaphor? Applying value judgements to rhetorical tropes is like Ted Hughes eating crow while forking Sylvia and calling it spooning - lookout, raven mavens! You call this pottery? It bites! I like Ike and synecdoche too and Tyler too-too Tippecanoe. Gosh, those rabbis sure knew how to get a laugh out of a crucifixion. A real knee-slapper toe-nailer, Tom! An image is an image and a god is a god and shucks maybe the Muslims are right. It was all a horsefeedback loopy sorta hat trick. Hardehar at yourdeyour and mightymine EXPENSE - seemingly forever! Aren't tropes fun?? (Especially on Desolation Row.) "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke" - Jimi via rabbi Bob "Words can kill." - President of Knesset They can also make people depressed. "Man is in love, and loves what vanishes - what more is there to say?" - Yeats - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 21:23:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Fwd: NEW: SmallPress - Small Press,Limited Edition and Chapbook List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_889928613_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_889928613_boundary Content-ID: <0_889928613@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII thought this might be of interest to some people here: --part0_889928613_boundary Content-ID: <0_889928613@inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from relay21.mx.aol.com (relay21.mail.aol.com [172.31.106.67]) by air18.mail.aol.com (v40.7) with SMTP; Sat, 14 Mar 1998 20:41:01 -0500 Received: from grape.EASE.LSOFT.COM (grape.ease.lsoft.com [206.241.12.34]) by relay21.mx.aol.com (8.8.5/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id UAA20937; Sat, 14 Mar 1998 20:40:42 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803150140.UAA20937@relay21.mx.aol.com> Received: from PEAR.EASE.LSOFT.COM (206.241.12.19) by grape.EASE.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <8.D3CB701A@grape.EASE.LSOFT.COM>; Sat, 14 Mar 1998 20:40:02 -0500 Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 20:46:56 -0500 Reply-To: "Book_Arts-L: The list for all the book arts!" Sender: "Book_Arts-L: The list for all the book arts!" From: Ron Koster Subject: NEW: SmallPress - Small Press, Limited Edition and Chapbook Publishing To: BOOK_ARTS-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit >X-From_: owner-new-list@listserv.nodak.edu Sat Mar 14 18:30:56 1998 >Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 17:21:45 -0600 >Reply-To: An-tAthair-Siorai Press Gp >Sender: NEW-LIST - New List Announcements >From: An-tAthair-Siorai Press Gp >Subject: NEW: SmallPress - Small Press, > Limited Edition and Chapbook Publishing >To: NEW-LIST@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU > >SmallPress via http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/smallpress > >SmallPress is an unmoderated discussion list for Publishers, Printers, >Editors, Collectors, Authors, Booksellers, Librarians, Historians and >anyone else interested in old and modern Small Press books, Small Press >Publishing, Marketing, Writing, Chapbooks and Magazines. It invites >comments on the state of the market, success and failure reports, ideas >and requests for information. Messages about new and planned publications >are also welcomed, as are reviews of books and magazines within the Small >Press Movement, and from an historical point of view. > >The list is designed to place all interested parties in touch with one >another in an informal manner and allow open and frank - but not abusive - >discussion of all aspects of this area of Publishing, and discussion / >warnings on vanity press publishing, changes in copyright law, cataloguing >and legal requirements for different markets and countries. > >To subscribe go to: http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/smallpress > >Owner: Adam An-tAthair-Siorai litterateur@t-online.de > > ------- >Use this information at your own risk. For more information and disclaimer >send E-mail to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU with the command INFO NEW-LIST >in the body. URL: http://LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU/archives/new-list.html > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ P S Y M O N ? ? ? ? http://home.istar.ca/~psymon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ --part0_889928613_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 20:58:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Readings in San Diego Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron (and others): Jay Wright will be reading at UCSD as part of the New Writing Series on April 9th at 4:30, and he will read later that evening at the Museum in La Jolla. I'll post the full list of Spring readings soon. Hope to see you there. Stephen Cope >I will be in San Diego the week of April 6 through 10. Does anybody know of >readings there that week? If so, please back (or front) channel. > >Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 23:11:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: New Writing Series in San Diego Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable List- Still a few yet-to-be-announced events, but otherwise it's complete. I wanted to give you all enough time to make your travel plans... UCSD NEW WRITING SERIES SPRING 1998 (Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at the Visual Arts Performance Space on the UCSD campus at 4:30PM) ------------------------------------- * Jay Wright April 9 * The acclaimed author of several books of poetry, including _Boleros_ and _The Double Invention of Komo_, Wright's work is often cross-cultural in scope, drawing on intersections of American, African, and African-American mythology and history. _Selected Poems of Jay Wright_ was published in 1987 by Princeton University Press, and includes an afterword by Harold Bloom. * Lydia Davis April 15 * A former San Diegan, Davis is the author of a novel, _The End of the Story_, and two collections of stories, _Break it Down_ and _Almost No Memory_. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, most recently _The Best American Short Stories 1997_. She teaches at Bard College in New York. * A CELEBRATION OF POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM April 19 * Scheduled 3:00 p.m. in the Geisel Room of the Central University Library. Reception & party to follow. Readings and performances to celebrate the publication of the second volume of Rothenberg and Joris's groundbreaking anthology _Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry_, a "brilliant revision of all we'd thought was 'poetry of the twentieth century'"(Robert Creeley) and "a sourcebook for the future." (Gary Snyder) * Douglas Messerli and Joe Ross April 22 * =46ounder of the seminal literary press Sun & Moon, Messerli is the author o= f several books of poetry and an ongoing work _Structures of Destruction_. Under the pseudonym of Kier Peters, he has written several dramas which have been performed nationwide. Ross recently moved to San Diego from Washington D.C., where he was the Literary Editor for the Washington Review. His tenth book of poetry, _EQUATIONS=3Dequals_, is forthcoming from Sun & Moon. * Yoshimasu Gozo and Marilia April 24 * Scheduled 7:00 p.m. at CRCA in collaboration with the UCSD Interarts Consortium. One of the most acclaimed of contemporary Japanese poets, Yoshimasu is also an accomplished performer, often working to jazz or improvised accompaniment. As a singer and performance artist Marilia has given numerous performances around the world, including collaborations with Yoshimasu and with Butoh dance founder Kazuo Ohno. * Ed Roberson April 29 * Ed Roberson's fourth and most recent book, _Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In_, won the 1994 Iowa Poetry Prize, and has established him as a major figure in contemporary African-American poetry. Ed Foster has called Roberson "one of those 'hidden masters'" and "one of our best," and Nathaniel Mackey has described his poetry as "wrought, wry, entrancing, transportative, strict, soul-sustaining." He lives in New Jersey. * John Woods and Jerome Rothenberg May 6 * Presented in cooperation with PEN American Center's national translation month. A session of creative translation and performance. John Woods, who has done many award-winning translations from German authors will read from his ongoing translations from Arno Schmidt. Jerome Rothenberg will perform new translations from Pablo Picasso and Vitezslav Nezval and older versions from Kurt Schwitters, Federico Garc=EDa Lorca, and traditional American Indian poetry. * May 13 TBA * * John Cayley and Yang Lian May 22 * Resident for the spring quarter at UCSD, John Cayley is both an innovator with hypertext and web-based poetry and an important translator and disseminator of both the new and the newer Chinese poetry. Yang Lian, as one of the key figures among the post-Mao "misty poets," has continued and expanded his writing while living outside of China and is today a postmodern experimentalist of genuine international stature. * May 27 TBA * ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 07:38:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: forwrded from Nikuko, a stupid poem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - dreaming of white gauze again, lips tied into place, severed from the body, appearing to emerge, there's always the first word, slight tumescence of the cloth, a definition of smothered language, body arched upwards, hollow beneath the back (where the back would be), it's an outline of white gauze, it's always damp, as if excretions were somehow caught up in all of this, head bending backwards speaking upside-down, all sounds are coming-out sounds sdnuos tuo-gnimoc era i will be a dash caught in a mesh, i will be a period coming to an end ___________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 08:40:40 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Deceased Poet Semenovich I knew Joe Semanovich. He was a real maverick. Over ten years ago I was attending then eventually running a poetry group/workshop which met at the CUNY Grad Center. One night Joe read a poem that I liked very much but I think he took offense that I said of the experience that it was like Gregory Corso reading "The Raven." As things went on Joe would arrive at meetings half-tanked and would take swigs off a bottle here and there over the span of a meeting. One night he dramatically walked out in a huff after starting a shouting match with someone who was a featured reader. I later ran into him at the Hunter College library where he worked. We were cordial and I don't think he was still mad at me (though his poems were surely wonderfully mad). I don't think in our po-world today there is enough room for people like Joe who was too beset by grievances among other things to play the game properly. RIP. Burt Kimmelman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 10:08:08 -0500 Reply-To: Gabriel Gudding Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Deceased Poet Semenovich In-Reply-To: <009C3376.7F8459C0.7@admin.njit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Burt, Dear Fallen Angels, Ok. So that's depressing. Joe Semenovich, jealous poet and unknown, has, like, died. I hope his poems are still in my office. I guess, though, it's not decided yet that he's actually dead, since it certainly does seem as if a guy, as described below, would be just as capable (right word?) of a good practical joke (writing DECEASED on an overdue envelope) as he would be of dying a relatively boozy death. I'll call Hunter College. Thanks for the information. Joe Semenovich: R, like, In Peace. Though I frankly am totally chagrined to think that this actually happened, that htis guy sent Syc Rev his last or next to last poems, all of which had to do with age, unpublished-dom, jealousy, and anger, and then, like, goes and Dies. So if this is a joke, I spose R could be Roar. Roar (w/ laughter), or Rest, in Peace, J Semenovich. Thanks'gain, Burt Kimmelman. Gabe gudding On Sun, 15 Mar 1998, Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT wrote: > I knew Joe Semanovich. He was a real maverick. Over ten years ago I was > attending then eventually running a poetry group/workshop which met at > the CUNY Grad Center. One night Joe read a poem that I liked very much > but I think he took offense that I said of the experience that it was > like Gregory Corso reading "The Raven." As things went on Joe would arrive > at meetings half-tanked and would take swigs off a bottle here and there > over the span of a meeting. One night he dramatically walked out in a huff > after starting a shouting match with someone who was a featured reader. > I later ran into him at the Hunter College library where he worked. We > were cordial and I don't think he was still mad at me (though his poems > were surely wonderfully mad). I don't think in our po-world today there > is enough room for people like Joe who was too beset by grievances > among other things to play the game properly. RIP. > > Burt Kimmelman > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 08:12:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Tom Beckett's goodbye Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm really sorry to see Tom Beckett signing off but am sure glad he signed on. If only because I now have a at least two issues of The Difficulties as well as one of his own small books. Moreover, his own contributions in even this short time have been interesting & of use. But maybe this is a chatroom as much as anything, & that's not even necessarily a bad thing. Is it? I didn't go to the trouble Carolyn Guertin did, to actually type in a Webb poem, but certainly agree that Phyllis Webb is, for many of us, one of the finest poets around. And _Naked Poems_ is a key text is the growth of postmodern poetry in Canada, as well as one of the most beautiful desiring erotic poems since Sappho. It's too bad that all her books have been published by small Canadian presses & so she is not well known outside the country. When John Kinsella of Australia was here last year, he found a copy of her Selected Poems in the guestroom; next morning he came storming out crying, 'How come I've never heard of this Phyllis Webb before, reading her was one of the great experiences of my life!' Have to say I liked that... Doug ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ thot we'd raise jerusalem here ripple this surface with the wind bpNichol ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 10:31:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: Bay Area: advertisments for myself Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear listees, I'll be doing a few events this week in the Bay Area, as follows: Reading Wed evening, March 18th at Cody's with Carl Rakosi Reading Thursday evening, March 19th at 7:30 at A Clean Well Lighted Place, 601 Van Ness Friday, March 20th, Talk on Objectivist Poetics in the Thirties at Small Press Traffic. Please check times in Poetry Flash. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 12:27:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: sininster metaphors vs. dextrous metonymies MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Since this topic is still alive and kicking, I'll post an epigram/epitaph by Donne, which I like because it collapses the metaphor/metonym distinction that at times is too rigidly upheld: Fall of a Wall Under an undermined and shot-bruised wall A too-bold captain perished by the fall, Whose brave misfortune, happiest men envied, That had a town for tomb, his bones to hide. Cannons were developed to overcome walled cities, since by 15th century everyone knew about the old wooden-horse-stuffed-with-killers trick. Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau have many interesting things to say about metaphor, metonymy, and the definition of spaces. I can't recapitulate their ideas here, but they both suggest that these linguistic ways of creating relationships can support the ideological control of the body's experiential space to social boundaries. The joke/metaphor that the happy men share at the expense of the dead captain is enabled by the quasi-metonymical alliteration (doesn't Freud's analysis of jokes and condesation rely on the subordination of metonymy as a tool for metaphor, maybe not, I'm just free associating here) of "town for tomb," though there is a buried metonymical relationship if we credit the joke with recalling the ancient, some would say original, relationship of cities to cemeteries. Now that I reread the above I see that it's garbled, but I think Donne's epigram makes more sense in terms of what someone (sorry I can't recall who) called the "fractional" character of some of these figures than in terms of George Hartley's distinction. But however the terms may fall, Donne seems to be suggesting that they "hide" the bare bones of misfortune. Or maybe that metonymy allows the comprehension of the remains of the metaphorical process, for aren't our skeletons when used as evidence that our bodies served the defense of metaphor, the ultimate metonymy for the structures through which language comes and goes, for what is left after violence has moved on? Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 10:48:26 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: metaphoracity redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT sorry for the silence, but here goes / metaphor: chris s says: > I've never "bought" the anti-metaphor line, at least in any > rigid sense (to say there are limits to metaphor or to any > linguistic tool is one thing, but to say "metaphor forces > association" and doesn't just let the world BE is quite another... > for to condemn metaphor (or symbols, etc.) on the grounds of > the latter, wouldn't one have to condemn POETRY on the grounds > of the latter more generally? yes i thought that was a problem in my statement when i reread my post -- & yes poetry doesn't let things be -- but aren't there different sorts of poetry -- them that try to "above" (Romantics) them that try "be" among (moderns); EP is a good example here b/c (harking on George T's post) he DID condemn poetry on those grounds, no? (WW condemned poetry for other reasons & also sought to "make it new" in lyrical ballads . . .) making it new to EP meant (also, &c) making it seeable (letting it be) (& to comment on GT, addressing metaphor was but one way to address this) instead of forcing it into some construct (what i meant by _forcing_ associations). I think there are different in nuances btw "forcing" "making" "requesting" -- differences in the way different poets treat their materials. Metaphysicals force, objectivists prod? again, perhaps to simplistic but a simple way to discern. Also, i thought you _had to_ condemn poetry to write it. to want to make the "new" poetry . . . btw, george thompson's post: >Furthermore, when EP says "make it new", what does he mean? Does he >mean "take a good long look and don't compare -- just put it there >next to the wheelbarrow"? >I don't think so. I think he's talking about metaphor. Make it new. >See it new, Metaphor. >No? >GT ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 19:29:28 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: [Fwd: In Mourning & Memory on 3.14.98] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------2ECE3FB11511" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------2ECE3FB11511 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit bye beatrice rasputin zukofsky --------------2ECE3FB11511 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU (jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU [128.143.200.11]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.8.7/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA02487 for ; Sun, 15 Mar 1998 14:57:53 -0600 (CST) Received: (from domo@localhost) by jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU (8.8.5/8.6.6) id OAA93244 for avant-garde-outgoing; Sun, 15 Mar 1998 14:43:57 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU: domo set sender to owner-avant-garde@localhost using -f Received: from imo25.mx.aol.com (imo25.mx.aol.com [198.81.19.153]) by jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU (8.8.5/8.6.6) with ESMTP id OAA74295 for ; Sun, 15 Mar 1998 14:43:47 -0500 Received: from BStater@aol.com by imo25.mx.aol.com (IMOv13.ems) id JHMJa02816 for ; Sun, 15 Mar 1998 14:42:57 -0500 (EST) From: BStater Message-ID: <3c988533.350c2f43@aol.com> Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 14:42:57 EST To: avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Subject: In Mourning & Memory on 3.14.98 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 for Mac sub 79 Sender: owner-avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Precedence: bulk Reply-To: avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII d a a d d a a d d a a d d a a d d a a d IN LOVING MEMORY OF OUR d a a d DADAMAMA d a a d R. I. P d a a d d a a d d a a d d a a d d ______________adadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada__________________ Beatrice Wood, 105, Potter and 'Mama of Dada' By ROBERTA SMITH Beatrice Wood, a ceramic artist who was known as much for her irreverent quips, beauty, bohemian lifestyle and famous lovers as for her luminous luster-glaze chalices, and who inspired at least two movie characters, died on Thursday at her home in Ojai, Calif. She had celebrated her 105th birthday on March 3. An independent woman inclined to say whatever was on her mind, Ms. Wood famously attributed her longevity to "chocolate and young men" and just as memorably titled her 1985 autobiography "I Shock Myself." In fact she was a lifelong vegetarian who neither smoked nor drank and who remained clear-minded enough to take up the computer at the age of 90. Until two years ago, she worked at the potter's wheel every day, following a strict daily regimen in a studio that was listed under "Places of Interest" in Ojai. A member of the Theosophy movement since 1923, she had moved to Ojai in 1948 to be near its leader, the Indian sage Krishnamurti. For the last four decades of her life, she dressed exclusively in bright Indian saris and wore large amounts of silver-and-turquoise jewelry, even when throwing pots, with her thick, hip-length gray hair twisted into braids or a bun. She was born in San Francisco and reared in New York, and demonstrated an early affinity for art and nonconformity, much to the dismay of her wealthy parents. She once said that she was 23 before she got free of her mother and her lady's maid, but she was allowed to go, chaperoned, to Paris when she was 18, where she studied painting at the Academie Julien and acting at the Comedie Francaise. Back in New York she fell in with some of the most adventurous artistic characters in town. Her friends included Man Ray, Francis Picabia, Charles Sheeler, Walter and Louise Arensberg, Edgard Varese and Mina Loy. She was closest to Marcel Duchamp and his friend the diplomat and writer Henri-Pierre Roche. The three founded Blind Man, a magazine that was one of the earliest manifestations of the dada art movement in New York. (In the second and last issue, Ms. Wood defended Duchamp's infamous urinal, rejected by the jury of the 1917 Independents exhibition, with a sentence usually attributed to Duchamp himself: "The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges.") Duchamp encouraged her to draw; the results were fey, often autobiographical caricatures. Her life was already the stuff of movies. Roche's novel about a menage a trois, "Jules et Jim," would inspire Francois Truffaut's 1961 movie of the same name, with the character played by Jeanne Moreau based in part on Ms. Wood. In 1993, she was the subject of a documentary, "Beatrice Wood, the Mama of Dada," directed by Diandra Douglas. And more recently, she inspired the 101-year-old character of Rose in the movie "Titanic," directed by James Cameron, a neighbor in Ojai. Ms. Wood liked to say that she had loved seven men she didn't marry and married two men she didn't love, saying that neither marriage was consummated. Her first, in 1919, to a theater manager from Montreal, resulted from family pressure and soon ended in annulment when it was discovered that the man already had a wife in Belgium. In 1938, while living in Los Angeles, she married Steve Hoag, an engineer, after a house they owned together in North Hollywood was swept away in a flood, on the correct theory that married people were likely to get Red Cross relief more easily. He lived with her until his death in 1960. She was a late bloomer as an artist and did not encounter ceramics until the 1930s, when she failed to find a teapot to match some neo-rococo luster-glaze plates she had bought in Holland. She enrolled in a pottery course at Hollywood High School, and began to research the luster-glaze process in a local library. She never made that teapot, but became fascinated with the process. Her first works -- small glazed figures whose whimsy echoed her drawings -- sold easily, helping her make it through the Depression. It was not until 1940, when she studied briefly with the Austrian ceramists Gertrud and Otto Natzler, that she began to appreciate the beauty and possibilities of ceramics as an art form. After settling in Ojai in 1948, she began to develop her own version of the unpredictable luster-glaze technique, extending a process that embedded the metallic iridescence in the glaze itself, rather than painting it on. While she didn't invent the technique, she did create a unique palette in an extraordinary range of metallic pinks, golds and greens. At first Ms. Wood supported herself by turning out large quantities of dinner sets, but after the mid 1970s, she was able to concentrate exclusively on more ambitious decorative vessels: chalices, bowls and vases. Her most complex pieces, which had elaborately decorated surfaces, came only after the mid-1980s, when she was in her 90s. These elaborate, radiant works dominate her most recent retrospective, held last year at the American Craft Museum in New York. The show opens in Florida at the Lake Worth Museum of Contemporary Art on March 27. Ms. Wood had her first exhibition in 1949 at America House in New York. Her museum exhibitions included a retrospective at the Phoenix Art Museum in 1973. Since 1981, she has had repeated exhibitions at the Garth Clark Gallery, first in Los Angeles and then in New York, where an exhibition of her work will close on April 4. In 1994, the Smithsonian Institution named Ms. Wood an Esteemed American Artist and Pete Wilson, governor of California, declared her a "California Living Treasure." Saturday, March 14, 1998 Copyright 1998 The New York Times --- from list avant-garde@lists.village.virginia.edu --- --------------2ECE3FB11511-- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 22:23:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Al Filreis Subject: Rakosi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For Michael Heller: So how is Carl Rakosi faring these days? If you have a chance, after the Wednesday event, perhaps you will post a summary. I'm sure I'm joined by others in being interested. --Al Filreis Univ. of Pennsylvania ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 23:12:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Shoemaker Subject: Re: Rakosi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, me too--Long live Carl! Steve At 10:23 PM 3/15/98 -0500, you wrote: >For Michael Heller: > >So how is Carl Rakosi faring these days? If you have a chance, after the >Wednesday event, perhaps you will post a summary. I'm sure I'm joined by >others in being interested. > >--Al Filreis > Univ. of Pennsylvania > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:21:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kcglowworm Subject: sinister ministers and dextrous homogeneities Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This is George Hartley (which I keep typing because that doesn't seem to appear in the message, but I don't know because I only get the digest version), I'd like to set at least part of the record straight (is that a metaphor?) for Tom Mandel and Henry Gould: 1. I prefaced my earlier citations with the comment that I'm using the terms "metaphor" and "metonymy" metaphorically (which should indicate that I have nothing against metaphor as a linguistic vehicle), meaning further that I'm not talking about language. When I talk about language, then I'll be happy to be accused of knowing nothing about it. What I'm talking about is (to use a metaphor) ideological terrain, a concept I am getting mostly from Althusser and, after him, Laclau and Mouffe. Now this distinction may in many ways itself be a tired one, but I found it useful for a particular discussion of kafka. 2. Having said that, I still can't accept the notion that either metaphor or metonymy lie there innocently as tools at hand but do (to what degree is the question) shape our conception of the relationships they establish rather than simply express (especially if we are borrowing sdomeone else's tropes). 3. That it even occured to the fork and the spoon to run away in the first place is something that interests me. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 07:57:39 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: sinister ministers and dextrous homogeneities In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:21:33 EST from On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 00:21:33 EST Kcglowworm said: >1. I prefaced my earlier citations with the comment that I'm using the terms >"metaphor" and "metonymy" metaphorically (which should indicate that I have >nothing against metaphor as a linguistic vehicle), meaning further that I'm >not talking about language. When I talk about language, then I'll be happy to >be accused of knowing nothing about it. What I'm talking about is (to use a >metaphor) ideological terrain, a concept I am getting mostly from Althusser >and, after him, Laclau and Mouffe. Now this distinction may in many ways >itself be a tired one, but I found it useful for a particular discussion of >kafka. >2. Having said that, I still can't accept the notion that either metaphor or >metonymy lie there innocently as tools at hand but do (to what degree is the >question) shape our conception of the relationships they establish rather than >simply express (especially if we are borrowing sdomeone else's tropes). >3. That it even occured to the fork and the spoon to run away in the first >place is something that interests me. George, I confess that I just get confused when I read analytical commentaries on these tropes. So I'm not going to say that they can't be understood ideologically or politically. But your position here seems to be slyly self-reflexive. You say that you're not using the terms to talk about language per se, but that you're using them metaphorically to talk about "ideological terrain". So you're using metaphor just as you describe it - to set up a hierarchy of values, in which metaphor, on IDEOLOGICAL TERRAIN, establishes suspicious transcendental-hierarchical relations. You claim not to be talking about poetry - or "only metaphorically". But by your own definition, these "metaphors" for metaphor subsume poetry to the set of your ideological structure of values. I.e., materiality and horizontality are "good"; spirituality and verticality are "bad", or suspicious, or tyrannical, or whatever. I think the point of Tom's remarks on this, and mine, and several others, is that this characterization of metaphor-in-action is extremely abstract, and a lot of evidence has already been brought forward that metaphor involves materiality and non-hierarchy etc. just as much as metonymy does. And the point of my remarks here is that you can't get out of your argument by saying you're only speaking "metaphorically" about language. Poetry is the subject and you're applying your theory. I just think you need to supply more concrete evidence to win me over, for one. Trouble is I gather supplying that evidence was the purpose of all those essays pro- metonymy of the previous decade, which I'd rather not read anyway... my ideology gets in the way, like a black hole in a calculator in Calcutta. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 08:24:21 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: sinister ministers and dextrous homogeneities MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kcglowworm wrote: > > [George Hartley wrote]: > 3. That it even occured to the fork and the spoon to run away in the first > place is something that interests me. It interests me that in the original rhyme, the dish ran away with the spoon. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 09:28:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Ammonsfest at Cornell Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For those interested in the work of A.R. Ammons... AMMONSFEST: a celebration in honor of A.R. Ammons April 3-4, 1998 Cornell University Ithaca, New York Friday, April 3, 1998 Poetry for A.R. Ammons Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall 4:00 p.m. Host: Ken McClane Readings by Cynthia Bond, Nancy Vierira Couto, Alice Fulton, Angela Shaw Exhibition Opening and Reception "A.R. Ammons: The Writing Life" 2B Carl A. Kroch Library 5:30 p.m. Remarks by Don M. Randel, Provost, Cornell University and H. Thomas Hickerson, Associate Director for Special Collections, Cornell University Library Saturday, April 4, 1998 The Poetry of A.R. Ammons Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall 2:00 p.m. "The Natural Philosopher Returns, Singing," Roald Hoffmann, Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Cornell University 2:30 p.m. "Ammons' Glare: Mortality and Its Metaphors," Helen Vendler, University Professor, Harvard University Refreshments 4:00 p.m. Poetry Reading : A.R. Ammons ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1@cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:13:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: sininster metaphors vs. dextrous metonymies In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 15 Mar 1998 12:27:12 -0500 from On Sun, 15 Mar 1998 12:27:12 -0500 Gary Roberts said: > >Fall of a Wall > >Under an undermined and shot-bruised wall >A too-bold captain perished by the fall, >Whose brave misfortune, happiest men envied, >That had a town for tomb, his bones to hide. seems like Gary's example shows how metaphor & metonymy are interchangeable depending on the interpreter, to some extent anyway. I read this little story as a metaphor for male lust. The town is a metaphor for tomb - and the wall is a metonymy for the town & vice-versa - but both tomb and town are metaphors for the too-bold Captain's objects of desire. Which means war and violence in general are also both metaphor-metonymy for same. Now how does this kind of language use serve ideology? Well, it's a kind of rhetoric. But a poetry of "pure metonymy" - the modernist "let-be" beauty of rubble, wall, dead Captain, dead detective, smoke - the aestheticization of all that... can also be read as part of a "controlling" ideology. - henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 11:21:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: my adidas (snap! they're pooo mas) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII epic --> lyric -- > amb i e n t tragedy | | \ / farce | | \ / ure here global branding ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 15:05:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: pomometametonymicalisexuality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This quote from Lakoff and Turner: "More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor" seems quite straightforward: "--In _metaphor_, there are two conceptual domains, and one is understood in terms of the other. In _metaphor_, a whole schematic strcutre (with 2 or more entities) is mapped onto another whole schematic structure. In _metaphor_, the logic of the source-domain structure is mapped onto the logic of the target-domain structure. None of this is true of metonymy. _Metonymy_ involves only one conceptual domain. A metonymic mapping occurs within a single domain... _Metonymy is used primarily for reference: via metonymy, one can refer to one entity in a schema by referring to another entity in the same schema. In _metonymy_, one entity in a schema is taken as standing for one other entity in the same schema, or for the schema as a whole. Metaphor and metonymy do have some things in common. Both are conceptual in nature. Both are mappings. Both can be conventionalized, that is, made part of our everday conceptual system, and thus used automatically, effortlessly, and without conscious awareness. In both, linguistic expressions that name source elements of the mapping typically also name target elements. That is, both are means for extending the linguistic resources of a language." Got it? I don't know what the ideological implications of this are... I remember reading Lakoff on metaphor several years ago and being impressed. (Someone mentioned George Lakoff in the context of this thread). Must we allegorize our tropes? Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 16:16:14 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: pomometametonymicalisexuality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit .... but one metonymic mapping, including pockets of metaphor, can be congruent and overlay another, sometimes matching, sometimes leaving the ragged edge of difference. This grammar of metonymic overlays is that of the Canto's I believe where Pound seeks the forma, the map that articulates the congruence of the totality of fields. ... to move into pomosexual terrain: Is it not the sliding of such metonymic fields over one another, creating various conjunctions and disjunctions, that Deleuze and Guattari articulate as a Thousand Plateaus? Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 16:22:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: fitter healthier etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII WHAT'S TO SHRIEK BACK MISTER Say gentle redress of logic, over that necessity on a drip-feed pinched to make a stand still kept from this pudding gentle breeze-block to noted jaw valiantly at the house edge stuck out, shattered in to arraigned sub-eye semi-tonguecase perfection from which a smile for not every day creeps / sags out back to the earth ware, back hand to the teeth scrubbed over in a fix of syntax and prank cowshit, naive as a leaf from intra-goose com punction brats electro-manual stripped of its honeyless recourse to intro banter, now choke out, less dazed on her Tunisian Motorway or its equivalent so saddeningly avail makes really what the hell ever masque before you that you wish that you pray in, in a flash it's there, there is no fat chance quiplessly to opt out, you can stuff your face onto hers and fail to scowl and the drapes flit either side unseen, under a stacked crate of all-out watt thunder and cackishly screeched out fondness, they will not give up their obscurity, not for ten seconds and counting break neck speed at near zero alliance to life spread like a goat's backside's war of pretend illogic. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 17:57:11 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aviva99999 Subject: Re: pomometametonymicalisexuality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-16 16:10:12 EST, you write: << Must we allegorize our tropes? >> Perfect! Best response I've seen yet during this conversation. Interesting...what're the political implications of allegory!?! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 20:55:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: pomometametonymicalisexuality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This quote from Lakoff and Turner: "More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide >to Poetic Metaphor" seems quite straightforward: Thanks to Jonathan for citing Lakoff and Turner, who say in a whole lot more words, and with much more insight, what I was trying to say earlier, more cutely perhaps. As a matter of fact, my own ideas have been influenced not only by Jakobson but also by Lakoff and a good deal more linguistic-oriented research on "metaphor analysis" -- in large part inspired by Lakoff. The key for me is the notion that metaphor involves mapping between *two* domains, whereas metonymy confines itself to one domain. Likewise, that metonymy is an act of reference, whereas metaphor is an act of reflection [quite literally: two domains and a mirror]. I have to confess that I don't quite understand Don Wellman's post [too fast for me]. Could you illustrate your comments re "this grammar of metonymic overlays is that of the Canto's..." I am a scholar rather than a poet, so you have to go slow for me. Best wishes, GT ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:45:01 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nada Gordon Subject: fake metaphors, similes, equivalences Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (Speaking of metaphor and its cousin simile...) Keston Sutherland wrote >near zero alliance to life spread like a goat's backside's war of pretend >>illogic. I feel an impulse to create similes like this one -- an impulse to posit equivalences just for the power rush of naming (it is because I says it is: "I procaim all objects equal"), e.g. (but here with a colon instead of a copula "is" so you can't tell if it's a metaphor or an elaboration) >voodoo: >an iron maiden >chomping broken glass equivalences that "pretend illogic" but also assert a jubilant connectedness of everything ("everything" represented by alogical word choices, as if those words were congresspeople from disparate districts of meaning getting together to legislate a poem [now that's a weird metaphor-who will take it up?]) -- that can be framed as fake formulas e.g. >rich x lazy = language finger worship or just try to addle the brain a liddle bit with similes that almost match up to expectation but slip >I streched out over you my longest leg >Like a special hollywood panther dummy or >Pursuit of trifles >carries the days >outward like spokes >and at the hub a knot >like a fingerprint Does anyone else feel this same compulsion towards fake similes? As I write them I'm aware of a perverse flouting of both pomopo convention and conventional convention and that's part of the pleasure. A couple of questions about metaphors & analogies: they are means by which we understand or conceive of something in terms of something else, right? (Lakoff said so) Is there anything we understand in itself and not by any analogy whatsoever? Would that be *enlightenment*? Nada p.s. I apologize for sending the virus warning. I had good intentions. hebi no niwa ni ningyo ga tobu sunaba nagai kingyo taiyo wa kaki ka? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 21:34:23 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: fake metaphors, similes, equivalences Comments: To: Nada Gordon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Your question, Nada, rhetorical though it may be, "Is there anything we understand in itself?" answers / deconstructs itself in that this would require "we" understand understanding in itself. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 23:53:22 -0500 Reply-To: Keston Sutherland Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: fake metaphors, similes, equivalences Comments: To: Nada Gordon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII balanced with a deployed quota of fakeness, in that goat line, is the fact of goats' exotic semantic history, much of it biblical but cropping up variously through philosophy often as distraction, sin, forgetfulness, satyrs, the inability to promise etc - another link within the line (talking about my line here, strange) is that the goat is about to be sodomised hence "spread like a..", goat sex also slipped into that history at certain flashpoints I like writing about goats, little seem-stricken critters k ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:32:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: cruisingfiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Schooling me to be more serious (I think, tho email offers incredible space to misinterpret what people right -- very postmodern in that), Henry Gould writes: "Gosh, those rabbis sure knew how to get a laugh out of a crucifixion. A real knee-slapper toe-nailer, Tom! An image is an image and a god is a god and shucks maybe the Muslims are right. It was all a horsefeedback loopy sorta hat trick. Hardehar at yourdeyour and mightymine EXPENSE - seemingly forever! Aren't tropes fun?? (Especially on Desolation Row.)" Inasmuch as the material basis of Xtianity equals the Roman Empire rips off Jew-ideas and blends w/ Roman religion (virgin births, human god, etc.), perhaps Henry would consent to view the Rabbis' laughter (if that is what it was: horror was more what I had in mind) in the light of gallows humor? Esp. inasmuch (further) as it was *Jew* Jesus who was crucified -- along with a number of other Pharisaic rabbis (Jesus was a pharisee, btw) w/ bold ideas whose flesh was sanctified in that manner or (more often) by being burned alive. Do I think it quite the *joke* that this same empire should recast itself as world religion on that back, yup uh huh in a rather chilly sense you bet I do and sorry if I offend -- either you or another other. Stoke those fires.... Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:57:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: simile MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I have notice that a certain kind of simile occurs in "creative writing" poems. I call it the "pseudo-profound" simile. It used to make me wince in poetry readings. On the other hand there is the "New York school" simile; an example I recall is "useless as a ski on a barge" or "useless as a ski." I think I came across it in relation to Kenneth Koch. I also like epic similes. Similes make easy targets because they are so blatantly stupid--unless they are used with some irony. Pound & Williams use them sparingly if at all. WCW condemns them in Spring & All I believe. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:02:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: cruisingfiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Schooling me to be more serious (I think, tho email offers incredible space >to misinterpret what people right -- very postmodern in that), Henry Gould >writes: >"Gosh, those rabbis sure knew how to get a laugh out of a crucifixion. >A real knee-slapper toe-nailer, Tom! An image is an image and a god is a god >and shucks maybe the Muslims are right. It was all a horsefeedback loopy >sorta hat trick. Hardehar at yourdeyour and mightymine EXPENSE - seemingly >forever! Aren't tropes fun?? (Especially on Desolation Row.)" >Inasmuch as the material basis of Xtianity equals the Roman Empire rips off >Jew-ideas and blends w/ Roman religion (virgin births, human god, etc.), >perhaps Henry would consent to view the Rabbis' laughter (if that is what >it was: horror was more what I had in mind) in the light of gallows humor? Curious that he fails to comprehend that the Islamic idea is essentially one of hierarchical understanding where all other ideas, other than their own, take a relative to each other place determined by that "higher understanding". For example, non believers as to god fall beneath pagans who believe there are many gods and pagans are the basement of spiritual existence according to Islam. At least according to what little I know of (degreed in the study of religions and philosophies). They reject the idea outright that Jesus, whom they say was a prophet, was crucified. It all seems very silly to me. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell. Though I do not share his beliefs either. The rejection by Islamic people is interesting in that the Rabbi agrees, since he is still waiting for the Jewish messiah, which puts the Jewish and the Islamic groups into bitter conflict again. There is no awaited messiah in Islamic beliefs. Something more to fight about, when not laughing about it. Keep in mind that studies show that there were around 60 or more messiahs in the mid eastern region of the Roman Empire at around the same time. They all followed the same pattern, but are less well known. One canot but suspect the work of the Roman censors (Roman Empire version of a CIA, and not simply bean counters), who devised a clever plot to quell some nasty rebellions. So there is a guy going around telling the oppressed to live like the lilies of the fields and give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The people suspected an agent of Rome and wanted to off him. They chose to save another guy, even though the local Roman governor tried to convince the people otherwise, by humiliating to gain popular sympathy. Crown of thorns and drag a Tau through the streets failed to get the desired effect. Word had gotten around the guy was a Roman spy. What to do then ? The Romans were clever. Their mystery cults, and each legion had one of their own, had death and ressurection rituals, to prepare warriors for battle. Common enough in such cultures, but they also were very clever with drugs. Where then does John Allegro's thesis concerning the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross come into it ? Shades of Amanita Muscaria mushroom myths ? What if the Romans induced coma and got their man off the cross before he perished. Then put him into a cave, which only the Roman engineers (clever fellows that they were) were able to open and close ? Ah, instant ressurection. Add an eclipse courtesy of the Roman knowledge of astronomy and it's done, a convincing spectacle of death and resurrection. A last ditch effort to convince the rebels not to rebel against Rome. The victim walks around with his stigmata, and then is whisked off, according to the legends again, to a grand tour of the empire, including a visit to Rome. Ah, how did Rome become the seat, and why did Roman emperors use the idea so readily later, rather than some other place ? Grand tours, and secret meetings with the emperor himself, were common for those who had served the emperor so exceptionally. In any instance the fellow had to be whisked away out of the mid east before someone caught on to what had happened. A further corollary to it all. The fellow chosen by the censors, might have been Herod's own son. Why ? Herod tried to find and kill him, and the legend has it that he was a son of the lord. Herod was the lord. It was common for kings and nobility to take whatever women they wanted, whenever they wanted, but it was always a non event if the woman was of non noble origins. (Meaning it never happened.) Any conception was simply immaculate. Of course such origins lead to a very strange life, having come from what was invariably, in those days, divine kingship. Initiation, and usefulness in a leadership role, were inevitable. Similar to Buddha, who was a prince, and whose immense desire for power led him to a kind of shadow government, imposing pacificism on would be rebels, during a time of potential upheaval. Very successful in maintaining the existing government in power, simply because he seemed so non political. Nevertheless, Buddha was power hungry, and the more followers who lived "like the lilies of the fields" and gave unto their political lords in the manner of "give unto Caesar what is Caesar's" the merrier. (If you see the Buddha on the road...kill him....takes on a whole new meaning.) So there you have another plausible interpretation of the myth, or a variant on The Life of Brian...humming "always look on the bright side of life"... The rabbi likely would have enjoyed that also. Could the laughter be something very political. Bob Ezergailis aka Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:16:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: simile In-Reply-To: from "MAYHEW" at Mar 17, 98 08:57:20 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Couldn't resist sending you all this little poem after reading Jonathan's post, so, here goes... -m. SIMILE He was like a trickster. Elizabeth Bishop once said that a simile should be true in at least two ways. Mine is, then, disqualified. He *was* like a trickster, this is true; but only in the sense that his penis was detachable; and even this is misleading, since it was only detachable once and with difficulty; as such, he was only like a trickster once. After that he was more like an emergency room patient. According to MAYHEW: > > I have notice that a certain kind of simile occurs in "creative writing" > poems. I call it the "pseudo-profound" simile. It used to make me wince > in poetry readings. On the other hand there is the "New York school" > simile; an example I recall is "useless as a ski on a barge" or "useless > as a ski." I think I came across it in relation to Kenneth Koch. I also > like epic similes. > > Similes make easy targets because they are so blatantly > stupid--unless they are used with some irony. Pound & Williams use them > sparingly if at all. WCW condemns them in Spring & All I believe. > > Jonathan Mayhew > Department of Spanish and Portuguese > University of Kansas > jmayhew@ukans.edu > (785) 864-3851 > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:28:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Not on the map? MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII It may be that our collective interest in the metaphor and metonymy thread as it relates to experimental poetry is waning at this point, in which case I would be glad to continue this back-channel. Not to be too obtuse, but I think the concepts of domain and mapping, as presented in the Lakoff quotation (is a quotation a metonym?) seem too positivistic, in the sense that they seem to assume a certain isomorphism between domains (perhaps the book addresses this elsewhere). Or maybe I just want consider the implications of some of the passive verb constructions in the quote that Jonathan usefully provided: "In metaphor the logic of the source domain structure is mapped onto the logic of the target domain structure." Does it makes a difference here to ask what is doing the mapping? (It can't be the metaphor since then then definition would be circular.) How would these ideas and questions help to describe and promote (or fail to) some kinds of experimental writing? Don's interest in the "ragged edge of difference" in these mappings could also maybe be useful to think about poems such as Schwerner's Tablets, or Retallack's "Afterimages," or something like this section from Peter Inman's "stead" from his book "criss cross" (now there's a suggestive subject heading for a post): the dawn (had she paused from its terms (enough brist of (arm in. an aspirin's revolution. (tanned since. the longer the Ohio (book (cattled out. could be sub- however she (tract than arrives frosted to. (fiction. dusked sweat drops Take that, rosy-fingered dawn. Perhaps I don't know enough about Inman's work, but I would say that this "stanza" seems relevant to the question that started this whole thread. And to its subsequent adumbrations: the punctuation carves up the "lines" into domains that provisional and irrefutable. (are. Reading it requires a rehersal of our mapping-procedures such we need to ask "What is a line?" and "what might a line be/not be?" No? Wait, whad I say? Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:35:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: LanceEli3 Subject: Re: cruisingfiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hmmmm . . . This is an interesting theory on Jesus (a new one I have not yet heard). Yet, what evidence is there that anybody thought Jesus a spy. If you go by the gospels (which seems to be the source of most of the facts in this email), Jesus claimed to be God in a Jewish context and this is what pissed everyone off, no one ever mentioned anything about being a spy. Why did Rome need a spy that hung out with "sinners" and outcasts? This theory does not make sense to me. To say that Jesus was Herod's son seems quite a stretch based on the Bible. Is there any outside evidence for this? I'm new to this listserver . . . but what in the world does this have to do with poetics?! >So there is a guy going around telling the oppressed to live like the lilies >of the fields and give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The people suspected an >agent of Rome and wanted to off him. They chose to save another guy, even >though the local Roman governor tried to convince the people otherwise, by >humiliating to gain popular sympathy. Crown of thorns and drag a Tau through >the streets failed to get the desired effect. Word had gotten around the guy >was a Roman spy. What to do then ? The Romans were clever. Their mystery >cults, and each legion had one of their own, had death and ressurection >rituals, to prepare warriors for battle. Common enough in such cultures, but >they also were very clever with drugs. Where then does John Allegro's thesis >concerning the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross come into it ? Shades of >Amanita Muscaria mushroom myths ? What if >the Romans induced coma and got their man off the cross before he perished. >Then put him into a cave, which only the Roman engineers (clever fellows >that they were) were able to open and close ? Ah, instant ressurection. Add >an eclipse courtesy of the Roman knowledge of astronomy and it's done, a >convincing spectacle of death and resurrection. A last ditch effort to >convince the rebels not to rebel against Rome. The victim walks around with >his stigmata, and then is whisked off, according to the legends again, to a >grand tour of the empire, including a visit to Rome. Ah, how did Rome become >the seat, and why did Roman emperors use the idea so readily later, rather >than some other place ? Grand tours, and secret meetings with the emperor >himself, were common for those who had served the emperor so exceptionally. >In any instance the fellow had to be whisked away out of the mid east before >someone caught on to what had happened. > >A further corollary to it all. The fellow chosen by the censors, might have >been Herod's own son. Why ? Herod tried to find and kill him, and the legend >has it that he was a son of the lord. Herod was the lord. It was common for >kings and nobility to take whatever women they wanted, whenever they wanted, >but it was always a non event if the woman was of non noble origins. >(Meaning it never happened.) Any conception was simply immaculate. Of course >such origins lead to a very strange life, having come from what was >invariably, in those days, divine kingship. Initiation, and usefulness in a >leadership role, were inevitable. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:49:24 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ... so much of what we understand in discourse seems to me to be "direct" ... mistaken maybe, maybe just impressions, not understanding. I am challenging the notion that there is an indirect understanding. Nada Gordon wrote, "Is there anything we understand in itself and not by any analogy whatsoever? Would that be *enlightenment*?" More problematical for me than the meaning of "understand" is the meaning of "anything." There seems to be a mechanistic notion of the relation between words and things here...that is if "anything" refers to discourse. When I drink wine, I do not experience it by analogy. When I read Nada's sentence, I hear a desire for immedicacy--that seems to float off her words and does not require mental acrobatics on my part to understand. That is my impression and it may be rationally indefensible. I am trying to say that the thing in itself is more likely to be a feeling rather than a brick in the road. I suppose if the brick in the road gave me a feeling that would be enlightenment (a religous epipnay). When I analyze Nada's statement, I load it with irony. I have no sense that this irony is intentional or the thing she wants to communicate, but my mind now buzzes with associations between Kant, Enlightenment era philosopy, the Age of Reason, the thing in itself, etc. None of what I am doing now is by analagy; it is by association. I don't feel my mind switching off as it follows its indirections. What is politically or socially interesting to me about metaphor and analogy is the way they their use can direct some one's thoughts, help some one see. A bad simile is a wonderful attack on reason--a refusal to allow the irrational to become rational, wonderfully irreveerent with respect to a too precious sense of how language is supposed to work. My sense of that irreverence is direct. I like it. I wrote earlier that a "grammar of metonymic overlays is that of the Canto's..." --by this I meant no more than the major structural device in the Cantos is the overlay of image on image, of phrase on phrase, passage on passage. Pound himself uses the word super-position to describe his method of composition in his "Vorticism" where he also attachs both symbolism and synechdoce, of I remember. From this I derive the notion that it is the overlay of one field of images (or allusions) on another that creates structural metaphors or what he calls the "forma" in his essay "Medievalism."--near the end of the Cantos, he likens each overlay to the facets of a crystal--the point seems to be a centered overlay of transparent forms--something he experienced "englightenment"--only intermittantly--politically, as differences become drained of their particular importance he becomes more totalitarian. By contrast, deleuze and Guattari, as their plateaus slide over one another, they produce differences. To my understanding, this is one of the crucial differences between modernism and postmodernism. The structural metaphors, metaphors of process, in modernism as represented by the Cantos are mraked by both reverence and quasi-scientific notionas of rationalism. Pound, again in "Vorticism" calls his method more like calculus than algebra, hence his denegration of easy connections between meaning and figures of speech like synechdoche.Still it seems to me that metaphor blossoms in ways that transcend or thread or cause energy to run through the planes of his composition. We see the rose in the steel dust. Christine Brooke Rose is much better on this than I am ... I for one can not see such roses or vortices as directly as he did--as he hoped--they do not exist objectively for me. The forma does not constrain my indirection and flight of association and I prize instead that flight--that becomes my direct experience, one of decentered flight, one of play ... His enlightenment becomes my fake simile? ... I am getting flakey now, having reached the limits of my ability to maintain a faced of coherence. The most important thing that I wanted to say is that even direction is a form of immediate thought ... I don't now what non-immediate thought is unless a deja vue slaps me in the face. Don Wellman. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:10:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Prageeta Sharma (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:08:42 -0600 (CST) From: "k. lederer" To: subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu Subject: Re: Prageeta Sharma A super poem by super poet Prageeta Sharma (in AGNI 46--she's also in the new Explosive Magazine): PERFORMANCE Detachment, as a general rule, scares me into traipse, and into the kind of pedantry that composed for myself erects more opulence, more human than feminine nevertheless, I require food and heat, falsify my walk to the drugstore on all fours because of weak knees, botch the stutter as a dog does when he has not yet succeeded in begging, to eternalize the architecture, coffee shops likewise your devotion, behold the butcher with devil in eye without soft mouth to substitute testimonial to linger as wine in throat to sip the throat, to care whether she has eaten, in a form like this, I am contagious, To claim Blake's MYRTLE TREE, for my love, for my love, translucent mess, a pageant, sun-down. We are on an amiable plight to wave to an audience disappearing. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:20:21 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kcglowworm Subject: metonymphormality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The seeming transcendence of metaphor (the carrying away from one plane to another) depends on the maintenance of a metonymical division of labor always in flux. This does not imply a hierarchy of tropic orders but rather a complicity. Metaphor (the priesthood) needs metonymy (the police). Got it? Got what? What is the nature of this it and of our getting? What is the power of such a question, with its implication of the self- evident? For Fredric Jameson, allegory is the basic symbolic act of the political unconscious. George Hartley ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:45:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: political unconscious metaphors In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII since i tend to worry alot, i tend to revise. yet ocassionally i notice an unintentionally "politically uncorrect" metaphor creeping into a poem "too late" (after it's appeared in print) (as opposed to the "intentionally politically incorrect" metaphors I DO let people my work)... For instance, I write "sanity goes on strike" in a poem and I'm angry at myself (though the alliteration is 'nice'), because I'm looking at Ange Mlinko's poem MATINEE (which will be in her forthcoming book I think) which has a line: "and others laid off by sleep and asides" which makes me wish i had written "sanity lays me off" or "sanity takes away health benefits" etc...... if some academic close-reader wants to accuse me of being bourgeois or something....assuming they still do that... nonetheless it's fun to worry i suppose about such things and is part of the flow as are ocassional fits of "intention".... chris On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Kcglowworm wrote: > The seeming transcendence of metaphor (the carrying away from one plane to > another) depends on the maintenance of a metonymical division of labor always > in flux. This does not imply a hierarchy of tropic orders but rather a > complicity. Metaphor (the priesthood) needs metonymy (the police). > > Got it? > > Got what? > What is the nature of this it and of our getting? > What is the power of such a question, with its implication of the self- > evident? > > For Fredric Jameson, allegory is the basic symbolic act of the political > unconscious. > > George Hartley > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:26:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: political (un)conscious MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am very interested in the way that "we" attach ideological value to formal elements--tropes, poetic forms and meters (or absence of) etc... So the recent posts by Louis Stroffolino and Kcglowworm (metaphor for George Hartley) are thought-provoking. I would contend that these attributions of value are themselves metaphorical at bottom. Parataxis is good because it isn't hierarchical as hypotaxis, would be one example. I have had long arguments with people about whether "open" form has anything to do with "openness." This is what I meant when I asked the question: "must we allegorize our tropes?" That is, how much ideological baggage can the formal structure of (poetic) language bear? I am wary of arguments that attribute value (negative or positive) to form; yet isn't this what "poetics" itself consists of? Help me, please! Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 13:31:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: boerdzhwa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Brian Kim Stefans has a cute poem in the new Object/Tork dubl issue in which he speaks of the importance of Ashbery's Europe for the new bourgeois poets which is not to call anyone a close reader same issue has fine work by Robt Kocik on a projected coop space in Manhattan for poets .. and Drew Gardner's "Cell Walk" which is also in the Jarnot Stroffolino Schwartz anthology I expect Brian will forgive the characterization "cute"? it's a small world after lunch J ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 13:34:07 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: political unconscious metaphors In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Chris, That was a really nice post. No, no one is going to call you bourgeois (except in gouldian vein, dripping with irony). If anyone was going to, it would be me, rest assured. (However I'm not an academic..It's not the academics you have to worry about though: names'll never hurt you: we workers knee-cap bourgeois types, **at least**) Nothing terrible about "sanity on strike" as you originally did it. Strikes can actually be mobilized on occasion for incredibly reactionary ends...The CIA is very big on this. Most importantly, when Nixon and the CIA were organizing their criminal fascist coup against Allende in Chile, their spooks manipulated elements in the copper and other industries to strike in order to weaken the economy and turn the population against the government, lining up as much support as possible before the army struck. There have been instances of strikes motivated by racism. (..the Dodgers *almost* wildcatted because of Jackie Robinson; only a few exceptionally strong-willed and anti-racist guys talked the majority, who were revoltingly racist, out of it; that would'a been a strike, and is always refered to as such by people who were close to the incident. But there have also been larger-scale industrial examples) I did enjoy the alternatives you considered. (How about, my sanity undergoes welfare reform...) from the sanity barricades, Mark the Red @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 13:46:20 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: fake metaphors, similes, equivalences MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Patrick F. Durgin wrote: > > Your question, Nada, rhetorical though it may be, "Is there > anything we understand in itself?" answers / deconstructs itself in that > this would require "we" understand understanding in itself. > > Patrick F. Durgin > > ` > ` > ` > ` ----->*<----- > ` K E N N I N G| > ` anewsletterof| > ` poetry&poetic| > ` s418BrownSt.#| > ` 10IowaCityIA5| > ` 2245USA\/\/\/| THAT DOES IT the preoccupation with its absence becomes the means X uses to achieve its mission without betraying its identity. we don't forget. we just don't say. the deepest cover lies in surfaces. flesh becomes an essay, a position paper, a series of excisions from a code book or a dictionary, an accretion disk, a sentence. no time off for good behavior. au contraire: an exchange of vows the erasure of the copula. spies make dreadful poets, & only mediocre critics. let's not call our new album Spies for Love. let's not make that An Anatomy of Eros, either. Is it This, Is it That does it. Daniel Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 14:08:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: the abstract point of toms.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry writes: "I think the point of Tom's remarks on this, and mine, and several others, is that this characterization of metaphor-in-action is extremely abstract," Dunno about the "several others," but I prefer to say what my point is myself, Henry -- every single time. There is no group take on nor objection to George Hartley, who is a really interesting critic, even tho I'm dishing him a mile a minute just in order to provoke him *or someone* into something fun. In fact, if there *is* a group take on his point, I'm going to have to switch sides in a minute, and him and me will spot you as many points as you name and make those and that many more. Ganging up on someone just ain't my way; when I want a fight, I get right out in front and swing. It is not -- my point that is -- btw, that "this characterization... is ...abstract." Abstract is cool, it's modern, it's jazz, shades, a beret, a goatee. It's a martini or a perfect rob roy, Billy Strayhorn Lenny Tristano Schmuel Trigano, and all that weltschmerz joiedevivre thing. I like abstract, I want abstract, it's wild that George is abstract. Lets all be way more abstract, man, dig? Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 13:51:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: dishing fork and spooning Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm delighted if I have in the slightest help to stir up the mare's nest soup in this teakettle-tempest of tenpins we bowl online if unalined. George Hartley is "using the terms "metaphor" and "metonymy" metaphorically... not talking about language... (but) about ...(to use a metaphor) ideological terrain, a concept ...mostly from Althusser and, after him, Laclau and Mouffe." To distinguish ideological terrain from language I am not able. I read Althusser pretty closely when he first appeared, with what then appeared as something new to say, but I've been luckier since and have only glanced off Laclau and like the asteroid and earth will have entirely missed Mouffe. Perhaps they are able to make the distinction w/o causing "either metaphor or metonymy (to) lie there innocently as tools at hand" in language as apparently they do not in that more colorful ideo-apellation. George asks: "to what degree... (do metaphor and metonymy) shape our conception of the relationships they establish rather than simply express." I.e. to what degree do they shape rather than express relationships." Hmmm. There is no question in this question is there? The *whole activity* of metaphor is to shape our conceptions. Both when we use it as a tool, and in the underlying sense that *all* conception is metaphor (note and unpack the word "underlying" just a moment ago or "unpack" even more recently: these are counters of a metaphorical system whereby we understand mental activities by way of physical ones. Note the word "understand" -- the same system is *in* that word. Note the word "in" which is a counter of the metaphorical system of container/contained, part of the same system I mentioned earlier in this paren. I hope the overwhelming nature of the mind/metaphor connection is starting to sink in [note the physical metaphor: "sink in]). Metonymy on the other hand, precisely "expresses" rather than establishes a relationship. When we say "Wyatt was buried in the country" and mean in a cemetary in the country, we are simply expressing an existing semantic field (no, not the one in which he lies buried!). We are *not* mapping two semantic fields, but as it were folding the one semantic field to make items which are related actually touch for the moment (of the sentence). (And those who have read the preceding para will recognize in "folding" another physical metaphor for a mental act) (and those who have read modern physics will recognize that I took the metaphor from one that's often used to understand how *conceptions of* space/time might work). All this to return to his original point, that metaphor is somehow "vertical" and therefore somehow "metaphysical" (i.e. vertical means distinctions of "height" and "height" implies ontology...?? or...?) and that metonymy is somehow "horizontal" and therefore somehow... investigative? makes new connections?" The point is, that is entirely incorrect. Not above 180 degrees off (nor below), as I said to myself -- and to you -- when I read his words. Just like my "fork ran away with the spoon" (as someone pointed out, it was the dish who did it). I was wrong about the fork and the spoon, George is wrong about metaphor and metonymy. If, as Hartley goes on, "this distinction may in many ways itself be a tired one", i.e. the fashion for using it has passed, perhaps it is because it is so often misused, abused, ill-used, used, i.e., to say that which is not true. "...but I found it useful for a particular discussion of kafka" -- Yes, well if the room is interesting, a lock is useful to inhibit access. Ok, now lets hear from George. This kind of stuff beats having to sweep Adorno's ashes out of the room, that's for sure! Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:29:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Nowak Subject: _Xcp_ no. 2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII _Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics_ no. 2 is now available and includes new work by: Juan Felipe Herrera, Zhang Er, Chung Na Yei, U Sam Oeur, Wai-lim Yip, Paul Naylor, Jeff Derksen, Fernand Roqueplan, Lise McCloud, Hilton Obenzinger, Diane Glancy, Victoria Lena Manyarrows, Thomas Biolsi, Susan M. Schultz, Yunte Huang, Kathleen Stewart, and Elizabeth Burns, along with reviews of new/recent books by James Clifford, Julio Marzan, Arjun Appadurai, Michael Taussig, Victor Hernandez Cruz and Adrian Castro. Subscriptions (for 4 issues) are available for $25 (individuals), $40 (institutions)--foreign, including Canada, add $5. Single issue copies are available for $9. **Please make checks payable to "College of St. Catherine"** and send to Mark Nowak, ed. _Xcp_, c/o College of St. Catherine-Mpls., 601 25th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, 55454. Forthcoming _Xcp_/Cross Cultural Poetics Conference Readings, not including those w/ Mackey mentioned earlier by Maria, include: Friday, April 3: Nathaniel Mackey reading, 7:30pm at the Nomad Gallery, St. Clair & Albert St. in St. Paul, Minnesota. Thursday, April 23: Kirin Narayan reading, 3:00pm at College of St. Catherine-Mpls, Room 250 (Old Main). Narayan will also be giving a talk on Friday, April 24 at the University of MN (time & location to be announced later) Saturday, May 2: _Xcp_ no. 2 publication reading at the Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul, 7:00pm, with Diane Glancy, Lise McCloud, Chung Na Yei, Rita Chakrabarti, & Mark Nowak. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 14:32:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: cruisingfiction In-Reply-To: morpheal "Re: cruisingfiction" (Mar 17, 11:02am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii That was a very bizarre, arm-waving exercise (if not just unforgettable). I think that what is meant by, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" is completely missed here. Are we meek? William Burmeister On Mar 17, 11:02am, morpheal wrote: > Subject: Re: cruisingfiction > >Schooling me to be more serious (I think, tho email offers incredible space > >to misinterpret what people right -- very postmodern in that), Henry Gould > >writes: > > >"Gosh, those rabbis sure knew how to get a laugh out of a crucifixion. > >A real knee-slapper toe-nailer, Tom! An image is an image and a god is a god > >and shucks maybe the Muslims are right. It was all a horsefeedback loopy > >sorta hat trick. Hardehar at yourdeyour and mightymine EXPENSE - seemingly > >forever! Aren't tropes fun?? (Especially on Desolation Row.)" > > >Inasmuch as the material basis of Xtianity equals the Roman Empire rips off > >Jew-ideas and blends w/ Roman religion (virgin births, human god, etc.), > >perhaps Henry would consent to view the Rabbis' laughter (if that is what > >it was: horror was more what I had in mind) in the light of gallows humor? > > Curious that he fails to comprehend that the Islamic idea is essentially one > of hierarchical understanding where all other ideas, other than their own, > take a relative to each other place determined by that "higher > understanding". For example, non believers as to god fall beneath pagans who > believe there are many gods and pagans are the basement of spiritual > existence according to Islam. At least according to what little I know of > (degreed in the study of religions and philosophies). They reject the idea > outright that Jesus, whom they say was a prophet, was crucified. > > It all seems very silly to me. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell. > Though I do not share his beliefs either. > > The rejection by Islamic people is interesting in that the Rabbi agrees, > since he is still waiting for the Jewish messiah, which puts the Jewish and > the Islamic groups into bitter conflict again. There is no awaited messiah > in Islamic beliefs. Something more to fight about, when not laughing about it. > > Keep in mind that studies show that there were around 60 or more messiahs in > the mid eastern region of the Roman Empire at around the same time. They all > followed the same pattern, but are less well known. One canot but suspect > the work of the Roman censors (Roman Empire version of a CIA, and not simply > bean counters), who devised a clever plot to quell some nasty rebellions. > > So there is a guy going around telling the oppressed to live like the lilies > of the fields and give unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The people suspected an > agent of Rome and wanted to off him. They chose to save another guy, even > though the local Roman governor tried to convince the people otherwise, by > humiliating to gain popular sympathy. Crown of thorns and drag a Tau through > the streets failed to get the desired effect. Word had gotten around the guy > was a Roman spy. What to do then ? The Romans were clever. Their mystery > cults, and each legion had one of their own, had death and ressurection > rituals, to prepare warriors for battle. Common enough in such cultures, but > they also were very clever with drugs. Where then does John Allegro's thesis > concerning the Sacred Mushroom and the Cross come into it ? Shades of > Amanita Muscaria mushroom myths ? What if > the Romans induced coma and got their man off the cross before he perished. > Then put him into a cave, which only the Roman engineers (clever fellows > that they were) were able to open and close ? Ah, instant ressurection. Add > an eclipse courtesy of the Roman knowledge of astronomy and it's done, a > convincing spectacle of death and resurrection. A last ditch effort to > convince the rebels not to rebel against Rome. The victim walks around with > his stigmata, and then is whisked off, according to the legends again, to a > grand tour of the empire, including a visit to Rome. Ah, how did Rome become > the seat, and why did Roman emperors use the idea so readily later, rather > than some other place ? Grand tours, and secret meetings with the emperor > himself, were common for those who had served the emperor so exceptionally. > In any instance the fellow had to be whisked away out of the mid east before > someone caught on to what had happened. > > A further corollary to it all. The fellow chosen by the censors, might have > been Herod's own son. Why ? Herod tried to find and kill him, and the legend > has it that he was a son of the lord. Herod was the lord. It was common for > kings and nobility to take whatever women they wanted, whenever they wanted, > but it was always a non event if the woman was of non noble origins. > (Meaning it never happened.) Any conception was simply immaculate. Of course > such origins lead to a very strange life, having come from what was > invariably, in those days, divine kingship. Initiation, and usefulness in a > leadership role, were inevitable. > > Similar to Buddha, who was a prince, and whose immense desire for power led > him to a kind of shadow government, imposing pacificism on would be rebels, > during a time of potential upheaval. Very successful in maintaining the > existing government in power, simply because he seemed so non political. > Nevertheless, Buddha was power hungry, and the more followers who lived > "like the lilies of the fields" and gave unto their political lords in the > manner of "give unto Caesar what is Caesar's" the merrier. (If you see the > Buddha on the road...kill him....takes on a whole new meaning.) > > So there you have another plausible interpretation of the myth, or a variant > on The Life of Brian...humming "always look on the bright side of life"... > > The rabbi likely would have enjoyed that also. > > Could the laughter be something very political. > > Bob Ezergailis > aka Morpheal >-- End of excerpt from morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:37:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: spoonerisms anyone? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks for that dish, Tom -- isn't _Adorno's Ashes_ that delightful weepy book that the talk shows have been spoon feeding to the still-reading masses all this year? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:41:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: SOY BOMB?????? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This received this morning -- Happy Saint Patrick's Day >>There's already a web site called >> >>Soy Bomb Nation >> >>Visit it @: >> >>http://www.hiphopmusic.com/soybomb.html >> >>You won't be sorry. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 14:46:05 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale M Smith Subject: Mike & Dale's Issue 8 For those of you who can't get enough of Spaghetti Westerns and Noir Romance, Mike and Dale's Younger Poets proudly present Winter issue #8. This issue will glue you to the edge of your seat and drop poems in your lap like ticks on a dog. Check out this list of serious characters: Edward Ainsworth, Edmund Berrigan, Ted Berrigan, Noel Andersen Black, Sherry Brennan, Tom Clark, Jack Collom, Clark Coolidge, Gary Dickerson, Kevin Fitzgerald, Greg Fuchs, John Herndon, Joey Kolb, John Latta, Katy Lederer, Hoa Nguyen, Jamison Panko, Simon Pettet, Wanda Phipps, Michael Price, Stephen Ratcliffe, Suloni Robertson, Michael Rothenberg, Joe Safdie, Sal Salasin, Alva Svoboda, Duncan McNaughton and yours truly. Wow!!!! Order today and register for a chance to win a free trip on the M&D Metaphor Express! That's right. An all expense paid trip through our collection of tried and true metaphorical expressions that promise more fun than a pun at the MLA. Order today: Michael Price 766 Valencia Street SF CA 94110 Dale Smith 1207 Lorrain Street #2 Austin, TX 78703 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 18:55:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (Announcement) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Forthcoming in April Close Listening Poetry and the Performed Word Edited by CHARLES BERNSTEIN Close Listening and the Performed Word brings together seventeen essays, especially written for this volume, on the poetry reading, the sounds of poetry, and the visual performance of poetry. While the performance of poetry is as old as poetry itself, critical attention to modern and postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. This collection opens many new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance of poetry, with special attention to innovative work. More important, the essays collected here offer wide-ranging elucidations of how twentieth-century poetry has been practiced as a performance art. The contributors cover topics that range from the performance styles of individual poets and types of poetry to the relation of sound to meaning, from historical and social approaches to poetry readings and to new imaginations of prosody. Such approaches are intended to encourage new forms of "close listenings"--not only to the printed text of poems, but also to tapes, performances, and other expressions of the sounded word. With readings and "spoken word" events gaining an increasing audience for poetry, Close Listening provides an indispensable critical groundwork for understanding the importance of language in--and as--performance. 368 pp., 22 linecuts, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 $19.95w*, paper, 0-19-510992-9 $49.95w, cloth, 0-19-510991-0 April 1998 Close Listening (paper), ISBN 0195109929 Close Listening (cloth), ISBN 0195109910 order from Oxford University Press or from your bookstore or from OUP on-line http://www.oup-usa.org/docs/0195109929.html Contents: Charles Bernstein, Introduction Sound’s Measures Susan Stewart, Letter on Sound Nick Piombino, The Aural Ellipsis and the Nature of Listening in Contemporary Poetry Bruce Andrews, Praxis: A Political Economy of Noise and Informalism Marjorie Perloff, After Free-Verse: The New Non-Linear Poetries Susan Howe, Either/Ether Performing Words Johanna Drucker, Visual Performance of the Poetic Text Steve McCaffery, Voice in Extremis Dennis Tedlock, Toward a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability Bob Perelman, Speech Effects: The Talk as Genre Peter Quartermain, Sound Reading Close Hearings / Historical Settings Jed Rasula, Understanding the Sound of Not Understanding Peter Middleton, The Contemporary Poetry Reading Lorenzo Thomas, Neon Griot: The Functional Role of Poetry Readings in the Black Arts Movement Maria Damon, Was that "Different," "Dissident" or "Dissonant"? Poetry (n) the Public Speak: Slams, Open Readings and Dissident Traditions Susan Schultz, Local Vocals: Hawai’i’s Pidgin Literature, Performance, and Postcoloniality Afterword Ron Silliman, Who Speaks: Ventriloquism and the Self in the Poetry Reading ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 19:16:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: spoonerisms anyone? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >isn't _Adorno's Ashes_ that delightful weepy book that the talk shows have >been spoon feeding to the still-reading masses all this year? No idea. I reside in what is essentially a media blackout. Unless you consider the www a part of the media. Actually the future of poetry might be that the poet must face the muse, not the audience, and read the poetry, while they remain riveted to their pews outside the railing that divides the stage from the public. In what language ? I wonder if that really matters. Of course the same thing happens when textual material is presented, not as live spoken word, or read from relatively immutable hard copy Guttenbergian style printed text, but is a multi media presentation that synthesizes sound through the mediumship of the midi sonic wafer that resides in the sanctum of the cyber circuits. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 19:24:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Not in the nomen cultura..... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I shall only say this once, so anyone who misses it shall have to endure the bewilderment and unbearable angst that my use of a pseudonym causes them. Oh, I should say, Morpheal is Bob Ezergailis, poet and visual artist, who resides in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I keep signing things as Morpheal. Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 19:45:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: political (un)conscious In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Is there such a thing as *progression* in metaphor, do you think? For example, such experiences as nursing a baby provide a wealth of metaphor in Shakespeare, though they are unlikely to be dealt with in themselves. Historically, do some subjects break into metaphor before direct treatment? At some point, does the metaphorical burden become overburdened, and spill out into the primary are of concern? Or is, in fact, metaphor the primary area of concern in poetry: the ostensible subject being merely a gloss or a net on the more fugitive and dynamic metaphor? These trucks, these metaphors, just who and what are they moving in/out? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 19:59:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: cruisingfiction : Geeze-US-az-po'et Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This is an interesting theory on Jesus (a new one I have not yet heard). >Yet, what evidence is there that anybody thought Jesus a spy. If you go >by the gospels (which seems to be the source of most of the facts in this >email), Jesus claimed to be God in a Jewish context and this is what >pissed everyone off, no one ever mentioned anything about being a spy. >Why did Rome need a spy that hung out with "sinners" and outcasts? This >theory does not make sense to me. Could be shadow leadership, same as Buddha. Makes perfect sense of all the elements of the story. Buddha was a Simon says who was not in direct line of immediate succession, but as an apparent outsider to the inner workings of secular power, people tended to trust and follow him. After all he had, as had Jesus, come down from high up there, to the commoners' level. Therefore he could influence the maintaining of the secular political order under the veil of a spirituality. Jesus is somewhat the same, according to that theory. Besides that, Jesus and Buddha used language in ways that were different from most other people of their time periods. Jesus appears poetic even if political. I sense that some poets have had the same fate, even if in lesser ways, of a kind of imputed shadow leadership. Was Ginsberg, for instance, a shadow president to Nixon ? It would make for an interesting doctoral thesis. Though poets also tend to get the opposite. They seem to be looked upon by the commoners' level as rising too far up out of it, and then they tend to have some want to pull them down again to a lower level than all the other commoners. Then truly only a lord can save them. Once that was the role of the nobility, and then of the patron. Perhaps that is because of the traditional mystification of the nature of language, and the use of language once viewed as almost wholly allied only to political and spiritual power. The poet then a kind of usurper of that cultural usage that concerns language as being properly thought of as the language of command. The commoner sometimes fearing, envious, mocking, and jealous, of the poet's potential prowess. >I'm new to this listserver . . . but what in the world does this have to >do with poetics?! I was following a thread, but further divergence does seem a little out of place, unless discussing the nature of standards as to the true verse and the perverse, of twisted meaning and truth. Is Buddha truth or twisted ? Is Jesus truth or twisted ? Is the bible truth or twisted ? Is the poet, whomever the poet is, truth or twisted ? Is poetry the twist itself, or the antithesis of the twist and the twistings twisted political aggenda ? I think - the latter. There is also the idea that scripture is the only true and acceptable verse and all poetics is an abomination. No longer a common standpoint nowadays, thank the muses. Nevertheless, I assure you that that is not a standpoint that post-modern poets are wholly immune from suffering through. Been there, done that....virtually....(pun intended). Also the burdens of prophecy, and poetics as a kind of prophetic and therefore systemically hated action. The poet as prophet is also a been there, done that kind of thing, and equally I believe meant to urge poets to abandon the art and become more Puritanical and proper as to someone else's idea of what spirituality ought to be. The poet urged to give up the craft of poetry, by means of an increase in hardships is I think a persistent theme, even in the current as opposed to historical contextual situatedness. It all becomes very complicated. Poetry as shadow leadership ? No further comment. Some people do tend to follow the strangest things, at the strangest times. Nevertheless, I do attempt precision as to intentional meaning, as well as concentrating on authenticity when I myself write, and I write almost every day. Poet as wise ? I would make no claims as to wisdom. That brings other kinds of contentions concerning poet a as traditional fool, spiritaul harlequin, and court jester. So the subjects are all loosely connected. Another pun imbedded in that. Perhaps best to spin the weathervane of poetical discussion back towards its more mainstreamed direction.... We had better return from this diversion to one of the other channels. Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:15:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: cruisingfiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >That was a very bizarre, arm-waving exercise (if not just unforgettable). Caesar will use everything, including messiahs, and poets, was the gist of it. I think it is equally applicable to the generic instance as well as specifics. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:23:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (Announcement) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I was looking through an advance copy of this in Moe's last week (does anyone *really* buy those spiral-bound prrofs?) & it looks just great! Can't wait. Much to lend an ear to. Charles Smith In a message dated 98-03-17 19:05:45 EST, you write: << Forthcoming in April Close Listening Poetry and the Performed Word Edited by CHARLES BERNSTEIN Close Listening and the Performed Word brings together seventeen essays, especially written for this volume, on the poetry reading, the sounds of poetry, and the visual performance of poetry. While the performance of poetry is as old as poetry itself, critical attention to modern and postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. This collection opens many new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance of poetry, with special attention to innovative work. More important, the essays collected here offer wide-ranging elucidations of how twentieth-century poetry has been practiced as a performance art. The contributors cover topics that range from the performance styles of individual poets and types of poetry to the relation of sound to meaning, from historical and social approaches to poetry readings and to new imaginations of prosody. Such approaches are intended to encourage new forms of "close listenings"--not only to the printed text of poems, but also to tapes, performances, and other expressions of the sounded word. With readings and "spoken word" events gaining an increasing audience for poetry, Close Listening provides an indispensable critical groundwork for understanding the importance of language in--and as--performance. 368 pp., 22 linecuts, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 $19.95w*, paper, 0-19-510992-9 $49.95w, cloth, 0-19-510991-0 April 1998 Close Listening (paper), ISBN 0195109929 Close Listening (cloth), ISBN 0195109910 order from Oxford University Press or from your bookstore or from OUP on-line http://www.oup-usa.org/docs/0195109929.html >> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 19:47:23 -0800 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (Announcement) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Bernstein wrote: > > Forthcoming > Word > > Edited > > Close Listening brings essays, > especially written, > poetry, > as poetry itself, > postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. > many new avenues > of poetry, with special > essays > as a performance art. > The > contributors cover > individual > from historical and social > imaginations of prosody. > > With readings and "spoken word" > poetry, > > > > $19.95w*, paper, 0-19-510992-9 > $49.95w, cloth, 0-19-510991-0 > > > ISBN 0195109929 > ISBN 0195109910 > > order from Oxford > or bookstore > or 0195109929.html > > Contents: > > > > Afterword > Ventriloquism Poetry Reading I was wondering about this metapoetry. Essays. I was trying to read the Benetton ad backwards as it was reflected in the bus window glass on the way to work. But i couldn't. the billboard performance was a double exposure at the stop-light performance. OUP didn't have the virtual reality CD that I could play in my Sony. So I listened close. mc ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:47:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: cruisingfiction In-Reply-To: morpheal "Re: cruisingfiction" (Mar 17, 8:15pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 17, 8:15pm, morpheal wrote: > Subject: Re: cruisingfiction > >That was a very bizarre, arm-waving exercise (if not just unforgettable). > > Caesar will use everything, including messiahs, and poets, was the gist of it. > I think it is equally applicable to the generic instance as well as specifics. >-- End of excerpt from morpheal What is "cruisingfiction" Are we talking Kerouac here? While I would agree that the Caesars of this world will use whatever means to achieve their ends (re: Mark Prejsnar's post today in which the CIA spooks provoked strikes thus bringing about a desired end), this has nothing to do with the famous words of Jesus from the gospels. It is a whole lot more obvious than all that -- the implied ownership of the thing with the owners face imprinted on it (Caesar), which has always been the case with currency: it always returns to its owner (is expected to). Of course, there is also a more spiritual idea there -- that of association with an unseen kingdom espoused by Jesus rather than the seen. Kinda gives a new perspective on having to pay taxes there. It is at once a subtle and obvious answer to a loaded question and can't be considered complete in its meaning without the other part, "and render unto God what is his." William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:59:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Live at Club Soy Bomb In-Reply-To: William Burmeister Prod "Re: cruisingfiction" (Mar 17, 8:47pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Everyone have a great St.Patricks day! Get thee to thy CD players and have another round of Roaratorio and a fifth of O'Shamelessly's Irish creme. William O'Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:19:40 -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" Joel Kuszai: if you're out there backchannel me your email and snailmail addresses (sorry, I lost them). I'll also gratefully accept this info from anyone else who cares to answer. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 22:24:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kasey Silem Mohammad Hicks Subject: Re: political (un)conscious In-Reply-To: <199803180510.VAA02606@leland.Stanford.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I am very interested in the way that "we" attach ideological value to >formal elements--tropes, poetic forms and meters (or absence of) etc... > >I would contend that these attributions of value are themselves >metaphorical at bottom. Parataxis is good because it isn't >hierarchical as hypotaxis, would be one example. I have had long arguments >with people about whether "open" form has anything to do with "openness." > >This is what I meant when I asked the question: "must we allegorize our >tropes?" That is, how much ideological baggage can the formal structure >of (poetic) language bear? I am wary of arguments that attribute value >(negative or positive) to form; yet isn't this what "poetics" itself >consists of? Help me, please! Don't worry, I'll save you! I think you hit on it yourself at the end of your post: "poetics" consists of the mapping of value (aesthetic, ideological, emotional, etc.) onto form (e.g., attributing "openness" to "free verse," or selecting the pantoum structure to convey ennui). Now, of course this is arbitrary and irrational, but that's how conventions get started. And convention lies at the root of poetic expression, even the most radical langpo improv. There is a complex but finite set of possible psychological responses to any linguistic structure: the range of that set is wider or narrower depending on the directness and familiarity of the conventions involved, and when the structure in question is deliberately antagonistic to or evasive of given conventions, this resistance generally produces a more complex but still determined set of possible responses, which incorporates the fact of resistance into its gradations of intelligibility. Thus a poem, for instance, in which "normal" relations of reference, syntax, logic, etc., are subverted, produces a familiar (within the context of langpo culture) recognition of certain stances--ironic, disaffected, anti-lyrical, and so forth. That recognition in turn comes to be associated (through a metonymic process) with the "forms" of langpo in general. An example might be the instant flush of tonal awareness one experiences upon seeing a line that looks like this nuptially (first. has toboggan( at once alerts the reader to several conventions: 1) the convention of areferentiality, of words communicating through their "random" selection the meaning of the impossibility of the communication of meaning; 2) the convention of asyntacticality, of words marshalled carefully into an order that signifies the lack of order; 3) the convention of faux punctuation; 4) the convention of the withholding of closure, and so on. All these conventions together elicit a judgment. This judgment may be one of approval, disapproval, or neutrality, but it is always a judgment of value, involving as it does the automatic identification (and placing-into-perspective-with-one's-own-alignment) of ideological positions. Metaphor has no qualitative essence of its "own," because there is no such thing as metaphor-as-such; metaphor is always a metaphor _of_ something. Within the familiar "genres" of metaphor (epic simile, allegory, blazon, etc.), there are obvious and utterly conventional responses grounded in the awareness of those associations. More complex responses occur when these associations are breached: when an epic simile, for example, is used to describe a bake sale, or when one refers to "the great inflatable tomahawk that is Rhode Island." Metaphor, that is, takes on value to the extent that it departs from conventionality, so that all figural assignment of value militates toward a veering into catachresis. I know there is some disagreement about this, but I do think that it is the "abuse" of metaphor rather than "metaphor itself" that generates the mapping of value in question. It is only when familiar forms are transmutated or deformed that we start to feel some way about them. I could go on about how our association of certain forms with "love," "nationalistic fervor," "goofiness," etc., arises not merely from arbitrary conventions but from a tension between the passive recognition of those conventions and the reactive anxiety that results from transgressions thereof, but I am getting very sleeeeeeeepy Clunk. Whrrrrrrrrr... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 22:32:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Not in the nomen cultura..... In-Reply-To: <199803180024.TAA25711@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" . > >Bob Ezergailis This sounds like a pseudonym to me. It is, isnt it? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 10:47:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Belgum's Driver 23 at Underground Film Festival MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For those in the NYC area: Rolf Belgum, brother of innovative fictioneer Erik Belgum (whose _Star Fiction_ Detour Press published in 1996), will be screening his documentary "Driver 23" at the New York Underground Film Festival this coming Saturday at Anthology Film Archives, 4:15 p.m. This is the most hilarious low-budget film I've seen since George Kuchar's "Corruption of the Damned." Rather than blather on about it myself, I'll attach a "spotlight" piece on Belgum that appeared in last week's _City Pages_ (Minneapolis). Hope to see you all there! --Gary TAPPING INTO METAL by James Diers Passion Play: Rocker Dan Cleveland has "an overwhelming personality" in the local rock-doc parody Driver 23. Truth may not always be stranger than fiction, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper. Just ask Rolf Belgum, the Minneapolis filmmaker whose latest feature-length documentary, Driver 23, was shot on a budget of $700. "I'm amazed at what passes for 'low-budget indie films' these days," says Belgum. "At some of these [indie film] festivals, you'll be going up against million-dollar films that are somehow still considered 'underground.'" In the spirit of the most earnest DIY director, Belgum spent a year and a half--sans crew and equipment, just a handheld video camera--getting inside the mind of Dan Cleveland, a Minneapolitan courier/rocker whose raw exploits are an uncanny, real-life mutation of Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap. From basement rehearsals with his Ryan's-ready metal band, Dark Horse, to quiet reflections in the bathtub (a la Tap's Mick Shrimpton), the film digs into Cleveland's true rock & roll story with Cassavetes-esque candor. Not only are the results strangely spellbinding, they're often hysterical. Interviews with Cleveland's on-again/off-again bandmates read like the sharpest of parody--e.g., "Dan's got a sweet voice...when he stays in his range"--except that they're real. "A lot of people think it's made-up or scripted because Dan's delivery is so tight," says Belgum. "But it's all real. He feels that comfortable in front of a camera." Indeed, with the aid of assorted anti-depressants, Cleveland is an organic deadpan delight whose passion for amateur physics is matched only by his penchant for goateed power chords and self-analysis. As Belgum puts it, "He is his own favorite subject." Though local screenings have been few and far between, Driver 23 (formerly known as Frontman) seems to have already infiltrated elite rock circles in the Pacific Northwest. A couple of members of the stalwart Seattle band The Walkabouts, former Twin Cities residents themselves, got hold of a video copy last year. They reportedly took to sharing the tape with various friends who came to visit their recording studio, including members of grunge-band survivors Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. Charmed by the film's priceless verite banter, even Eddie Vedder's pals are apparently stunned to learn that Cleveland's not putting on an act. Can a cult following of Spinal proportions be far behind? To his credit, Belgum opted not to directly engage any broader agendas in the film, even though elements like Cleveland's interracial marriage or the anatomy of the local rock scene provided ample opportunity. "Had I wanted to apply for grant money to fund my movie, that would've been the way to go," he quips. "But Dan's personality is so overwhelming, there's hardly any room for anything else." . . . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 11:29:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Fatimah Tuggar @ Tilton Gallery & New Museum MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Another Friends-of-the-Poet Plug(TM): New collage and installation work by Nigerian visual artist, Fatimah Tuggar, can be seen in two current shows in New York: "Keeping up with the Joneses" (New Museum) and "Esperanto 98" (Jack Tilton Gallery). Tuggar, who is currently homeless, creates (among other things) stunning collages, somewhat reminiscent of those of Jess Collins, combining peopled photographs taken mostly in northern Nigeria with images clipped from First world magazines. Often humorous, always provocative & disturbing, Tuggar's work can be seen on the web for those of you not in the NYC area: http://www.plexus.org//tuggar/ For those here in NYC, check her work out "live": Keeping up with the Joneses March 19 - April 12, 1998 The New Museum of Contemporary Art 583 Broadway (btwn Houston & Prince) Esperanto '98 curated by Christian Haye. Tuesday, March 10, 1998 - Saturday, April 11, 1998 Jack Tilton Gallery 49 Greene Street (btwn Spring & Broome) Hope to see you there! --Gary ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 13:15:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Heller/objectivists/SPT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Small Press Traffic presents =46riday, March 20, 7:30 p.m. Utopocalyptic Moments: Objectivist Poetics Michael Heller Heller tells us that =B3Utopocalyptic=B2 is his =B3made-up name for a sense = of uncertainty, for that odd socio-political or cultural product, both fever and exacerbation, in which an individual is torn between idealized hopes and gnawing dread. My discussion focuses on the poetics of Zukofsky, Oppen and other poets as utopocalyptic responses to the socio-political and aesthetic pressures of the Thirties.=B2 Michael Heller is a full time faculty member at New York University. He is the author of _Conviction=B9s Net of Branches: Essays on the Objectivist Poets and Poetry_ (Southern Illinois University Press, 1985) and the editor of _Carl Rakosi: Man and Poet_ (National Poetry Foundation, 1985). As a poet, he is the author of six fine books including the most recent, _Wordflow: New and Selected Poems_ (Talisman House, 1997). New College Theater 777 Valencia Street =46ree (thanks to the California Council for the Humanities) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 17:54:29 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881 Subject: opposite Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit in an interesting post about the cia, mark P wrote: "anti-racist guys" is this the "only" opposite of the word racist? like for fascist couldn't you say anarchist or communist or democracy believer in? for sexist, what? interested in these big words lately. Bill Luoma ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 17:09:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: The Metaphor Express MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Not TOO many professorial comments about metaphor and metonomy today -- (and by the way, Tom M. [bereted, goateed, huddled over in the corner of that coffee house with Clement Greenberg snapping his fingers to Monk] I think we can safely assume that Henry Gould is PROBABLY well-informed about the major developments of art in the 20th century, and was objecting more to a certain academese that's haunted this thread rather than the word "abstract") -- so it may be time for me to opine that Linda Russo's now somewhat plaintive question that began this thread, and also Nada's recent question, namely "is there anything that we understand in and by itself and without the aid of analogy?" seem to have gotten very short shrift. Chris Stroffolino, back-cover boy (nice poem, though!), wrote a few days back that he was suspicious of the "anti-metaphorical tendency" -- but wasn't such a tendency a main project of the Black Mountain folks, to get away from what Olson called the suck of symbol, from the universe of discourse, from what he called, in the Letter to Elaine Feinstein, the "classical-representational" as opposed to the "primitive abstract"? And let's not forget "I", who keeps asking the Gunslinger in Book One what a certain event was LIKE. "Like, boy? What's that mean? Were you HERE or not?" I think these and other works were positing ATTENTION and PERCEPTION as more valuable qualities than linguistic INVENTION and ORNAMENT: "Be here now and then." I of course can't argue with the folks who claim that ALL our language is metaphorical (though mainly unconscious dead metaphors) -- nor with my old teacher Norman O. Brown, who ended _Love's Body_ with the prescient remark "All is metaphor: there is only poetry" -- but one indication of really BAD poetry is surely the overuse of such devices? Here's a poem called YOU WANT MORE Here are three cancer spots: Skin. Stomach. Bone. You can take your pick, but everyone Wants skin. Once in Houston, Texas, I saw a car full of sparrows. They looked like nothing else. Of your friends: How many take pills to sleep? How many drink themselves to sleep? How many would take for themselves your illness? My friend, Last night I walked outside And watched the stars do nothing at all unusual. Ask anyone: Describe the stars. That's exactly how they looked. And even If I dressed them up as children, Gave them wagons, cakes, and birthday boots, Then broke their fingers one by one until they said It's only you they shine for, I know what you'd want: You'd want more. (by Jim Krusoe) There's lots I still like about this 22-year-old poem, but one of them is the implied anti-metaphorical (thus, pro "world-as-it-is") stance -- I'm sure that's not a properly mediated statement, Joe Amato, but I've always valued work (like Bob Grenier's "Curriculum of the Soul" piece "Attention") that moves us IN rather than AROUND, AWAY . . . . How WAS "Adorno's Ashes?" I didn't know he was Irish! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 21:40:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: cruisingfiction In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:32:10 -0600 from On Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:32:10 -0600 Tom Mandel said: > >Inasmuch as the material basis of Xtianity equals the Roman Empire rips off >Jew-ideas and blends w/ Roman religion (virgin births, human god, etc.), >perhaps Henry would consent to view the Rabbis' laughter (if that is what >it was: horror was more what I had in mind) in the light of gallows humor? >Esp. inasmuch (further) as it was *Jew* Jesus who was crucified -- along >with a number of other Pharisaic rabbis (Jesus was a pharisee, btw) w/ bold >ideas whose flesh was sanctified in that manner or (more often) by being >burned alive. Do I think it quite the *joke* that this same empire should >recast itself as world religion on that back, yup uh huh in a rather chilly >sense you bet I do and sorry if I offend -- either you or another other. >Stoke those fires.... It's interesting we're putting on the gloves while the Pope is making his play for reconciliation (cards close to the chest, gloves on). I always thought "I" was the Pope (metapharisaically speaking). Not only was Jesus a Jew (NEWSFLASH), but so were Peter and Paul. Speaking of P's, did you know that Poe's Pym hits dead center (numerically speaking) when ship Grampus arrives at Peter & Paul rocks in mid-Atlantic? What does that mean? It means that Jesus was from outer space, obviously. Jesus MAY have been a Pharisee - but remember, G-d (or was it Pnin?) showed Moses only his BACKSIDE. EP, EP (Ez & Eddie) had to drop the p's to pee pee, remember. (Eli & Eli - same biz) (whiz within whiz!) - beglovedly yours, St. Henry (de Petersburg) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 22:25:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: handedness I found this in a poem called One Square Mile: 19 Pitching righthand by a pillar he stood. He was lefthanded, he was black, but they needed him. A nominal phenomenal singularity, they said; he dove down from the dome, filled to the brim with MAYDAY, MAYDAY rings in his ears, feathers, bronze pedestals for sandals; and the square choir (tested for touching wakes and funerals) suddenly mothers a circle of fire-eaters! And they sprang up - completely FESTA'd! - Henry gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 23:27:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: The Metaphor Express In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This question occured to me, before I got mr. safdie's comments, so i will ask it first: When people speak of "metaphor," they often say "metaphor for" (I do it too), but isn't saying "metaphor for", strictly speaking, an improper use of the term? Not that I'm suggesting that we, as poets, necessarily should be "strictly speaking", but some synchronization of terms might be helpful..... Now, if metaphor, or a metaphor cannot be "translated", or is, in some way, "irreducible", wouldn't such a metaphor qualify as "anything that we understand in and of itself without the aid of analogy" (Nada, or Safdie quoting Nada), or some kind of "primitive abstract"? When confronted with metaphor read as thus one need not respond as Dorn's "I" (What's that mean? What's that LIKE? etc). Or, if one does one is not going to come any closer to the "meaning". I think the distinction between seeing a metaphor as a metaphor and seeing it as a metaphor "for" something is the crucial distinction here. When one says "X is a metaphor for Y," one is really speaking of analogy, not metaphor. all (is a metaphor) for now, chris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 23:50:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: Mark Nowak's address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit If anyone (or Mark Nowak) has his snail-mail address, could they please e-mail it to me at the Poetry Project: poproj@artomatic.com? Thanks much, Marcella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 00:56:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: a metaphor MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII "Ah, Critic, more and more you club the life out of this dead topic. What for? Put down your stick, Professor, use knife and for k [sic] instead." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 07:57:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: warts of religion This is my final post on this tetchy non-poetics topic, and I will be brief. After what Europe & the Church did to the Jews - and does to this day in the scenario of some parts of the gospels - no one is in a position to scold them for being alienated or antagonistic toward organized Christianity. The project of Peter & Paul was, in a sense, to make Jews of all mankind, and so far you have to admit they have been successful in a number of ways. Unsuccessful in others. I guess I would agree with what maybe J. Joyce would think: if God is a Person, she must be the God of Here-Comes-Everybody. Her name, by the way, is Beatrice, and she lives in Sioux Falls, North Dakota - where she runs a movie house and is an active member of the Church of the Frisbee- Tossin' Jesus. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 09:13:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Heller/objectivists/SPT anyone know if the new collection of essays on the Objectivists has come out yet and if so how to get a copy? burt kimmelman kimmelman@admin.njit.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 09:21:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: warts of religion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I guess I would agree with what maybe J. Joyce would think: if God is a >Person, she must be the God of Here-Comes-Everybody. Her name, by the >way, is Beatrice, and she lives in Sioux Falls, North Dakota - where she >runs a movie house and is an active member of the Church of the Frisbee- >Tossin' Jesus.>- Henry Gould Almost poetic.... Except I have heard of her, several times, under several different names, but the movie theatre is always running the same boring porno flicks.... Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 08:38:51 -0600 Reply-To: MAYHEW Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Non-academic definitions of tropes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Beware of crossing swords with Chiasmus or crossing Chiasmus with a sword. Don't lose connection with Asyndeton. Mr. Litotis is a not uncharming Englishman. Simile is like a bad haircut; Allegory is a wearisome journey, A Tautology is just a Tautology but Paradox makes black ink bright. etc... Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 08:54:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: render into scissors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The "render unto Caesar" debate occurred within the pharisaic movement; you can find all sides of the debate represented as artefacts and consciously in lots of early midrashic texts and in the Mishnah. Even Jesus's parabolic way of representing the issue -- whose face is on the coin? -- occurs in that literature I believe (but it would take a scholar to come up with a citation). Those were revolutionary times, and the debate was not about meekness, personal ethics, living in or apart from the political, but rather about what attitude a Jew ought to have (and since these were rabbis, ought to preach) about the Romans. Were they bad because they enslaved our minds? Were they good because they created roads and their law kept someone off us? Etc. 60 messiahs? someone said. Remember, the idea of "messiah" had *nothing* (zero, zilch) to do with a divine being (and only metaphorically to do with the saving of souls) before the romanifying of Judaic ideas into Xtianity. The vision was of what we would call a world revolution (gee I always wondered why the European left had so many Jews in it...). The messiah was to be a king (descendant of King David and therefore a rightful king) who would lead the movement to that order, in which swords would be beaten into plowshares and the whole world would view Jerusalem as its center. T'were the Romans who had human gods, gods with sons (and daughters), humans impregnated by divine beings, etc (well... there is a reference to gods lying with women in Genesis, I believe, to create the race of "Giants"). And foisted on my mojo such notions as virgin birth. Some of you may have noticed that "first will be last" didn't actually happen. Yet, the world religion built on that Jewish idea (oppressed/exiled idea -- it's not essentialistically Jewish as is obvious I hope) rules on. We live in Rome. Tom Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 08:56:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: adorno's ashes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Language being so much more interesting than ideas, the phrase "Adorenoashes" makes me think of Adonis -- the contemporary Arabic poet. I just ordered his "Intro to Arab Poetics" (hope that title is right) from Amazon. Anyone read it? Tom Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:01:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: Segue Reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dan Machlin asked me to forward the following: Kit Robinson & Erica Hunt Tuesday, March 31 @ 7:30 P.M. $5.00 @ Segue Performance Space 303 E. 8th St, 1R (Betw. Aves B&C) New York, NY ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 23:07:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Nepotistic plug Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nepotistic plug from Kevin Killian to all New Yorkers . . . I hope you find the time to see "Surface Transit: sketches of ordinary people" at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (236 East Third Street between B and C) on March 19, 20, 21 at 7:30.... It is the one woman show of my cousin, Sarah Jones, "winner of the 1997 Grand Slam" Different styles, same genetic code!!! For reservations call (212) 505-8183 I won't be there but please tell me how you like it Thanks everyone--- Kevin K. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 09:18:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: The Metaphor Express In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i really didn't wanna touch the metaphor thread, as it seems to me that these distinctions are useful primarily to the extent you're willing to read (and write) such & such a way... i.e., "touching threads"... or, "with due regard for" somebody or other's instrumental definitions of same... lakoff may be a smart guy, but i find that the leap to cognition (if that's what it is---it surely is in the case of mark turner) that you end up with is probably a reduction, at least when you start talking specific metaphorical constructs (in specific poems) as opposed to process... i.e., i think metaphor/metonymy are really so sociocultural insofar as how we use such devices---when such devices are being put to use, as it were... but joe s brings me out simply to say that i used the word "mediated" in my posts to gabe b/c i wanted to provoke/emphasize an awareness of media... and b/c the notion of "unmediated visions" and such is a relatively easy one to come by... but "mediated" really is more metaphorical (!) than anything else... which is to say, perhaps a word like "constitutive" would have been more to the point?... a different metaphoricity at stake here? (my but don't i sound professorial!)... well that's not my point, anyway... mediated: as i "see" it, it's not that there's something "between" my understanding of a thing and the thing itself (dasein etc.)... it's that language, mind, culture, etc., constitutes perception of said thing... which for my money, is not *all* the thing is... nor is it *all* we may likely believe it to be... for "thing" substitute "person" or "self" or "god" and it all gets so---sticky?... in any case, i can't think, at this "point" in my life, w/o thinking *through*, or i think as joe indicates, *in*... to think *in* is still to constitute an object through thought ('mediated by thought'?)... metaphor in the most general sense, as in 'everything may be metaphorical,' indicated by my persistent use of "quotes"... well i can put the entire post in quotes, of course... i can just imagine what the philosophers among you might say... but hey, recall olson re the human universe, "we are ourselves both the instrument of discovery and the instrument of definition"... i think this is to the "point"... setting aside my metaphors here (like, as though i could!): whence actual knowledge, proprioceptive or otherwise, given such a "state of affairs"?... perhaps it's *like* the old---joke? 'a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a metphor"?... best, j-o-e, aka joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:12:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: I cain hep it Tom says we live in Rome. But according to Beatrice, we live in Sioux Falls. Beatrice is God & Henry is her Prophet. The Ark of the Covenant is a 4-dimensional Frisbee. With Eagle Feathers. Made of a special kind of clay. Called Silly Putty. - St. Henry de Petersburg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:30:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: a metaphor Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"Ah, Critic, >more and more >you club the life >out of this dead >topic. >What for? >Put down your stick, >Professor, >use knife >and for >k [sic] >instead." Emendation: "...and short declarative tightly controlled sentences suitable only for command." Of course that suggests an ever more prevalent anti-intellectual attitude of unquestioning, increasingly muscle tensioned, knife and fork mentality, accompanied by an attack on poetic license, attempting to revoke same, in favour of more tactical Anglish, such as is favoured by language "properly" thought of as being short, declarative, sentences of command....? Paraphrased: The poet as hanged man, subject to twists of meaning. Either that or the poet's words as deadly force and the writer having to register possession of such a deadly weapon, under new legislation yet to be approved by Congress. The need having been recognized that regulation is necessitated of those inevitably violent distortions of proper usage, anarchic in their tending to ignorance of linearity, and as they do not properly punctuate, disrespectful, ill mannered, not knowing how to properly begin or end anything, poet-tries....but a poet surely tries, making the effort to say the unsayable... Shameful. The punishment will be grammatical lessons as to the writing of the most constrained and proper prose, since that seems to be the deficit. If that fails remediation as to intentional meaning and communicative effects being reversed, will begin and persist until poet-tries are abandoned in vein. That, or make the poet stare into a mirror forever and ever. That ought to do it, if nothing else does. During the Cold War there was someone to blame, but no more....as now there is only US. In the immortal words of that great American poet Pogo "we have met the enemy and he is US". All of US, presumably, and without national boundaries. Phenomenologically bracketing out any assumptions. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:46:37 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: adorno's ashes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tom Mandel wrote: > > Language being so much more interesting than ideas, the phrase > "Adorenoashes" makes me think of Adonis -- the contemporary Arabic poet. I > just ordered his "Intro to Arab Poetics" (hope that title is right) from > Amazon. Anyone read it? > > Tom > > Hi, Tom. Adonis presents a rich and readable explanation of Arab poetics from orality to modernity, e.g., "Language... is not a tool for communicating a detached meaning. It is meaning itself because it is thought. Indeed, it precedes thought and is succeeded by knowledge. This implies that the criterion of meaning was contained in language itself, and was defined by the rules of language" (82). He maintains a dual perspective--poetic and sociohistorical--and helps to calibrate the compass. You might also find interesting Harold Coward's _Sacred Word and Sacred Text: Scripture in World Religions_. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988). ISBN 0-88344-604-9 (pbk). Also his _The Sphota Theory of Language_. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidsss, --can't find it just now, so I don't know the date). Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:59:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: LanceEli3 Subject: Re: warts of religion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I know this is all unpoetic, but I can not help but comment on such statements as these: >The project of Peter & Paul was, in a sense, to make Jews of all mankind, >and so far you have to admit they have been successful in a number of ways. >Unsuccessful in others. Peter and Paul were cetainly Jews, but where in the world does the idea that they wanted to make everyone Jews come from. So much of the New Testament (written by Paul) tells the Jews not to force Old Testament law on Gentile Christians (particularly circumcision, the primary "mark" of a Jew). It is true that Christianity as taught by Paul embraces Jewish history and scriptures, but his goal was not to expand the Israelite nation. One of the themes of the Bible is that "all nations will be blessed through Israel." First Israel will be blessed, then the whole world. So Israel and Jewish history was simply a starting point, not an end (to Paul). I don't know, perhaps I entered this "conversation" to late . . . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 11:21:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: adorno's ashes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Tom Mandel wrote: > Language being so much more interesting than ideas, the phrase > "Adorenoashes" makes me think of Adonis -- the contemporary Arabic poet. I > just ordered his "Intro to Arab Poetics" (hope that title is right) from > Amazon. Anyone read it? > > Yes, I have -- it is a terrific book -- Adonis is a terrific poets and thinker -- unhappily too much is not yet translated, though a few poems from one of the latest books were done excellenty by Allen Hibbard & Osama Isber (published in SULFUR). That poem "A desire moving through the maps of the material" is also reprinted in Millennium Vol II as is a theoretical text from 1992. I am right now translating a few exceprts from a book of essays called LA PRIERE ET L'EPEE. Superb work. -- Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 11:16:22 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: warts of religion In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:59:31 EST from On Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:59:31 EST LanceEli3 said: > >Peter and Paul were cetainly Jews, but where in the world does the idea >that they wanted to make everyone Jews come from. So much of the New >Testament (written by Paul) tells the Jews not to force Old Testament law >on Gentile Christians (particularly circumcision, the primary "mark" of a >Jew). It is true that Christianity as taught by Paul embraces Jewish >history and scriptures, but his goal was not to expand the Israelite >nation. One of the themes of the Bible is that "all nations will be >blessed through Israel." First Israel will be blessed, then the whole >world. So Israel and Jewish history was simply a starting point, not an >end (to Paul). I meant that Xtianity is a Biblical religion and the core of it, the spiritual core of it, is Hebraic. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 12:48:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Adonis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To quickly pick up two threads, one old -- the metaphor discussion --, one new -- Tom's query re Adonis --, here the last chapter, of a longish Adonis essay on Arab poetics & involving metaphor. The modern poets he speaks of are those of the Abassid period, i.e. Abu Tamman, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Abu Nuwas & Co., inventing urban modern poetics some 800 to 1000 years before Baudelaire & co. were on the euro-scene. This is an insta-translation, as I type, so, please excuse mistapes... Pierre ADONIS -- ChapterXIV of “THE FIXED AND THE MOBILE; TRADIITON AND INNOVATION IN ARAB CULTURE” During pre-islamic times, poetry imitated man who, in turn, imitated poetry. And man thus saw himself in his own mirror. Poetry spoke life; life spoke poetry. After the advent of Islam, poetry became but a simple part of a larger whole -- the islamic vision of the world. While poetic content submitted itself to religious power, form remained attached to the pre-islamic language. It’s only with the beginning of the Omeyyad period that poetry started to distance itself from religion. Islam by then had become a simple external social and political frame. But the real poetic revolution took place in the Abassid era.(1) It consisted in an interrogation of the question of origin: is the latter truly perfect? Is it really impossible to go beyond it? The answer that was reached was of course negative — creation being, precisely, synonymous with origin. Now, in the matter of poetic creation, no origin can, in the absolute, be better than any other. Creation being a stranger to time, “modern” poetry can indeed surpass “ancient” poetry. The criterion no longer resides in the ancientness or the modernity as such: ancient creation and modern creation can thus meet. The “innovating” poets of the Abassid period thus show the way that the contemporary poets have found again. Today, creation has to move in the direction of transgressing the know, towards producing the new or the unknown. The relationship between tradition and creation is no longer a relation of cause and effect. Furthermore, the time of the former is different from that of the latter. The work is simultaneously contemporary and non-contemporary. The moment of creation does not necessarily correspond to historical moment of the tradition. The creator lives simultaneously in all times. The moment of the work may not partake in the predominant taste; anyway, it is the great works which create this taste, always. It is in the dialectic of the apparent and the hidden, of the visible and the invisible that this “time of the creation” has expressed itself. And it is thanks to that dialectic that the way opens to go beyond the fixed traditional image of religion. This dialectic has also permitted the emergence of the riches of language and poetry, and of creative experience in general, the principle domain of which was metaphor, the essential dimension of interpretation. As metaphor is the artistic form of thought, traditonalism rejected it just as it had rejected the doctrine of interpretation. For the traditionalist current, everything that’s written in the Koran is literally true; God’s language cannot be metaphorical. What is called “metaphor” in the language of the Koran thus represents a reality whose essence we are ignorant of. If poetry wants to be religious, it has to abandon metaphor. Indeed, in the traditionalists’ mind metaphor is akin to a kind of “magic,” consisting in substituting the false for the true. But the poets, without worrying about it, keep on using metaphor, and poetry becomes resolutely pluri-simensional, gifted with a plurality of meanings. Thus metaphor has had the virtue of “opening” a language which until then was “closed.” This is the great lesson of that “modernity” of which the “innovators” of the Abassid period were the precursors. This revolution has produced a new poetic language which, rather than describing the apparent in itself, proposes to unveil its meaning. The unveiling thus becomes the goal of all utterance. No matter the certainties or the teachings, what is essential is to open the doors of the imagination. This new conception of language achieved three major changes. The first consisted in proposing that the imagination lies at the origin of the world; the second, that the criterion for evaluating poetic experience lies in the transgression of the ordinary and the common. The third consisted in recommending a perpetual invention of new forms. Form is no longer the image of the poem-object, but the image of the relation, in the poem, between the poet and the world. Form has become the very breath of the poem: in itself, already, a product of the imagination. It is in this way that Arab poetry found again the deep sense of its true tradition: a tradition of innovation and questioning. 1. The Abassyd dynasty succeeded the Omeyyad dynasty in 750 and ruled until 1258, date of the conquest of Bagdad by the turco-mongolian army. -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 12:56:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: I cain hep it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Tom says we live in Rome. But according to Beatrice, we live in Sioux Falls. >Beatrice is God & Henry is her Prophet. >The Ark of the Covenant is a 4-dimensional Frisbee. >With Eagle Feathers. >Made of a special kind of clay. >Called Silly Putty. >- St. Henry de Petersburg When in Rome do as the Americans do. The tabloids report Beatrice Foods is launching suit against all other Beatrices who are all, it is alleged, and without any exceptions, heretofor and forthwith, considered damaging to that incorporate reputation, and so what's in a name ? Sioux Falls is in an uproar. Rumours abound that Sue had a serious accident but no one is quite sure which version to believe. Beatrice is changing her name & Henry has gone into chicken ranching. His primary rational is not monetary gain but the spiritual fact that chickens are something that can be lass-sued. There is a loose connection in all these facts on the fringes of near urban life. Any ark in a storm. The sacred frisbee vanishes into a quantum well causing a long line of flagelland physicists to pilgrimage seeking Sue. With chicken feathers dyed respectable colours. Clay feet came from original lumps of clay giving original sin a new meaning. All people who are not silly putty by nature will be subject to being exchanged. - St. Looney de Ottawa ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 13:07:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Heller/objectivists/SPT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-19 09:28:16 EST, you write: << anyone know if the new collection of essays on the Objectivists has come out yet and if so how to get a copy? burt kimmelman >> Rachel Blau DuPlessis should know. You still lurking here, Rachel? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 13:13:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Any Korean speakers? In-Reply-To: <199803191756.MAA24776@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Wondering if any lister or lurker speaks Korean and could backchannel me any literal/denotative meanings of the name "Poe Hwa," or your best gloss--thx. much. Gwyn "Once and Future Gringa" McVay ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 13:21:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: opposite In-Reply-To: <759628c6.351050a7@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I find this post completely baffling. I was talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers, as I recall... "only opposite of the word racist"??? ...**Huh?** The Dodgers who kept the team from carrying out a racist "job action" against Jackie Robinson were, I think, (for their time and place) anti-racist guys... Right? Your're too profound for me, Bill. Thank heavens I at least understand the infield fly rule!! Mark @lanta On Wed, 18 Mar 1998, Maz881 wrote: > in an interesting post about the cia, mark P wrote: > > "anti-racist guys" > > is this the "only" opposite of the word racist? > > like for fascist couldn't you say anarchist or communist or democracy believer > in? > > for sexist, what? > > interested in these big words lately. > > Bill Luoma > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:59:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Vogler Subject: [1]POETICS Digest - 17 Mar [1]POETICS Digest - 17 Mar 1998 to 18 Mar 3/19/98 Please note that my new email address is tavogler@cats.ucsc.edu Your message has been forwarded ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 11:36:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Adonis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I hope I'm wrong, but I think I rmember having recently read a notice of the death of this fine poet & critic -- anybody know for sure? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 15:25:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Adonis In-Reply-To: Pierre Joris "Adonis" (Mar 19, 12:48pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="PART-BOUNDARY=.19803191525.ZM2083.comm.mot.com" --PART-BOUNDARY=.19803191525.ZM2083.comm.mot.com Content-Description: Text Content-Type: text/plain ; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Zm-Decoding-Hint: mimencode -q -u On Mar 19, 12:48pm, Pierre Joris sent: > Subject: Adonis > To quickly pick up two threads, one old -- the metaphor discussion --, = one new -- > Tom's query re Adonis --, here the last chapter, of a longish Adonis es= say on Arab > poetics & involving metaphor. The modern poets he speaks of are those o= f the > Abassid period, i.e. Abu Tamman, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Abu Nuwas & Co., inven= ting urban > modern poetics some 800 to 1000 years before Baudelaire & co. were on t= he > euro-scene. This is an insta-translation, as I type, so, please excuse mistapes... > Pierre Can we see some examples to back this incredible claim? Pierre, I can't h= elp but think that what you have posted below maybe means something to you (a= kinship with) your manisfesto on a nomadic poetics. Is there any such mea= ning for ya? > ADONIS -- ChapterXIV of =93THE FIXED AND THE MOBILE; TRADIITON AND INNO= VATION IN > ARAB CULTURE =2E =2E =2E >As metaphor is the artistic form of thought, traditonalism rejected it j= ust >as it had rejected the doctrine of interpretation. For the traditiona= list >current, everything that=92s written in the Koran is literally true; = God=92s language >cannot be metaphorical. What is called =93metaphor=94 in the la= nguage of the Koran >thus represents a reality whose essence we are ignorant of. If= poetry wants to >be religious, it has to abandon metaphor. Indeed, in the= traditionalists=92 mind >metaphor is akin to a kind of =93magic,=94 consi= sting in substituting the false for >the true. But the poets, without worrying about it, keep on using metaph= or, >and poetry Now make that perhaps the rejection of metaphor by traditionalism's succe= ssor science & technology. Is metaphor the artistic form of thought (merely)? = Does metaphor have a place in a world at large ruled by science (include pseud= o science) and technology? Once saw a show in which a famous spaceship of entrepid galaxy hopping humanists encountered another spacefaring race wh= ich spoke almost entirely in metaphor. Metaphors with alot of references to t= heir ancient myths, epics, and whatever. The question is how could they have r= eached that level of technology with a language (spoken) consisting largely of metaphor. Or am I stuck in 1984? William Burmeister --PART-BOUNDARY=.19803191525.ZM2083.comm.mot.com-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 16:17:48 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Metaphornymia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry, but: metonymicity: Coy? Me? Tiny Tim? metaphoricity: I'm a poetry itch. The first uses all of its letters to represent part of its potential in the [metonymic?] figure of Tiny Tim; the second predicates itself as prior to itself--an impulse toward its own creation [and thus violates the tense of its verb]. A dead heat? [& how about *that* metaphor?!]. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 14:50:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Petition: Gay Rights/American Airlines Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Passing this along.... > >Stephen Cope > > > >X-Originating-IP: [192.147.65.114] >From: "Bradley Wise" >To: AP5150@aol.com, funkhouser@tesla.njit.edu, scope@sdcc3.ucsd.edu, > dposner@us.ibm.com, iekstrom@ia-sf.com, rnest@pacbell.net, > martinn@MTVN13.VIACOM.COM, oward@haywire.csuhayward.edu, > rain@vanilla.com, s-wise2@nwu.edu, eubanv@rpi.edu >Subject: A Petition for Gay Rights >Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:15:58 PST > >Dear Friends, > >American Airlines is a major sponsor to and supporter of groups like >GLADD, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the >AIDS Action Foundation, DIFFA, AmFAR, and scores of community-based >groups representing gays and lesbians. It is also the first airline to >adopt a written non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation in >its employment practices. > >In an unusual joint letter released to the media on Friday, March 14th >from the Family Research Council, Concerned Women of America, American >Family Association and Coral Ridge Ministries, American Airlines was >openly criticized about their policy. > >Radical right leader Beverly LaHaye also went on Christian "talk >radio" on Friday to blast American Airlines because "American's >sponsorship of homosexual 'pride' events constitutes an open >endorsement of promiscuous homosexuality." She and the other groups >have written Bob Crandall at American to complain that the airline has >"gone beyond mere tolerance" of gays and lesbians. > >The full article appears in Friday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and >possibly picked up by other newspapers around the country. It has come >to the attention of the gay and lesbian community that American >Airline's switchboard and E-mails are being bombarded now by homophobic >and hateful callers who have been urged by LaHaye and others to DEMAND >the company terminate its gay-friendly policies. > >Please add your name to this petition and forward it to as many people >as you can. To add your name just cut and paste this onto new mail and >send it out! > >If you are the 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th, etc. person to sign this >petition then also please forward this to American Airlines at >Webmaster@amrcorp.com > >To American Airlines: >We, the undersigned, support your gay/lesbian rights policies and >commend you for your efforts in ending discrimination. Thank you for >your dedication to such issues and please continue to remain active in >the struggle to end discrimination. > >1. Bob Fulton Johnson, Cambridge, MA >2. Gary Iredell, Somerville, MA >3. Keith MacDonald, Boston, MA >4. Will Cook, Boston, MA >5. Gerald Denis, Boston, MA >6. Brian Sands, New Orleans, LA >7. Ben Pesner, New York, NY >8. Craig Lucas >9. Mitchell Lichtenstein >10. Vincent Sanchez >11. Eve Gordon >12. Todd Waring >13. Steve Hendrickson, Minneapolis, MN >14. Megan Odell, Minneapolis, MN >15. Chris Boulton, Pittsburgh, PA >16. Matthew Boulton, Cambridge, MA >17. Holly Grant, Boston, MA >18. Elizabeth Mueller, Austin, TX >19. Rebecca Braslau, CA >20. Dan Kluger, SF CA >21. Aureliano DeSoto, Montreal, QC >22. David Conner, San Francisco, CA >23. Brad S. Wise, San Francisco, CA >24. Stephen Cope, San Diego, CA >______________________________________________________ > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:27:52 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nada Gordon Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe Safdie wrote: >Nada's recent question, >namely "is there anything that we understand in and by itself and without >the aid of analogy?" seem to have gotten very short shrift. Actually, Don Wellman went into my question quite deeply. I'm not sure if his message was posted to the list or not, because I only got one copy, directly from him and not the list. Don, however, says he got his list copy and that I can go ahead and post my reply to his post: --------------------------------------------------- Don, I perceived in your post a whiff of sophistry and in re-reading mine a blast of loose diction. you wrote >I am challenging the notion that there is an indirect understanding. >Nada Gordon wrote, "Is there anything we understand in itself and not by >any >analogy whatsoever? Would that be *enlightenment*?" More problematical >for me than the meaning of "understand" is the meaning of "anything." > >There seems to be a mechanistic notion of the relation between words and >things here...that is if "anything" refers to discourse. No, I didn't mean for "anything" to refer to discourse -- but rather the world which we mediate or construct (depending on your metaphor) indirectly via discourse. The metaphor I'm picturing is a giant web of likenesses and differences -- that's not original is it -- Saussure? Perception or apprehension may be direct, but what the mind does immediately afterwards (and sometimes before, in acts of prediction, anticipation and prejudice) is to place the perception somewhere in that web in order to try to "understand" Where did you find the mechanistic notion of the relation between words and things? I hope I don't think that way -- it sounds so rigid, not to mention unfashionable. >When I drink >wine, I do not experience it by analogy. No, but the first time you drank wine, you probably had to go through the (maybe instantaneous) process of connecting drinkable liquids (water, grape juice--similes) to the wine that was before you to ensure it was not in fact gasoline or some other non-drinkable liquid. In time you learned to create distinctions about wines, Gallo being in big jugs and working class, etc.; you learned that wine was a soPHISticated EuropEan thing to drink; that white is for seafood Yes, these are associations, maybe not analogies. Or some are analogies and some are distinctions and most are associations -- but they are all mediations of experience. When I read Nada's sentence, I >hear a desire for immedicacy--that seems to float off her words and does >not require mental acrobatics on my part to understand. Do I feel a desire for immediacy? Maybe. A kind of "cut the bullshit" impatience with my mind. But I don't feel some poignant heavy longing or anything like that. I am curious about this immediacy thing but I'm not sure it's humanly possible -- although "enlightened" people claim to perceive everything (that web) in a sudden flash of connectedness and present-ness. I also seem to remember a philosopher (who was it? help me here) talking about a state of mind called EPOCHE in which we experience something, if only for a moment, without any preconceptions, we see a bird and don't call it a BIRD or a SPARROW, we observe the movement, the feathers, the shape of the head, the sharp little beak,but the brain doesn't rush to file it in a nest of preconceptions and memories and experiences and classifications in order to understand it. I'm not sure what you meant about mental acrobatics but I suspect you may be insulting me. Doesn't understanding anything require mental acrobatics? Even unwilled and unconscious? Or do we just grok by sudden immediate grasping? That is my >impression and it may be rationally indefensible. I am trying to say >that the thing in itself is more likely to be a feeling rather than a >brick in the road. I suppose if the brick in the road gave me a feeling >that would be enlightenment (a religous epipnay). If the brick in the road gave you a feeling it would make you a lyrical poet. If the thing in itself is a feeling rather than a brick in the road what would we build our houses with? (It's all right for impressions to be rationally indefensible. I like that.) > >When I analyze Nada's statement, I load it with irony. I have no sense >that this irony is intentional or the thing she wants to communicate, Irony has a bunch of meanings. One is pretended naivete (Socratic irony) that intends to lure something out of an interlocutor. Another is a statement that actually means the opposite or something quite different from what it literally states. Which irony did you load my statement with? When I analyze my motives, I find there was some of both kinds of irony there. >but my mind now buzzes with associations between Kant, Enlightenment era >philosopy, I didn't mean that kind of enlightenment, the age of reason kind. I live in the "far east" and I am not particularly rational. The logos gives me the *willies*. the Age of Reason, the thing in itself, etc. None of what I >am doing now is by analagy; it is by association. I don't feel my mind >switching off as it follows its indirections. OK I concede that what I meant was sometimes "by association" and sometimes "by analogy." (Sometimes by metonymy and sometimes by metaphor -- but (almost?) never by itself -- "never ever jam today") > >What is politically or socially interesting to me about metaphor and >analogy is the way they their use can direct some one's thoughts, help >some one see. A bad simile is a wonderful attack on reason--a refusal to >allow the irrational to become rational, wonderfully irreveerent with >respect to a too precious sense of how language is supposed to work. My >sense of that irreverence is direct. I like it. YES YES YES! That was the *real* point of my post and not those afterthought questions I tacked on at the end. >I wrote earlier that a "grammar of metonymic overlays is that of the >Canto's..." --by this I meant no more than the major structural device >in the Cantos is the overlay of image on image, of phrase on phrase, >passage on passage. Pound himself uses the word super-position to >describe his method of composition in his "Vorticism" where he also >attachs both symbolism and synechdoce, of I remember. From this I derive >the notion that it is the overlay of one field of images (or allusions) >on another that creates structural metaphors or what he calls the >"forma" This sounds like another version of the web? -- you see I am trying really hard here to understand what you're talking about by means of analogy. All this you're building is a structural metaphor too. in his essay "Medievalism."--near the end of the Cantos, he >likens each overlay to the facets of a crystal--the point seems to be a >centered overlay of transparent forms--something he experienced >"englightenment"--only intermittantly--politically, as differences >become drained of their particular importance he becomes more >totalitarian. By contrast, deleuze and Guattari, as their plateaus slide >over one another, they produce differences. This sounds a little like living on the San Andreas fault (another analogy, sorry, I'm getting lost in all these models -- my plateaus are slippery -- oo). > >To my understanding, this is one of the crucial differences between >modernism and postmodernism. The structural metaphors, metaphors of >process, in modernism as represented by the Cantos are mraked by both >reverence and quasi-scientific notionas of rationalism. Pound, again in >"Vorticism" calls his method more like calculus than algebra, hence his >denegration of easy connections between meaning and figures of speech >like synechdoche.Still it seems to me that metaphor blossoms in ways >that transcend or thread or cause energy to run through the planes of >his composition. We see the rose in the steel dust. Christine Brooke >Rose is much better on this than I am ... OK, if metaphors blossom or thread than they are either metaphor 1: part of an interdependent garden or ecology of meanings metaphor 2: strings on a web (a sort of macrame world) > >I for one can not see such roses or vortices as directly as he did--as >he hoped--they do not exist objectively for me. Roses don't exist objectively for you? (How) do they exist? Or what does that mean, "objectively"? The forma does not >constrain my indirection and flight of association and I prize instead >that flight--that becomes my direct experience, So you're positing an alogical equivalence! INDIRECTION = DIRECTNESS. I love it! one of decentered >flight, one of play ... > >His enlightenment becomes my fake simile? ... I am getting flakey now, >having reached the limits of my ability to maintain a faced of >coherence. Did you intend face or facet? Facet goes with your earlier metaphor but it's faces that are maintained, or "saved". The most important thing that I wanted to say is that even >direction is a form of immediate thought ... I don't now what >non-immediate thought is unless a deja vue slaps me in the face. > Hmm, that's funny. I would say that what's so eerie about deja vu experiences is their immediacy or anyway their sudden demand for recognition -- you think, "I know this, I know this sequence as a whole already." Don, your post is like a carousel of horned philosophers grabbing at imitation seafood in the midnight. I mean that as a kind of steel rose in the vortex. Yoroshiku, Nada ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 19:54:05 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nada Gordon wrote: > > Joe Safdie wrote: > > > > Don, I perceived in your post a whiff of sophistry and in re-reading mine a > blast of loose diction. > > you wrote > > >When I drink > >wine, I do not experience it by analogy. > DZ: The first time I drank wine, I got stupid and puked. The stupid part, I think, derived from analogy to other sober moments of stupidity which I'd experienced--directly and vicariously--before; the puking represented an act of intelligence. As my oenological sophistication matured, I generally ceased puking and a modicum of wit (lunatic at first, admittedly, then gradually drier... sec!) displaced torrential boorishness--at least in my own rather hazy memory. I attribute this recapitulation of phylogeny to the kindness of the increasingly bright and often alcoholic crowd who put up with me. In other words, I developed not only a tolerance for the grape, but a respectful affinity for it, by way of analogizing my behavior under its influence with that of my peers. I like to drink champagne; how 'bout you? > When I read Nada's sentence, I > >hear a desire for immedicacy--that seems to float off her words and does > >not require mental acrobatics on my part to understand. > > Do I feel a desire for immediacy? Maybe. A kind of "cut the bullshit" > impatience with my mind. But I don't feel some poignant heavy longing or > anything like that. I am curious about this immediacy thing but I'm not > sure it's humanly possible -- although "enlightened" people claim to > perceive everything (that web) in a sudden flash of connectedness and > present-ness. I also seem to remember a philosopher (who was it? help me > here) talking about a state of mind called EPOCHE in which we experience > something, if only for a moment, without any preconceptions, we see a bird > and don't call it a BIRD or a SPARROW, we observe the movement, the > feathers, the shape of the head, the sharp little beak,but the brain > doesn't rush to file it in a nest of preconceptions and memories and > experiences and classifications in order to understand it. DZ: Edmund Husserl. > > I am trying to say > >that the thing in itself is more likely to be a feeling rather than a > >brick in the road. I suppose if the brick in the road gave me a feeling > >that would be enlightenment (a religous epiphany). > > If the brick in the road gave you a feeling it would make you a lyrical poet. > If the thing in itself is a feeling rather than a brick in the road what > would we build our houses with? > (It's all right for impressions to be rationally indefensible. I like that.) > DZ: Let him who is without mortar lay the first brick. > > > >When I analyze Nada's statement, I load it with irony. I have no sense > >that this irony is intentional or the thing she wants to communicate, > > Irony has a bunch of meanings. One is pretended naivete (Socratic irony) > that intends to lure something out of an interlocutor. Another is a > statement that actually means the opposite or something quite different > from what it literally states. > > Which irony did you load my statement with? > > When I analyze my motives, I find there was some of both kinds of irony there. DZ: Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone. > > > DZ: Forgive my intrusion into this marvellous discussion. Flags need wind, & I've offered a puff or two. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 20:45:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Adonis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Tom's query re Adonis --, here the last chapter, of a longish Adonis essay on >Arab poetics & involving metaphor. The modern poets he speaks of are those of >the Abassid period, i.e. Abu Tamman, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Abu Nuwas & Co., inventing > urban modern poetics some 800 to 1000 years before Baudelaire & co. were on >the euro-scene. This is an insta-translation, as I type, so, please excuse >mistapes...Pierre >ADONIS -- ChapterXIV of "THE FIXED AND THE MOBILE; TRADIITON AND INNOVATION IN >ARAB CULTURE" >During pre-islamic times, poetry imitated man who, in turn, imitated poetry. .........And >man thus saw himself in his own mirror. Poetry spoke life; life spoke poetry. > After the advent of Islam, poetry became but a simple part of a larger whole - >the islamic vision of the world. While poetic content submitted itself to >religious power, form remained attached to the pre-islamic language. > It's only with the beginning of the Omeyyad period that poetry started to >distance itself from religion. Islam by then had become a simple external >social and political frame. But the real poetic revolution took place in the >Abassid era. This is very odd, and probably very misleading. 1). Arab culture became Islamic culture. That's it, pure and simple. Even its deviances occur very rigidly within an Islamic framework. I know of no exceptions to that fact. 2). Poetry within that socio-cultural contextual situatedness, subsequent to the writing of the Koran, believed to be by Mohammed, whom the Islamic believers refer to as a prophet, is strictly limited to rhyming poetry of a very specific kind. In fact the kind that is used by a suitor seeking marriage, and written by the suitor to a woman. As polite as such verse usually is, even nowadays, it is considered very baudy and "off colour" at the very best. The interesting fact is that, according to the rules, it MUST rhyme, though there are very specific and complicted limits as to content as well as the restriction to rhyming verse. 3). Mohammed, the reputed author of the Koran, was reputedly a poet, and along with other poets, is said to have been in contest. Such contests were traditional, at the black rock at Mecca, in pre-Islamic times. Since then such contests have ended. Only the Koran is recited there, as far as I know, and never any other poetry. The poetry contests ended when the Islamic era began. (The story of Mohammed reputedly having had the verses of the Koran dictated to him, in a cave, need not be repeated here.) 4). There is Sufi poetry, but Sufi poetry is quite a different matter. As I tend to understand that, the Sufi's claim exception as to methods, even though they have adopted Islamic beliefs to which their methods supposedly lead others who are reputedly unable to follow the more direct path prescribed by the Koran. So Sufi poetry has its unusual quirks and offers various fascinations and spiritual hooks. Not the only hooks in the tradition, but certainly hooks meant to urge conversion to belief in essentially the same ideas as espoused by the Arab mainstream. 5). Within Islamic culture, it appears, sociologically, that the arrangement is highly hierarchical and stratified. The desert Arabs are the highest level, then the other groups. Pakistanis tend to be regarded as among the lowest. The Persians as somewhere below the desert Arabs. Of course there is internal conflict, but nevertheless there does tend to be a spiritual class structure of sorts, even if loosely maintained. This has a lot to do with the factof language. The Koran is properly known only in its ancient Kufic Arabic form, not even in modern Arabic. The other groups rarely know modern Arabic, let alone ancient Arabic. In fact many Arabs cannot read the Koran in its orignal form. Poetry, of spurious kinds, though keeping loosely within the Islamic themes and somewhat consistent with Islamic beliefs, tends to be more prevalent in other cultures other than that of the desert Arabs. On the other hand, as in Iran, in the spirit of spiritual competitions, with the desert Arabs, which is a very important concept within Islamic tradition, there is tendency towards very rigid totalistic purging of such strains of poetics and more than a hard line urging towards purity where the only poetry is the Koran and certainly to them the only acceptable poetry. So, in fact, there is less and less, sanctioned poetry within Islamic culture, but more and more stress upon the Koran as essentially the last _proper_ instance of poetry within their culture. In fact there is an Islamic belief, often put into practice, that anything referring esplicitly to the Koran's contents that is not the Koran, particularly if it includes Arabic language, must be burned as an abomination. So I really do have difficulty understanding what that article is about. Sure isn't about anything on this planet..... Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 18:03:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: shameful bowering promo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Listpersons who may recall the name "George Bowering" will now be able to examine at length several shameful episodes purportedly from his life by going to http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html There one can find the novel _Piccolo Mondo_ , online in all of its 25 chapters.This book, which concerns itself with campus life in 1961 in Vancouver, was authored by GB together with wife Angela B and bosom-buddy Mike Matthews. Because I was also at UBC then, and knew not enough to avoid GB, I was a friend of Angela and Mike as well. Due no doubt to this friendship, these 3 are circulating a rumor that I too had a hand in writing this collocation of disgraceful episodes. If I did, so what? It was only to help out an old buddy or 3. Back in 1961, I helped them out of several bars a week. There are a few bugs in the text, but the fetish object formerly known as "a book" will be available within weeks, bug-free. When recoiling at the listed price of said object, remember that CAN$28 is only about US$18 . And keep in mind that Bowering Manor is mortgaged up the wazoo to cover GB's gambling debts. Shameful Promo over, dutifully yrs, db3. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 21:12:15 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality Comments: To: daniel7@IDT.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Nada Gordon wrote: > I also seem to remember a philosopher (who was it? help me > > here) talking about a state of mind called EPOCHE in which we experience > > something, if only for a moment, without any preconceptions, we see a bird > > and don't call it a BIRD or a SPARROW, we observe the movement, the > > feathers, the shape of the head, the sharp little beak,but the brain > > doesn't rush to file it in a nest of preconceptions and memories and > > experiences and classifications in order to understand it. > > DZ: Edmund Husserl. Thanks Dan. I should have suspected phenomenology at play here. Husserl is getting at what I meant by both the brick and the wine that I envoked. I guess I took to wine more immediately than some. Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 21:15:32 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: [Fwd: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------307B382D0E6CE5C250AD8826" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------307B382D0E6CE5C250AD8826 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My reply to Nada on this thread is attached, I hope. Don Wellman --------------307B382D0E6CE5C250AD8826 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-ID: <35113A1D.B88343C6@ma.ultranet.com> Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 10:30:38 -0500 From: Don Wellman Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Nada Gordon Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality References: Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------21D3D5FD83239013EB0D654A" --------------21D3D5FD83239013EB0D654A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Nada, very thoughtful, thought provoking, and engaging reply. There seem to be some misunderstandings on the mechanical/instrumental level. I sent my post to the list and invoked your earlier post as well as some others as I wove my thoughts--that is why I tangled your first meaning of enlightenment with my reservations concerning rationalism. I know I sent my post to the list because I received a copy of it when I next downloaded from the list. I suggest that you post the message that you sent me to the list now. I understand what you mean by 'epoche' and wish very much that I knew the source, but I don't. I also think that I understand what is generally meant by "direct apprehension." Usually --it means direct apprehension of the abstract--that cosmic rose or whatever. I see real roses very well. I do not always see patterned cosmic forces. When I see a brick in the road that speaks to me it is through color and texture--not with a voice, not as a "a jar on a hill in Tennessee." It might be a genetic quirk in my mental composition, but I tend to insist on the material as though it already had a surplus of abstract/spiritual meaning. I like Deleuze and Guattari, because there is a matter not only of slipping, but also the pace and acceleration in the rate of flow. I am opposing Pound (what I take to be the modern stance that "time is the enemy") and situating perception in time. Deja vue is stunning because it is a palpable fold in time. "Don, I perceived in your message a whiff of sophistry and in re-reading mine a blast of loose diction." My earlier post was very sophistical wasn't it? You are right I confused the motive to explain with the motive to taunt. I did not mean to personalize my response in the least bit though. I did pick at your loose diction precisely because of the doors that it opened in my mind and was pretty loose in turn with my own diction. Where did you find the mechanistic notion of the relation between words and things? I hope I don't think that way -- it sounds so rigid, not to mention unfashionable. My reference is to Bishop Pratt? to those philosophers in Gulliver's Travels who carry packs of things with which to discourse--the thread here is part of my challenge to the Enlightenment Era rationalism. By contrast I took your "anything" to be an essentially empty marker (that's Roland Barth's I think) and just rushed in ... I should have thanked you? the first time you drank wine, you probably had to go through the (maybe instantaneous) process of connecting drinkable liquids (water, grape juice--similes) to the wine that was before you to ensure it was not in fact gasoline or some other non-drinkable liquid. In time you learned to create distinctions about wines, Gallo being in big jugs and working class, etc.; you learned that wine was a soPHISticated EuropEan thing to drink; that white is for seafood I am not one to contest the notion that even breathing is learned behavior--but I do contest the notion that my pleasure in wine is semantically coded. Although everything you imply here is probably true in some sense; it is not true of "my pleasure" and if I become aware of any of this knowledge (maybe by choosing an Entre deux mers for mussels), it, it probably detracts from "my pleasure"--even the now self-conscious knowledge that I have made a sophisticated choice of a dry white to go with or cook the the mussels in--puts something like reception at risk, not the pleasure of the wine itself--something, a pleasure, I think I can relate to directly, even though my ego has now gotten in the way ... I'm not sure what you meant about mental acrobatics what I meant was that I directly apprehended your desire to cut the bullshit--even as I larded my own discourse with sophistical acrobatics. I suppose I had hoped that some one would get a direct sense that I was clowning--or did I desire to see my self caught in the web of my own rope tricks and threads. Maybe there is no third term for me for the way my mind works. I take directly, give back indirectly, suppressing the common denominator. I am much more fascinated by ego issues than is probably fashionable on this list. For me "feelings" are matters of reception and of empathy and of insights when there is a matching of desires. By "ego issues" I do not mean "egotism"--I generally see no point in subtracting myself from where I am standing--that gets back to the directness/indirectness thread. I am arguing for a direct apprehension of where I am standing (or of how I pass through my local environment) without elevating myself to some self above the self and thereby directly perceiving the otherwise only indirectly perceptible other. This is a negation of the Jungian notion of self/other ...individuation. probably an acrobatics of the soul that I called "mental" above? Irony has a bunch of meanings. One is pretended naivete (Socratic irony) that intends to lure something out of an interlocutor. Another is a statement that actually means the opposite or something quite different from what it literally states. Which irony did you load my statement with? Unfortunately I loaded your statement with Socratic irony. I received a "D" in Brit lit ages ago for my failure to appreciate "irony." With reference to what I wrote about Pound and Deleuze and Guattari, you wrote: This sounds a little like living on the San Andreas fault (another analogy, sorry, I'm getting lost in all these models -- my plateaus are slippery --oo) If you live there, you live there? That is why I put my emphasis here--if not in my first post-- on the palpable rate of flow. If the ground isn't sliding out from under your feet why worry? Be happy! It it is scurry. Possibly not a very pragmatic response on my part, but I have these sense that our cultural constructs conspire to adapt us to living with fear, uncertainty, distraction ... My point: there is both a mindscape and a physical terrain to adapt to. The easy answer is to adapt to the physical environment. We need to talk with one another about the anxiety that makes it difficult to do this (however produced, however maintained, and used to keep us happy consumers). Are we hurtling down an abyss or shrugging our shoulders? Why are we standing still? I am from the east and I am imagining that you and I are talking about the pros and cons of living on the San Andreas fault. I have not experienced the trauma of an earthquake so I depend on you for that information if you have it. >His enlightenment becomes my fake simile? ... I am getting flakey now, >having reached the limits of my ability to maintain a faced of coherence. Did you intend face or facet? Facet goes with your earlier metaphor but it's faces that are maintained, or "saved". I have puzzled myself over how to code this typos. I meant "face"--but when I re read it, I wished I had developed a "face off" analogy--as in hockey, my team against those with COHERENCE blazoned on their jerseys, sounds like bad Disney movie, now. In 1982, I edited an anthology of post-modern poetry and poetics called "Coherence." I wanted to conclude my first post by saying that even "indirection is a form of direct thought" and I think you understood that. I was thinking of William James who said that even a thunderclap does not interrupt the the stream of thought"--it may change its direction though. I get lost in my own channels so easily. ... concluding then on an appreciative and unresolved note. Don Wellman --------------21D3D5FD83239013EB0D654A Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Nada, very thoughtful, thought provoking, and engaging reply. There seem to be some misunderstandings on the mechanical/instrumental level. I sent my post to the list and invoked your earlier post as well as some others as I wove my thoughts--that is why I tangled your first meaning of enlightenment with my reservations concerning rationalism.

I know I sent my post to the list because I received a copy of it when I next downloaded from the list. I suggest that you post the message that you sent me to the list now.

I understand what you mean by 'epoche' and wish very much that I knew the source, but I don't. I also think that I understand what is generally meant by "direct apprehension." Usually --it means direct apprehension of the abstract--that cosmic rose or whatever. I see real roses very well. I do not always see patterned cosmic forces. When I see a brick in the road that speaks to me it is through color and texture--not with a voice, not as a "a jar on a hill in Tennessee." It might be a genetic quirk in my mental composition, but I tend to insist on the material as though it already had a surplus of abstract/spiritual meaning. I like Deleuze and Guattari, because there is a matter not only of slipping, but also the pace and acceleration in the rate of flow. I am opposing Pound (what I take to be the modern stance that "time is the enemy") and situating perception in time. Deja vue is stunning because it is a palpable fold in time.

"Don, I perceived in your message a whiff of sophistry and in re-reading
mine a blast of loose diction."

My earlier post was very sophistical wasn't it? You are right I confused the motive to explain with the motive to taunt. I did not mean to personalize my response in the least bit though. I did pick at your loose diction precisely because of the doors that it opened in my mind and was pretty loose in turn with my own diction.

Where did you find the mechanistic notion of the relation between words and things?
I hope I don't think that way -- it sounds so rigid, not to mention unfashionable.

My reference is to Bishop Pratt? to those philosophers in Gulliver's Travels who carry packs of things with which to discourse--the thread here is part of my challenge to the Enlightenment Era rationalism. By contrast I took your "anything" to be an essentially empty marker (that's Roland Barth's I think) and just rushed in ... I should have thanked you?

the first time you drank wine, you probably had to go through the
(maybe instantaneous) process of connecting drinkable liquids (water, grape
juice--similes) to the wine that was before you to ensure it was not in
fact gasoline or some other non-drinkable liquid.  In time you learned to
create distinctions about wines, Gallo being in big jugs and working class,
etc.; you learned that wine was a soPHISticated EuropEan thing to drink;
that white is for seafood

I am not one to contest the notion that even breathing is learned behavior--but I do contest the notion that my pleasure in wine is semantically coded. Although everything you imply here is probably true in some sense; it is not true of "my pleasure" and if I become aware of any of this knowledge (maybe by choosing an Entre deux mers for mussels), it, it probably detracts from "my pleasure"--even the now self-conscious knowledge that I have made a sophisticated choice of a dry white to go with or cook the the mussels in--puts something like reception at risk, not the pleasure of the wine itself--something, a pleasure, I think I can relate to directly, even though my ego has now gotten in the way ...

I'm not sure what you meant about mental acrobatics

what I meant was that I directly apprehended your desire to cut the bullshit--even as I larded my own discourse with sophistical acrobatics. I suppose I had hoped that some one would get a direct sense that I was clowning--or did I desire to see my self caught in the web of my own rope tricks and threads. Maybe there is no third term for me for the way my mind works. I take directly, give back indirectly, suppressing the common denominator. I am much more fascinated by ego issues than is probably fashionable on this list. For me "feelings" are matters of reception and of empathy and of insights when there is a matching of desires. By "ego issues" I do not mean "egotism"--I generally see no point in subtracting myself from where I am standing--that gets back to the directness/indirectness thread. I am arguing for a direct apprehension of where I am standing (or of how I pass through my local environment) without elevating myself to some self above the self and thereby directly perceiving the otherwise only indirectly perceptible other. This is a negation of the Jungian notion of self/other ...individuation. probably an acrobatics of the soul that I called "mental" above?

Irony has a bunch of meanings.  One is pretended naivete (Socratic irony)
that intends to lure something out of an interlocutor.  Another is a
statement that actually means the opposite or something quite different
from what it literally states.

Which irony did you load my statement with?

Unfortunately I loaded your statement with Socratic irony. I received a "D" in Brit lit ages ago for my failure to appreciate "irony."

With reference to what I wrote about Pound and Deleuze and Guattari, you wrote:

This sounds a little like living on the San Andreas fault (another analogy,
sorry, I'm getting lost in all these models -- my plateaus are slippery --oo)

If you live there, you live there? That is why I put my emphasis here--if not in my first post-- on the palpable rate of flow. If the ground isn't sliding out from under your feet why worry? Be happy! It it is scurry. Possibly not a very pragmatic response on my part, but I have these sense that our cultural constructs conspire to adapt us to living with fear, uncertainty, distraction ... My point: there is both a mindscape and a physical terrain to adapt to. The easy answer is to adapt to the physical environment. We need to talk with one another about the anxiety that makes it difficult to do this (however produced, however maintained, and used to keep us happy consumers). Are we hurtling down an abyss or shrugging our shoulders? Why are we standing still? I am from the east and I am imagining that you and I are talking about the pros and cons of living on the San Andreas fault. I have not experienced the trauma of an earthquake so I depend on you for that information if you have it.

>His enlightenment becomes my fake simile?  ... I am getting flakey now,
>having reached the limits of my ability to maintain a faced of coherence.

Did you intend face or facet?  Facet goes with your earlier metaphor but
it's faces that are maintained, or "saved".

I have puzzled myself over how to code this typos. I meant "face"--but when I re read it, I wished I had developed a "face off" analogy--as in hockey, my team against those with COHERENCE blazoned on their jerseys, sounds like  bad Disney movie, now. In 1982, I edited an anthology of post-modern poetry and poetics called "Coherence."

I wanted to conclude my first post by saying that even "indirection is a form of direct thought" and I think you understood that. I was thinking of William James who said that even a thunderclap does not interrupt the the stream of thought"--it may change its direction though. I get lost in my own channels so easily.

... concluding then on an appreciative and unresolved note.
 

Don Wellman
 
  --------------21D3D5FD83239013EB0D654A-- --------------307B382D0E6CE5C250AD8826-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 21:30:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: render into scissors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >60 messiahs? someone said. Mass production. (Pardon the pun.) >Remember, the idea of "messiah" had *nothing* (zero, zilch) to do with a >divine being (and only metaphorically to do with the saving of souls) >before the romanifying of Judaic ideas into Xtianity. Exactly. >T'were the Romans who had human gods, gods with sons (and daughters), >humans impregnated by divine beings, etc (well... there is a reference to >gods lying with women in Genesis, I believe, to create the race of >"Giants"). And foisted on my mojo such notions as virgin birth. Fact is that all kings were divine, as in divine kingship. People tended to understand things much more literally than they do now. (Odd word, literally, to use in that context as there was no question of literal as hardly anyone could read and write until very recently.) Divine kingship really was the divinity of the king. The king was 'od. Very odd, compared to the people. He even dressed very 'od. He talked 'od. He behaved 'odly. On a more serious note Frazer's _Golden Bough_ is sufficient as an introduction to that subject, and offers a paradigm applicable to most, if not all, ancient and not so ancient cultures. He covers the fusion of traditions quite nicely, within European culture, and many of their various manifestations. So when a king impregnated a non noble woman, obviously she had become pregnant by means of immaculate conception. That was nothing unusual in the ancient world. (Now we are taking it too in a too literal manner and fail to see this.) If she had become pregnant by means of someone of lower rank, her husband would have had reason for complaint and terrible consequences would have befallen her. She would have become outcast at best, being sent away, or stoned to death at worst. Since it was the lord, it is acceptable. We might easily imagine some telling fibs about the lord paying them a visit. However, since kings could have anything they chose to have, complaints were uncommon and the women were forgiven by their husbands as they had no say in the matter themselves and neither did their husbands. Neither could refuse to do the lord's bidding. Their command was from the lord, and if anything issued from the liaison then it was the work of the lord, and not of any man, making it quite acceptable. Seems 'od but it was an epidemic situation, if a woman was at all attractive enough to be noticed by the lord. Such events were euphemistically, poetically in fact, referred to, and no woman would ever dare say "the king came today and banged me up". That would have been completely unheard of. Instead she was blessed and immaculate, unstained in the eyes of her husband, and not in any way lacking in fidelity. The latter was essential so that women whom those of high rank found attractive and therefore took when the urge came to them, as a matter of their own undisputed privilege, would not be spurned subsequently and so that no social dissent and outcry against those privileged would be likely to happen. Kings, princes, and sometimes other members of the nobility such as dukes and barons commonly had such privileges. Even foreign lords, as some allusions in the grimoires to such demons readily attest. (Ah, you didn't know that either did you ? The grimoires on one level are mostly veiled references, even catalogues, of foreign political powers and their political relations. Some foreign lords were known for their prowess at immaculate conceptions. After all, no man was there, only a demon prince and there was issue from the womb nine months later. What could a husband do ? Visiting nobles also had certain privileges shared with the local lord.) What is interesting is that such a common occurrence, has come down to us within a particular story, from ancient times, and been preserved as what is often included within poetic literature. So who was the lord ? Herod is perhaps most likely. So we have a poem about the lord having a woman named Mary, and the lord having second thoughts about it later, as sometimes happened, because another potential heir might upset some succession plans, or create dangerous rivalries upsetting the established order. Any child who was a son of the lord, an immaculate conception, could gather a following simply by that fact, sharing in the divine kingship, and that could prove highly dangerous. Unless we claim parthanogenesis. Not so likely. >Some of you may have noticed that "first will be last" didn't actually >happen. Yet, the world religion built on that Jewish idea (oppressed/exiled >idea -- it's not essentialistically Jewish as is obvious I hope) rules on. >We live in Rome. We live in the direct succession to Alexandria and Rome. The ancient Egyption contribution, via ancient Greek culture, and Greek culture to Roman, cannot be underemphasized. As for the first coming last, it is something to win over the people. A poetic phrase promising a future where the king will follow and the people lead. Of course it has become politically true in terms of democracy, at least in principle, if not always in fact. Of course, a god was the first thing or being, according to most creation myths, and therefore the god will be last ? Perhaps saying only that whatever everything came from it will return to. The uncarved block of Taoism is the first and the last, from which all ventures forth and all ultimately returns in an undending cyclical haiku of a breath in and a breath out. Of course "spiritual" (philosophical or religious) systems and how they are understood are integral to poetics. It is impossible to do poetics without wrestling with some such questions....in any tradition or across cultural lines. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 22:21:15 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: adorno's ashes Comments: To: morpheal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit morpheal wrote: > > > Adonis presents a rich and readable explanation of Arab poetics from > >orality to modernity, e.g., "Language... is not a tool for communicating > >a detached meaning. It is meaning itself because it is thought. > > The element of orality is still most prevalent. The tradition was oral > recitation, and remains a tradition of oral recitation. The ability to > remember, precisely, is highly prized and rewarded within the culture. > That has not changed even a little since ancient times, but has in fact > become more emphatic since the Koran was reputedly received by Mohammed. > > So where is the orality to modernity ? It is in fact orality to orality. morpheal wrote: > > > DZ wrote: Adonis presents a rich and readable explanation of Arab poetics from orality to modernity, e.g., "Language... is not a tool for communicating a detached meaning. It is meaning itself because it is thought. > morpheal wrote: The element of orality is still most prevalent. The tradition was oral recitation, and remains a tradition of oral recitation. The ability to remember, precisely, is highly prized and rewarded within the culture. That has not changed even a little since ancient times, but has in fact become more emphatic since the Koran was reputedly received by Mohammed. > > So where is the orality to modernity ? It is in fact orality to orality. DZ: True, though the original Koranic orality pretty quickly became written and inviolable (emphatic) after the prophet's death. Adonis does struggle with the paradox you mention in his final chapter--and not altogether successfully (i.e., not without some equivocation). He does, though, call for a freedom of thought which transcends mere stylistic experiment, and concludes that "The essence of this is that modernity should be a creative vision, or it will be no more than a fashion. Fashion grows old from the moment it is born, while creativity is ageless. Therefore not all modernity is creativity but creativity is eternally modern" (101-102). Here, he seems to historicize the (changing, linear?) principle of creativity as equivalent to the (unchanging, cyclic?) ideal of the umma at the time of the prophet. As he says earlier, "...the modern Arab poet lives in a state of 'double siege' imposed upon him by the culture of dependency on the one hand, and the culture based on a foetal relationship with the traditionalist past on the other" (81). What he proposes may serve as a way out of this impasse for him, but many may find that razor too sharp a path. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 22:32:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Adonis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Aldon -- me too I hope you're wrong -- Adonis, to me, was not only a fine poet & critic, but also something of a friend -- I haven't heard anything about an untimely departure -- tried to check a few websites & newspapers, but no info -- can you try to remember where you may have seen this notice? or check your info? that wld be much appreciated -- Pierre Aldon Nielsen wrote: > I hope I'm wrong, but I think I rmember having recently read a notice of > the death of this fine poet & critic -- > > anybody know for sure? -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 22:51:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Adonis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit William Burmeister Prod wrote: > On Mar 19, 12:48pm, Pierre Joris sent: > > Subject: Adonis > > To quickly pick up two threads, one old -- the metaphor discussion --, one > new -- > > Tom's query re Adonis --, here the last chapter, of a longish Adonis essay on > Arab > > poetics & involving metaphor. The modern poets he speaks of are those of the > > Abassid period, i.e. Abu Tamman, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Abu Nuwas & Co., inventing > urban > > modern poetics some 800 to 1000 years before Baudelaire & co. were on the > > euro-scene. This is an insta-translation, as I type, so, please excuse > mistapes... > > Pierre > > Can we see some examples to back this incredible claim? Not such an incredible claim. Unhappily, though you may rather easily find some "examples" of Abu Nuwas' poetry it will be mainly lousy translations -- better to dig in deeper into Adonis' & other such writings (at least until we have or can make worthwhile translations of those poems) as it is an understanding of the cultural history of Arab poetics & history that make the point clearer. The claim sounds "incredible" only if you think that modernity is somehow the exclusive domain of euro-culture, i.e. something that happened first and only in 19C Europe & then in Americ and that could not have happened somewhere else in a totally different cultural situation a 1000 years ago. > Pierre, I can't help > but think that what you have posted below maybe means something to you (a > kinship with) your manisfesto on a nomadic poetics. Is there any such meaning > for ya? Of course -- that is to say, my interest in Arab poetics connects in some ways with my Nomad Manifesto — though there my focus is more on pre-islamic poetics, i.e. those of the Arab nomad tribes, rather than on what Adonis is talking about in this piece, which is an Arab urban modernism that flowered in the Abassid period, and which he, I believe rightly, compares to a similar revolution in poetcis happening in europena modernism in the 19C. So it is also true that much of the Abassid poetics involved Sufi notions & practices, and that is indeed of interest for my nomadic thinking. > > > > ADONIS -- ChapterXIV of “THE FIXED AND THE MOBILE; TRADIITON AND INNOVATION > IN > > ARAB CULTURE > . > . > . > >As metaphor is the artistic form of thought, traditonalism rejected it just > >as it had rejected the doctrine of interpretation. For the traditionalist > >current, everything that’s written in the Koran is literally true; God’s > language >cannot be metaphorical. What is called “metaphor” in the language of > the Koran >thus represents a reality whose essence we are ignorant of. If > poetry wants to >be religious, it has to abandon metaphor. Indeed, in the > traditionalists’ mind >metaphor is akin to a kind of “magic,” consisting in > substituting the false for > >the true. But the poets, without worrying about it, keep on using metaphor, > >and poetry > > Now make that perhaps the rejection of metaphor by traditionalism's successor > science & technology. Is metaphor the artistic form of thought (merely)? Does > metaphor have a place in a world at large ruled by science (include pseudo > science) and technology? I would tend to agree with you -- science is full of metaphor -- but isn't it exactly when that fact goes unrecognized, i.e. when science & its worldview constructs get taken as _literal_ and not metaphoric, that we get a kind of scientistic fundamentalist not that different from the kind of religious fundamentalism Adonis is referring to? Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 21:10:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Vogler Subject: [1]POETICS Digest - 18 Mar [1]POETICS Digest - 18 Mar 1998 to 19 Mar 3/19/98 Please note that my new email address is tavogler@cats.ucsc.edu Your message has been forwarded ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 00:05:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joanne molina Organization: student Subject: [Fwd: Ethics and Poetics Event at American University (fwd)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-Path: Received: from dresden.american.edu (dresden.american.edu [147.9.239.10]) by carthage.american.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA04703; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 13:23:46 -0500 (EST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by dresden.american.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA77998; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 13:22:49 -0500 Received: from www.CIRC.gwu.EDU (tiberium.circ.gwu.edu [128.164.127.251]) by dresden.american.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA59804; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 13:22:47 -0500 Received: from gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (mdw@gwis2 [128.164.127.252]) by www.CIRC.gwu.EDU (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA27888; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 13:16:14 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost (mdw@localhost) by gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id NAA27300; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 13:22:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 13:22:04 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Wallace To: Undisclosed recipients: ; Subject: Ethics and Poetics Event at American University (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 For those of you who like critical work intermixed with poetry, the following one day free conference at American University should provide an excellent combination of poetry and contemporary critical perspectives. Don't pass up this remarkable one day gathering of many of the best poetic and critical minds in the D.C. area. This event will certainly be one of the most informative of the year. Here's the info 1998 Ethics and Poetics Conference at American University Sponsored by the Philosophy Department at American University THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!! Please join us for a day of poetics and philosophy Saturday, March 28th from 11am-4:40pm American University Gray Hall Bentley Lounge FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO RSVP PLEASE CONTACT JOANNE MOLINA AT jo0984a@american.edu or call 202-637-0441 The program is as follows: 11:00am-1:30pm Opening Remarks: David Rodier Patricia Huntington: "Semiotics and the Ethics of Asymmetrical Reciprocity: Young, Benhabib, and Kristeva." Alan Levine: "Fiction as Political Theory: Chinua Achebe's Multicultural Take on Multiculturalism." Marianne Noble: "Emily Dickinson and Kristeva" Tom Mandel: "Ancestral Cave" Heather Fuller: "Perhaps this is a Rescue Fantasy" *LUNCH SERVED* SESSION II 2-4:30 Jonathan Loesberg: "Kant's Indifference and Foucault's Aesthetics: An Historicist Sublime." Peter Baker: "Writing the Gift" Joan Retallack: "The Scarlet Aitch-- Some Notes on PoetHics." Rod Smith: "The Boy Poems" Beth Joselow: "Begin at Once" This event includes poets/philosophers/theorists who are excited about the possibility of engaging in an interdisciplinary conversation. Please join us!! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 02:38:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: quartermain query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII please back-snorkel me the following bleep shell: current street residence info for Meredith & Peter Quartermain ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 00:40:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: shameful bromige bromo In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" re: > http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html Bromige's contention that I had a hand in writing his vapid maunderings yclept a "novel" can only worsen relations between Vancouver and California in the endless battle for hegemony over Oregon. The novel in question (really, a bunch of bad jokes and pointless Cold War adventure) was largely written by Bromige, a notorious bibliomaniac and shaker of martinis. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 05:42:17 -0800 Reply-To: arenal@bc.sympatico.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wolsak Organization: Arenal Resorts Subject: Re: quartermain query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit J. Kuszai wrote: > > please back-snorkel me the following bleep shell: > > current street residence info > for Meredith & Peter Quartermain Joel, 846 Keefer Street Vancouver, B.C. phone (604) 255-8274 Melissa Wolsak ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:25:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: science & metaphor In-Reply-To: <9803191525.ZM2083@plhp517.comm.mot.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>Now make that perhaps the rejection of metaphor by traditionalism's successor science & technology. Is metaphor the artistic form of thought (merely)? Does metaphor have a place in a world at large ruled by science (include pseudoscience) and technology? O goodness. I mean--take quarks--whose name famously comes from Finnegans Wake ("Three quarks for Mister Mark"), and whose different varieties are called up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange, and which are said to have the qualities "color" and "flavor." (And now "Quark" is both a highly excellent page layout program and a character on Deep Space Nine.) Or the whole branching-tree metaphor in cladistic evolution. It semeth me metaphor is all over science. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:35:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: greater than / less than / equal to MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I noticed that Tom Mandel suggested that language was something something interesting than ideas. Tom, as you can see my radio had some static in it. Could you repeat your language, or if you prefer, your ideas? Signed, Another old world ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:04:17 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: thanks Dan, Pierre, et. al. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks Dan and Pierre for comments and more that leave me eagerly looking forward to Adonis's book. Dan's citation: "Language... is not a tool for communicating a detached meaning. It is meaning itself because it is thought. Indeed, it precedes thought and is succeeded by knowledge. This implies that the criterion of meaning was contained in language itself, and was defined by the rules of language" (82) is invaluable, and I suspect Pierre's insta-translation will be too. I've clipped it to read this weekend. Thanks! Tom Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:55:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: biblical...? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I *don't* want to discuss this here, it is an imposition on a list for whom this will *not* be interesting, and anyway it's too divisive and positions are too set for a listserv to be a platform for making any progress on this kind of a subject. Yet, I can't get myself to let this go by: "I meant that Xtianity is a Biblical religion and the core of it, the spiritual core of it, is Hebraic. - Henry G." To which my answer is simple: bullshit. The spiritual core of Christianity is Roman pagan religion. You think the trinity-mystery is a "Hebraic" idea? No thanks. Btw, the term "Hebraic" is a hegemonic insult however unconsciously placed. Just as Rome used Greek ideas and any other ideas (immensely successfully!) as a means to ideological/cultural domination, so it turned to Jewish ideas and treated them similarly. In Xtianity, Judaism and scripture are swallowed. That's not being "core." The very idea of "a Biblical religion" illustrates the point. That there is a single "Bible" consisting of the Gospel (truth) and the "Old Testament" is a "fact" only within a dominant, imperial, "religious" empire (the term "religion" is a Roman term folks -- Jews do not have "a religion"). I will speak no more on this subject on this list. Feel free to backchannel if absolutely necessary. Tom Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:14:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm still curious about the notion that some subjects generate metaphor and others supply it. Also about the possibility of the trucks of metaphor moving meaning between sites. Someone told me yesterday that Americans move on average about 17 times per lifetime. I could be in haiku-daze. Do metaphors generate movement in much the same way that Ryder trucks connect the differences between Lafayette, Indiana, say, and Lubbock, Texas. So it all comes down to the current state of the road. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:03:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: science & metaphor In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:25:55 -0500 from On Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:25:55 -0500 Gwyn McVay said: > >O goodness. I mean--take quarks--whose name famously comes from Finnegans >Wake ("Three quarks for Mister Mark"), and whose different varieties are >called up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange, and which are said to >have the qualities "color" and "flavor." (And now "Quark" is both a highly >excellent page layout program and a character on Deep Space Nine.) Or the >whole branching-tree metaphor in cladistic evolution. It semeth me >metaphor is all over science. Maybe this idea of a divide between "artistic metaphorical thinking" and scientific (or direct, or realistic, or factual) non- or anti-metaphorical thinking - maybe this IDEA of art vs. science - is really a METAPHOR - for a deeper divide (in our minds & in our culture) between forces and impulses TOWARD art and AWAY from art. A kind of replay of the Byzantine battle between iconophiliacs and iconoclasts. Played out very directly in the federal de-funding of arts since the 80s. That art is a charismatic-absorptive-mirroring-illusory-gratifying phenomenon which evokes mixed feelings always - a dangerous, mongrel, illegitimate thing - a useless thing - so that poets who want to play this out in terms of metaphor's illusory idealistic traditionalist aestheticism, in favor of factuality's direct, honest, hardhitting political treatment of the thing, should maybe be aware of the double-edged nature of all this - "factism" becomes politically-correct "fascism" just as quickly as solipsissy aesthoidism does... every word is full of the freeplaying sounds of about a dozen other words... try to put that on yo grid an freeze-fry it... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:27:17 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: biblical...? In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:55:01 -0600 from On Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:55:01 -0600 Tom Mandel said: > >Yet, I can't get myself to let this go by: > >"I meant that Xtianity is a Biblical religion and the core of it, the >spiritual core of it, is Hebraic. - Henry G." > >To which my answer is simple: bullshit. The spiritual core of Christianity >is Roman pagan religion. You think the trinity-mystery is a "Hebraic" idea? >No thanks. Btw, the term "Hebraic" is a hegemonic insult however >unconsciously placed. Now this is getting fun. I'm not going to take recourse to "history", which on the list here would get boring & overlong. I'd rather respond with my own "illegitimate" story. I was brought up in the Episcopalian church. Singing the hymns, the whole bit. Lost interest in my teens. Regained interest in late teens, when I read the "2 testaments" through, front to back. You can toss the "bullshit" if you want to, Tom, but you wrong. As the elevator man said, "The Bible is my main book" - & that goes for the whole religion. > >Just as Rome used Greek ideas and any other ideas (immensely successfully!) >as a means to ideological/cultural domination, so it turned to Jewish ideas >and treated them similarly. In Xtianity, Judaism and scripture are >swallowed. That's not being "core." If you want to make accusations of "borrowing" you could start with the Hebrews - they took it all from Egypt & Mesopotamia & made a very new blend. > >The very idea of "a Biblical religion" illustrates the point. That there is >a single "Bible" consisting of the Gospel (truth) and the "Old Testament" >is a "fact" only within a dominant, imperial, "religious" empire (the term >"religion" is a Roman term folks -- Jews do not have "a religion"). > Yes, Christianity took the Hebrew Scriptures & twisted them into a shape full of menace, eventually, for the Jews themselves. This is the sick tragedy of it all and the reality that demands awareness, criticism, and change on the part of churches. But the same scriptures are the source of what is good about Christianity, too - the word, the demand for charity and justice, the message. Hope, joy, love. It a big mess o'pottage, bro - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 11:30:49 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: understanding/pomometametonymicalisexuality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Metaphors generate roads (that's my view). For I.A. Richards metaphors are "vehicles"--that is Ryder Trucks. The contents of the truck is its tenor or meaning. If the vehicle stands in for the tenor it is really a synecdoche isn't it? (container for thing contained). In Richard's way of putting it, meaning is relatively stable. One of the things we have been trying to do on this list is destabilize all three elemenrs and put them in motion: the truck, the contents of the truck, and the road. Metaphors deflect or impart motion (desiring in put)--but there is no guarantee that the roads or threads generated by a metaphor will connect Lafeyette with Lubbock. They might set up such a swaying in the truck that it tips over outside of Tulsa; the desires that the truck was carrying heating the ozone layer as they escape, and the sheell of the truck being appropriate for use as a taco stand. Don Wellman Mairead Byrne wrote: > I'm still curious about the notion that some subjects generate metaphor > and others supply it. Also about the possibility of the trucks of > metaphor moving meaning between sites. Someone told me yesterday that > Americans move on average about 17 times per lifetime. I could be in > haiku-daze. Do metaphors generate movement in much the same way that Ryder > trucks connect the differences between Lafayette, Indiana, say, and > Lubbock, Texas. So it all comes down to the current state of the road. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 11:35:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: borrowings Actually, I think the Romans borrowed from the Jews what the Jews borrowed from ME - long time ago in the pluperfect futurepast. Called a "closed timelike curve" in physics. Get out yo frisbees, O my people! It's SPRINGY! They didn't call Ezekiel a whizionary fer nothin! Or as Louis Armstrong put it : Ezekiel saw the wheels of glory, the great big wheels a turnin over - Ezekiel saw the wheels of glory - way in the middle of the air. - see the final footnote in Mudlark Poster #10 (http://www.unf.edu/mudlark) for a more complete hermhenautical explodapropoeperdition of these "realities". HG Wells was very well-informed, ol HG. - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 11:45:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: science & metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Gwyn McVay wrote: > >>>Now make that perhaps the rejection of metaphor by traditionalism's > successor science & technology. Is metaphor the artistic form of thought > (merely)? Does metaphor have a place in a world at large ruled by science > (include pseudoscience) and technology? > > O goodness. I mean--take quarks--whose name famously comes from Finnegans > Wake ("Three quarks for Mister Mark"), and whose different varieties are > called up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange, and which are said to > have the qualities "color" and "flavor." (And now "Quark" is both a highly > excellent page layout program and a character on Deep Space Nine.) Before which it had been the name of en excellent experimental science fiction magazine edited by Chip Delaney & Marylin Hacker. In German of course quark has always been soft cheese. > Or the > whole branching-tree metaphor in cladistic evolution. It semeth me > metaphor is all over science. > > Gwyn -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 11:58:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: science & metaphor In-Reply-To: Henry Gould "Re: science & metaphor" (Mar 20, 10:03am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'm glad Pierre and Henry understood what I meant rather than what I wrote (thank you). Instead of having a generous, outside perspective on the whole of science, 'specially wrt to its glorious heyday before hyperspecialization, when science worked itself nicely into (co-existed with) a pre-existing aesthetic of the imagination, the intent of my question was to probe for a way out from the inside of this unquestionable hegemony of technology, and the idea of science just "being there," intuited rather like history is now. This is really also an economic thing now ("don't take this personally, this is about business"). Pierre answered succinctly when he replied, "science is full of metaphor -- but isn't it exactly when that fact goes unrecognized, i.e. when science & its worldview constructs get taken as _literal_ and not metaphoric, that we get a kind of scientistic fundamentalist not that different from the kind of religious fundamentalism Adonis is referring to?" I agree with Henry too. This is not merely an issue: the notion of such a dichotomy is itself metaphor and the implications are there for hegemony in the extremes. Gwyn's mention of "three quarks for Muster Mark" illustrates the liberal mindedness of scientists in the 60's and 70's to use such whimsical naming conventions (W/albeit western sources). Not to say that doesn't happen now, but there is an overall fear of being misunderstood, or cryptic in today's marketing science (Oedipal) mentality so perhaps that explains why they still use the SAME names. I think that the quark phrase comes from Lear or Carroll rather than Finnegan's Wake doesn't it? William Burmeister On Mar 20, 10:03am, Henry Gould wrote: > Subject: Re: science & metaphor > On Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:25:55 -0500 Gwyn McVay said: > > > >O goodness. I mean--take quarks--whose name famously comes from Finnegans > >Wake ("Three quarks for Mister Mark"), and whose different varieties are > >called up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange, and which are said to > >have the qualities "color" and "flavor." (And now "Quark" is both a highly > >excellent page layout program and a character on Deep Space Nine.) Or the > >whole branching-tree metaphor in cladistic evolution. It semeth me > >metaphor is all over science. > > Maybe this idea of a divide between "artistic metaphorical thinking" and > scientific (or direct, or realistic, or factual) non- or anti-metaphorical > thinking - > > maybe this IDEA of art vs. science - is really a METAPHOR - > > for a deeper divide (in our minds & in our culture) between forces and > impulses TOWARD art and AWAY from art. A kind of replay of the Byzantine > battle between iconophiliacs and iconoclasts. Played out very directly > in the federal de-funding of arts since the 80s. That art is a > charismatic-absorptive-mirroring-illusory-gratifying phenomenon which > evokes mixed feelings always - a dangerous, mongrel, illegitimate thing - > a useless thing - > > so that poets who want to play this out in terms of metaphor's illusory > idealistic traditionalist aestheticism, in favor of factuality's > direct, honest, hardhitting political treatment of the thing, should > maybe be aware of the double-edged nature of all this - "factism" > becomes politically-correct "fascism" just as quickly as solipsissy > aesthoidism does... > > every word is full of the freeplaying sounds of about a dozen other > words... try to put that on yo grid an freeze-fry it... > > - Henry Gould >-- End of excerpt from Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 08:39:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Adonis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Adonis wrote me a letter last week, so I presume he's well and alive, Aldon. Douglas Messerli Aldon Nielsen wrote: > > I hope I'm wrong, but I think I rmember having recently read a notice of > the death of this fine poet & critic -- > > anybody know for sure? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 13:04:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: Reading in Buffalo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------6BD4E92BAD02629AF7465A8C" --------------6BD4E92BAD02629AF7465A8C Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sunday, March 22 at 2pm just buffalo literary center presents: Rosmarie Waldrop & Ben Friedlander @ Hallwall's Contemporary Arts Center 2495 Main St. Truly, Mike --------------6BD4E92BAD02629AF7465A8C Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sunday, March 22 at 2pm

just buffalo literary center presents:

Rosmarie Waldrop
&
Ben Friedlander

@
Hallwall's Contemporary Arts Center
2495 Main St.

Truly,
Mike --------------6BD4E92BAD02629AF7465A8C-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:30:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: GB : too far this time Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" re : http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html George Borrowing has gone too far this time. I dont like taking up list space for a personal matter, but since he has gone public, I must respond here. For a lifetime, since we played the national sport, hookey, together as boys in Oliver, B.C., I have bailed him out of innumerable scrapes--and this is the recompense I get : "vapid maunderings," "bad jokes." All I did was tighten a linguistic screw or two in a work that is largely his alone (with a little help from his two other cohorts). You know, corrected his spelling, changed each archaic "a lot" to "alot," made sure his participles weren't dangling, and helped him with the Future Vague and Imperfect (always his achille's heel). Back of all this lies the poor self-image he suffers from. This is why he is bad-mouthing a really neat piece of writing and projecting the flaws that he imagines, onto others--one other, namely me. (I notice he says nothing of the excellent passages by his other friend, Matthews, or by Angela, his own wife!) George Burrowing, however, cannot escape so easily this time. Go to the htttp above & you'll find his name boldly inscribed on the Title Page. More telling, you'll find his prose-style throughout, easily identifiable to players & lurkers of this List alike. And who can doubt that the escapades within could only have happened to a youthful Beering? (Since they continue to happen to an aging Baring?) I trust this will be the last time I have to trouble the List with rebuttals in this case. Let GB know that the age of duelling isnt over till I say so. As for Oregon, it has already been Californicated, too late for BC to Vanca-hoover it up. Outraged in Virtuality, db3. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 13:35:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: GB : too far this time In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:30:56 -0800 from > >I trust this will be the last time I have to trouble the List with >rebuttals in this case. Let GB know that the age of duelling isnt over till >I say so. As for Oregon, it has already been Californicated, too late for >BC to Vanca-hoover it up. Outraged in Virtuality, db3. why don't you just toss it in the Washington-machine? Heh heh. that was funny, I think. - Always, Baring-Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:49:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: George Washington-Machine Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In reply to Mr. S. Baring-Gould, Hymn-writer's, post : Funny he should allude to the state of Washington, as coincidentally an entire chapter (6 or 7, I think) is devoted to a visit by a UBC drama-group to present a play at UW Seattle. And the protagonists--principally, one "G"--are really put through the wringer there. db3 (That's at http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html ) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 13:52:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: GB : too far this time Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>I trust this will be the last time I have to trouble the List with >>rebuttals in this case. Let GB know that the age of duelling isnt over till >>I say so. As for Oregon, it has already been Californicated, too late for >>BC to Vanca-hoover it up. Outraged in Virtuality, db3. > >why don't you just toss it in the Washington-machine? Heh heh. >that was funny, I think.- Always, Baring-Gould That reminds me of a quote that I particularly like, though it is a very dark bit of prose about poetics: "In the end the artificial intelligentsia will win: people will have been reduced to machines - as Winston Smith was reduced to loving Big Brother - and there will be only one understanding of King Lear." from "1984: A Collection of Essays" published in 1984 the author of the quote is a contributor to that intresting little volume, to which I have forgotten the other publication data.... author's name ? Joseph Weizenbaum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory M.I.T. Written in 1984, the anniversary of Orwell's classic. Of course, as a footnote, I think Adonis would see one interpretation of the Koran as the ultimate evolution of Arab poetics, and quite acceptable as the outcome of the creative process they believe manifests conceptually and currently in gestation, if not maturing towards an Islamic totalism. I would think they too have achieved A.I. and are able to use the technology. In fact I am _intuitively_ absolutely certain that they have it. Reminds me a little of the Soviet "megaloplasm", which was also a kind of A.I. loop machine technology resembling the many other kinds of what are sometimes loosely called "techno shamanism". So it goes....."not with a bang, but a whimper..." T.S.E. as the last prophet. Morpheal aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 13:54:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: borrowings In-Reply-To: henry gould "borrowings" (Mar 20, 11:35am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 20, 11:35am, henry gould wrote: > Subject: borrowings > Actually, I think the Romans borrowed from the Jews what the Jews borrowed > from ME - long time ago in the pluperfect futurepast. >-- End of excerpt from henry gould Who dat man? Gabriel!!! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 13:57:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Z. Baring-Gould" Subject: Re: George Washington-Machine In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 20 Mar 1998 10:49:54 -0800 from >In reply to Mr. S. Baring-Gould, Hymn-writer's, post : Funny he should >allude to the state of Washington, as coincidentally an entire chapter (6 >or 7, I think) is devoted to a visit by a UBC drama-group to present a play >at UW Seattle. And the protagonists--principally, one "G"--are really put >through the wringer there. db3 (That's at >http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html ) On behalf of my beloved brother Spanky, who is unfortunately momentarily (in a time-wiped sense) incommodious "at the moment", I want to thank Mr. - db3[?] - for alerting us to this possible electronical allusion [fictional, I hope] to his "dead ringer" experience. In the Masonic Temple of Boom, OR, when the last G became the first G and the borrower burrowed through a wormhole and emerged - drug-free - in Vancougar, BP [Black Panther, Canalda]. We'll be sure to look it up, together. If Dante & Virgil traveled that path, why, so can I. God pointed the way. But did he get it all backwards - that remains the question, with a capital Q. I'm sure Beatrice knows. - Zelda Baring-Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 15:29:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: LanceEli3 Subject: Re: biblical...? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit You think the trinity-mystery is a "Hebraic" idea? >No thanks. Btw, the term "Hebraic" is a hegemonic insult however >unconsciously placed. Sorry, I have to say something. Actually there are quite a few references in Jewish scriptures about the Trinity. For example, when God says "let's make man in my image," the Hebrew word actually means "our image" (plural). Unfortunately things such as this are often lost in translation. Its always good to research such things when studying religious scriptures. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 15:48:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: biblical...? In-Reply-To: Henry Gould "Re: biblical...?" (Mar 20, 10:27am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Subject: Re: biblical...? > On Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:55:01 -0600 Tom Mandel said: > > > >Yet, I can't get myself to let this go by: > > > >"I meant that Xtianity is a Biblical religion and the core of it, the > >spiritual core of it, is Hebraic. - Henry G." > > > >To which my answer is simple: bullshit. The spiritual core of Christianity > >is Roman pagan religion. You think the trinity-mystery is a "Hebraic" idea? > >No thanks. Btw, the term "Hebraic" is a hegemonic insult however > >unconsciously placed. > With all due respect to Tom and others here (since this was noty directed at me per se), this is just unnecesary. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here by making statements such as, "The spiritual core of Xtianity is Roman Pagan religion." First because it just ain't true and ignores a wealth of OT prophecy, and hey, what about the reformation there. This ends up sounding like the most reductionalizing demagoguery, which isn't Tom M. (in light of his vasty knowledge in the area of Hebrew studies). Not to essentialize mine or anyone elses's beliefs here over yrs (Tom) either: you stay on yr trajectory and I'll stay on mine. William Bvrmeister ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:06:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: zinc reading: come all ye faithful Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" from the mighty Anselm B.: > > > Rod Smith & Andrew Levy at the Zinc Bar this Sunday > > All please come, fly in from out of town > > > 90 W. Houston St./6:30 pm > > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:04:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rod Smith & Andrew Levy at the Zinc Bar this Sunday All please come, fly in from out of town 90 W. Houston St./6:30 pm ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:34:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Adonis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Adonis wrote me a letter last week, so >I presume he's well and alive, Aldon. > >Douglas Messerli Is Adonis any adoptive relation to Salmon Rushdie ? I wonder. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 15:14:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: biblical...? In-Reply-To: <1915a133.3512d1b4@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Interesting. It's many years since I've had a tanah (that's hebrew for bible for you honkies) in the house, but I don't remember that plural. Backchannel (or front-channel) me a transliteration if you can't supply it in hebrew alphabet? By the by, my King James, courtesy of the Gideons and Best Western, does have the plural, but I always assumed that that was Lancelot Andrews' idea of proper protocol. I'd love to see the other quite a few references, or at least citations so that I can look them up. It's no secret that there are lots of polytheistic survivals in the Old Testament, although these tend to diminish through time, and Genesis I is pretty late, and probably of priestly origin. All the more reason for my curiosity. If you have a Masoretic translation around it would be nice to know how the rabbis translate the phrase as well. At 03:29 PM 3/20/98 EST, you wrote: > You think the trinity-mystery is a "Hebraic" idea? >>No thanks. Btw, the term "Hebraic" is a hegemonic insult however >>unconsciously placed. > >Sorry, I have to say something. Actually there are quite a few >references in Jewish scriptures about the Trinity. For example, when God >says "let's make man in my image," the Hebrew word actually means "our >image" (plural). Unfortunately things such as this are often lost in >translation. Its always good to research such things when studying >religious scriptures. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 18:09:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: biblical...? In-Reply-To: <1915a133.3512d1b4@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII When did the Jesus Seminar hijack the Poetics List? Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Program in Writing and Rhetoric (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 18:24:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881 Subject: Re: opposite Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Mark P: I believe it's fine to use the word anti-racist. I really asked a very simple question. What is the opposite of the word racist (if you don't use the anti- prefix or the alpha privative)? And more generally, I guess, what percentage of english words have "viable" opposites? And then do you trust words that don't have "viable" opposites? Sorry, those last questions are kind of kevin spacey. But the first one is simple. You also wrote: <> This i take issue with tho. I don't think even the umpires understand this rule (eg it can be invoked in the outfield. eg it can be NOT invoked when an infielder catches a fly with runners on 1 & 2 or bags loaded with less than 2 outs if the ball is deemed to be not enough of a :pop: a line drive is an easy example of this. but in general, how do you know what's a pop & what's not?) Bill Luoma <<------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 13:21:18 -0500 From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: opposite I find this post completely baffling. I was talking about the Brooklyn Dodgers, as I recall... "only opposite of the word racist"??? ...**Huh?** The Dodgers who kept the team from carrying out a racist "job action" against Jackie Robinson were, I think, (for their time and place) anti-racist guys... Right? Your're too profound for me, Bill. Thank heavens I at least understand the infield fly rule!! Mark @lanta>> On Wed, 18 Mar 1998, Maz881 wrote: > in an interesting post about the cia, mark P wrote: > > "anti-racist guys" > > is this the "only" opposite of the word racist? > > like for fascist couldn't you say anarchist or communist or democracy believer > in? > > for sexist, what? > > interested in these big words lately. > > Bill Luoma > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 15:44:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: FW: Error Message Haiku MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BD545A.1AF5B820" This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. ------ =_NextPart_000_01BD545A.1AF5B820 Content-Type: text/plain > <> > Fellow Listees: Some of these are better than others, but the best really will make you smile, so I send them forward as harbingers of spring. I also highly recommend an essay in the current issue of _Harper's_ (what IS that apostrophe doing there? Harper's WHAT?) by Laura Kipnis, which is advertised as a justification of adultery but turns out to be more than that: an transference (uh oh) of the LANGUAGE of private "scandalous" behavior into public relevance -- an advance beyond the by now lame retort "I don't care what he does privately as long as he's doing a good job publicly" -- when actually the private and public have always had intimate and scurrilous relations. I note, happily, the baseball chatter starting to increase . . . but will myself be watching the visual analog of Duncan McNaughton's _Valparaiso_ in a few hours -- think of it: didn't Kansas lose early because granting Irby tenure AND winning an NCAA championship would just be too much in one month? ------ =_NextPart_000_01BD545A.1AF5B820 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Message-ID: <199803161848.KAA25884@mail.orst.edu> From: Jean Caspers Reply-To: osucclp List To: Multiple recipients of list OSUCCLP Subject: FW: Error Message Haiku Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:45:12 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1460.8) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Many of you may find these poignant. I know I did... Jean. > > Poetry for the PC... > > > > > >Salon (http://www.salon1999.com/) has just announced > > > >the winners of their "Haiku Error Messages" contest. > > > >Here are the winners and those of honorable mention: > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > A crash reduces > > > > your expensive computer > > > > to a simple stone. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Seeing my great fault > > > > Through darkening blue windows > > > > I begin again > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > A file that big? > > > > It might be very useful. > > > > But now it is gone. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Everything is gone; > > > > Your life's work has been destroyed. > > > > Squeeze trigger (yes/no)? > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Windows NT crashed. > > > > I am the Blue Screen of Death. > > > > No one hears your screams. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Three things are certain: > > > > Death, taxes, and lost data. > > > > Guess which has occurred. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The code was willing, > > > > It considered your request, > > > > But the chips were weak. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Printer not ready. > > > > Could be a fatal error. > > > > Have a pen handy? > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Errors have occurred. > > > > We won't tell you where or why. > > > > Lazy programmers. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Server's poor response > > > > Not quick enough for browser. > > > > Timed out, plum blossom. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Chaos reigns within. > > > > Reflect, repent, and reboot. > > > > Order shall return. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Login incorrect. > > > > Only perfect spellers may > > > > enter this system. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > This site has been moved. > > > > We'd tell you where, but then we'd > > > > have to delete you. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Wind catches lily > > > > scatt'ring petals to the wind: > > > > segmentation fault > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ABORTED effort: > > > > Close all that you have. > > > > You ask way too much. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > First snow, then silence. > > > > This thousand dollar screen dies > > > > so beautifully. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > With searching comes loss > > > > and the presence of absence: > > > > "My Novel" not found. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The Tao that is seen > > > > Is not the true Tao, until > > > > You bring fresh toner. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > The Web site you seek > > > > cannot be located but > > > > endless others exist > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Stay the patient course > > > > Of little worth is your ire > > > > The network is down > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > There is a chasm > > > > of carbon and silicon > > > > the software can't bridge > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Yesterday it worked > > > > Today it is not working > > > > Windows is like that > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > To have no errors > > > > Would be life without meaning > > > > No struggle, no joy > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > You step in the stream, > > > > but the water has moved on. > > > > This page is not here. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > No keyboard present > > > > Hit F1 to continue > > > > Zen engineering? > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hal, open the file > > > > Hal, open the damn file, Hal > > > > open the, please Hal > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Out of memory. > > > > We wish to hold the whole sky, > > > > But we never will. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Having been erased, > > > > The document you're seeking > > > > Must now be retyped. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > The ten thousand things > > > > How long do any persist? > > > > Netscape, too, has gone. > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Rather than a beep > > > > Or a rude error message, > > > > These words: "File not found." > > > > > > > > > > > > * > > > > > > > > > > > > Serious error. > > > > All shortcuts have disappeared. > > > > Screen. Mind. Both are blank. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------ =_NextPart_000_01BD545A.1AF5B820-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 18:44:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: biblical...? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >When did the Jesus Seminar hijack the Poetics List? They will have to footnote it now. After all, this discussion of that epic, is archived. We came, we saw, we conquered, and we moved on to another topic..... Cheers ! Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 00:48:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Bromige shy abt achievement In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >re : http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html Well, if you go to the http above you will see what I and any other fool can see. There are 4 photos of the purported four authors. There is a photo in b+w (whereas the other three are coloured) of "George Bowering." An obviouys ruse on Bromige's part. No one looks that dumb, certainly not I. He got some picture out of the Weekly World News and used photo shop on it or something and came up with this dummy "author." I am not denying that Brownwich may have collaborated with the other 2 authors, though I rather suspect that they are phantasms, too. But the point is that among the maunderings and really, trust me, bad jokes, there is some good writing, and I take that to be Bromige at his best (as he was in the book "The Gathering." He should not be so shy as to disown those fine passages (one of 21 words on page 212, for example, and I think there was another one somewhere in there. More important: I would like to take this opportunity to announce that Broadwinch never once got me out of trouble. He once saved me from Fiona Dampington, but I never said I wanted to be rescued in that instance. But he had the Jaguar and I had no car at all in those days. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 08:21:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: religion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" William Burmeister writes: "let's not throw the baby out with the bath water here by making statements such as, "The spiritual core of Xtianity is Roman Pagan religion. This ends up sounding like the most reductionalizing demagoguery..." Here's a secret for everyone on this list to share: "Sometimes the truth is reductive. So sorry. The mgt." "Not to essentialize mine or anyone elses's beliefs here over yrs (Tom)" You are welcome to your beliefs, Bill. I *don't* mean to step on Xtian toes. If for example you find a prophecy of Xtianity in the "OT" - go for it. It is the relationship (imperial) of Xtianity to Jews which we were discussing here. "you stay on yr trajectory and I'll stay on mine." Hmmm. If you don't like the sound my (intellectual) plane makes when it takes off or lands 100 feet from your (intellectual) house, you are free to move (intellectually), plug your (intellectual) ears, or (intellectually) try to shoot me down. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 08:01:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: in our image Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Huge recommendations for the recently-published (but awfully expensive) _Schocken Bible, Vol. 1, The Five Books of Moses._ translated with intro, commentaries and notes by Everett Fox. The goal is to get as close to the feeling, texture, structure of the Hebrew as possible. It's fabulous. "Let us make humankind in our image" As you may imagine, in the many many volumes of commentary on this verse it has always seemed a problem. One of my favorite midrashim on the subject pictures Moses on Mt. Sinai, writing the scripture at God's dictation. He has to write the work of each day of creation. When he comes to our verse, he cries: "Sovereign of the universe, why do you supply an excuse to heretics?" "Write," He replied. "Whoever wishes to err may err." *A lot* of Judaism is in those few words. There are two creation stories in Genesis -- in the first "Let us make humankind in our image." In the second "and YHWH, God, formed the human, of dust from the soil, he blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being. human is "adam" dust is "adama" -- "and the dust became a living being." Then it is the role of the human to span that gap, between "in our image" and the dust of which she was formed. Never to lose both or, as we say in my industry, "the two ends of the cable are in the same place." One of the chasidim used to say "here are two truths to keep in your pockets and use as required: 'for my sake was the world created' and 'I am dust.'" Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 09:57:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: in our image MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Tom Mandel wrote: > Huge recommendations for the recently-published (but awfully expensive) > _Schocken Bible, Vol. 1, The Five Books of Moses._ translated with intro, > commentaries and notes by Everett Fox. Tom -- Amazon is selling it right now in hc for $24.95 I think, which isn't that bad (down from $35) -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel: (518) 426 0433 fax: (518) 426 3722 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "What often prevents us from giving ourselves over to a single vice is that we have several of them." — La Rochefoucauld “All my life I’ve heard one makes many” — Charles Olson ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 15:01:50 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L.MacMahon and T.R.Healy" Subject: Cork Poetry Conference 1 Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Saturday the 14th of March the second Cork Conference for New and Experimental Poetry organised by Alex Davis and Matthew Gedden was held. First on was Trevor Joyce whose latest works, _Syzygy_ and _Hellbox_ were launched at the conf. In his introduction to the poem _Chimaera_, he mentioned that formally it is based on the renga and combines texts by Richard Lovelace, Aloysius Bertrand and the author and later interpolaters of the Lieh Tzu. (In a hostile review in Ireland, the poem was slated as being too heavily influenced by Paul Muldoon, though not a word of it is Trevor's own. The briefest glance at the notes in the book _Stone Floods_, which was the subject of the "review" would have revealed this.) The Earth due to be struck by an asteroid on 26th October 2028, Archbishop Ussher's dating of creation to 10 am Thursday the 26th of October 6006 bc, and TJ's own birthday being the 26th of October, the poem is justifiably full of endings and beginnings. Also, look up chimaera in a biology dictionary. more tomorrow Randolph Healy *************************** Chimaera Trevor Joyce *for Tina Murphy* Ceres and Bacchus bid good night sharp frosty fingers all your flowers have topped and what scythes spared winds shave off quite a moth bred out of moonlight I disturbed from the dark folds where it lay hid a naked thing that seems no man may cheat and love like any jack another dressed may prove a beast that creature fluttered free but voided in my lap a maggot with a human head monstrous misshapen such whose white satin upper coat of skin cut upon velvet rich incarnadin has yet a body and of flesh within whereas anything with six foot of skeleton with hands that grip with scalp of hair front teetch concealed inside a face and which leans forward as it runs is called a man with us the joys of earth and air and thine entire that with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly the sky unrolled its folds of purple and blue to the winds and later from these steps I saw on the horizon a village torched by soldiers blaze like a comet in the sky then ah the sickle golden ears are cropped dropping December shall come weeping in the blood of horses become jack o lantern the blood of ment become will o the wisp kites become sparrow hawks and those hawks cuckoos when the sun opened its golden lashes on the chaos of worlds and the earth was adrift with its cargo of ashes and bones my terrified soul then fled through the grey web of halflight but that spawn hung on in this shrill rush and spun himself into the full of its white mane cuckoos in due course again turn raptor swallows become oysters seashells hatch geese poor verdant fool and now green ice thy joys large and as lasting as they perch of grass bid us lay in gainst winter rain and poise apes grown of sheep fish that are rotten fruit flies born of roe such transformations are souls of the dead like mountain oaks uprooted by demons souls of the dead like meadow flowers gathered by angels sun sky earth man all had begun all gone I cannot tell who loves the skeleton of a poor marmoset naught but bone bone ************ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 09:46:55 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Stein quote - where? I was reading along in a back issue of West Coast Line, and came across an article by Doug Barbour on Roy Kiyooka. Doug cites an epigraph from Stein used by Kiyooka. Here's the Stein passage: "The business of art is to live in the complete actual present, that is the complete actual present, and to completely express that complete actual present." Neither Doug nor I have been able to track down the precise source for this Stein-quote, though we suspect it may be in the Lectures (I've looked & can't find it) or Composition as Explanation (I've looked & can't find it). Anyone able to help out & locate where Kiyooka gets the Stein passage? Kiyooka uses the passage in _transcanada letters_ but does not give a source for the quote. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 13:15:09 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Poetry Tourism: Hong Kong Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit If anybody has anything to suggest as far as poetry (readings, bookstores, books in English to read before I go, sites, etc.) in Hong Kong, Macau, or Guangdong (sp?) province, I would like to listen. I will be there for six days and am not going further into China. A former employer who spoke Mandarin mentioned to me that there were two distinct styles of poetry she was familiar with, a very formal one that her mother used to write poems, and a more informal, modern style. In Cantonese as well? Any difference in the poetry since the pronunciation is different? Help? Regards, Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 10:25:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: i dont "under stand" metaphor Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" so i will use my posting space today to deal--with merciless brevity--with Bowering's latest, concerning evidence to be viewed at http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html --Just how reliable the Klaxon of Kerrisdale may be, can be illustrated by his comments re the "authors' pics" to be seen at the beginning of _Piccolo Mondo_ . *His* (quel egotist!) is not the only B+W pic : mine,too, is B+W. But unlike the others, I do not get to have that small rectangle all to my own body. If you look closely, you will see that the arm (with fist attached) that props up my chin, is at an impossible angle. This is because it is actually Bowering's right arm, not my left. This may be verified by turning to p. 40 of Gale Research's _Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series_, vol. 26, where the entire snapshot is reproduced. I was able to check the online novel properly for the first time yesterday by going to a computer superior to my own. It's a very nice design job, as one has come to expect from Coach House. And let me say that Bowering's best writing is in this novel. Didnt know the boy had it in him. He is also an accomplished lit-mimic; there are passages in there I am told "sound like" me. However, a Jaguar was never one of my attributes. George has me confused with Liam Chutney, scholar of Nineties Decadence, who gave a snockered GB a lift one night and offered to satisfy his curiosity concerning Des Esseintes & the Philistines. Took them a long time to get home. With the wish that this posting contain something of value, I'll add that I'm writing while listening to a great, weekly radio show available to all in the Bay Area who can receive 94.1 FM, KPFA public radio. It's "The Johnny Otis Show," 3 R n B packed hours from 9 till noon each Saturday, with commentary by Mr. Otis hisself as he spins a notable succession of vinyl from his extensive collection. The hour from 10-11 he reserves for archive notes--he plays recordings he was involved in as performer &/or producer, and remarks on what now strike him as their strong or weak points, tells how they came to be made, and the like. Sometimes there's live music--the other week, there was a Klezmer trio, a string quartet from a local symphony, and a blues group--and spontaneous R+B prosody from the small crowd gathered there at the Powerhouse Brewing Co in Sebastopol. For those Listfellows who follow poetry into its musical adventure, and for historians of the blues, this is a "mustn't miss" event. I'm goin' down there soon as i sign off. See ya there? db3 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 14:26:12 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Stein quote - where? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi-- The Stein quote comes from "Plays," from LECTURES in AMERICA. I don't have the page number--I found the quote cited in a wonderful book by Wendy Steiner entitled EXACT RESEMBLANCE to EXACT RESEMBLANCE (Yale: Yale U Press, 1978). If you can't find the page number in "Plays," you will be able to find it in Steiner. And thanks for subscribing to Explosive! I just got your sub today-- Best, Katy *** On Sat, 21 Mar 1998, Hank Lazer wrote: > I was reading along in a back issue of West Coast Line, and came > across an article by Doug Barbour on Roy Kiyooka. Doug cites an > epigraph from Stein used by Kiyooka. Here's the Stein passage: > > "The business of art is to live in the complete actual present, that > is the complete actual present, and to completely express that > complete actual present." > > Neither Doug nor I have been able to track down the precise source > for this Stein-quote, though we suspect it may be in the Lectures > (I've looked & can't find it) or Composition as Explanation (I've > looked & can't find it). > > Anyone able to help out & locate where Kiyooka gets the Stein passage? > Kiyooka uses the passage in _transcanada letters_ but does not give a > source for the quote. > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 22:04:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: sonnet, DNS, entropy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - sonnet, DNS, entropy now the time of thermal heating splatters a particular zero across the domain name insertion, that is to wet what bit into the format of the seven groves, consider education .edu lending a path crackling with desire and naked students hardening an axiom. Here is the axiom: Succession always follows, and there is no Reason. To assume a One anywhere in, the vicinity. so it lays there, stillborn with umbilical. which would be the folding of a catastrophe still fresh.* now is. The time of domain names expands, .mil for example turns to ash, the military. .net splays mesh across the same.** a student previously mentioned. there are never enough portions to go around. To assert a One is to beg her, the question. __________________________________________________________________ *Thom, Two **Irigaray, Irrigation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 19:57:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Another plug (non-nepotistic), for SWARM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is Kevin Killian--recommending a new book you can order through the mail. Black Star Series announces the publication of SWARM, a book of stories by Camille Roy. The book design (by Jay Schwartz) utilizes color xerography, letter press, and offset to striking effect: SWARM bears resemblance to a lesbian rug. Here is Susan Smith Nash (in WITZ) on Camille Roy's previous book, "The Rosy Medallions": "This is the language of the socially-constructed (or deconstructed) self bared naked so that you're forced to see your own violences... If Henry Miller were a smart, funny lesbian and he were rewriting The Rosy Crucifixion, this is what might result. Brilliant insights into the savage dynamics of love." SWARM is available from Small Press Distribution (800.869.7553), or by mail, for ten dollars ($10) inclusive of shipping, handling, and tax, from > Black Star Series > 1419 20th Street > San Francisco, CA 94107 Remember, when you order this book from Black Star Series, make checks payable to Megan Adams. I would say, get many copies, you can give them out as graduation presents too, or Mother's Day also. Thanks everyone (but you'll thank me)--! KK ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 00:27:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE Subject: Baltimore Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Wednsday March 25th at 8 PM Rod Smith & Mark Wallace Maryland Institute College of Art Auditorium S-3, Mount Royal Station (The old train station) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 09:24:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: children's word transformation game MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - remarkable transformations (one letter at a time) alan .org .mil jennifer alar .ort .mrl jernifer alur .ont .mrm bernifer allr .nnt .mzm bornifer aulr .net .czm hornifer aupr .com hownifer jupr howniwer judr hownower jodr hinnower jodu ninnower jolu ninnkwer julu niknkwer nikukwer nikukwir nikukwin nikukoin ____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 18:14:52 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L.MacMahon and T.R.Healy" Subject: Cork Conference 2 Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Another instalment. More to follow over the next few days including a biblio and distn details. Randolph Healy. ********************************************** Trevor Joyce was followed by Michael Smith who read mainly new work which included some remarkably successful poems written for children. He also read some of his translations of Machado and Lorca. Unfortunately I do not have any of the texts to hand. Here is a poem from Michael's collection: _Lost Genealogies_. WHEELWRIGHTS MICHAEL SMITH The iron hoop burns the timbers tight in a geometry of hands. They cannot read the stars like the Incas. Their wheels are not planetary, sounding celestial music. Bump of cobble and kerb is their consideration: winger slush and summer rain, ice and smooth rotation. *********** Next on was Geoffrey Squires, who read two long poems, both of which were in sections. Here is a sample from _A Long Poem in Three Sections_ which was launched at the conference and is published by Levraut de Poche (Form Books with a beret and string of onions). from A LONG POEM IN THREE SECTIONS GEOFFREY SQUIRES II No depth here but recession of surfaces rock behind rock and behind that the road and then rocks again, white, placed one in front of the other, irregularly, all shimmering Gullies and folds, the basins formed by the rocks, and the earth between where it collects, light following falling into the hollows, bending over surfaces, a confusion of ways down The heat brings with it a silence which is not the silence of night or of snow but a heaviness and troubled vision with stones, metal, buildings, all shimmering Haze over everything, making everything unclear as the heat rises, confusing even the points of the buildings, the sharp features the definiteness that they have Warm evening, luminous calm somewhere a bay is filled soft tic of birds in the night air rock behing rock and the path between boulders gleaming white in the dark in the distance the small eye of the house Rocks in the darkness, shapes sensed rather than seen, inert like animals asleep in the middle of a field or by the road which one moves among with care, picking a way home across the dark grass Small fires in the near hills and sound of the sea beating down in the hollow of the bay no sense of arrival but of echo only reverberation in the darkness, footsteps between silences, a dog barking in space And the rocks still warm still shimmering in the dark, after the day's burning like the memory of another world which they have crossed from somehow like a memory of the physical they are cool now in the moonlight which picks them out on the hillside like smooth, sleeping animals hump-backed white forms half-buried in the earth and yet because of the moonlight seemingly disembodied and removed and quite unearthly ************************ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 18:00:19 -0800 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: civic-li(v)e MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit La lingua ch'io parlai fu tutta spenta innanzi che all'ovra incomsummabile Marion Barry is my lover. When I voted with the unpermitted Gladiola man, he pointed virtu out the door on the corner. And the republican civitas couldn't hold forth in Spanglish at the boarded up Tivoli theater. Combinacion invencible. Estados Unidos. They don't even *need* to jack the niggers. Right now. They shuit down that, like, lyric, lunch-counter woolworths poetry-thing, 4th Ward 14th street. 1998. Like yesterday poet-person. Remember? Easy as a b c. Woyd. mc ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 20:38:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: New Discussion Group; New Discussion List (fwd) Comments: To: core-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This may be of interest. Who knows? "Make it so" ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 14:43:14 -0600 From: Peter Sands Reply-To: Utopias and Utopianism To: UTOPIA-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: New Discussion Group; New Discussion List Hello all, and apologies for crossposting. At long last we have a Listserv dedicated to the newly formed MLA Discussion Group on Science Fiction, Utopian and Fantastic Literature. The group held its first meeting in December 1997 in Toronto during the MLA convention. If you think you might be interested in joining the Discussion Group (which helps us justify our continued existence to the powers-that-be at MLA headquarters), then please subscribe to the new list. If you're not interested, please accept my apologies for this intrusion. . . . If you *are* interested, here is how to subscribe: 1. Address an email message to: listserv@csd.uwm.edu 2. Leave the subject line blank. 3. In the body of the message, inserting YOUR ACTUAL NAME in the appropriate spot below, write the following: subscribe sfuf yourfirstname yourlastname 4. Send the message. IF you do not receive a welcome message from the list, or you receive an error message, or you otherwise suspect that your bytes have been bitten, ask for assistance by emailing me at: sands@uwm.edu Cheers, -- Peter Sands, U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee sands@csd.uwm.edu || http://www.uwm.edu/~sands Writing Center || http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/English/wcenter/ English Department || http://www.csd.uwm.edu/Dept/English/ Epiphany Project || http://mason.gmu.edu/~epiphany 414.229.4416 || 414.229.2643 (fax) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 22:17:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: science & metaphor Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I'm glad Pierre and Henry understood what I meant rather than what I wrote >(thank you). Instead of having a generous, outside perspective on the whole of >science, 'specially wrt to its glorious heyday before hyperspecialization, when >science worked itself nicely into (co-existed with) a pre-existing aesthetic of >the imagination, the intent of my question was to probe for a way out from the >inside of this unquestionable hegemony of technology, and the idea of science >just "being there," intuited rather like history is now. This is really also an >economic thing now ("don't take this personally, this is about business"). In some instances it does look like some scientists are being kept busy reinventing the wheel over and over again, and describing how they did it. This happens in part, because most scientists do not have any idea what is already on the shelf and will not trickle down from beyond top secret, and so they continue to work on what is at best obsolete and at worst a red herring that will never amount to anything. They also do not have any idea what others are doing. That is partly in the spirit of scientific competition. It happens in part because of constraints of extreme secrecy, the necessitating of much dissemination of disinformation to keep others off the scent, and the quest for the ever so holy grant money grail. Corporate competition nowadays is sometimes as fierce and as jealously guarded as is military progress, and in fact the two can be closely linked. Hyperspecialization is also the indicator of extreme secrecy. Each has their tin part to work on, and does not know what it is for, or how it is to function along with the other parts. Someone else will know how two parts go together, but not how they are derived, or what the third is to be used for. Only the very few and very elite know how anything goes together and see the big picture. Of course a large portion of such instances of hyperspecialization amount to nothing, but a few are the real thing, out there in the stirred around in the vast soup of everything scientific. There are inevitably many conflicting metaphors. Anyway, what does the average post-graduate student, or professor, really know about what exists and will not be available to the "scientific community", let alone the "general public" or "consumer public", for at least 50 years, if ever ? Not much. To the average person science is and can only be "edutainment". It is not much different from a vaudeville routine, though more mentally challenging, and that is what attracts some to that kind of entertainment. Even to many scientists the uncharted brave new frontiers, where no scientist has gone before, such as they dream of, is perhaps at best a vague rumour. Fifty years is the estimate trickle down time for some of the most advanced inventions and real breakthroughs. I doubt this has changed since the Cold War ended. There are more covert attempts to gain control of such advances for nefarious and alien purposes, including those attempts by competing ideologies, than ever. So the metaphors of science as knowable by everyman cannot possibly present a reasonable map of that darkest of dark arts. True science remains occulted. What then do we have in terms of the mantras and rituals that anyone might know something of, outside of its highest priesthood ? A little less than the neophytes beginning their initiation into obfuscation and maintaining the veil of darkness. In many senses a lot of science becomes a fiction concerning the world, and deals only with how the world was known, or believed to be. The study of literature could include the study of scientific literature, as a branch of the study of popular fiction. It would, I think, be appropriate. The only reason that it would defy most scholars within the area of literature is their lack of knowledge of the scientific language of mythematics. (Mythematics, as I prefer to call it, is a language I have not mastered either, so I have every sympathy for anyone attempting to translate it into common English. The claim is that it describes how the world is and predicts how it will be. I think that claim is a little too bold sometimes, and that in fact mathematics is the weaving of a mythic vision of how the scientist somewtimes imagines how the world was, how it is likely to be and how it shall evolve into the future. The myth, as do all myths, has its uses. Myths have always been valuable and the mathematical myth of the world proves its usefulness, in ways at least equal to the usefulness of descriptive prose and metaphors in English.) As for the devices, those doing the inventing, as did Thomas Edison, do not care in the least as to what scientists said before it, or what they say about it. The scientists can protest the invention, and declare it violates paradigms, principles, even laws, but the inventor who engineers it will simply point to it and tell them to watch it do what it has been invented to do. The device works, and so what if it defies every known law and principle that science has ever posited. Then the scientists can attempt to explain it after the fact of its invention. Even in the most ordinary situations, where secrecy is not the matter of concern, engineers and designers ultiamtely do not care at all about science, but rather they care about whether something works, and is pragmatically useful, rather than whether it can be explained mythematically or in scientific metaphor. Technical progress does not depend on science. Science more often depends on progress for its cues, and attempts to catch up, by revising its paradigms, principles and laws, such that they remain more consistent with new invention. >Pierre answered succinctly when he replied, "science is full of metaphor -- but >isn't it exactly when that fact goes unrecognized, i.e. when science & its >worldview constructs get taken as _literal_ and not metaphoric, that we get a >kind of scientistic fundamentalist not that different from the kind of >religious fundamentalism Adonis is referring to?" There are fashions in science also. Fads, in fact, that come into and go out of vogue. That, contrary, to Adonis, is a _good_ thing, simply because it tends to thwart some of the dogmatism that would otherwise hold sway over it. There is less tendency to declare absolutes, and more tendency to find useful metaphors. In that sense it is cliques, cults, and gamesmanship. It is the glass bead game, in effect, and it can do that as a purely historical entity in a mythic world that it constructs and modifies. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 22:37:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: in our image In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 21 Mar 1998 08:01:58 -0600 from On Sat, 21 Mar 1998 08:01:58 -0600 Tom Mandel said: > >"Let us make humankind in our image" > >As you may imagine, in the many many volumes of commentary on this verse it >has always seemed a problem. One of my favorite midrashim on the subject >pictures Moses on Mt. Sinai, writing the scripture at God's dictation. He >has to write the work of each day of creation. When he comes to our verse, >he cries: "Sovereign of the universe, why do you supply an excuse to >heretics?" "Write," He replied. "Whoever wishes to err may err." > >*A lot* of Judaism is in those few words. This is a very double-edged little story. Moses sets himself up this time. By playing the cautious scholar, narrows God's own capacious sense of human-divinity. God, generously, plays along with Moses. As long as he writes it down. "Write it, Moses. Whoever wishes to err may err - including you." > >There are two creation stories in Genesis -- in the first "Let us make >humankind in our image." In the second "and YHWH, God, formed the human, of >dust from the soil, he blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the >human became a living being. >human is "adam" dust is "adama" -- "and the dust became a living being." >Then it is the role of the human to span that gap, between "in our image" >and the dust of which she was formed. Never to lose both or, as we say in >my industry, "the two ends of the cable are in the same place." > >One of the chasidim used to say "here are two truths to keep in your >pockets and use as required: 'for my sake was the world created' and 'I am >dust.'" This I find fascinating. Mandelstam's Voronezh poems are all about soil, black earth. Clay - American Bottomland - that's where the epics are. Time flowers on the lips of whispered clay. "costly clay" I raise this greenness to my lips, This sticky promise of leaves, This breach-of-promise earth: Mother of maples, of oaks, of snowdrops. See how I'm dazzled, exalted, Obedient to the lowliest root. (trans. James Greene) (let's do some better translations) - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 23:06:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: in our image Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>"Let us make humankind in our image" Ah, that is what the _machine_ said. >>As you may imagine, in the many many volumes of commentary on this verse it >>has always seemed a problem. The phrase was purely prophetic. Remarkable isn't it ? Of course, the process theologians claim, along with some others not of their particular cult, that the process of creation, including evolution, is on going. So the prophetic statement becomes included within that larger rubric. >This is a very double-edged little story. Moses sets himself up this time. >By playing the cautious scholar, narrows God's own capacious sense of >human-divinity. God, generously, plays along with Moses. As long as he >writes it down. "Write it, Moses. Whoever wishes to err may err - including >you." Strange that we do not get any accounts of the alien spaceship being in any way involved until we get to Ezekiel and the O.T. apocryhpa and pseudepigrapha. There we have some quite startling Barney and Betty Hill type stuff. That brings up the question of who's machine it really was, is, might be... Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 23:18:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: The Morphealist Manifesto Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Since the poetics list has become so religious of late, I thought I would include my little piece of skull duggery, first published in 1995, and entitled "The Morphealist Manifesto". Of course I have advised the OED of the coining of the much needed words "morphealist", "morphealism" and "morpheality". "Morpheal" seems to have been in some prior use, even if not included in the edition I have at hand. Here it is... The MORPHEALIST MANIFESTO We, Morphealists, believe in Change. We, Morphealists, believe in nothing else, as being absolute, other than Change.We, Morphealists, believe that everything Changes. We believe that everything that existed, in what is commonly referred to as "the past", that exists in what is commonly referred to as "the present", or that could exist, in what is commonly referred to as "the future", is subject to Change. In fact, so is what is past, present and future, subject to Change. We believe that anything, that is either imaginable or unimaginable, has existed, or could exist, somewhere in the absolute of all of space and all of time. We believe that the limits of the human imagination are also completely subject to Change. We believe that what was, what is, and what shall be imagined, in its distinction to what is now considered real, is subject to change. We believe in the power of Change as being the last and only remaining genuinely supernatural power. The power of Change remains supernatural, because Change and only Change transcends all previously existing, now existing, and future existing, actual and potential, natures and powers, as their only constant. There are no other,real, constants in Nature or in Science. All other apparent constants are subject to Change. We believe that the effective processes, that existed, exist, or that shall exist, are all subject to Change. Causalities, all causal relations themselves, are potentially subject to Change. The fact that a particular observable cause gives rise to a particular observable effect, and that that is commonly believed to be predictably thus, is not necessarily thus in the past or in the future. It was only thus at that moment of the observation and prediction. That apparent thusness, no matter how many times the same is observed or how carefully and closely it is scrutinized and measured, is subject to Change. This is not negated by any fact of a continuous series of similar or identical causal relations, having been apparently observed, between any particular kind of presumed cause and any particular presumed kind of effect, nor by how many times that same was observed. The only certainty in causality is Change. Change is not a theoretical principle, or an idea, or an existent, or an energetic force, and yet there is nothing whatever, that ever existed, that exists, or is yet to exist, that is not subject to Change, and which does not exhibit the effects of Change. Change is everywhere, and in everything, and yet change is not any particular thing, or any particular principle. It is the most fundamental characteristic of everywhere and everything. In fact there is no thought, and there are no ideas, without Change. The very intention of keeping an idea in mind, as it has arisen there, itself involves Change. Any mental activity involves Changes. The mind is essentially Change. Minds constantly Change. We believe that everything that once existed, and everything that does not now exist, is subject to the power of Change, such that that shall somewhere, someday, exist again. In fact we believe that, subject to the power of Change, that which did not ever exist and that which appeared to have passed from existence, might subsequently have existed, or not ever have not existed. We believe then, that neither the logical proposition that it did not exist, nor the logical proposition that it never did not exist, is falsified. This is a radical departure from all previous beliefs and thinking. Similarly, we believe, with equal resolve, that, subject to the power of Change, what exists and was known, with absolute certainty, to have existed, might henceforth not exist and then be known, with absolute certainty, as never having existed. We believe then, that neither the logical proposition, it existed, nor the logical proposition, it never existed, is falsified. This is another radical departure from all previous thinking. We believe that Change is the fundamental paradox, and that all paradoxes of time and space are ultimately resolvable to that fundamental paradox. We believe that Change is absolute and that all changing is itself subject to Change. We believe that the rate of change might be stopped, accelerated, or decreased, in any instance of anything changing, by means of Change. The apparent limitations as to effecting this, whether they are limitations as to thought or technology, are subject to Change. Ultimately even the means of effecting such Changes could themselves be effected by Change and could be themselves Changed. Morphealism is the belief in the effecting of changes. The advance forces of the Morphealist movement are the artists. Morphealism is the successor of Surrealism. Where Surrealism dealt with the idea and its transmutations and permutations of its possibilities, Morphealism deals with the manifestation into reality of the Surrealist Ideas. The Surrealists were the early prophets of Morphealism. Their domain was the production of icons and symbols, within a language that pertains to the transformations of the mind as its thoughts. This was the first realization of the world as being a Morpheality. We Morphealists recognize the fact that the mind is a mirror of the external world. Thoughts are the mirror in which the world reflects. The nature of the mind's processes reflect the nature of the world as manifestations of the very same Morpheality. We Morphealists recognize that the mind and its thoughts, as it was, is, and shall be, is subject to being Changed as a part of the world as Morpheality. The stuff that the world is made of, its matter and energies, its quanta, are the stuff that Morpheality is comprised of. Morphealism in the arts is the forerunner of Morphealism in those realities that go beyond the arts. The arts provide the experimental basis for the implementation of the techniques of Morphealism to the whole of the world as Morpheality. Whereas Surrealism was a new school, a new style, a new genre, of art and within the arts, we Morphealists announce the end of all schools, styles, and genres of art. In Morphealism art is liberated from the categories that human thinking imposed upon it and from all the traditional categories that did, do, or ever could, define the arts. We Morphealists believe that all transmutations and transformations, all transubstantiations, of anything that was, is, or is yet to be, are an art. That is the final art that is no longer art as it was known, and the final art that is the culmination of all of the arts, and of all artistic schools, styles and genres. It is not where art and life once met, or meet, but instead where art and life become the same. It is where art is life and where life is art. Morphealism is the first advance in thinking that has no ancestry. All of Morphealism's predecessors and ancestors are subject to Change. All of Morphealism's methods, techniques, means and ways, are subject to Change. This distinguishes Morphealism from all precedents. All of Morphealism's results, products, effects, are subject to Change. Unlike everything before it, Morphealism has no ideology, and refuses to be used by any ideology. With the advent of Morphealism we Morphealists believe that all ideologies are subject to Change. We Morphealists announce the final end of art and the beginning of Morpheality where Morphealism has no specific materials or effects distinctive unto itself, unlike all previous arts and technologies, but instead is inclusive of all the potentialities of all possible involvements with all possible and imaginable past, present, and future materials and means of Change. Morphealism is the culmination of the prophecies of alchemy, and thus of the dreams of the sciences, as to the Great Work of transmutation that becomes Morphealism's Changing of everything into absolute Morpheality. Morphealism and the production of Morpheality is the final purpose of humanity. Morphealism is the final method inclusive of all methods and thus the liberation from methods. Morpheality is the final result, inclusive of all possible results and thus the liberation from efficacies. Morphealism is the new and constant dynamism that is productive of the world of human and non human beings, of all that existed, exists or ever shall exist, as becoming the whole of the Morpheality. Political Postscript: (October 1997) As Morphealism gains precedence that bursting forth of unfettered creativity brings about an ever increasing and more complex Chaos, thwarting all attempts at determinism and totalism. Chaos as product of Morphealism, understood as the manifestations of more, therefore less and less predictable, creative interactions, and as the results of unfettered creativity known as its products. copyright 1995, 1997, 1998 Bob Ezergailis aka MORPHEAL Hamilton, Ontario, Canada morpheal@bserv.com Poet and visual artist. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 23:53:24 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: The Morphealist Manifesto MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit morpheal wrote: > > Since the poetics list has become so religious of late, I thought I would > include my little piece of skull duggery, first published in 1995, and entitled > "The Morphealist Manifesto". Of course I have advised the OED of the coining > of the much needed words "morphealist", "morphealism" and "morpheality". > "Morpheal" seems to have been in some prior use, even if not included in the > edition I have at hand. Here it is... > > The MORPHEALIST MANIFESTO > > We, Morphealists, believe in Change. We, Morphealists, believe in nothing > else, as being absolute, other than Change.We, Morphealists, believe that > everything Changes. We believe that everything that existed, in what is > commonly referred to as "the past", that exists in what is commonly referred > to as "the present", or that could exist, in what is commonly referred to as > "the future", is subject to Change. In fact, so is what is past, present and > future, subject to Change. We believe that anything, that is either > imaginable or unimaginable, has existed, or could exist, somewhere in the > absolute of all of space and all of time. > > We believe that the limits of the human imagination are also completely > subject to Change. We believe that what was, what is, and what shall be > imagined, in its distinction to what is now considered real, is subject to > change. We believe in the power of Change as being the last and only > remaining genuinely supernatural power. The power of Change remains > supernatural, because Change and only Change transcends all previously > existing, now existing, and future existing, actual and potential, natures > and powers, as their only constant. There are no other,real, constants in > Nature or in Science. All other apparent constants are subject to Change. > We believe that the effective processes, that existed, exist, or that shall > exist, are all subject to Change. > > Causalities, all causal relations themselves, are potentially subject to > Change. The fact that a particular observable cause gives rise to a > particular observable effect, and that that is commonly believed to be > predictably thus, is not necessarily thus in the past or in the future. It > was only thus at that moment of the observation and prediction. That > apparent thusness, no matter how many times the same is observed or how > carefully and closely it is scrutinized and measured, is subject to Change. > This is not negated by any fact of a continuous series of similar or > identical causal relations, having been apparently observed, between any > particular kind of presumed cause and any particular presumed kind of > effect, nor by how many times that same was observed. The only certainty in > causality is Change. > > Change is not a theoretical principle, or an idea, or an existent, or an > energetic force, and yet there is nothing whatever, that ever existed, that > exists, or is yet to exist, that is not subject to Change, and which does > not exhibit the effects of Change. Change is everywhere, and in everything, > and yet change is not any particular thing, or any particular principle. It > is the most fundamental characteristic of everywhere and everything. In fact > there is no thought, and there are no ideas, without Change. The very > intention of keeping an idea in mind, as it has arisen there, itself > involves Change. Any mental activity involves Changes. The mind is > essentially Change. Minds constantly Change. > > We believe that everything that once existed, and everything that does not > now exist, is subject to the power of Change, such that that shall > somewhere, someday, exist again. In fact we believe that, subject to the > power of Change, that which did not ever exist and that which appeared to > have passed from existence, might subsequently have existed, or not ever > have not existed. We believe then, that neither the logical proposition that > it did not exist, nor the logical proposition that it never did not exist, > is falsified. This is a radical departure from all previous beliefs and > thinking. Similarly, we believe, with equal resolve, that, subject to the > power of Change, what exists and was known, with absolute certainty, to have > existed, might henceforth not exist and then be known, with absolute > certainty, as never having existed. We believe then, that neither the > logical proposition, it existed, nor the logical proposition, it never > existed, is falsified. This is another radical departure from all previous > thinking. We believe that Change is the fundamental paradox, and that all > paradoxes of > time and space are ultimately resolvable to that fundamental paradox. We > believe that Change is absolute and that all changing is itself subject > to Change. We believe that the rate of change might be stopped, accelerated, > or decreased, in any instance of anything changing, by means of Change. The > apparent limitations as to effecting this, whether they are limitations as > to thought or technology, are subject to Change. Ultimately even the means > of effecting such Changes could themselves be effected by Change and could > be themselves Changed. Morphealism is the belief in the effecting of changes. > > The advance forces of the Morphealist movement are the artists. Morphealism > is the successor of Surrealism. Where Surrealism dealt with the idea and its > transmutations and permutations of its possibilities, Morphealism deals with > the manifestation into reality of the Surrealist Ideas. The Surrealists > were the early prophets of Morphealism. Their domain was the production of > icons and symbols, within a language that pertains to the transformations > of the mind as its thoughts. This was the first realization of the world as > being a Morpheality. > > We Morphealists recognize the fact that the mind is a mirror of the external > world. Thoughts are the mirror in which the world reflects. The nature of > the mind's processes reflect the nature of the world as manifestations of > the very same Morpheality. We Morphealists recognize that the mind and its > thoughts, as it was, is, and shall be, is subject to being Changed as a part > of the world as Morpheality. The stuff that the world is made of, its matter > and energies, its quanta, are the stuff that Morpheality is comprised of. > Morphealism in the arts is the forerunner of Morphealism in those realities > that go beyond the arts. The arts provide the experimental basis for the > implementation of the techniques of Morphealism to the whole of the world as > Morpheality. Whereas Surrealism was a new school, a new style, a new genre, > of art and within the arts, we Morphealists announce the end of all schools, > styles, and genres of art. In Morphealism art is liberated from the > categories that human thinking imposed upon it and from all the traditional > categories that did, do, or ever could, define the arts. We Morphealists > believe that all transmutations and transformations, all transubstantiations, > of anything that was, is, or is yet to be, are an art. That is the final art > that is no longer art as it was known, and the final art that is the > culmination of all of the arts, and of all artistic schools, styles and > genres. It is not where art and life once met, or meet, but instead where > art and life become the same. It is where art is life and where life is art. > > Morphealism is the first advance in thinking that has no ancestry. All of > Morphealism's predecessors and ancestors are subject to Change. All of > Morphealism's methods, techniques, means and ways, are subject to Change. > This distinguishes Morphealism from all precedents. All of Morphealism's > results, products, effects, are subject to Change. Unlike everything before > it, Morphealism has no ideology, and refuses to be used by any ideology. > With the advent of Morphealism we Morphealists believe that all ideologies > are subject to Change. We Morphealists announce the final end of art and the > beginning of Morpheality where Morphealism has no specific materials or > effects distinctive unto itself, unlike all previous arts and technologies, > but instead is inclusive of all the potentialities of all possible > involvements with all possible and imaginable past, present, and future > materials and means of Change. Morphealism is the culmination of the > prophecies of alchemy, and thus of the dreams of the sciences, as to the > Great Work of transmutation that becomes Morphealism's Changing of > everything into absolute Morpheality. Morphealism and the production of > Morpheality > is the final purpose of humanity. Morphealism is the final method inclusive > of all methods and thus the liberation from methods. Morpheality is the > final result, inclusive of all possible results and thus the liberation from > efficacies. Morphealism is the new and constant dynamism that is productive > of the world of human and non human beings, of all that existed, exists or > ever shall exist, as becoming the whole of the Morpheality. > > Political Postscript: (October 1997) > > As Morphealism gains precedence that bursting forth of unfettered creativity > brings about an ever increasing and more complex Chaos, thwarting all > attempts at determinism and totalism. Chaos as product of Morphealism, > understood as the manifestations of more, therefore less and less > predictable, creative interactions, and as the results of unfettered > creativity known as its products. > > copyright 1995, 1997, 1998 Bob Ezergailis > aka MORPHEAL > Hamilton, Ontario, Canada > morpheal@bserv.com > Poet and visual artist. So, have you changed your mind about this yet? Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 21:26:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: that Bromige: Nobel material In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just one last word on Bromige's obscuring of actuality re: > http://www.chbooks.com/onlinebooks/piccolo/title.html > >--Just how reliable the Klaxon of Kerrisdale may be, can be illustrated by >his comments re the "authors' pics" to be seen at the beginning of _Piccolo >Mondo_ . *His* (quel egotist!) is not the only B+W pic : mine,too, is B+W. My (honest) mistake. I thought that Bromige's picture was in colour because, although it looks like a b+w photo, so does Bromige. He IS a handsome person, especially his forearm and fist. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 00:01:44 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Sleep Somalixt MANIFESTO MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sleep Somalixt MANIFESTO They, Somalixts, believe of Dreams. They, Somalixts, believe of nothofg else, beofg absolute, osleepr than Dreams.They, Somalixts, believe formerly everythofg Dreams. They believe formerly everythofg formerly exixted, of what ix commonly referred to "sleep pt", formerly exixts of what ix commonly referred to "sleep present", or formerly could exixt, of what ix commonly referred to "sleep future", ix subject to Dreams. Of fact, so ix what ix pt, present and future, subject to Dreams. They believe formerly anythofg, formerly ix eixleepr imagofable or unimagofable, h exixted, or could exixt, somewhere of sleep absolute of all of space and all of time. They believe formerly sleep limits of sleep human imagofation why not! also completely subject to Dreams. They believe formerly what w, what ix, and what shall be imagofed, of its dixtofction to what ix now considered real, ix subject to Dreams. They believe of sleep poTheyr of Dreams beofg sleep lt and only remaofofg genuofely supernatural poTheyr. Sleep poTheyr of Dreams remaofs supernatural, because Dreams and only Dreams transcends all previously exixtofg, now exixtofg, and future exixtofg, actual and potential, natures and poTheyrs, sleepir only constant. Sleepre why not! no osleepr,real, constants of Nature or of Science. All osleepr appwhy not!nt constants why not! subject to Dreams. They believe formerly sleep effective processes, formerly exixted, exixt, or formerly shall exixt, why not! all subject to Dreams. Causalities, all causal relations sleepmselves, why not! potentially subject to Dreams. Sleep fact formerly a particular observable cause gives rixe to a particular observable effect, and formerly formerly ix commonly believed to be predictably thus, ix not necessarily thus of sleep pt or of sleep future. It w only thus at formerly moment of sleep observation and prediction. Formerly appwhy not!nt thusness, no matter how many times sleep same ix observed or how cwhy not!fully and closely it ix scrutofized and meured, ix subject to Dreams. Thix ix not negated by any fact of a contofuous series of similar or identical causal relations, havofg been appwhy not!ntly observed, betTheyen any particular kofd of presumed cause and any particular presumed kofd of effect, nor by how many times formerly same w observed. Sleep only certaofty of causality ix Dreams. Dreams ix not a sleeporetical profciple, or an idea, or an exixtent, or an energetic force, and yet sleepre ix nothofg whatever, formerly ever exixted, formerly exixts, or ix yet to exixt, formerly ix not subject to Dreams, and which does not exhibit sleep effects of Dreams. Dreams ix everywhere, and of everythofg, and yet Dreams ix not any particular thofg, or any particular profciple. It ix sleep most fundamental characterixtic of everywhere and everythofg. Of fact sleepre ix no thought, and sleepre why not! no ide, without Dreams. Sleep very oftention of keepofg an idea of mofd, it h arixen sleepre, itself ofvolves Dreams. Any mental activity ofvolves Dreamss. Sleep mofd ix essentially Dreams. Mofds constantly Dreams. They believe formerly everythofg formerly once exixted, and everythofg formerly does not now exixt, ix subject to sleep poTheyr of Dreams, such formerly formerly shall somewhere, someday, exixt agaof. Of fact They believe formerly, subject to sleep poTheyr of Dreams, formerly which did not ever exixt and formerly which appewhy not!d to have psed from exixtence, might subsequently have exixted, or not ever have not exixted. They believe sleepn, formerly neixleepr sleep logical proposition formerly it did not exixt, nor sleep logical proposition formerly it never did not exixt, ix falsified. Thix ix a radical departure from all previous beliefs and thofkofg. Similarly, They believe, with equal resolve, formerly, subject to sleep poTheyr of Dreams, what exixts and w known, with absolute certaofty, to have exixted, might henceforth not exixt and sleepn be known, with absolute certaofty, never havofg exixted. They believe sleepn, formerly neixleepr sleep logical proposition, it exixted, nor sleep logical proposition, it never exixted, ix falsified. Thix ix anosleepr radical departure from all previous thofkofg. They believe formerly Dreams ix sleep fundamental paradox, and formerly all paradoxes of time and space why not! ultimately resolvable to formerly fundamental paradox. They believe formerly Dreams ix absolute and formerly all changofg ix itself subject to Dreams. They believe formerly sleep rate of Dreams might be stopped, accelerated, or decreed, of any ofstance of anythofg changofg, by means of Dreams. Sleep appwhy not!nt limitations to effectofg thix, whesleepr sleepy why not! limitations to thought or technology, why not! subject to Dreams. Ultimately even sleep means of effectofg such Dreamss could sleepmselves be effected by Dreams and could be sleepmselves Dreamsd. Somalixm ix sleep belief of sleep effectofg of Dreamss. Sleep advance forces of sleep Somalixt movement why not! sleep artixts. Somalixm ix sleep successor of Surrealixm. Where Surrealixm dealt with sleep idea and its transmutations and permutations of its possibilities, Somalixm deals with sleep manifestation ofto reality of sleep Surrealixt Ide. Sleep Surrealixts Theyre sleep early prophets of Somalixm. Sleepir domaof w sleep production of icons and symbols, withof a language formerly pertaofs to sleep transformations of sleep mofd its thoughts. Thix w sleep first realization of sleep world beofg a Somality. They Somalixts recognize sleep fact formerly sleep mofd ix a mirror of sleep external world. Thoughts why not! sleep mirror of which sleep world reflects. Sleep nature of sleep mofd's processes reflect sleep nature of sleep world manifestations of sleep very same Somality. They Somalixts recognize formerly sleep mofd and its thoughts, it w, ix, and shall be, ix subject to beofg Dreamsd a part of sleep world Somality. Sleep stuff formerly sleep world ix made of, its matter and energies, its quanta, why not! sleep stuff formerly Somality ix comprixed of. Somalixm of sleep arts ix sleep forerunner of Somalixm of those realities formerly go beyond sleep arts. Sleep arts provide sleep experimental bix for sleep implementation of sleep techniques of Somalixm to sleep whole of sleep world Somality. Where Surrealixm w a new school, a new style, a new genre, of art and withof sleep arts, They Somalixts announce sleep end of all schools, styles, and genres of art. Of Somalixm art ix liberated from sleep categories formerly human thofkofg imposed upon it and from all sleep traditional categories formerly did, do, or ever could, defofe sleep arts. They Somalixts believe formerly all transmutations and transformations, all transubstantiations, of anythofg formerly w, ix, or ix yet to be, why not! an art. Formerly ix sleep fofal art formerly ix no longer art it w known, and sleep fofal art formerly ix sleep culmofation of all of sleep arts, and of all artixtic schools, styles and genres. It ix not where art and life once met, or meet, but ofstead where art and life become sleep same. It ix where art ix life and where life ix art. Somalixm ix sleep first advance of thofkofg formerly h no ancestry. All of Somalixm's predecessors and ancestors why not! subject to Dreams. All of Somalixm's methods, techniques, means and ways, why not! subject to Dreams. Thix dixtofguixhes Somalixm from all precedents. All of Somalixm's results, products, effects, why not! subject to Dreams. Unlike everythofg before it, Somalixm h no ideology, and refuses to be used by any ideology. With sleep advent of Somalixm They Somalixts believe formerly all ideologies why not! subject to Dreams. They Somalixts announce sleep fofal end of art and sleep begofnofg of Somality where Somalixm h no specific materials or effects dixtofctive unto itself, unlike all previous arts and technologies, but ofstead ix ofclusive of all sleep potentialities of all possible ofvolvements with all possible and imagofable pt, present, and future materials and means of Dreams. Somalixm ix sleep culmofation of sleep prophecies of alchemy, and thus of sleep dreams of sleep sciences, to sleep Great Work of transmutation formerly becomes Somalixm's Changofg of everythofg ofto absolute Somality. Somalixm and sleep production of Somality ix sleep fofal purpose of humanity. Somalixm ix sleep fofal method ofclusive of all methods and thus sleep liberation from methods. Somality ix sleep fofal result, ofclusive of all possible results and thus sleep liberation from efficacies. Somalixm ix sleep new and constant dynamixm formerly ix productive of sleep world of human and non human beofgs, of all formerly exixted, exixts or ever shall exixt, becomofg sleep whole of sleep Somality. Political Postscript: (October 1997) Somalixm gaofs precedence formerly burstofg forth of unfettered creativity brofgs about an ever ofcreofg and more complex Chaos, thwartofg all attempts at determofixm and totalixm. Chaos product of Somalixm, understood sleep manifestations of more, sleeprefore less and less predictable, creative ofteractions, and sleep results of unfettered creativity known its products. Rasputin Zukofsky ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 08:39:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gee, a zillion words a day by whoever this guy is who knows more about Islam than Adonis, about spirituality than those for whom it is an active issue, about science than scientists, about space ships than aliens. Oh, and his (ho hum) manifesto too---thanks for the testosterone 'orph! Does anyone know where to get a bozo filter for listservs? Tom Mandel Tom Mandel | Screen Porch, LLC tmandel@screenporch.com | http://screenporch.com vox: 202-362-1679 | fax: 202-364-5349 ------------------------+------------------------- Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 15:00:05 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sean bonney Subject: artaud translations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Can anyone tell me if there's a decent english translation of Artaud's "Heliogabalus" available. I've been trying to find one in britian but nothng. Thanks, Sean Bonney ---------------------- el0p71e9@liverpool.ac.uk ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 11:02:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r. drake" Subject: Re: artaud translations In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" a section (last half of section 3, "l'anarchie") appears in Selected Writings, ed. susan Sontag/tran. Helen Weaver, Noonday/farrar straus & giroux 1976... cant comment on it's decency, or lack thereov lbd >Can anyone tell me if there's a decent english translation >of Artaud's "Heliogabalus" available. I've been trying to >find one in britian but nothng. > >Thanks, Sean Bonney > >---------------------- >el0p71e9@liverpool.ac.uk ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 11:54:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Sleep Somalixt MANIFESTO Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Sleep Somalixt MANIFESTO >They, Somalixts, believe of Dreams. They, Somalixts, believe of nothofg >else, beofg absolute, osleepr than Dreams.They, Somalixts, >believe formerly...... I like that....It reminds of the fact that if the artificial intelligentsia succeed as Weizenbaum predicted they would, after there is only one interpretation of King Lear, everyone might perhaps "sleep for a thousand years and when they awaken - nothing will have changed". Of course your Somalixisism is the antithesis of Morphealism. >Rasputin Zukofsky Ah, an agent of the czar. Tip of the hat to you, good sir. Did you know that Rasputin was a key agent in the Czar's version of the CIA ? Read the story again, in that light, and see whether it fits together somewhat better that way. What was it that Dylan said about everybody "gotta serve somebody" ? No, not Dylan Thomas. That other poet, and also a Bob, Dylan. Morpheal aka Bob ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 12:18:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Gee, a zillion words a day by whoever this guy is who knows more about >Islam than Adonis, about spirituality than those for whom it is an active >issue, about science than scientists, about space ships than aliens. Oh, >and his (ho hum) manifesto too---thanks for the testosterone 'orph! There was such a horrible lull in the levels of activity I felt obligated to stir it up a little....to see if there were any living beings remaining here, or if it is mostly the artificial intelligentsia all being in perfect agreement with one another like a good hive of drones..... Nothing to do with testosterone though. I strongly object to that remark !!!! Though you are quite welcome to refer to me as Bozo the Clown if you wish to. I quite liked Bozo, years ago. Definitely one of my childhood heros. Perhaps a role model ? Since you mention Adonis, and Islam, here is a little story that you might like. It reminds me of this list a little byte...and of other lists similar to it, where it is mostly a dialogue of men with men. That is exactly what the Moslems would push the whole world towards, men only with men, and women only with women, developing very separate, very genderized and very stereotypic cultures according to their gender category. I have noticed that there appear to be very few women participating on this, as on many other, lists. I have always wondered about that. Of course the Marxist dialecticians and the Moslems both approve of that schism and of a hard line division between genders such that women and men ought not enter into such discussions together. Even if the dialecticians and the Moslems do it for different reasons, and with different purposes. Perhaps you know that in Islamic beliefs women are considered a different species than men. When men die, preferably in battle as that assures their passage, they reputedly go to some kind of paradise. There it is all men, with no human women whatever. They get served as to their every desire, there, by female beings of a different kind, who are described in that mythology. Islamic women do not go to paradise, according to that mythology, and if they live lives of perfect servitude to their male masters in this world, and follow the Koran's teachings closely enough, they get snuffed out like candle flames when their time is ended. If women in that system do not conform to that supposed ideal they go to hell, and Islamic hell is something alike to what happened to European captives during the Crusades. >Does anyone know where to get a bozo filter for listservs? >Tom Mandel Throw holy water at me...I might burst into flames. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 13:41:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ctfarmr Subject: "costly clay" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Henry G. wrote: >This I find fascinating. Mandelstam's Voronezh poems >are all about soil, black earth. >Clay - American Bottomland - that's where the epics are. >Time flowers on the lips of whispered clay. >"costly clay" Henry, Your agricultural terms seem somewhat confused, possibly due to the brevity of your words, but I also suspect that you're not a farmer. (Jack Spandrift is a cowboy, not a sodbuster, right?) Here's the way I see it: Black earth is loam, which contains much more organic matter than either clay or silt. Bottomland (low lying land along a river, generally good crop land) is mostly silt, not clay. Clay,which is usually red, yellow, or white (not black), is not good for crops. When it's wet, it's sticky-gluey and when it's dry, it's rock-hard -- clay is, after all, what we use to make bricks. It's possible that epics often grow out of land that's mostly clay because it's so damn hard to farm. Is this what you meant with your brief comments? Bobbie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 10:27:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: morphealist manifesto Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" gee, i didnt recognize a word in this document. Must be that the words have all changed since it was written. db3 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 15:48:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: transl/lostserv MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry what was so wrong with the mandelstam translation you quoted it seemed fine. But I am guilty of that kind of vague dismissal all the time I understand it it is like a maquette a cartoon of a future thought (hey Steve Carll are you out there?). Anyway that translation sounded oddly like Bowra's pasternak which I am pretty sure was a big influence on David Shapiro's poetry. Kisses on the breast like water from a pitcher. After tromping about in New York's secret foggy Bolinas I went and heard Don Byrd and Madeline Gins read at Here this Sat. Don Byrd back from the desert read "After After the End of the World" "The happy family is eating the earth" which also had strong lines about duck-shaped melanomas. He read also from the Dimestore Centennial at Nick Piombino's request. Nick Piombino is the most showmanlike of poetry reading MCs, it is like a New Wave movie when he introduces readers. It was repeat repeat Madeline Gins read "The The Eyelid" blink blink blink. She also said many beautiful things "Daffodils should be called violets. Violets should be called earhorns." "God was pretentious" I myself was struck as in struck down by lines about faking getting it right after I laughed too loud. Lines about often having to fake understanding. A rousing, rousing reading. Then Sunday New York Underground Film Festival Jeff Krulik's ("Heavy Metal Parking Lot") DC underground filmmakers my preface to seeing Rod Smith read with Andy Levy at the Cavern Club aka Zinc. Rod read a bit from Hegel's Mother about his toad Buber who keeps rabbits. Maybe if we all applaud and think good thoughts he will send it here. Hey Rod send it here. There were other more jazzlike codes he espoused too. Andy Levy read from a prosey sequence with the word "elephant" in the title. I was more tired and blotting out notes in my notebook so I have no lines of theirs, ow. Anyway that's what happened. Signed, Recalcitrant Buzzphobe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 16:43:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: (a tentative) part 3 of ON THE OCCASION A REPAST MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 3 Should she arrest what's wailed to the blizzard entry and then parch the air, all its intimate flick- knifing pro- longed pressure and constraint in that swelter she is (break) unprepared, a sanded bark-strip, positioned on fire; that hollow's not en- gulfed in a clamour (swing right) but reeks of its technical negative, less bland and shat out in her sleep to its exhibit n mercy-carton twixt her teeth, a man made sure redress can bide with her should she wail or founder see, even the vault in heaven's momentous, no blaze streams at its own speed sideways cut across mind out contrive to be alert (BREAK) all stacked-down relished voluntariness in: (A) resist (B) rub-on placidity is an intromitted (C) pregnant gnat glued pat to a wasted by-road, a tax-bin. A few shoppers pace unhurriedly at this life, vaunting and mewling. One particularly big, peculiarly impressive cinder, taken for what it is will be blent up into her pyrrhic face-scrub, don't need to wait, you are forever safe, and the blizzard's bait. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 16:59:40 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: "costly clay" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ctfarmr wrote: > > Henry G. wrote: > > >This I find fascinating. Mandelstam's Voronezh poems > >are all about soil, black earth. > >Clay - American Bottomland - that's where the epics are. > >Time flowers on the lips of whispered clay. > >"costly clay" > > Henry, > > Your agricultural terms seem somewhat confused, possibly due to the brevity of > your words, but I also suspect that you're not a farmer. (Jack Spandrift is a > cowboy, not a sodbuster, right?) Here's the way I see it: Black earth is loam, > which contains much more organic matter than either clay or silt. Bottomland > (low lying land along a river, generally good crop land) is mostly silt, not > clay. Clay,which is usually red, yellow, or white (not black), is not good for > crops. When it's wet, it's sticky-gluey and when it's dry, it's rock-hard -- > clay is, after all, what we use to make bricks. It's possible that epics > often grow out of land that's mostly clay because it's so damn hard to farm. > Is this what you meant with your brief comments? > > Bobbie Bobbie, I believe Henry [& Mandelstam] referred to the black chernozemic soils of the Russian steppe. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 17:35:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Morpheal's message re: women on the list-- In-Reply-To: <199803231718.MAA27411@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I also wish that more women would post on this list-- And I wish that more women would submit to magazines-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:14:12 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Poet freed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > South China Morning Post > > Internet Edition > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Tuesday March 17 1998 > > Poet wins freedom after spending 10 months in police custody > > JOANNE LEE-YOUNG > > Poet Chen Dongdong, in police custody since last May, has > been released. > > Chen, now in Shanghai, said the situation remained sensitive > and it was not convenient for him to give details. > > Before his arrest, he was poetry editor of Tendency > Quarterly, a publication which began in 1988 as a Beijing > underground magazine before being published publicly. > > Its Shanghai office was forced to close in 1992. > > Although the journal focuses on non-political subjects, > including literature and art, it was closely monitored > because of its links with the dissident community and access > to American backers. > > Prior to his detention, Chen told the South China Morning > Post the magazine's mainland editors and contributors had > been questioned by police. > > "They suggested it was liaising with the democracy movement > in the West," he said, adding that he denied the allegation. > > On one trip, Tendency founder and US-based dissident poet > Bei Ling said he collected hundreds of underground > publications, mostly dealing with poetry, literature, > criticism and music. > > Bei, 35, said it was important to offer help to Chinese > writers barred from publishing their articles or in > financial trouble. > > "Literature should be freed from government control," Bei > said."We have to give humanitarian support to these > writers." > > Bei said Chen was arrested on charges of having had "illicit > sexual relations". > > Chen had been repeatedly harassed by the public security > bureau, said Bei. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 18:27:34 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: Morpheal's message re: women on the list-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit k. lederer wrote: > > I also wish that more women would post on this list-- > > And I wish that more women would submit to magazines-- > > Best, > Katy Okay--I'll bite. I don't post much because the discourse of this list, like many, is one I don't want to get too caught up in. I don't want to have to defend myself, I don't want to clarify my thoughts in terms of someone else's idea of "logic," I don't want to try to pee higher up the tree than whoever might want to assert their greater authority. This isn't meant as criticism of the discourse, btw, it's just they way things look from where I type. Perhaps women are less drawn to competitive poetics (a gross generalization, I know). Karen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 21:21:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Siann Ngai Subject: Open Letter Launch in NYC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Please join in the launch of Disgust and Overdetermination: a poetics issue, the latest issue of OPEN LETTER, a Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory, guest edited by Jeff Derksen. In an introduction Jeff notes an impulse not towards synthesis or unity in these works, but towards the stacking up, the overloading, the spilling over of contradictions... a movement from the fragmentary to the relational. It includes the greater part of a substantial essay by Sianne Ngai called Raw Matter: a Poetics of Disgust, as well as new work by Caroline Bergvall, Miles Champion, Louis Cabri and others. Local contributors Kevin Davies, Sianne Ngai, Brian Kim Stefans, Andrew Levy and Dan Farrell, will be on site to read. The event will kick off around 8pm on March 27th at the Segue performance space, 303 East 8th Street. We hope to see you for a lively evening of distribution. Yours, Dan Farrell ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 19:36:13 -0700 Reply-To: R M Daley Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: KATY L Re: Morpheal's message re: women on the list-- In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > I also wish that more women would post on this list-- > > And I wish that more women would submit to magazines-- > > Best, > Katy > hi katy - deceptively cold here today huh? - just got back from my new job!- no more pizza wooman sorry to say, as i know this listserv was waiting to here more of my pizza delights and escapades - but let me end the suspense right now and say IT SUCKED!!@#!#%!#@!$#@- my car will smell like pizza for weeks to come- and hows that for a spring time road trip- i did like bringin you and josh pizza, and wish i could have reaped the benefits of the position long enough to bring you and kevin some...late night romance candlelight pizza and email - but i could take it no longer- there is no romance about driving up and down the same street ten times cause the stupid person who takes orders cant spell - anyway- i now work at a construction worker/lonely daytripper kinda bar/restaurant- you know JCs cafe? it closed, turned into lou henri's (and don't pretend that is pronounced AHN-REES because the guy who cleaned out the place told me they left 10 years worth of grease on the back wall of the fryer and, god knows how long that deep fryer had gone wihtout getting a cleaning- i didnt want to hear any more myself, so i can guess what you're thinking) - but the bar, the 'outer limits', that's where i started today- boy do i smell like cigarettes rightnow...and a great jukebox and some ways to earn a little cash on the side i found out about- ask me about that later anyway, there are lots of reasons some people might not want to be writing on this listserv- maybe they are watching movies, like i like to do - i know you don't have a tv- maybe they have two jobs like i do and someimtes that just doesn't leave much time for this kind of social banter- regardless, i am wondering , especially a question for all you fellas out there in listserv land, what exactly do YOU want from a woman, what can she provide you, what viewpoint does she inherently possess that will breach all those communication barriers and give you hmm and honest? woman's point of view? or is it that women present an honest human being's point of view? or not honest, maybe fresh? inspired? vaginal? what could this be? - i will be glad to capitalize on this capacity when this community will tell me how to do so- maybe this means not ever getting published, maybe it means not getting the right mfa- is this what a woman's point of view could be? - lurking in the back somewhere, popping up just to show all you men how it really is? well katy, i'm glad you logged on today- i had to ask you something rachel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 21:45:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Duck-shaped melanomas In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Jordan Davis wrote: > After tromping about in New York's secret foggy Bolinas I went and heard > Don Byrd and Madeline Gins read at Here this Sat. Don Byrd back from the > desert read "After After the End of the World" "The happy family is eating > the earth" which also had strong lines about duck-shaped melanomas. THE FOLLOWING IS FROM THE UNFORTUNATELY TITLED _LETTERS FROM A NUT_ BY TED L. NANCY. It is a book composed of around a 100 letters Nancy wrote to several famous service corporations, publishing firms, hotels and casino/hotels etc etc making preposterous demands, asking ludicrous questions and otherwise managing to be brilliantly cloying. The responses from the firms are also printed in the book. Submissions Department HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN MAGAZINE 2300 West 5th Ave PO Box 16278 Columbus, OH 43216 Dear Submissions Department: I have a feckle on my back, that when I stretch, looks like Anthony Quinn. I would like to sell my back as part of a magazine article. People love to look at my freckles. Should I send in the picture of my back for your magazine? Obviously I can't sell my back. Can I? I have a few other freckles on my arm and a mole that when bunched together kinda looks like Richard Gere. When not bunched, Andy Griffith. If I brush the gray hair over the mole it looks like Gere. No gray hair, Andy Griffith. As I look at it now in the light, it looks like Andy Griffith. Do you want to see it for your magazine? It would look good on your "fun" page. Who should I send the pictures to? Everyone always asks me to show them my freckles and moles. (And blemishes). The doctor said with age, as the freckle bleaches out, it could look like Dick Van Patten. I really enjoy your magazine. I am a long time reader. This is just a fun thing with these freckles. So, please let me know if I should send in a picture of my back and arms for your magazine. Thanks very much. Sincerely, Ted L. Nancy ___________________________________________________________ Submissions Department STAR MAGAZINE 660 White Plains Road Tarrytown New York 10591 Dear Star Magazine: I have a corn on my foot that resembles Shelley Fabares. How can I get my corn submitted to your magazine for inclusion? This is a standard size corn that closely resembles the "Coach" star. When I turn my foot in the light, the resemblance is uncanny. You would think Shelley Fabares is on my foot. (Can be mistaken for Ellen Degeneres if looked at fast. But why)? My podiatrist said he will take off this corn soon. He says it is not healthy to keep a corn on your foot that long, even if it looks like a celebrity. I'd like to let the world see it before it is removed. How can I do this? Please let me know how I can send in the picture of my corn that looks like Shelley Fabares? Sincerley, Ted L. Nancy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 22:13:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Morpheal's message re: women on the list-- In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Why should more women submit? To magazines or anything else. Down with submission. There are enough dopes out there already. Include me out. Best, Mairead On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > I also wish that more women would post on this list-- > > And I wish that more women would submit to magazines-- > > Best, > Katy > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 01:25:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ctfarmr Subject: costly clay Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 16:59:40 -0500 From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: "costly clay" Ctfarmr wrote: > > Henry G. wrote: > > >This I find fascinating. Mandelstam's Voronezh poems > >are all about soil, black earth. > >Clay - American Bottomland - that's where the epics are. > >Time flowers on the lips of whispered clay. > >"costly clay" > > Henry, > > Your agricultural terms seem somewhat confused, possibly due to the brevity of > your words, but I also suspect that you're not a farmer. (Jack Spandrift is a > cowboy, not a sodbuster, right?) Here's the way I see it: Black earth is loam, > which contains much more organic matter than either clay or silt. Bottomland > (low lying land along a river, generally good crop land) is mostly silt, not > clay. Clay,which is usually red, yellow, or white (not black), is not good for > crops. When it's wet, it's sticky-gluey and when it's dry, it's rock-hard -- > clay is, after all, what we use to make bricks. It's possible that epics > often grow out of land that's mostly clay because it's so damn hard to farm. > Is this what you meant with your brief comments? > > Bobbie >Bobbie, >I believe Henry [& Mandelstam] referred to the black chernozemic soils >of the Russian steppe. >Dan Zimmerman Right. Black earth is chernozemic. But Henry's bit seemed to be equating it with clay. That's what had me scratching my head. Bobbie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 01:00:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Reply to Karen and Mairead--re: women on the list In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I see your points--but still think that women should get on the list(s)--and should submit. When I say things like "more women should do this or that..." people often say things like "why women? Aren't you essentializing?" and so on-- But the fact of the matter is that women (as a category) have been historically disenfranchised-- I don't pick the categories here--history already has-- Women writers have been very important to me-- Sure, Emily Dickinson didn't submit--and though she didn't take part in the discourse during her lifetime, her work takes part in it now. But what kind of world would it have been for me if all of my female role models were already dead? How would it have been for me if I had had to move through an academy devoid of women? If people like Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein hadn't been there first? Whether or not the public sphere sucks, women should get out there and be in it. There is a connection between real life and literature-- There is a connection between economic, physical, and emotional oppression and literacy-- There is a connection between being a woman, in a woman's body and with a woman's perspective (however broad a category that may be), and the kind of writing that I as a woman produce. Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 08:07:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: costly clay In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 24 Mar 1998 01:25:06 EST from Does loam contain clay? I thought clay was mineral-rich but I could be wrong. Also remember reading about a science study showing some kind of electromagnetic movement - sort of a shifting back & forth - in clay that the scientists thought was a sort of primitive pre-life form. Jordan, I do like those translations [by James Greene - from the collection EYESIGHT OF WASPS] of Mandelstam. But they're very English english, & maybe there could be some new OM translations in a different idiom. clay is sculpture & pottery material. it's earth taking form as earth (as opposed to vegetation). Spandrift never picked up a hoe in his life, believe it or not, even when he came off the range - but Henry's done a lot of gardening & even farm work. Just so y'all know a little about me. - Sub-sub ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:09:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: For Laura (Riding) Jackson Fans Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Laura (Riding) Jackson and the Promise of Language A Symposium and Exhibition Cornell University, Ithaca, New York October 8-9, 1998 An international gathering of scholars, including Laura (Riding) Jackson's authorized biographer, her bibliographer, students of her poetry, stories, criticism, and thought, and publishers of her work, will offer two full days of panel discussions and related presentations in a symposium timed to coincide with the opening of the first exhibition drawn from the extensive Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson Collection held by the Cornell University Library. For this occasion, both a guide to the collection and an exhibition catalog will be made available, and most restrictions on scholarly access to the Collection will be permanently lifted. For a complete program and information about housing in Ithaca, or to pre-register (no charge) please contact: Lorna Knight, Curator of Manuscripts, 2B Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-5302. TEL (607) 255-3530 FAX (607) 255-9524 lmk22@cornell.edu. Co-sponsored by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library and the Laura (Riding) Jackson Board of Literary Management. Additional funding provided by the Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation. ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1@cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:25:11 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: KATY L MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel wrote: "what exactly do YOU want from a woman, what can she provide you, what viewpoint does she inherently possess that will breach all those communication barriers and give you hmm and honest? woman's point of view? or is it that women present an honest human being's point of view? or not honest, maybe fresh? inspired? vaginal? what could this be?" I for one would like to hear more dialog between women as well as among women and men. the economic threads, gender threads, sexuality threads, privilege threads and poetics threads are all fascinating to me. Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:42:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: Re: costly clay In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII there's some indication that kaolin has various regimes that interact and behave as primitive life-forms. there was an article years ago in, I think, Scientific American, among other sources. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:57:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Reply to Karen and Mairead--re: women on the list In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, Katy, I agree (although I had to resist the impulse to post to you privately rather than blaring all over; Woolf has something to say about the long shadow cast by the big ugly "I"). It was just the *submit* aspect that I baulked at. Could we not come up with a better way of describing that monthly alternative to buying lottery tickets: like I "offer" my poems to you, or "Recently, I bestowed some poems on Parnassus" or "Dear Editor, I wish to display/exhibit/make a show of the enclosed poems" or "I give you these bright things on trust" etc etc. Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:01:10 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: wo(men) on the list-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Karen Kelley wrote: Perhaps women are less drawn to > competitive poetics (a gross generalization, I know). I dont think its fair to genderize this, Im here in search of an active community, not to engrave my initials in the american poetry tree...Im interested in shared space, exchange, networking, humor & perpetuating an electronic environment which is inclusive & inviting. miekal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 07:57:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: women hyperpoets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" taking advantage of this recent thread, could listees please help with the following women poets currently working in the "new media" vein, particularly web-based word arts (visual, kinetic/animated, e- poetry)? names? URLs? much obliged bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh PaperBrainPress Voice & Range Community Arts National University wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu http://bmarsh.dtai.com snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 San Diego, CA 92109 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:54:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: JAB 9 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The ninth issue of _The Journal of Artists' Books_, edited by Brad Freeman, is now available. This issue features: Essays on Ulises Carrion (by Brad Freeman), Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop (by Johanna Drucker) and John Baldessari (by Victoria Sancho); reviews of Jean-Claude Gotting's _La Symphonie Silencieuse_ (by Cynthia Young), J.H. Kocman's _My Activity_ (by Ted Purves), and Roy Villevoye's _'No problem, brother!'_ and Helen Douglas's _Between the Two_ (by yours truly); and sports a beautiful cover designed and printed by Inge Bruggeman (publisher of INK-A! Press in Santa Barbara). I have a couple extra copies I'll send, gratis, to the first couple of people to back-channel me. Otherwise, the issue is, postpaid, $9 (U.S., Canada, Mexico) and $12 for the rest of the world. Send to: JAB 324 Yale Avenue New Haven, CT 06515 USA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:06:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Hilda Morley (1919-1998) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bob Creeley sent me this note this morning: >Just yesterday we heard that Hilda Morley had died Sunday night in >London -- expected ... but hard none the less. We would have >delightful long telephone conversations -- and I have known her >since Black Mountain days. She has a substantial selection of her poems >coming out just now with Moyer Bell, The Turning, for which I did a >brief but heartfelt preface. ****** I picked this up from http://www.moyerbell.com/books/TURNING.HTM: THE TURNING Hilda Morley "Hilda Morley's work inhabits a universe of quietly intense coastlines and rockscapes, of radiant sunlight and luminous mists . .." - Choice "[Her poems] come to us wild and fresh, radiating a joy of invention that is inseparable from her word play." - Stanley Kunitz In her fifth collection of poems, poet Hilda Morley proves a master of rhythm and in poem after poem reveals her ability to recite with perfect pitch. With striking visual images, she brings new life and beauty to nature and inanimate objects. Her work has been described by colleagues as fluid, elegant, and organic. there is only the language of a voice which turning on itself says (the dark streaking itself with glimmering) words of that voice saying (the only one in this dark place) begin, begin again. (from "The Turning") Hilda Morley has published five books of poetry, including What Are Winds What Are Waters and Cloudless at First (Moyer Bell), and has won numerous awards and fellowships. She lives in Sag Harbor, New York and London. ASPHODEL PRESS Poetry 190 pages : 7 x 10" ISBN 1-55921-202-0 : $16.95 cloth ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:17:12 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word (Announcement) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980317183147.006d9938@bway.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable a small point, but my title is the Public Spear, not Speak. At 6:55 PM -0500 3/17/98, Charles Bernstein wrote: >Forthcoming in April > >Close Listening > >Poetry and the Performed Word > >Edited by CHARLES BERNSTEIN > >Close Listening and the Performed Word brings together seventeen essays, >especially written for this volume, on the poetry reading, the sounds of >poetry, and the visual performance of poetry. While the performance of >poetry is as old as poetry itself, critical attention to modern and >postmodern poetry performance has been negligible. This collection opens >many new avenues for the critical discussion of the sound and performance >of poetry, with special attention to innovative work. More important, the >essays collected here offer wide-ranging elucidations of how >twentieth-century poetry has been practiced as a performance art. The >contributors cover topics that range from the performance styles of >individual poets and types of poetry to the relation of sound to meaning, >from historical and social approaches to poetry readings and to new >imaginations of prosody. Such approaches are intended to encourage new >forms of "close listenings"--not only to the printed text of poems, but >also to tapes, performances, and other expressions of the sounded word. >With readings and "spoken word" events gaining an increasing audience for >poetry, Close Listening provides an indispensable critical groundwork for >understanding the importance of language in--and as--performance. > > > 368 pp., 22 linecuts, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 > $19.95w*, paper, 0-19-510992-9 > $49.95w, cloth, 0-19-510991-0 > April 1998 > >Close Listening (paper), ISBN 0195109929 >Close Listening (cloth), ISBN 0195109910 > >order from Oxford University Press >or from your bookstore >or from OUP on-line http://www.oup-usa.org/docs/0195109929.html > >Contents: > >Charles Bernstein, Introduction > >Sound=EDs Measures >Susan Stewart, Letter on Sound >Nick Piombino, The Aural Ellipsis and the Nature of Listening in >Contemporary Poetry >Bruce Andrews, Praxis: A Political Economy of Noise and Informalism >Marjorie Perloff, After Free-Verse: The New Non-Linear Poetries >Susan Howe, Either/Ether > >Performing Words >Johanna Drucker, Visual Performance of the Poetic Text >Steve McCaffery, Voice in Extremis >Dennis Tedlock, Toward a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability >Bob Perelman, Speech Effects: The Talk as Genre >Peter Quartermain, Sound Reading > >Close Hearings / Historical Settings >Jed Rasula, Understanding the Sound of Not Understanding >Peter Middleton, The Contemporary Poetry Reading >Lorenzo Thomas, Neon Griot: The Functional Role of Poetry Readings in the >Black Arts Movement >Maria Damon, Was that "Different," "Dissident" or "Dissonant"? Poetry (n) >the Public Speak: Slams, Open Readings and Dissident Traditions >Susan Schultz, Local Vocals: Hawai=EDi=EDs Pidgin Literature, Performance,= and >Postcoloniality > >Afterword >Ron Silliman, Who Speaks: Ventriloquism and the Self in the Poetry Reading ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:27:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r. drake" Subject: Re: women hyperpoets In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980324075755.007cb9f0@nunic.nu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" bill-- the Eastgate stable ov writers has a number of women promenant & active (deena larsen, judy malloy, cathy marshall, shelley jackson): http://www.eastgate.com/ quite a bit ov work at the Maid in Hyperspace site: http://www.studioxx.org/maidincyberspace/index.html Christy Sheffield Sanford has quite a bit ov work; i particularly liked _Red Mona_: http://web.purplefrog.com/~christy/red-mona/ http://gnv.fdt.net/~christys/index.html ...this of the top ov my bookmarks... & conditional as to whether or no it's "poetry"... luigi >taking advantage of this recent thread, could listees please help with the >following > >women poets currently working in the "new media" vein, particularly >web-based word arts (visual, kinetic/animated, e- poetry)? > >names? URLs? > >much obliged >bill > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >William Marsh >PaperBrainPress >Voice & Range Community Arts >National University >wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu >http://bmarsh.dtai.com >snail: 1860 PB Dr. #4 >San Diego, CA 92109 >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:35:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r. drake" Subject: Re: wo(men) on the list-- In-Reply-To: <35177655.5462@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" miekal-- ov course it's fair to genderize this (which is quite a different thing than criticizing You) -- as an experiment, try tallying up th ratio ov women to men posting to this list; then compare it to the ratio ov wo/men subscribed... ov course, th handful of men who post daily or more will skew th result somewhat... (& i'm not criticizing; like k.l., i wish more women would join in)... but it's no coincidence, and gender, th social construct, has everything to do w/ it... lbd >Karen Kelley wrote: > Perhaps women are less drawn to >> competitive poetics (a gross generalization, I know). > >I dont think its fair to genderize this, Im here in search of an active >community, not to engrave my initials in the american poetry tree...Im >interested in shared space, exchange, networking, humor & perpetuating >an electronic environment which is inclusive & inviting. > >miekal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:37:56 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hzinnes Subject: Re: JAB 9 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit 24 March l998 Dear Gary Sullivan May I have a copy of your Journal of Artists' Books? Thank you so much for your generosity. Sincerely Harriet Zinnes HZinnes@aol.com 25 West 54 Street New York, NY l00l9 I'll certainly be pleased to pay for the postage. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:41:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hzinnes Subject: Re: For Laura (Riding) Jackson Fans Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit 24 March l998 Dear Staff: As an art critic (and poetand literary critic as well) is it possible for you to send me the catalogue and other pertinent information since I'll bve unable to attend the exhibition and discussions? Thank you for your cooperation. Sincerely, Harriet Zinnes HZinnes@aol.com 25 West 54 Street New York, NY l00l9 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:49:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: Re: Reply to Karen and Mairead--re: women on the list In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > I see your points--but still think that women should get on the > list(s)--and should submit. wait- how can you see these points and go on to say this - > > When I say things like "more women should do this or that..." people often > say things like "why women? Aren't you essentializing?" and so on-- > > But the fact of the matter is that women (as a category) have been > historically disenfranchised-- > really i know it's more complicated than all that, than whining "oh you're essentializing and that's totally invalid..." --i hate that shit - but it IS complicated, but i don't go through my day thinking i'm the historically disenfranchised- isn't everyone historically disenfranchised somewhere down the line? - the fact that i have to fucking fill out my taxes makes me some kind of angry and disenfranchised and bitter and (disenfranchised in the legal necessity to submit to such idiocy) - and somewhere down some line choosing to , conscoiusly choosing to, not take up the burden of everything constructed as history that says YOU WOMAN, YOU ARE DISENFRANCHISED - in fact , to be honest i'm not even sure who's a 'woman' and who's not- if i'm fucked up the ass? if i'm not? if i cry at certain movies? if i were feather boas (no that would make me a drag queen?) - what am i to do about the fact that i DON'T think about who's fucking me over because i'm a woman > I don't pick the categories here--history already has-- > GET REAL- just choose another history, there's millions to be had > Women writers have been very important to me-- > > Sure, Emily Dickinson didn't submit--and though she didn't take part in > the discourse during her lifetime, her work takes part in it now. > > But what kind of world would it have been for me if all of my female role > models were already dead? How would it have been for me if I had had to > move through an academy devoid of women? If people like Virginia Woolf and > Gertrude Stein hadn't been there first? > > Whether or not the public sphere sucks, women should get out there and be > in it. > one might respond that this is buying into a patriarchal structure of kissing ass, mutual stroking, and when women (historically?) have not benefitted much from public sucking , why start now? > There is a connection between real life and literature-- literature is real life, last i checked - as is cleaning the bathtub or taking a walk or communing with the moon or making enchiladas > > There is a connection between economic, physical, and emotional oppression > and literacy-- > > There is a connection between being a woman, in a woman's body > and with a woman's perspective (however broad a category that may be), and > the kind of writing that I as a woman produce. well i feel as though i have to get a new body, my woman's body is not getting my woman's perspective motor running - be specific here, i was being serious before - i want to know what to be looking for in my woman's writing, what makes it so, how broad can this category be? can it include men? if so, is that cause they have too little testosterone or maybe a little progesterone floating around or are gay? - meanwhile where did that thing i was working on... > > Best, > Katy > lovingly rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:06:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Katy, I think your points about women and their participation in the process of being a public writer are well taken. I also think it's interesting to consider women's involvement in other forms of expression--ranging from the critical/philosophical to other mediums of art such as film. How many women philosophers can one think up anyhow? (Arendt? Kristeva?) And how many men come rolling off the tongue? Likewise with film--I can't, for the life of me, name a woman film maker. Perhaps these are my own shortcomings, but the lack of female names in these fields seems to indicate two things. One, maybe there aren't as many women working in these disciplines--which seems to be a societal problem. What does society do or not do to encourage/discourage women from participating in these activities. And/or, two, that women don't receive the same type of exposure that men do. The lack of exposure seems to me to be a greater problem right now given the number of women who are engaging in these various disciplines. Some thoughts, Summi ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:57:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: JAB 9 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Harriet: You're the fourth to respond, & so will receive the last available gratis copy! I'll send it along to the address below today. Be well, Gary On Tuesday, March 24, 1998 11:38 AM, Hzinnes [SMTP:Hzinnes@AOL.COM] wrote: > 24 March l998 > > Dear Gary Sullivan > > May I have a copy of your Journal of Artists' Books? Thank you so much for > your generosity. > > Sincerely > > Harriet Zinnes > > HZinnes@aol.com > > 25 West 54 Street > New York, NY l00l9 > > I'll certainly be pleased to pay for the postage. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:10:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Open Letter Launch in NYC Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can this issue by obtained by mail? tom bell At 09:21 PM 3/23/98 -0500, Siann Ngai wrote: >Please join in the launch of Disgust and Overdetermination: a poetics >issue, the latest issue of OPEN LETTER, a Canadian Journal of Writing and >Theory, guest edited by Jeff Derksen. In an introduction Jeff notes an >impulse not towards synthesis or unity in these works, but towards the >stacking up, the overloading, the spilling over of contradictions... a >movement from the fragmentary to the relational. It includes the greater >part of a substantial essay by Sianne Ngai called Raw Matter: a Poetics of >Disgust, as well as new work by Caroline Bergvall, Miles Champion, Louis >Cabri and others. Local contributors Kevin Davies, Sianne Ngai, Brian Kim >Stefans, Andrew Levy and Dan Farrell, will be on site to read. > >The event will kick off around 8pm on March 27th at the Segue performance >space, 303 East 8th Street. > >We hope to see you for a lively evening of distribution. > >Yours, >Dan Farrell > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 12:03:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: JABs all gone! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The extra issues I had are all spoken for, now--but, again, you can get one from the editor/publisher, Brad Freeman, for $9 postpaid (US, Can, Mex), $12 (elsewhere): JAB 324 Yale Avenue New Haven, CT 06515 USA Also: Potential reviewers/essayists interested in book arts definitely ought to get in touch with Brad: He's always looking for material . . . ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:21:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Reply to Rachel re: women In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rachel-- I AM getting real here-- We've talked about this before, but I don't always think it's a matter of details and refinement when it comes to gender-- I'm not interested in refining my points--in defining the differences between men and women, defining how possession of a female body might affect one's writing etc.... I understand that all of this is up for grabs IN AN IDEAL or otherwise intellectualized world-- But Rachel, this is the real world-- This is the world in which people (including other women) look at each other and make some pretty sweeping judgements based on superficial things like hair and dress-- I think that your position is fine in the long-run--as in, gender is a malleable category--everything is discourse-- But right here and right now--in my real life (and in yours) everything is not discourse-- People are real right now--living real lives. As I've said to you (and Josh) before, I think it's lame to deny the real lives of real people as they are affected by perhaps "fictional" stereotypes in the interest of proving that everything is rhetoric and discourse-- When a teacher ignores a little girl in math class, this is NOT discourse-- When a woman feels like she has to giggle and say "I'm sorry" fifty times a day, this is NOT discourse-- When I go to the bookstore and see five times more men being published than women, this is NOT discourse-- These things are real-- At best your responses were intellectually feasible-- At worst they were smug-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:35:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII And poker.... Hi Summi-- All of this has made me think a lot about my views--to reconsider them-- My sister is a professional poker player, and I think this has a lot to do with my views--(along with my experiences as a student at a rather sexist boarding school, as a college student at a rather liberal college (Berkeley), as a poet who has worked in a number of environments--). My sister is considered to be the best female poker player in the world. She is 32 and has two wonderful babies. She got into poker because she needed to make some money (she dropped out of a PhD program in order to marry her husband...)-- Her story is super interesting, but suffice it to say that I have watched her play poker a lot-- I have watched the way in which men react to her-- I myself have experienced the incredible sexism of poker first-hand-- Men don't like it when women play poker-- Men don't like to lose to women-- I have been personally cussed out on numerous occassion for simply being a woman and having the audacity to play at the very public and open (like this list) tables in Vegas-- To my mind poker is much like the other industries you bring up-- Like film, philosophy, and other traditionally male pursuits, one rarely rarely hears about women-- I don't think this is because of lack of exposure--I think it's because fewer women practice these arts-- And I think that part of why fewer women practice these arts is that women are not encouraged to do so-- Some thoughts-- Yours, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:54:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: esp Rachel, Models of Power In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think that a lot of my ideas about gender (and other categories) stem from a pretty simple distinction that has to do with how I conceptualize power--(Rachel: perhaps this will answer to your theoretical concerns...). This little schema comes from a wonderful book by Jana Sawiki entitled DISCIPLINING FOUCAULT--in many ways it got me out of that mode of thinking in which everything ceases to be "true" and thus to matter, and showed me how to use theory in a productive and real way. For Sawiki, the traditional Marxist model of power runs as follows: 1. Power is possessed (for instance, by the individual in the state of nature, by a class, by the people). 2. Power flows from a centralized source from top to bottom (for instance, law, the economy, the state). 3. Power is primarily repressive in its exercise (a prohibition backed by sanctions). Foucault's model runs as follows: 1. Power is exercised rather than posessed. 2. Power is not primarily repressive, but productive.. 3. Power is analyzed as coming from the bottom up. (Sawiki, 1991, pp 20-21) I'm more of a proponent of the second model--a model in which pervasive discourses are productive rather than repressive-- In other words--women should speak! Everyone should speak! Exercise your power (however you may define yourself)-- As in Rachel: if you don't define yourself as a woman, then how do you see yourself? As human? What is human? I mean, people can do whatever they want, but what is it that you want to do? Is it enough to "know the truth"? Is it enough to be able to "see through" the discourses that are already out there and operating? Best, Katy-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 12:05:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: Re: Reply to Rachel re: women In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > Rachel-- > > > I AM getting real here-- > > We've talked about this before, but I don't always think it's a matter > of details and refinement when it comes to gender-- > > I'm not interested in refining my points--in defining the differences > between men and women, defining how possession of a female body might > affect one's writing etc.... > > I understand that all of this is up for grabs IN AN IDEAL or otherwise > intellectualized world-- > > But Rachel, this is the real world-- > > This is the world in which people (including other women) look at each > other and make some pretty sweeping judgements based on superficial things > like hair and dress-- > > I think that your position is fine in the long-run--as in, gender is a > malleable category--everything is discourse-- > > But right here and right now--in my real life (and in yours) everything is > not discourse-- > > People are real right now--living real lives. > > As I've said to you (and Josh) before, I think it's lame to deny the real > lives of real people as they are affected by perhaps "fictional" > stereotypes in the interest of proving that everything is rhetoric and > discourse-- > > When a teacher ignores a little girl in math class, this is NOT > discourse-- > > When a woman feels like she has to giggle and say "I'm sorry" fifty times > a day, this is NOT discourse-- > > When I go to the bookstore and see five times more men being published > than women, this is NOT discourse-- katy, of course these things are discourse, they are the ways that we go about our days in discourse by a method or by millions of discourses - the ways you and i or josh or big 'intellectual' namers interact is all so very so very determined by discourse, and sometimes this is evil i totally agree- the evil part to me i've found in my real-life-discourse (and i resent the insinuation that i am somehow different from someone having a real life ie a little girl or a girl who giggles whenever she talks...) the evil part is the fact that discourses become discourses in such a complicated convoluted inextricably indeterminable way that this gives people somehitng that allows them to say, hey, this is just how it is, we should go about things the way they've always been done and that's THAT - - or worse, it goes unrecognized - i am totally not NOT denying that these examples you give are real, but i'm saying they are real, they are real discourse, or more specific, are seeming to be products of modes of discourse that are just as real as why i have to be delivering pizza - for tons of reasons or no reasons, but to me the thing to do is avoid those situations, recognize them, do my work > > These things are real-- > > At best your responses were intellectually feasible-- > > At worst they were smug-- > smugly smugly smugly > Best, > Katy > rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 12:18:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: Re: esp Rachel, Models of Power In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > I think that a lot of my ideas about gender (and other categories) stem > from a pretty simple distinction that has to do with how I conceptualize > power--(Rachel: perhaps this will answer to your theoretical concerns...). > > This little schema comes from a wonderful book by Jana Sawiki entitled > DISCIPLINING FOUCAULT--in many ways it got me out of that mode of thinking > in which everything ceases to be "true" and thus to matter, and showed me > how to use theory in a productive and real way. > > > For Sawiki, the traditional Marxist model of power runs as follows: > > 1. Power is possessed (for instance, by the individual in the state of > nature, by a class, by the people). > > 2. Power flows from a centralized source from top to bottom (for instance, > law, the economy, the state). > > 3. Power is primarily repressive in its exercise (a prohibition backed by > sanctions). > > > Foucault's model runs as follows: > > 1. Power is exercised rather than posessed. > > 2. Power is not primarily repressive, but productive.. > > 3. Power is analyzed as coming from the bottom up. > > (Sawiki, 1991, pp 20-21) > > > I'm more of a proponent of the second model--a model in which pervasive > discourses are productive rather than repressive-- > > In other words--women should speak! Everyone should speak! > > Exercise your power (however you may define yourself)-- > > As in Rachel: if you don't define yourself as a woman, then how do you > see yourself? As human? no i don't go for all that hippy granola shit- but this point/question above is exactly my problem with identity politics of power katy, you are dictating to me to define my identity - i don't see myself any particular way at all times, more like a particular way at any particular time - you know that cheesy bumper sticker, keep your laws of my body - - well thats as close as i can come - you're not seriously dictating to me or anyone else other than yourself how i sholud go about my day, spend my time and energy, how i should define myself - and see i don't ever want to be told to claim knowledge wisdom voice insoght beauty squalor sentiment emotion for anyone , not myself or anyone , and sure as hell not for some idea of community, of "women" or i like this better, "woman," which never exists and would rather not have rather not have anything i claim to write be declared part of a woman's perspective, as this is cordoning it off, saying well this is just woman's writing or gee this is woman's writingor oh isnt this keen it's woman's writing, i never new - this kind of response to writing or, as you seem to suggest, to one' real life, is like saying, oh that is what comes of not having a dick, that is that other things, the other species , or at best, containing it in order to excuse it or explain it away - just don't want this please and finally the idea of "woman's" perspective, one i have to take on and make my own cause i don't have a dick, seems to have to be starting with, hey i'm the forgetten, the lost, the negelcted, i'm marginalized to begin with so listen to me- i'm needed for always already (!!!???!!!) having been lost so i'd just rather not be called lost before having a chance to get lost myself > > What is human? > how the hell would i know - i thought titanic was really fuckin stupid and wanted leonardo to die already and hated i mean HATED the jewelry rd > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:18:59 -0500 Reply-To: Keston Sutherland Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: esp Rachel, Models of Power Comments: To: "k. lederer" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII wouldn't Foucault say that, whilst productive rather than repressive (strictly speaking), power can nonetheless be used to produce repressive conditions? And that in fact it regularly is? Why does this lead to >In other words--women should speak! Everyone should speak! ? Of course they should. There's a gehenna of links I'm missing ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:17:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Reply to Karen and Mairead--re: women on the list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I see your points--but still think that women should get on the >list(s)--and should submit. I think that the problem in that might be the word "submit". Submission is such a horrible concept. Obedience to a lord. Nasty idea. None who enter into a dialogue with others ought to submit, but neither ought they to attempt to cause others to submit by means of conquest. It is, after all, an exchange of ideas and ought to be nurtured as such. That ought, I think, to refer to men and women equally. Why should there be dominants and submissives in a kind of sadomasochistic brow beating ritual of whom shall we convert to a viewpoint today attitude. I hate the whole concept and fail to see what gender has to do with it. The list is after all, at its best, an exchange of intellectual ideas between persons who should have some sense of equal respect for each other. Why should anyone, man or woman, submit ? They ought here to express their own ideas, and where there are differences of opinion, that need not lead to a personal battle where one must defeat the other, and the crowd cheer the one that is left standing, while despising the one that has been knocked down. That barbarity does occur in many places, but surely it is possible to get beyond that mentality ? Of course if someone attempts to force someone else, by any means at their intellectual disposal to cause someone else to agree they need to be resisted, as such tyranny ought not to be acceptable. However, does it matter whether it is a man or a woman who is attempting to push it over on someone else, or to take absolute dictatorial control over the whole ? I do not see gender as having anything to do with that. Women that I have known can do it as well as can men. Even the Pentagon has realized that fact and women are being offered combat roles, having been found to have the same killer instincts as men have been found to have. That does not mean that everyone ought to start to do one another in, even intellectually. We can be a little more civil to one another in times of peace than we tend to be towards enemy aggressors, can we not ? Labelling a whole gender "the enemy" and attacking anyone who happens to have certain physical characteristics that are different from one's own, is no different than attacking all blue eyed people, or perhaps all people who have olive coloured skin. It is simply the same as racism, an extreme of prejudice. Of course, we see it happen on both sides of any fence. Express prejudice towards all blue eyed people and soon all blue eyed people will gather together and express their hatred for brown and green eyed people. It is inevitable... Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:24:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: esp Rachel, Models of Power Comments: To: R M Daley In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >so i'd just rather not be called lost before having a chance to get lost >myself this is --dead right--, I reckon. Please continue, Rachel and Katy, this is a stimulating exchange ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 13:31:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Reply to Rachel re: women In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hmmm-- To return to the orginal point of debate-- Okay--so there is no distinction between the real and discourse in your view--I can go with that. When you say, though, that you feel the best strategy for you is to avoid situations in which the "discourse" is fucked up in a way that is anathema to your needs and desires (your discourses) and is to "just do your work," aren't you evading the larger issue at hand in this discussion? Namely: why aren't there more women on this list? I glean from your last post that perhaps women don't participate in this space because they feel it doesn't jibe with their preferred "discourse"--that it's inimical to the work they want to accomplish (this was echoed by Karen and Mairead also, I believe)-- So--okay--maybe you don't want to participate in forums that seem competitive or male-dominated-- I guess I feel like this is a cop-out. There is nothing inherently male (there is nothing inherently discursively masculine) about an electronic list-- There is nothing inherently "masculinist" (or competitive, or inimical to getting your work done, whether you are a woman or a man) about poetry-- About banks-- About poker tables-- About poetry MFA programs-- About any space whatsoever-- If women (or any other dissatisfied group or individual or family or generation or whatever) just decide to withdraw from participation--even if they decide to start there own forums (women's groups, magazines, lists...) then where does that leave the new generation of women? Of poets? Of human beings? It's like--here at the Workshop a lot of people complain about the parties, about the networking and schmoozing-- But I mean jeez, if all of the people who complained actually participated, then the parties and other events would be a lot different-- You know? Anyway--back to the original point-- I still wish more women would participate on this list. I think it would change the discourse here in an interesting way-- I still wish more women would publish-- I like to read work by women-- I like to read work by lots of people--not just the ones who are ambitious enough, or whatever enough to submit to magazines "naturally"-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 11:36:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: L.A. reading by Michael Davidson and David Bromige Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" An early alert for Los Angelenos and out-of-towners headed for Houston who may want to fly on to Southern California -- Thursday April 23 -- 7:30 PM Loyola Marymount University Poetry reading by David Bromige and Michael Davidson Friday April 24 -- NOON Loyola Marymount University Michael Davidson and David Bromige discuss their poetry both events free & public annoying reminders accompanied by further details in future weeks TELL EVERYBODY ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 13:36:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" interesting that poker shd poke its head up... in my dept there was a longrunning poker game to which only (the right) men in the dept were invited, which was where all the real decisions were made...i think the game may still be going on, but without the power it once had in dept politics...a paradigm breaking moment came when a young chaucerian (who has since left) whom none of the guys realized was mildly progressive and definitely-not-them, turned down the almighty invitation to join The Game...the department was never the same. At 11:35 AM -0600 3/24/98, k. lederer wrote: >And poker.... > >Hi Summi-- > >All of this has made me think a lot about my views--to reconsider them-- > >My sister is a professional poker player, and I think this has a lot to do >with my views--(along with my experiences as a student at a rather sexist >boarding school, as a college student at a rather liberal college >(Berkeley), as a poet who has worked in a number of environments--). > >My sister is considered to be the best female poker player in the world. >She is 32 and has two wonderful babies. > >She got into poker because she needed to make some money (she dropped out >of a PhD program in order to marry her husband...)-- > >Her story is super interesting, but suffice it to say that I have watched >her play poker a lot-- > >I have watched the way in which men react to her-- > >I myself have experienced the incredible sexism of poker first-hand-- > >Men don't like it when women play poker-- > >Men don't like to lose to women-- > >I have been personally cussed out on numerous occassion for simply being >a woman and having the audacity to play at the very public and open >(like this list) tables in Vegas-- > >To my mind poker is much like the other industries you bring up-- > >Like film, philosophy, and other traditionally male pursuits, one rarely >rarely hears about women-- > >I don't think this is because of lack of exposure--I think it's because >fewer women practice these arts-- > >And I think that part of why fewer women practice these arts is that >women are not encouraged to do so-- > >Some thoughts-- > >Yours, >Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:27:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: submission Seems like the general experience in trying to get published is, you "submit to rejection". sort of a double whammy. unless you get lucky (or connected) & "submit to acceptance". "send your submissions, with entry fee, to..." maybe they should be called emissions. "your ms. emission has been felt. thank you but we are unable to absorb it at this time. now go clean yourself up." not much of an improvement. how about arrows? "Your arrows have hit the market. thank you. we will get back to you soon - hopefully by November 2026." - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:58:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: verisimilitudes and usefulnesses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII re: recent Qs re: participation rate on -this- list specifically - I hardly ever mail anything other than poems to this list, I don't have the requisite genre of energy, this makes me one of those for whom its climate is in some sense forbidding, (1) does this matter (2) does it matter less with regard to me because I am male (3) because I am not hindered by anxiety exactly (4) because I do not feel that other list members extinguish my urges (5) I think these -are- Qs worth sifting through with an open mind i.e. without the preposed conclusion that those who don't OUGHT TO, or that they ought to HERE - other lists I'm on are different, there are list characters If they -ought to-, the character of their participation is different and, in terms of the relative autonomy of their motive for participating, is -inferior- to that of those males for whom ought is an irrelevance If it matters less with regard to me because I am male, this is by dubious virtue of my 'type' of contributor being already well represented I don't feel supernumerary in this assembly, nor do I feel part of a majority; there is a savoury naivete in this remark, of course, and Katy's right to encourage talks, thought I'd post a 2 bit, k ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 15:27:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: women who do write In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII forgive the slightly-off-topic-ness, but among the women who do write, I'm glad Mei-mei Berssenbrugge does write--have finally gotten round to her EMPATHY and SPHERICITY, two recent Bridge St. purchases, & read around in each, even while "submitting" my alleged master's thesis to the tender mercies of the Ruler Lady who Measures Margins (Graham Foust will remember her), & her extended ice-floe sequence haunts one something like Notley & creates space something like Lauterbach, while being of course very much Berssenbrugge's own--does that make any sense? the sometimes doubtful McVay ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 15:36:09 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Sound States Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit has anyone read or know anything about this book? --Charles Smith Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies by Adalaide Kirby Morris, ed., University of North Carolina Press (1998) ISBN-0807846708 360 pages, $24.95. "At least since the late 1920s some writers have been trying to free writing from the book, from the restrictions of print. This collection of essays explores the aural aspect of poetics, especially focusing on the technologies of sound and the possibilities they provide and provoke. Subjects range from Caribbean dub poetry to the experiments of John Cage and Cecil Taylor. Here's a book to add to that small but vital shelf that illuminates this essential ground--it's a good introduction to the issues and sends you off to the best source material. " ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:16:30 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Reply och trembling viacom MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT RM DALEY - ach, I dunno what so, part of what yr reacting against seems a sort of smugness or mebbe decidedness in women SHOULD, as if it were evident or why should they, exactly? which addresses, on it's flip-side (backside?) the sort of worrysome, patronizing aspect of publishers pushing for a ~ 50/50 gender split - instead of, say, publishing what is important to them or to poetry or etc. As if it were so clearly the issue, that women lack venue and need it charitably given them... compare Lily James: "On the Postfeminist Playground, Susannah Breslin and I have created a space for our fiction writing where no space existed [....] We wrote essays about Postfeminism instead of waiting for a critic to dis- cover us. We created our own focus, decided on our own path, and began delivering the goods to our readers." which is not separatism, but "get over it"... (btw, how's this for a book title: Lily James' The Great Taste of Straight People. it's on FC2/Black Ice: "Both children were stern and brushed down. They wore conservative clothes. They were bad looking. Dianna stepped to them.") on the other hand, I do look @ a table of contents or a list of publ. books suspiciously if there don't seem too many women on it. and I do worry abt. gender issues in relation to my own press. mebbe that's me just beeeen my old bourgeois self. gender still matters because we make it matter. hey, you should answer my email more often, you know. chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 15:15:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: Sound States In-Reply-To: <7ba763a.3518193a@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, CharSSmith wrote: > has anyone read or know anything about this book? > > --Charles Smith > > Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies > by Adalaide Kirby Morris, ed., University of North Carolina Press (1998) > ISBN-0807846708 360 pages, $24.95. Haven't read much of it, but I've listened to the CD, which I'm surprised goes unmentioned by the blurb you quote below: It's a great mix (the disc, that is) w/ recordings ranging from HD reading a bit of _Helen in Egypt_, to Marinetti raving about "Bombardamento di Andrianopoli," as well as soundpoems by Ball, Hausmann, and Kruchenykh, not to mention recordings of Lee "Scratch" Perry and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. I've read the essays by Adelaide Morris ("H.D. on the Air"), Steve McCaffery's great "The emergence of the Audio Poem"), and I've started Jed Rasula's lengthy essay on "voice" entitled "Poetry's Voice-Over," but a headache got the better of me. So I'm not lamenting having spent the $25, which seems high, if you don't take into account the accompanying CD. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago So often nothing happens and then when something does noone notices. --Alan Davies ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 17:01:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: add-on disappointment (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII re: oughts/shoulds ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 20:54:37 -0500 (EST) From: Keston Sutherland To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Subject: add-on disappointment to repeat myself: (1) I suppose what I'm groping after here, is that the quality of disappointment arising from a preparation to be disappointed is different from that arising 'naturally', though perhaps only (and this, I hope, rather clinches the imperative) in -degree-. 'Natural' disappointment has the flavour of Nietzsche's criticism of the Romantics, that naivety is basically a paradox, and is negative; because not prepared for adequately (or, perhaps, honestly), its issuing sense of reappointment is of inferior urgency. Been pondering, with somewhat emaciated attention (Boss Hogg were a bit disappointing), whether it's strictly accurate to say that the difference between 'prepared' and 'natural' disappointment is in -degree-; might it not also be the case, that the former affection is more properly -spontaneous-? That's to say, more voluntary, and therefore more assertive of one's -own- disrespect, as distinguished from (though not quite opposed to) simple disrespect? That distinction is a tenuous one, but smacks of at least a trifling validity - that prepared re-appointment is more impressively reflexive than re-appointment arising from unanticipated dissatisfaction, i.e. its effects are not stimulated (and directed) by the substance of the book/film/song/poem alone, but also by one's own immediately relevant understanding of the imperatives arising from dissatisfaction. This seems, perhaps, a bit counter-intuitive; if our intuition would have us pleased by what we spend time over, why should we minimise our chance of being so? Isn't this a mere prejudice, inflated and inspecific? Furthermore, wouldn't it effect in both reader and text a kind of repression of generosity - a pre-emptive stultification of possible, helpful results of reading, diminishing the ability of the text to 'mature' in reading and, at the same time and as the aetiological motive of that diminution, making the reader -lethargic-? Persistence has been greatly extolled, over the past couple of decades and in certain areas of the poesy earth, as the necessary state of a successful reading attitude; many current writings would be almost untouchable if we were not persistent with them - if we did not arrest, or at least consciously defer our initial disappointment. Firstly, whilst a preparation to disappointment is likely to stimulate what it prepares, and our chance of being pleased is in that sense minimised, it's only through this preparedness that 'our chance' and 'being pleased' can be seen clearly; that their stratification in value and into values (political values being one set) can be perceived and examined; that, to take account of the poem simultaneously, culturally and artificially installed mechanisms of 'efficacy' in the object regarded can be distinguished from the effects they (seek to) produce: infectious, -reflex- acceptance (a granting of permission) can be exorcised from pleasure. The prejudice is certainly inspecific in outset. In fact, it -must- be so: to keep unpreparedness in reserve, to read one's favourite authors without the same negative anticipation, is to exercise a tacit and un-self-reproved tendency to grind to a halt (to settle down with what one has, whether this is for comfort or its opposite). This bears, I feel, upon the issue of addressing discrepencies in the reception of women's poetry compared to that of men's: it's poisoning the root of the aspiration for equality and for redress, which is an aspiration I share, to allow a preparation to disappointment to be appalled by its circumstantial dependency on a politic hopefulness. Women's poetry deserves and demands exactly the same rigour, exactly the same distinction of its pleasures from its 'cultural' efficacy, as does men's. I wholeheartedly approve of positive efforts in publishing, buying books, organizing readings and urging reviews. There are many women's poetries that disable the fruition of a prepared disappointment, and in doing so, succeed without affectionate, implicit patronage. Regarding the repression of possible reading-results - that a text becomes -less- if treated in this manner, I can only assent. And this, too, seems quite equitable. There are different powers of achievement in poetry, and to some extent this difference is the product of situation and other, apposite external factors; but those achievements (felicities, as it might have put a while ago, or -qualities of significance-) can be sorted, over time and within the experience of an individual reader, into two types (or rather, identified as two types): those which are contingent upon a neutral (or eager) receptivity for their effectiveness, and those which are effective either because of or despite having no such contingency - those which are capable of converting the latency of a prepared disappointment into its own total incapacity. Such a description is more than a little bloated, but seems approximately relevant to me, right now. And, importantly, wouldn't be made without prepared disappointment, the description itself being an analysis that occurs -in rapid reappointment-. Those qualities which -do- convert latency to incapacity, are genuinely exalted (they make me happy), the more so, or, in fact -at all- for having been categorically distinguished from other effects and in that way exposed as rarities. Disappointment re-enables rarity, replaces dormant rarity. Lethargy is a disarming charge, or at least, might be disarming if left unexamined. I think it's crucial to see the difference between lethargy and refusal - that the former is a phatic and partly instinctive behaviour, characterized by a later, incurred regret; refusal, on the other hand, whilst momentarily similar, branches off from lethargy in its repercussion, and is then known to have been radically different from it. Refusal is an access to a politics of identity; lethargy is a partially accidental eschewal of access. It is not lethargic to approach poetry with a prepared dissappointment. Rather, it is either one or two refusals: firstly, the refusal of a default 'enthusiasm' (with which word, Peter's Puritans are recalled), which is an entailed benefit; secondly, the potential refusal to -linger-. By this I mean, that whereas a reader who is not prepared to be disappointed, finds her or himself lingering over their disappointment after reading a poem (questioning why they had not anticipated their reaction, what had made them react in such a way, why had they spent the 10.99/20 mins. etc), a 'prepared' reader is able instantly to become reappointed, to reassert her or himself, to recognise the causes of his or her reaction without that recognition being entirely -symptomatic- of (bought, paid for) literary unsuccess. This rapid reappointment, I would argue, -is- persistence; it does not allow the relaxing rhythms of hopefulness and symptomatic dismay, it will allow a reader to read more in less time, and, I believe to feel more specifically and with less 'apolitical' delusion the true magnificence of rarity. Fuck 'postmodern' pastiche. Again, much more needed, K ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 17:27:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: SF Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If you're in the area... Cydney Chadwick and Elizabeth Treadwell reading their prose and poetry, Friday April 3rd, 7:30 p.m. Caffe Sapore, 790 Lombard St. (at Taylor). (One block west of Columbus, near the San Francisco Art Institute). (415) 474-1222. FREE. Elizabeth Treadwell is the editor of the literary magazine Outlet and proprietress of Double Lucy Books. Her novel _Eleanor Ramsey: the Queen of Cups_ was published last year, as was a chapbook, Eve Doe (becoming an epic poem). _Populace_, a collection of her prose and poetry, is due out this year from Avec Books. She is currently working on a collection of stories. Her new work is due out in Tinfish 6, The Artful Mind, Errant Bodies, Tripwire: A Poetics Journal, Fabula and non. Cydney Chadwick has been the director of AVEC publications since 1988. She is the author of seven books and chapbooksQthe most recent of which is _Inside the Hours_. Her work has appeared in five American anthologies--the latter two from Sun & Moon Press. Her prose has been translated into Portuguese for a Brazilian anthology of experimental American fiction, titled _Without Explanation_, which is forthcoming out of Sao Paolo. Several of her stories are being translated into Russian for the publication Poetry Olympics. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 21:10:37 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: women MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In words like these: "i am totally not NOT denying that these examples you give are real, but i'm saying they are real, they are real discourse, or more specific, are seeming to be products of modes of discourse that are just as real as why i have to be delivering pizza - for tons of reasons or no reasons, but to me the thing to do is avoid those situations, recognize them, do my work" Rachel is responding to katy about her experience of gender and seems to inist that an ungendered space that is the real space of her life be acknowldged. To me it seemed that Rachel's first post invoked sexuality, more so than it did gender. There she wrote: "what exactly do YOU want from a woman, what can she provide you, what viewpoint does she inherently possess that will breach all those communication barriers and give you hmm and honest? woman's point of view? or is it that women present an honest human being's point of view? or not honest, maybe fresh? inspired? vaginal? what could this be?" ...seems to be a "real" here that is opposed to the reality of discourse, a desire to "breach communications barriers" -- not a denial of communications barriers and their censoring effects or the need to overcome them. But it also seemed to me that Rachel's post puts sexuality into play as human and some how distinct from discourse. The question that this raised for me is what happens to those who embrace(know/like/dislike) the human, the "hmm and honest"??? Are those who know such most often female? Do any who know/experience such write poety? Can this point of view be defined in terms that are poetic and sexual but not gendered? Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:09:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Reply to Rachel re: women In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII About Mairead: I thought the name might be sufficiently occult to pass. About submission: How about: I wish to release these poems... disclose these poems ... reveal / expose / flaunt or otherwise blatantly thrust forward these poems. But non serviam!! Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 21:51:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: scuba diving It is good to read MOBY DICK, not commentaries. Leer, if you will. Black holes swallow the crippled sky-Hawking; yet he fingers his remote. Bible leaves! White forehead. Flag of Ahab; crushed skyhawk; drowned Gay Header (Tashtego). Peter Paul and Pole. Dying stars = neutrons. Perfect spheres of iron. Harpoons. Forehead overwrit = hieroglyph. Vengeance is mine. I will repay. Mere mer amer. Notre Dame. Bloodrose. - P.C. (politically-correct) (avenging eunuch = AHAB) (snow...) -Ye W/Hale I alone am write it down down. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:22:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: womanly MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Although it's easy for women to feel invisible (I know!) just keep = opening up opening up opening up. Talking talking talking. Also, there = _are_ women lurking and posting: count them. Women need to send out more = (this directive is also directed towards myself), be less = perfectionistic, discount the opinions of others more, also need to = curate more readings, start literary magazines, contribute to critical = writing (a particularly difficult point--how to be critical when you are = very often criticized???) I am interested in perception. Am I actually = "pushed" out more, or am I, socialized as woman, more sensitive to = regular ongoing criticism, dog-eat-dogism??? Are my words, when said, as = weighty? Do I accept my own words? Katy, thanks for opening up these cans of worms--need to be = opened--worms are good! Make soil! Grow plants! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:52:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Scott Pound Subject: Re: Open Letter Launch in NYC Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Can this issue by obtained by mail? >tom bell > Since I happen to have the issue right beside me, here is the address: OPEN LETTER 499 Dufferin Ave. London, ON N6B 2A1 CANADA Single issues are $7Cdn. ($9 international) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 20:02:04 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Models of Power MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit R M Daley wrote: >exactly my problem with identity politics of power > i don't see myself any particular way at all times, more like a particular way at any > particular time - though I am conscious of being perceived as a woman ALWAYS. I have been an art student, a mother, a teacher, a bookstore clerk, a poet, a sister, a wife, a stripper, an executive, a web designer, an analysand, a divorcee, a sister, a mistress, caregiver to a terminally ill brother, a bodybuilder, half of an interracial relationship. In each and every one of these situations, I have also been reminded each and every moment that I am a woman. I have NEVER met a man--or a woman--who doesn't assess a woman's body on first meeting. It is cultural, it's what we've been taught to look at, and I don't particularly mind it. In fact, I go to the gym to make my body look the way I want. I check out men. The bigger the better. I loko at the other women. I am a feminist. I like pornography. I understand I am politically incorrect on some of these issues by some standards, that I am immoral by other standards, and that I am illogical by any standard. I am not interested in pinning things down; I've tried to define myself, been defined, both as an individual and as part of a larger collective, be it white, female, college-educated, literate, artistic, blah blah blah. The thing is: none of the definitions are particularly interesting or particularly apt. I'm not interested in assuming power: power is less interesting than submission. Sometimes. I don't want to crystallize my thoughts; I don't want to say what's true. I write what I want, so God forbid it be the same all the time, or logical, or correct, or sensible, or legible, or female. > > so i'd just rather not be called lost before having a chance to get lost > myself That last line's the best. And none of this refers to YOU, particular man reading this post. I am talking to the IDEA of men. And it isn't me talking, it's your idea of a woman. (Serious p.s.: I really didn't mean you, Miekal. And I'm sorry if it made you upset.) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 00:18:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph Subject: Tom Mandel's e-ddress Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Tom, if you're out there, would you refresh me on your e-mail address? I need to backchannel you! Thanks. Sheila shemurph@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 21:22:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: what do man want? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Crystal Balls, Or The Idea of Practice Makes Practice Perfect (for "you know who" both) indulging my weakness for prophecy can see, for example, there'll come a time when i disappoint you, this is simple to see more mere memory, hasn't everyone disappointed you? Speaking personally i've disappointed everyone I could, and everyone has disappointed me if they could, so i thought if i disappointed you right away, we could have that over with and get right down to the funny business get down to the refusal of eternity get down to the calm determined practice the frenzied practice? the spontaneous regenerating practice the heartwarming practice the cold blooded practice the practice of the ha ha harmonious melodious ha has the syncopated practice simulated interrupted disappointing practice the perpetual amateur and sentimental practice of love, amateur love unpracticed unrehearsed practice poor paid highly ha ha practice practice of now, pre-petroleum practice the acknowledged stickum of the planet mama the resonating rechargeable practice mama piano practice fortissimo allegro practice confluent incongruous boogie woogie practice the inconsolable and consuming practice the here again gone again practice practice giraffe practice gingko tree practice guffaws, practice spelling bee practice sister practice brother practice telepathy hell reincarnation play Possession Mama spirit of the self gotten mama practice mammal practice, four legged practice sabre toothed practice sewing practice teeth, rolling practice eyes hair trigger rapid fire practice finger jackhammer jalopy practice zippers and snaps salmon sucking practice thorough methodical practice divine practice, imperfectable practice, pre-season practice post funny practice, intolerable, longwinded practice just -can't-quit-this practice until we're memorized predictable or prophesied. st. ink forbidden plateau fallen body dojo 4 song st. nowhere, british columbia canada V0R 1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 12:40:56 +0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Weldon Sithiwong Subject: women on the list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It seems to me that the list is subject oriented, producing participation in several conversations. These conversations interest, mystify or bore, the measure of which is participation. The exception would be intimidation; do any women on this list feel intimidated? I would be interested to hear what women think about the poetics of their own work. I'd also like to hear what men think about what these women express. But can we avoid a very boring rehash of male "I'm a feminist, too" stuff? Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 21:42:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Fwd:MEXPERIMENTAL Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =46ilm buffs in the San Diego, LA, and SF Bay Areas may be interested in thi= s... Stephen >From: Ritagonzal >Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 13:15:39 EST >To: scope@ucsd.edu >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Subject: MEXPERIMENTAL > >Stephen. >Please forward to grads and all of your interested groups. Thanks. >r > >NEWS RELEASE > >DATE March 16, 1998 > >FOR RELEASE Immediately > >CONTACT Rita Gonzalez, (619) 298-8761 > Jesse Lerner, (213) 622-0483 > >"MEXPERIMENTAL CINEMA" > >April 1, 3, 4, and 8 >A four-part film series in conjunction with UC San Diego and the Museum of >Contemporary Art, San Diego. > >Pacific Film Archives, University Art Museum, Berkeley CA >April 7, 14, 16, and 21 > >Headlands Center for the Arts >Panel Discussion >944 Fort Barry, Sausalito >Sunday, April 19, 4:00 p.m. > >Filmforum (Los Angeles), Art Center College of Design, Pasadena >Friday, April 24, 7:00 p.m. >"Surveying the Terrain" > >Filmforum (Los Angeles), LACE, Hollywood >Sunday, April 26, 7:00 p.m. >"The City" > >Huntington Beach Art Center, Huntington Beach >Friday, April 24, 8:30 p.m. >"Highlights from the Series" > >Mexperimental Cinema is funded by the Fideicomiso Para la Cultura Mexico/US= A >(The Rockefeller Foundation, Fundacion Cultural Bancomer, and Fondo Naciona= l >para la Cultura y las Artes); the University of California, San Diego; and = a >grant from UC MexUS. > > >The history of Mexico's mainstream cinema during the "golden age" of the 19= 40s >through the mid-1950s is well documented. Less well known is the work of >independent and fringe filmmakers and artists experimenting with film and >video from the thirties up to today. In the four-part series, Mexperimenta= l >Cinema, co-curators Jesse Lerner, filmmaker, and Rita Gonzalez, MCA Curator= ial >Intern, present a non-traditional survey of Mexican film history from the >1930s to the present. In San Diego, the series will open at MCA San Diego >with works by Antonio Reynoso, Adolfo Best Maugard, Silvia Gruner, Ximena >Cuevas, and others. Gruner and Cuevas will be present at certain screening= s >to discuss their works. The final three parts of the series will be screen= ed >at UCSD at the Performance Space in the Visual Arts Complex, and the Price >Center Auditorium; for information, call 619-298-8761. The programs at the >University are free. Following its debut in San Diego, the series will tra= vel >to the Film Forum in Los Angeles, Pacific Film Archives at the Berkeley Art >Museum, and the Huntington Beach Art Center. > > > > > > >Part One: "SURVEYING THE TERRAIN" >SHERWOOD AUDITORIUM >WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1 >7:30-9:30 P.M. >$3 MCA MEMBERS, STUDENTS, SENIORS >$4 GENERAL PUBLIC >Ximena Cuevas and Silvia Gruner will be present. > >This survey illustrates the trends in media that have taken place on the >margins of the Mexican commercial industry. The program highlights the wor= k >of artists like Adolfo Best Maugard, known for his paintings and connection= s >to important artistic and literary figures, who made only two films in his >career. Contemporary artists Ximena Cuevas and Silvia Gruner will show fil= m >and video and discuss their work after the program. > >Magueyes. Director, camera, and editor: Rub=C8n G=B7mez. 35mm film. 12 mi= n. >1962. Courtesy of Gustavo Alatriste. > >Surviving fragment from Humanidad. Director: Aldolfo Best Maugard. 35mm. 1 >min. 1934. Courtesy of the Filmoteca de la UNAM. > >El despojo. Director: Antonio Reynoso. 12 min. 1958-60. Courtesy of the >Filmoteca de la UNAM. > >Pecado Original Reproducci=DBn. Director, camera, and editor: Silvia Grune= r. >Super-8 film transferred to 3/4" video. 5 min. 1986. Courtesy of the >artist. > >Medias mentiras. Director, camera, and editor: Ximena Cuevas. 3/4" video. >35 min. 1994. Courtesy of the artist. > >Part Two: THE CITY >PERFORMANCE SPACE, UC SAN DIEGO >VISUAL ARTS COMPLEX, RUSSELL DRIVE >FRIDAY APRIL 3 >7:30-9:00 >FREE > >Far from the heroic charros and idyllic landscapes of the "Golden Era's" >nationalist fantasies, the Mexico of these films is one of bloque [cinder >blocks] and industrial waste. > >Vicente Rojo, directed by Juan Jos=C8 Gurrola. Text: Juan Garc=CCa Ponce. = 16 mm. >27 min. 1964. Courtesy of the Filmoteca de la UNAM. > >Sabado de mierda, director: Gregorio Rocha. Camera: Sarah Minter. Acted b= y >Rafa and los Mierdas Punks. 16mm film. 25 min. 1985-87. > >Un nahual veracru', director, editor and actor: Miguel Calder=DBn. Super-= 8 >film transferred to 3/4" video. 1994. Courtesy of the artist. > >Mi Cor-a-z=DBn, director, camera, editor: Pola Weiss. 17 min. 1986, =E6" v= ideo. > >El Vuelo, director, camera, editor: Silvia Gruner. High-8 video and Super = 8 >film transferred to 3/4" video. 15 min. 1989. Courtesy of Silvia Gruner. > > > > > >Part Three: EL GRITO >PERFORMANCE SPACE, UC SAN DIEGO >VISUAL ARTS COMPLEX, RUSSELL DRIVE >APRIL 4 >7:30-9:30 p.m. >FREE > >The intersection of media and politics are considered in this program, from >the radical strategies of student activist collectives during the uprisings= of >1968 to the super 8 aesthetics of Sergio Garcia in the 70s and 80s up to a >postmodern video critique of Salinas. > >Comunicados # 1 (La agressi=DBn), 2 (La respuesta), and 4, directed, filmed= and >edited collectively by Comite de Huelga. 20 min. 16mm. 1968. Courtesy of >the Filmoteca de la UNAM. > >El fin, director, camera and editor: Sergio Garc=CCa. Super-8 mm film >transferred to 3/4" video. 12 min. 1970. Courtesy of Sergio Garc=CCa. > >Ah, Verda', director, camera and editor: Sergio Garc=CCa. Super-8 mm film >transferred to 3/4" video. 20 min. 1973. Courtesy of Sergio Garc=CCa. > >Segunda primera matrice, director, camera and editor: Alfredo Gurrola. >Super-8 mm film transferred to 3/4" video. 14 min. 1973. Courtesy of Alfr= edo >Gurrola. > >V=CCctimas del pecado neo-liberal, director: Ximena Cuevas, with Jesusa >Rodr=CCguez. Camera and editor: Ximena Cuevas. High-8 and 3/4" video. 15= min. >1995. Courtesy of Ximena Cuevas. > >Part Four: MEXICANIDAD >PRICE CENTER AUDITORIUM, UC SAN DIEGO >APRIL 8 >7:30-9:30 p.m. > >A significant aspect of Mexican intellectual thought has reflected on the >tragic dimensions of national identity, with specific emphasis on the >figuration of the indigenous as long-suffering and stoic. Mexican critic >Roger Bartra has dissected the discourse on Mexicanidad, and suggested the >disparities in class between the philosophers and those who they claim to >represent. The films and videos in this program employ the signs of >Mexicanidad with irony, social gest, and excess. > >Corazon sangrante, director: Ximena Cuevas, with Astrid Hadad. Camera: Xime= na >Cuevas. 3/4" video. 3 min. 1995. Courtesy of the artist. > >La formula secreta, directed and camera: Rub=C8n G=B7mez 35mm. 45 min. 1= 965. >Courtesy of Filmoteca. > >Sim=DBn del desierto, director: Luis Bu=D2uel. 35mm reduced to 16mm. 43 mi= n. >1964. Courtesy of Pacific Film Archives > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 19:47:18 -1000 Reply-To: redmeat@lava.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Weigl Subject: Re: women MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit katy writes: > why aren't there more women on this list? maybe women are a lot smarter than men. maybe they know that their time is too valuable to be spent reading a bunch of boring multiple posts from garrulous white guys for whom time (apparently) has no value, or even (as i find myself doing) risking carpal tunnel by deleting one message after another without even opening them. i wish i was a girl. can you help? oh boy. ps: i am, of course, assuming that all those garrulous boys are white. they sure as hell sound like it. how's that for essentializing? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 23:59:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: women hyperpoets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit William Marsh wrote: > > taking advantage of this recent thread, could listees please help with the > following > > women poets currently working in the "new media" vein, particularly > web-based word arts (visual, kinetic/animated, e- poetry)? > > names? URLs? maria damon & I are putting together a multi-site hypertext called Literature Nation, enterable thru many different web nodes within the next couple months... 10 digit lifepod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:02:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Sound States Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A very exciting book, and a very interesting disc. Highly recommended. (Check out Fred Moten's typographically and formally explorative essay on Cecil Taylor's _Chiampas_, in addition to the essays that D. Zuhar recommends. And of course, Nate Mackey's "Cante Moro," which has appeared elsewhere). Stephen > has anyone read or know anything about this book? > > --Charles Smith > > Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies > by Adalaide Kirby Morris, ed., University of North Carolina Press (1998) > ISBN-0807846708 360 pages, $24.95. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:09:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Robert Duncan at the MLA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Burt, Just a note, touching base on the Oppen materials I sent, and wondering what might be up re: the panel you announced. Had I let you know I was interested? (I've been having some problems w/ e-mail of late, and some of my messages haven't gone through). In any case, hope you're well, Stephen ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:46:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: re : what do man want? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Billy Little, have we met since the night L*N*R*D S*K*Y*N*N*R*D crashed? {hmm, maybe thats where L=A=N=G came from}. Thanks for the poem. I enjoy the way it stumbles sure-footedly onward. And thanks for the question. Seems to me the answer is, To be woman. David ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 23:05:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: Sound States MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Charles, You might try Chris Funkhauser; he's a friend and bud of Cecil Taylor's. Where ole Chris is, I'm not sure, but SUNY Albany or Don Byrd there might know. Chris, if you're out there somewhere, warm hello from Steve, here. Know this text Charles is looking for? S. CharSSmith wrote: > has anyone read or know anything about this book? > > --Charles Smith > > Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies > by Adalaide Kirby Morris, ed., University of North Carolina Press (1998) > ISBN-0807846708 360 pages, $24.95. > "At least since the late 1920s some writers have been trying to free writing > from the > book, from the restrictions of print. This collection of essays explores the > aural aspect > of poetics, especially focusing on the technologies of sound and the > possibilities they > provide and provoke. Subjects range from Caribbean dub poetry to the > experiments > of John Cage and Cecil Taylor. Here's a book to add to that small but vital > shelf that > illuminates this essential ground--it's a good introduction to the issues and > sends you > off to the best source material. " ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 01:20:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > And how many men come rolling off the tongue? Oooooh! George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 06:54:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: womanly In-Reply-To: <01BD5773.5D8FC280@hd15-189.hil.compuserve.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" great discussion, all. thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 08:03:04 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: what do man want? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit man want woman to feel invited to contribute to list what prevents that? is it the topics of threads is it fear of invoking the ire of the good ole boys is it unimportant to teleport words into here is it the man dont shut up is it that poetics is a corrupted male discourse is it the meta balance of power is it what's not said is the thing to listen to is it all the talk about poetry & baseball or George B's bad jokes is it the electronic territory is unmarked what are the wants what are the needs Justine of Poesy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 08:05:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dee morris Subject: Re: Sound States In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry to come in late on this thread. Sound States is a collection of twelve essays which came out from the University of North Carolina Press in January. Its subtitle, "Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies," is the place it started: I had been working with a batch of H.D. poems which eluded any approach I knew to take with them until it occurred to me that I was trying to get beyond or behind the sound when the sound was the point: they were poems not quite like but not wholly unlike the oral poetics explored by Walter Ong, Eric Havelock, and other theorists of primary orality and, more recently, texts like Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead's collection *Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-Garde* and theorists like Friedrich Kittler and Garrett Stewart who deal with what Ong calls "secondary orality." Pursuing that line of exploration, it occurred to me that the world that surrounded the poets Bernstein calls the "radical modernists" was an ear-world, a soundscape, a place where experience came intensely and for the first time amplified into the ear on telephones, radios, loudspeakers, tapes, etc. I took off from Marjorie Perloff's focus in "Radical Artifice" on poetics and popular media and Michael Davidson's work with tape archives and pursued other people--critics and poets--who I thought were exploring the same terrain. The essays are (in order) by James Connor on Joyce, me on H.D., Toby Miller and Alec McHoul on Foucault and the "radio intellectual," Kate Hayles on Beckett and Burroughs, Michael Davidson on "orality and the tapevoice," Perloff on Cage, McCaffery on the "audio-poem," Loretta Collins on Caribbean performative sound, Mackey's "Cante Moro," Fred Moten on Cecil Taylor's "Floating Garden," Garrett Stewart on "Modernism's Sonic Waiver," and Jed Rasula on poetry "voice-over." The book was a long time in the making not because of the essayists but because it wasn't easy to track down and get permissions for the cd, which I mastered at the University of Iowa with a wonderful technician named Tom Schipper. I felt the cd was integral--crucial--to a project which argued for other ways of apprehending poetry, ways which are, it seems all of a sudden, increasingly available. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, for example, now comes with a cd, as does the Riverside Anthology--which organizes its entries by ear as much as by text. A few years ago there was the Exact Change Yearbook with a terrific cd. Now that sites like the Electronic Poetry Center make the earworld available on the web, those of us who love this kind of poetics need to find ways to approach it that respect its materiality as sound, a materiality often lost in preoccupation with the gaze, new critical formalism, poetry wars, etc. "Sound States" is both a noun phrase and a declaration, an assumption I wanted to use to test, stretch, and make new a critical vocabulary for poetics which was missing the ear-action. Charles Bernstein's collection *Close Listening,* which moves along parallel lines of exploration but differently, will be out in April. *Sound States* is available from Bridge Street Books (Rod Smith, if you're there, you might want to reprint your offer) or from University of North Carolina Press or www.amazon.com or your local bookstore. Dee Morris >On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, CharSSmith wrote: > >> has anyone read or know anything about this book? >> >> --Charles Smith >> >> Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies >> by Adalaide Kirby Morris, ed., University of North Carolina Press (1998) >> ISBN-0807846708 360 pages, $24.95. > > >Haven't read much of it, but I've listened to the CD, which I'm surprised >goes unmentioned by the blurb you quote below: It's a great mix (the >disc, that is) w/ recordings ranging from HD reading a bit of _Helen in >Egypt_, to Marinetti raving about "Bombardamento di Andrianopoli," >as well as soundpoems by Ball, Hausmann, and Kruchenykh, not to mention >recordings of Lee "Scratch" Perry and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. > I've read the essays by Adelaide Morris ("H.D. on the Air"), Steve >McCaffery's great "The emergence of the Audio Poem"), and I've started Jed >Rasula's lengthy essay on "voice" entitled "Poetry's Voice-Over," but a >headache got the better of me. > So I'm not lamenting having spent the $25, which seems high, if >you don't take into account the accompanying CD. > >David Zauhar >University of Illinois at Chicago > >So often nothing happens >and then when something does >noone notices. > >--Alan Davies ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:21:12 -0500 Reply-To: Gwyn McVay Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: perspective re: women In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Morning paper front-page news: two boy students open fire into a fire-alarm crowd outside a Jonesboro, AR middle school, killing 4 students and a teacher, and wounding another 11. All but one of those shot, including the 5 fatalities, were women. One of the young shooters had been overheard bragging that he was going to "kill everyone who ever broke up with me." It reminds me hideously of the massacre at (what?) university in Canada in which the shooter, an engineering student, fired into a class including many women, shouting something like "you fucking feminists." We can't "do" anything about either case except what we already "do": write our poems & critical works, teach our students, live our lives in our own way--& certainly it seems to have little "to do" with this listserv--except to underscore the VITAL IMPORTANCE of continuing to promote respect & equity in every direction. How that has to do with women & poetry & Poetics list, I dunno specifically. I did have a gut feeling it bore mention. Gwyn McVay ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:17:10 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Sound States In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 25 Mar 1998 08:05:22 -0600 from This is not only the turf of "radical innovative modernists". You can't "get" Hart Crane, for example, without hearing how the sound plays off (via puns) the written words. James Merrill also comes to mind. This sounds like a fascinatin book & I'm not tryin to start a poetry war. down with labiles - Henry G for gzzzzntheit ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:50:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: perspective re: women Comments: To: Gwyn McVay In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:21 AM -0500 3/25/98, Gwyn McVay wrote: >Morning paper front-page news: two boy students open fire into a >fire-alarm crowd outside a Jonesboro, AR middle school, killing 4 students >and a teacher, and wounding another 11. All but one of those shot, >including the 5 fatalities, were women. One of the young shooters had been >overheard bragging that he was going to "kill everyone who ever broke up >with me." > >It reminds me hideously of the massacre at (what?) university in Canada in >which the shooter, an engineering student, fired into a class including >many women, shouting something like "you fucking feminists." > >We can't "do" anything about either case except what we already "do": >write our poems & critical works, teach our students, live our lives in >our own way--& certainly it seems to have little "to do" with this >listserv--except to underscore the VITAL IMPORTANCE of continuing to >promote respect & equity in every direction. > >How that has to do with women & poetry & Poetics list, I dunno >specifically. I did have a gut feeling it bore mention. > >Gwyn McVay Thanks for that (horrible) report, Gwyn. As for your last question, I don't see how anything could be MORE relevant to a discussion of the forces that silence. Sylvester ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:52:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: Sound States In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:17 AM -0500 3/25/98, henry gould wrote: >This is not only the turf of "radical innovative modernists". You can't >"get" Hart Crane, for example, without hearing how the sound plays off >(via puns) the written words. James Merrill also comes to mind. > >This sounds like a fascinatin book & I'm not tryin to start a poetry war. > >down with labiles >- Henry G for gzzzzntheit I thought Hart Crane WAS a radical innovative modernist! S. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:55:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Models of Power In-Reply-To: Karen Kelley "Models of Power" (Mar 24, 8:02pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii You go girl. On Mar 24, 8:02pm, Karen Kelley wrote: > Subject: Models of Power > R M Daley wrote: > > >exactly my problem with identity politics of power > > i don't see myself any particular way at all times, more like a particular way at any > > particular time - > though I am conscious of being perceived as a woman ALWAYS. I have been > an art student, a mother, a teacher, a bookstore clerk, a poet, a > sister, a wife, a stripper, an executive, a web designer, an analysand, > a divorcee, a sister, a mistress, caregiver to a terminally ill brother, > a bodybuilder, half of an interracial relationship. In each and every > one of these situations, I have also been reminded each and every moment > that I am a woman. I have NEVER met a man--or a woman--who doesn't > assess a woman's body on first meeting. It is cultural, it's what we've > been taught to look at, and I don't particularly mind it. In fact, I go > to the gym to make my body look the way I want. I check out men. The > bigger the better. I loko at the other women. I am a feminist. I like > pornography. I understand I am politically incorrect on some of these > issues by some standards, that I am immoral by other standards, and that > I am illogical by any standard. > > I am not interested in pinning things down; I've tried to define myself, > been defined, both as an individual and as part of a larger collective, > be it white, female, college-educated, literate, artistic, blah blah > blah. > The thing is: none of the definitions are particularly interesting or > particularly apt. > > I'm not interested in assuming power: power is less interesting than > submission. Sometimes. > > I don't want to crystallize my thoughts; I don't want to say what's > true. > > I write what I want, so God forbid it be the same all the time, or > logical, or correct, or sensible, or legible, or female. > > > > so i'd just rather not be called lost before having a chance to get lost > > myself > > That last line's the best. > > And none of this refers to YOU, particular man reading this post. I am > talking to the IDEA of men. And it isn't me talking, it's your idea of a > woman. > > (Serious p.s.: I really didn't mean you, Miekal. And I'm sorry if it > made you upset.) >-- End of excerpt from Karen Kelley ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 10:01:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: women In-Reply-To: Charles Weigl "Re: women" (Mar 24, 7:47pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 24, 7:47pm, lurker Charles Weigl wrote: > Subject: Re: women > katy writes: > > > why aren't there more women on this list? > > maybe women are a lot smarter than men. maybe they know that their time > is too valuable to be spent reading a bunch of boring multiple posts > from garrulous white guys for whom time (apparently) has no value, or > even (as i find myself doing) risking carpal tunnel by deleting one > message after another without even opening them. > > i wish i was a girl. can you help? > > oh boy. > > ps: i am, of course, assuming that all those garrulous boys are white. > they sure as hell sound like it. how's that for essentializing? >-- End of excerpt from Charles Weigl You go girl. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:01:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: submission and dominance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I applaud Katy for daring to bring up the nasty "g" word (gender) on the List....It sure is threatening to a lot of folks. Quite simply, she's right: there are still huge disparities in the involvement, power, choices and visiblity of men and women in our poetry circles and institutions. (...because those disparities exist in society as inescapeable lines of torsion and inequality...) And it will (I think) surprise no one that I can confirm from my own work as editor that she's very right about "submissions" (and dominations)..... Women are less likely to actively sell and push their work than men. Given the number and importance of women poets out there, this is quite striking (to say nothing of wildly frustrating for us editors). The many very impressive women on the List should consider sending out more manuscripts to us magazine editors.... (My ratio is about 6 percent women to 94 percent men...While I don't think it is this bad for everyone, it is very *close* for many editors I've talked to...) (Actually it is more 18 percent women to 82 percent men, if you include poets who saw my entry in Poets' Market; those 60 or so poets who've submitted using PM have been *without exception* just starting out, very "workshop" and very, very bad...The 6 to 94 estimate is when I look just at folks who have seen an issue of the mag, and know what kind of stuff I publish....) I haven't much to say to those who've dismissed or belittled Katy's points about the disequalibrium between women and men...They must be living in the twelfth dimension or something...No doubt a finer and happier place than ours... Mark Prejsnar editor, Misc. Proj. 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11 Atlanta, GA 30306 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 08:04:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: canada's top painter Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pure Coinkydink, any resemblance livin or dead etc. RADIO REQUEST Roy Kiyooka was on of the sexiest men in North America in the sixties. His devilish thin mustache, his piercing gaze and his dapper haberdashery left women from Halifax to Tofino falling to their knees to undo his shoelaces. He wasn't like American pretty boys who never got enough of hearing themselves shoot off their mouth. Roy was a doll OK, with those dark eyebrows and the smoke trailing out of his broad nostrils, but the first thing his sweethearts all mentioned,"Roy listened, he left his ears open all day long." "You betcha,"Jackie said "his gentle little fingers thrilled me, I had more orgasms at Emma Lake in 30 days, than i'd had in hyannisport the four years previous. Roy gave you his attention as a gift, he gave thought to every word I said, he seemed to care so much it made me cry. he was the only man I ever met who kept listening even after I was naked." I'd first met Roy(a few years before I met Jackie) on the Staten Island Ferry. A couple of years later, after Mr. Gee put the clamps on, I'd probably never have spoken to him, but in those days I was fearless, a real showoff. I was just back from Milan, just old enough to vote, pacing the deck trying to memorize Ovid. My method was simple, I'd read the line silently, then read it aloud and then close the book and recite the same line aloud so as I passed Roy heard me say "rusticus est nimium quem laedit adultera coniunx." He did a double take, looking as if he wondered what bughouse this looney tune crept out of I laughed. "Quo tibi formasam si no nis cast placebat?" Roy replied and I nearly shit my pants. Was this guy a plant, a reminder from Mr. Gee that there'd always be eyes on me as long as I was in the family, my chin just about clanged into my zipper. Roy had a laugh like one in a million. If you were in a stadium in red Deer or Moncton and heard that laugh you'd go looking for Roy. In laughing, he'd taken his leg off the railing,"I was about to jump," he told me years later. Bobby had told me,'men who pahsist in theah foolish attentions towahd my sistah-in-law have been known to suhvivi e near fatal accident", only an hour earlier. Your Ovid saved my life." Almost two decades later, when we knew each other better, after I left the family, after Izzie died, Roy told me he was blind with anger and overwhelmed with sorrow after the attorney general advised him to "take youah payntbahx back to iglooland" He didn't know how long he had walked or how he had ended up on the Staten Island Ferry, but suddenly, there I was giving him that line, "Only a provincial bumpkin stews about adultery" from Ovid, which made him think his thoughts were written on his foehead. He said his roommate was always quoting Ovid to him in college, his roommate claimed Ovid worked better than Spanish Fly, but Roy said he'd never kissed a girl who'd remembered her latin, except Jackie. Or was it Marilyn? Yes, he was pretty sure it was Marilyn who said, "quo tibi formasam si no nis cast placebat?" referring to Mr. Dimaggio who didn't get it, "why marry good looks when all you wanted was good behaviour?" was what Roy had responded to my latin. I must confess, since that day, I haveheard that same line from numerous and surprising sources, but that's another story. In the sixties, Roy had a studio in the same building with Leonard Cohen. I remember he almost fell out of his chair laughing the first time he heard THERE AINT NO CURE FOR LOVE. Could you play that in memory of Roy Kiyooka? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:12:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: women who do write In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > forgive the slightly-off-topic-ness, but among the women who do write, I'm > glad Mei-mei Berssenbrugge does write--have finally gotten round to her > EMPATHY and SPHERICITY, two recent Bridge St. purchases, & read around in > each, even while "submitting" my alleged master's thesis to the tender > mercies of the Ruler Lady who Measures Margins (Graham Foust will remember > her), & her extended ice-floe sequence haunts one something like Notley & > creates space something like Lauterbach, while being of course very much > Berssenbrugge's own--does that make any sense? > > the sometimes doubtful McVay > I second that and recommend these books also; I spent about a month buried in Sphericity not long ago. Berssenbrugge doesn't get mentioned as frequently as I'd expect, as being one of our really astonishing contemporaries. I like "creates space".....Sometimes M-M B. has this truely singular feel for long lines and a floating quality, a very unusual prosody is often going on, at a remarkable level of thought about sound and the movement of words. I remember a piece called Ghost Poem, in an anthology or mag, which was remarkable in this way (one of the first times I realized I had to start paying special attention to her..) That both she and Lauterbach "create space" is a good comment. Lauterbach floats around constructs of social space and defered narrative more, though.... Mark P. @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:19:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: perspective re: women In-Reply-To: sylvester pollet "Re: perspective re: women" (Mar 25, 9:50am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 25, 9:50am, sylvester pollet wrote: > Subject: Re: perspective re: women > At 9:21 AM -0500 3/25/98, Gwyn McVay wrote: > >Morning paper front-page news: two boy students open fire into a > >fire-alarm crowd outside a Jonesboro, AR middle school, killing 4 students > >and a teacher, and wounding another 11. All but one of those shot, > >including the 5 fatalities, were women. One of the young shooters had been > >overheard bragging that he was going to "kill everyone who ever broke up > >with me." > > > >It reminds me hideously of the massacre at (what?) university in Canada in > >which the shooter, an engineering student, fired into a class including > >many women, shouting something like "you fucking feminists." > > > >We can't "do" anything about either case except what we already "do": > >write our poems & critical works, teach our students, live our lives in > >our own way--& certainly it seems to have little "to do" with this > >listserv--except to underscore the VITAL IMPORTANCE of continuing to > >promote respect & equity in every direction. > > > >How that has to do with women & poetry & Poetics list, I dunno > >specifically. I did have a gut feeling it bore mention. > > > >Gwyn McVay > > Thanks for that (horrible) report, Gwyn. As for your last question, I don't > see how anything could be MORE relevant to a discussion of the forces that > silence. Sylvester >-- End of excerpt from sylvester pollet Seconded!! Your post,Gwyn,goes a long way as do the honest, interesting posts by the several other women writers who have posted on these intersecting threads (such as Karen Kelly and Rachel Daley among others). William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 10:21:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark's statistic of 96 percent to 4 percent is pretty much the same as mine for Explosive. My original comment was a personal plea for more women to participate in MY poetic life. I apologize to you, Rachel, if you think I'm stepping on your toes or otherwise denying your individuality--I'm not trying to. I find your view of gender just as threatening to my sense of justice as you probably find my view threatening to yours-- But, to be utterly practical-- I do find it strange that I get like 9 submissions by men per 1 by women (I mean, I'm a female and very young editor--have a very broad range of voices in my mag--ages, aesthetics, etc...)-- I don't like it that when I go out at night I worry about being raped. I do want to have children, and I think is a pretty gendered decision. Maybe I'm brainwashed or evil or whatever--but I'm glad to be a woman. I am proud of the heritage that comes with that-- I am proud of the women who preceded me and got me the vote, the right to abortion, the "right" to go to school and so on. I'm not always thinking all the time "I'm a woman" "I'm a woman" "I'm a woman"-- But sometimes I AM a woman--and when that's how I feel, I want to feel that this isn't a hindrance to me in the workplace or anywhere else-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:35:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carolyn Guertin Subject: Feminist Poetics In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > compare Lily James: > "On the Postfeminist Playground, Susannah Breslin > and I have created a space for our fiction writing > where no space existed [....] We wrote essays about > Postfeminism instead of waiting for a critic to dis- > cover us. We created our own focus, decided on our > own path, and began delivering the goods to our readers." > > > which is not separatism, but "get over it"... It's not particularly useful either. We get make-up tips for morons and a catty fashion critique of the participants in the academy awards quoted to us as a model for behaviour? I doubt that any Poetics site could get 2500 hits a day (as James and Breslin claim)--even using their tabloid-style approach. Where is the feminist poetics list anyway? Carolyn ________________________________________________ Carolyn Guertin, Department of English, University of Alberta E-Mail: cguertin@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca; Tel/FAX: 403-432-2735 Website: "Language is a virus." -- Laurie Anderson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:42:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Darren Wershler-Henry Subject: Re: Open Letter Launch in NYC Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom: All Open Letter back issues are available from the editor, Frank Davey: Open Letter 499 Dufferin Ave London, Ontario Canada N6B 2A1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:33:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Lazy editors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "women don't submit' if submissions make up the bulk of your magazine than you are a lazy editor male or female, you read poetry for crying out loud do you know what you like, can you tell when you're devastated or tickled pink by somebody else's work, Every mag I've edited i've sought the work of writer's female or other gone right out and told them i like your work and i'd like to publish some in my next sought the right to promote this work to a wider audience sought to benefit from the reflected quality of the work around me. And suppose they don't live next door, even before e-mail if you found their work you could find them, write the editor of the other mag, is that too much effort? write the CBC, write the publisher, even if you're not an editor or publisher you have to realize if you make a slight effort when you find an overwhelming poem to seek out the writer and say wow where can i read more, that might be the very difference that enable's more to be written a little note like that can be a better suicide cure than any pill. People will submit good work unrequested sure and often that will be a cue to others you should chase down to create your solid and continuingly interesting mag, Passivity is unbecoming in an editor, "they don't submit" is a lie by omission a half truth, Robert Creeley hasn't submitted a poem since the fifties, Kathy Acker since the seventies. the other technique i've favoured is republication of poems you've found elsewehere in lieu of a review. Poetry is news that stays news, Ez sez. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:39:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Re: women Comments: To: Charles Weigl In-Reply-To: <35189A66.AEFDBEF7@lava.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Charles Weigl wrote: > maybe women are a lot smarter than men. > i wish i was a girl. can you help? > > oh boy. > > ps: i am, of course, assuming that all those garrulous boys are white. > they sure as hell sound like it. how's that for essentializing? > A little off the topic, but not entirely. Has anyone seen the French movie, Ma vie en rose? It's an excellent film about a 7 year old boy who wants to be a girl and doesn't understand why it's not possible. Summi ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:09:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: stupid and lazy posts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Billy Little's post is pretty unhelpful. Essentially, what Katy and I are doing *is* trying to get the word out, to encourage more and better submissions, and to encourage the many superb woman writers out there to become more active, to give us more poems to consider, etc. She and I and others I know of, are trying various means to improve the situation. This thread is actually one of 'em. But BL's snivelling post is not really a help to anyone, I'd say. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:09:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > Mark's statistic of 96 percent to 4 percent is pretty much the same as > mine for Explosive. > > My original comment was a personal plea for more women to participate in > MY poetic life. > > I apologize to you, Rachel, if you think I'm stepping on your toes or > otherwise denying your individuality--I'm not trying to. > > I find your view of gender just as threatening to my sense of justice as > you probably find my view threatening to yours-- hmm how is this - i'm fine and knowing your magazine and others are doin their darndest to make up for some lack or something , more POWER to you as you said but your stance seems to take a fascistic step toward somthing else no? - is there a way i'm not being told by you and then someone else who said he'd like to hear women more becasue they that other species must be smarter?!?!? help me out here > > But, to be utterly practical-- > this continual distinction between the real world and the poetry world, the suggestion tha tyou or i or josh are other than "Real people" is awfully disturbing - and so goes this 'real world' of publishing a magazine vs the non-real ? world of talking and reading and writing - > I do find it strange that I get like 9 submissions by men per 1 by women > (I mean, I'm a female and very young editor--have a very broad range of > voices in my mag--ages, aesthetics, etc...)-- > > I don't like it that when I go out at night I worry about being raped. > > I do want to have children, and I think is a pretty gendered decision. > Maybe I'm brainwashed or evil or whatever--but I'm glad to be a woman. > > I am proud of the heritage that comes with that-- ????????????????????heritage of women? which one? last year ? > > I am proud of the women who preceded me and got me the vote, the right to > abortion, the "right" to go to school and so on. > > I'm not always thinking all the time "I'm a woman" "I'm a woman" "I'm a > woman"-- > > But sometimes I AM a woman--and when that's how I feel, I want to feel > that this isn't a hindrance to me in the workplace or anywhere else-- > but you are always a woman no? i feel as though i'm beating many dead horses and need to go - but that's how i feel- and i suppose i always feel like a woman cause i always have ovaries or whatever and have never had a sex change to know a difference- emma goldman and others sure were great -- but they also seemd to me to have made it possible for me to not be fighting the fight continuously, made it so i don't ever have to have babies and at age 24 don't feel like an old maid and do whatever in whatever lala land mark presjner considers this > Best, > Katy > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:36:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Lazy editors In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 25 Mar 1998 09:33:41 -0700 from the world needs more passive, lazy editors willing to read what comes straight out of the mailbox with no name attached. Let them publish a magazine called TAHITI every now and then full of stuff that just showed up one day while they were lounging around eating grapes. let them publish good & bad poems right next to each other. let them be totally lazy people whose only concern is avoiding typos. let them lie about giving away their mag directly from their hammocks. let them be so lazy that they don't even provide URLs or CDs - you have to read the damn stuff out loud yourself!! holding the magazine in your bare, sunbrowned hands, wind blowing through the palm trees, coconuts plopping gently around your towel, the waves hissing on the snore... zzzzzzzz..... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 12:59:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rachel-- I'm not making a distinction between "the real" and the "non-real"-- Rather I think there is a difference between a short-term and a long-term approach to gender My long-term strategy is to think more like you seem to think--to believe in the powerful malleablility--or perhaps even the irrelevance--of identity. In the short-term, however, I am faced with a glaring set of disparities that do indeed seem to be based on a gender category--no matter how malleable that category may seem (or how fictional or stultifying...) in the long-run. *** Also--as to Billy's comment-- Please do not be accusing me of being lazy about my editing-- I've probably solicited 80 percent of what's in my mag-- But it's funny--people ("the audience") get pretty pissed off if they think you are soliciting a lot-- As in--some might say that it is, in fact, lazy to SOLICIT work-- That it is more difficult and more rewarding to have to slog through submissions-- That it is exclusive and smelly of coterie to solicit too large a bulk-- I agree with you that one should go after the work that one wants to present--but I, for one, would like to strike a balance between going for what I already know I like and being open to poetry that is new to me. Thoughts, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 12:06:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, George Bowering wrote: > > And how many men come rolling off the tongue? > > Oooooh! I can't remember who said it, but some woman on th list asked if there is an intimidation factor in posting to the list. Yes, I do think there is. I am usually an observer, but when something catches my eye and I feel strongly enough to write about it, I'll overcome that intimidation. However, when I receive this kind of jeering response, as a woman it makes me feel like I need to stand on the sidelines and shut my trap unless what I have to say is 100% brilliant. I'm not sure that the men who post to this list with frequency feel that way. Summi ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:02:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: fascistic rhetorics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Errr....fascistic?? There are some, uh, pretty worrisome people on this list. It would appear that the spirit of recent ultra-right attacks on affirmative action, is alive and active and inspiring some of the new people here on the poetix list.. Pretty interesting, I'd say. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:16:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: "s. kaipa" "Re: women in poetry and in the arts" (Mar 25, 12:06pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 25, 12:06pm, s. kaipa wrote: > Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts > On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, George Bowering wrote: > > > > And how many men come rolling off the tongue? > > > > Oooooh! > > I can't remember who said it, but some woman on th list asked if there is > an intimidation factor in posting to the list. Yes, I do think there is. > I am usually an observer, but when something catches my eye and I feel > strongly enough to write about it, I'll overcome that intimidation. > However, when I receive this kind of jeering response, as a woman it makes > me feel like I need to stand on the sidelines and shut my trap unless > what I have to say is 100% brilliant. I'm not sure that the men who post > to this list with frequency feel that way. > > > Summi >-- End of excerpt from s. kaipa Summi, don't let the (us) curmudgeonlies get you down. In answer to the question, yes. Don't go for the brilliant (what's brilliant anymore?), go for the humor -- anything ya like. William ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:24:17 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rachel-- I've gotten some strange hits off of some of your posts-- 1. That what I'm saying has anything to do with "telling" you to have babies? That I'm "dictating" how you should identify yourself? You didn't have to respond to my post(s)--you don't have to do anything on here. I'm not "dictating" anything... 2. That I think women should be included here or anywhere else as a category of being because "they" as a "species" are smarter? What? I just feel that if someone feels uncomfortable either giving work to mags or speaking on this list because of how they think they will be perceived vis-a-vis gender, then that's lame. If you feel that your gender doesn't get in your way in this forum, then that's great. 3. That I'm some sort of gushy girly person who cries at the TITANIC. (Rachel and I saw the TITANIC together, so anything she says about that....)-- Yes, I loved the TITANIC! I cried because of the sentimental love story--sure. I cried because I was faced with an extremely graphic portrayal of 1500 people freezing to death-- I cried because the women and children were separated from their husbands... What's wrong with crying? Is there anything inherently wrong with sentimentality? Is there anything inherently gendered about it? Or perhaps I misread your post-- Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:22:46 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Sound States Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Thanks to everyone who responded about _Sound States_. I'm looking forward to it. Now that we've blabbed about the materiality of the text, the materiality of type itself (Drucker's _Visible Word_), it's about time someone took a close look at the aural material side of poetry. ps to Sydney: so did I. HD as well! --Charles Smith In a message dated 98-03-25 09:48:40 EST, you write: << I thought Hart Crane WAS a radical innovative modernist! S. >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:03:11 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'm likewise a by-stander (mainly because I only get e-mail at work) but have been thinking hard about the issues raised. When I think about how much of my academic energy has been wasted alternately not wanting to piss men off (because they might: 1. Hurt me professionally 2. Do that whole number where you show them your work and they sit there like your dad or something and "help" you along with your little ideas. 3. Tell me my ideas are a bunch of whiney, privledged white feminist bullshit and if I can't "compete" with men (meaning, usually, read the same books they have read) I should just shut up. Or suggest I'm claiming "victim" status--(now that's got to be the worst thing a woman in the 90s can be called) 4. Not want to date me (well, since I'm being confessional here) 5. They'll take some "devil's advocate" stance and argue some mysogynist position (recently a very bright man and I were discussing the whole Clinton mishmash and his position seemed to be that women can think what they want, but bottom line, men need blowjobs and will do whatever it takes to get them) and then when you point that out (like "hey, when did your right to a blowjob become an ethical underpinning of our society") they suggest you've taken it "too personally" and get offended that you thought so badly of them. and this isn't even having to worry that if you dump a 13 year old boy, he might open fire on you) and wanting to piss men off, (I have this essay about starting a company called dial a psycho-- where if a guy makes you feel bad and then tells you not to make a scene, you hire an actress to do it for you anonymously. That way you don't get the negative fallout from "making a scene" but you know that he's had to deal with your deferred rage. There's more to it, but that's the core. Is this art? Is it the rantings of a whiney man-hater? I've never submitted it because I've never been sure. Maybe I will.) I sometimes don't trust myself to say anything. All of it's so real and discursive. Elizabeth ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 11:58:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Sound States/Funkhouser Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" CF's in New Jersey these days (backchannell for address). His interview w/ Cecil Taylor appears in a recent Hambone, and is worth checking out. I'd also recommend (of course) Aldon Nielsen's work on Taylor in BLACK CHANT -- Stephen ps - apologies for the should-have-been backchannelled post I dropped off earlier... >Dear Charles, > >You might try Chris Funkhauser; he's a friend and bud of Cecil Taylor's. Where >ole Chris is, I'm not sure, but SUNY Albany or Don Byrd there might know. >Chris, >if you're out there somewhere, warm hello from Steve, here. Know this text >Charles is looking for? S. > >CharSSmith wrote: > >> has anyone read or know anything about this book? >> >> --Charles Smith >> >> Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies >> by Adalaide Kirby Morris, ed., University of North Carolina Press (1998) >> ISBN-0807846708 360 pages, $24.95. >> "At least since the late 1920s some writers have been trying to free writing >> from the >> book, from the restrictions of print. This collection of essays explores the >> aural aspect >> of poetics, especially focusing on the technologies of sound and the >> possibilities they >> provide and provoke. Subjects range from Caribbean dub poetry to the >> experiments >> of John Cage and Cecil Taylor. Here's a book to add to that small but vital >> shelf that >> illuminates this essential ground--it's a good introduction to the issues and >> sends you >> off to the best source material. " ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:19:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: women who do write Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Creating space is an intriguing poetic notion that I'd like to hear more about and would appreciate comments. As a man I feel it is easier for me to create an audience (are these creative terms related?) and I wonder if this is a general gender socialization thing or is it just one of my weirdnesses? You might think that "creating space" is an ego thing and sterotypically masculine but I don't think so. tom bell At 11:12 AM 3/25/98 -0500, Mark Prejsnar wrote: >On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > >> forgive the slightly-off-topic-ness, but among the women who do write, I'm >> glad Mei-mei Berssenbrugge does write--have finally gotten round to her >> EMPATHY and SPHERICITY, two recent Bridge St. purchases, & read around in >> each, even while "submitting" my alleged master's thesis to the tender >> mercies of the Ruler Lady who Measures Margins (Graham Foust will remember >> her), & her extended ice-floe sequence haunts one something like Notley & >> creates space something like Lauterbach, while being of course very much >> Berssenbrugge's own--does that make any sense? >//// > >Mark P. >@lanta > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 20:20:29 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L.MacMahon and T.R.Healy" Subject: new titles from Wild Honey Press Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable SYZYGY TREVOR JOYCE 16pp, hand sewn chapbook, =A33.50 or= $5(currency) A long poem in which lyric intensity and the most rigorous intellectual underpinnings interpenetrate or even coexist. Gorgeous stuff. and then there is this sound=20 that starts with a scarcely audible=20 rustling inside gold the whisper echoing within the diamond grows to take in snatches from high stars from elsewhere the disintegrating actions of clocks so that eventually you attend to the infinities of numbers shattering the shriek that is the change of several millions =A5 the red fish leaping from the mouth=20 up the cold fresh stream to the empty source spilling down through stars and through the watching courses of stone=20 until the fixed mesh abstracts unerringly each hour with all its clamouring brood jerking routinely to the tune TINY PIECES BILLY MILLS 10pp, hand=3Dsewn, =A32.00 or $3.00 (currency) Modest in size but not in scope, much of Mills poetic can be deduced from this bite-sized miracle. =20 Available from=20 Wild Honey Press 16a Ballyman Road Bray Co. Wicklow Ireland cheques payable to Randolph Healy Writing is currency so both titles also available in exchange for some of your own work in any form. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 15:18:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Sound States/Funkhouser Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-25 15:06:55 EST, you write: << CF's in New Jersey these days (backchannell for address). His interview w/ Cecil Taylor appears in a recent Hambone, and is worth checking out. >> as is Chris' interview w/ Nate Mackey. posted @ EPC i believe --cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 14:33:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts Comments: To: William Burmeister Prod In-Reply-To: <9803251416.ZM7975@plhp517.comm.mot.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII We need to be careful to distinguish between delineating the scope of this list and policing those borders. The comments re: women & their exclusion from verse culture, particularly the small mag.s illustrate a similar tendancy for the list to incite valuable debate then fall into an impotent silence. If one thread to spring off of these debates, such as regards a supposed "female sensibility" in contemporary, innovative poetics were to arise, I'd have to jump in with this: In soliciting over long distance a poet, firstname Michael, whose work I'd seen in Daniel Bouchard's wonderful Mass. Ave. magazine for submissions to my own little mag., Kenning, I found this Michael (Angelo Tata) was apparently a woman, judging by (her) voice on the telephone. In the work I'd seen previously & (her) subsequent submission, I found nothing to truly disambiguate the gender distinction. There was something beautiful in this, as I was then curious to see to what degree the pieces I was reading were "engendered". Let me just add that I'd hate to lose the already scant multiplicity of voices on this list. As much, I'd hate to lose the threads which are more "text" based than "culture" based, however arbitrary this opposition may be. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, William Burmeister Prod wrote: > On Mar 25, 12:06pm, s. kaipa wrote: > > Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts > > On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, George Bowering wrote: > > > > > > And how many men come rolling off the tongue? > > > > > > Oooooh! > > > > I can't remember who said it, but some woman on th list asked if there is > > an intimidation factor in posting to the list. Yes, I do think there is. > > I am usually an observer, but when something catches my eye and I feel > > strongly enough to write about it, I'll overcome that intimidation. > > However, when I receive this kind of jeering response, as a woman it makes > > me feel like I need to stand on the sidelines and shut my trap unless > > what I have to say is 100% brilliant. I'm not sure that the men who post > > to this list with frequency feel that way. > > > > > > Summi > >-- End of excerpt from s. kaipa > > > > > Summi, don't let the (us) curmudgeonlies get you down. In answer to the > question, yes. Don't go for the brilliant (what's brilliant anymore?), go for > the humor -- anything ya like. > > > William > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 15:38:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: fascistic rhetorics Comments: To: Mark Prejsnar In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >Errr....fascistic?? >There are some, uh, pretty worrisome people on this list. Mark - I think that if this is a responsible rather than an off-hand remark, you ought now to say who you think these people are. Keston ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 16:00:11 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Contribution Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit It's not a submission, it's a contribution which can be appropriate or not. Just like the lotto, it's an unfair tax on those who need the money most, but everyone can spend and / or give and / or buy. In this respect, I respect Denise Duhamel and Lyn Lifshin. Maybe even Joyce Carol Oates, but VERY grudgingly. Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 15:09:43 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: <9803251416.ZM7975@plhp517.comm.mot.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, William Burmeister Prod wrote: > Summi, don't let the (us) curmudgeonlies get you down. In answer to the > question, yes. Don't go for the brilliant (what's brilliant anymore?), go for > the humor -- anything ya like. I'm not sure I understand what this means. Although I appreciate humor and often long for more casual discussion of poetic/political issues. If you mean that I should counter a serious issue that is being discussed in a serious fashion with levity, I'm not sure I think this is a helpful way of dialoguing without being misunderstood. Summi ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 16:11:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Chaffing & Winnowing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Anybody else see the article on coding/encrypting/scrambling in the New York Times? The url for the mit paper is http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt (NYT printed the tilde above the r) Mr. Rivest's dad suggested he use "winnowing" as a term. I think part of the innovation is packetizing, then encoding, but not encrypting, the packets (using different codes). But am I sure? Nope. Encryption is not exportable because it may be a national security risk. The question becomes, "Who holds the keys?" To get around it, one could use encoding, but code is generally not as secure. This particular paper is about adding chaff (or mixed "grains") to "grains" of meaning (the packets) and then passing out ... different winnowing fans to different people (I think). Regards, Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 15:33:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts Comments: To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" you left out a fifth reason: they might sneer at your ideas and then use them and get credit for them, knowing you lack the credibility (as a woman) to point out the theft and get redress...--md --of course this has happened with women as well. At 2:03 PM -0500 3/25/98, Elizabeth Hatmaker wrote: >I'm likewise a by-stander (mainly because I only get e-mail at work) but have >been thinking hard about the issues raised. When I think about how much of >my academic energy has been wasted alternately not wanting to piss men off >(because they might: > >1. Hurt me professionally >2. Do that whole number where you show them your work and they sit there >like your dad or something and "help" you along with your little ideas. > >3. Tell me my ideas are a bunch of whiney, privledged white feminist >bullshit and if I can't "compete" with men (meaning, usually, read the same >books they have read) I should just shut up. Or suggest I'm claiming >"victim" status--(now that's got to be the worst thing a woman in the 90s can >be called) > >4. Not want to date me (well, since I'm being confessional here) >5. They'll take some "devil's advocate" stance and argue some mysogynist >position (recently a very bright man and I were discussing the whole Clinton >mishmash and his position seemed to be that women can think what they want, >but bottom line, men need blowjobs and will do whatever it takes to get them) >and then when you point that out (like "hey, when did your right to a blowjob >become an ethical underpinning of our society") they suggest you've taken it >"too personally" and get offended that you thought so badly of them. > >and this isn't even having to worry that if you dump a 13 year old boy, he >might open fire on you) > >and wanting to piss men off, (I have this essay about starting a company >called dial a psycho-- where if a guy makes you feel bad and then tells you >not to make a scene, you hire an actress to do it for you anonymously. That >way you don't get the negative fallout from "making a scene" but you know >that he's had to deal with your deferred rage. There's more to it, but >that's the core. Is this art? Is it the rantings of a whiney man-hater? >I've never submitted it because I've never been sure. Maybe I will.) > >I sometimes don't trust myself to say anything. All of it's so real and >discursive. > >Elizabeth ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:49:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: women In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >A little off the topic, but not entirely. Has anyone seen the French >movie, Ma vie en rose? It's an excellent film about a 7 year old boy who >wants to be a girl and doesn't understand why it's not possible. > > > > >Summi I have heard that it is a very good movie. Just one point. It is not French. It is Belgian. We folks who live next to big countries like to remind them of this stuff. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 17:54:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Anecdotal Agoraphobia Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I believe that Dickinson was agoraphobic as well as not socialized for interaction beyond her family. However, her refusal to participate in religious revivals that swept Amherst further limited her social interaction. Her writing work exacerbated the situation. I live with a very deliberately macho borderline agoraphobic not socialized for interaction outside family. His participation in the publication process brings on anxiety, the same type as when he goes to, oh, a party. Oddly, the listservs he's on are for geneology. My junk reading this week has included two books apropos to this e-mail exchange: _Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution_ and _Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women_. I can recommend neither, but I will say that maybe the information these journalists gathered from scientific papers is not meaningful. I.e., is the reason that I am unaccountably good at rotating shapes in space that I got some strange testosterone shot as a little girl? My fiance sure as heck can't pack a trunk worth a darn, but I doubt if he was dropped on his hippocampus (gee, that must hurt) as a child. If the model doesn't fit, don't wear it. Tom Lux should be berated for a variety of things, but among them for fielding a mostly male Sarah Lawrence softball team in the New York MFA games. Hopefully that's not going on anymore. Regards, Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:51:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm afraid that I have to agree with Billy Little on this one. I dont see the sense or the committment in sending out a general request to poets to "submit." Read someone's poetry. Figure out what you like. Then ASK that poet to send you something for your magazine or whatever. Be a community, not a market. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 18:35:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: perspective re: women MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this is crazy. makes me wonder if all of the efforts we have made over the years have only created a bitter struggle for power instead of and move toward equality. how can we move away from power games and actually work toward a more egalitarian society?? i don't know. maybe a move away from the polarized points of male and female, and toward a vision of individuality. i begining to feel my head shake with cynicism. jeff. >Morning paper front-page news: two boy students open fire into a >fire-alarm crowd outside a Jonesboro, AR middle school, killing 4 students >and a teacher, and wounding another 11. All but one of those shot, >including the 5 fatalities, were women. One of the young shooters had been >overheard bragging that he was going to "kill everyone who ever broke up >with me." > >It reminds me hideously of the massacre at (what?) university in Canada in >which the shooter, an engineering student, fired into a class including >many women, shouting something like "you fucking feminists." > >We can't "do" anything about either case except what we already "do": >write our poems & critical works, teach our students, live our lives in >our own way--& certainly it seems to have little "to do" with this >listserv--except to underscore the VITAL IMPORTANCE of continuing to >promote respect & equity in every direction. > >How that has to do with women & poetry & Poetics list, I dunno >specifically. I did have a gut feeling it bore mention. > >Gwyn McVay > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 19:00:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: submission and dominance MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >3. That I'm some sort of gushy girly person who cries at the TITANIC. >(Rachel and I saw the TITANIC together, so anything she says about >that....)-- i happen to posses a penis (and i'm almost six foot, and can bench over 200lbs-- so i'm "manly"), and i balled my eyes out at titanic. for the whole last hour and three hours afterward. good will hunting made me cry even harder (but not for as long). the post earlier about the kids and teacher being killed brought tears to my eyes. point?: crying is a -human- thing to do. i don't trust anyone who doesn't cry often. esp. poets. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 19:12:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: women in poetry/arts & chaffing/winnowing In-Reply-To: Maria Damon "Re: women in poetry and in the arts" (Mar 25, 3:33pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sorry, but have to double up because my daily limit it will be met. Patrick Durgin wrote: >We need to be careful to distinguish between delineating the scope >of this list and policing those borders. The comments re: women & their >exclusion from verse culture, particularly the small mag.s illustrate a >similar tendancy for the list to incite valuable debate then fall into an >impotent silence. Truly the delicate approach is appreciated in yr post, but is somewhat elliptical. I dunno though -- I'm trying to get out of the scope delineating and border policing business as it applies listwise. >If one thread to spring off of these debates, such as >regards a supposed "female sensibility" in contemporary, innovative >poetics were to arise, ... The thread I was jumping on was not a thread per se but was a lisle. >Let me just add that I'd hate to lose the already scant >multiplicity of voices on this list. Me too! ------------ >> Summi, don't let the (us) curmudgeonlies get you down. In answer to the >> question, yes. Don't go for the brilliant (what's brilliant anymore?), go for >> the humor -- anything ya like. >I'm not sure I understand what this means. Although I appreciate humor >and often long for more casual discussion of poetic/political issues. If >you mean that I should counter a serious issue that is being discussed >in a serious fashion with levity, I'm not sure I think this is a helpful >way of dialoguing without being misunderstood. >Summi Probably not. Forget the last part. ----------------------------------- Hey, maybe if I committed virtual (list) suicide, then perhaps flowers would grow over my unmarked virtual grave and the birds would begin to sing once again and ... ----------------------------------- Cadaly wrote: >Anybody else see the article on coding/encrypting/scrambling in the New York >Times? >The url for the mit paper is >http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt >(NYT printed the tilde above the r) >Mr. Rivest's dad suggested he use "winnowing" as a term. I think part of the >innovation is packetizing, then encoding, but not encrypting, the packets >(using different codes). But am I sure? Nope. >Encryption is not exportable because it may be a national security risk. The >question becomes, "Who holds the keys?" To get around it, one could use >encoding, but code is generally not as secure. This particular paper is about >adding chaff (or mixed "grains") to "grains" of meaning (the packets) and then >passing out ... different winnowing fans to different people (I think). Hi Catherine! Did read the article you posted on. It's an interesting repackaging of older ideas and erstwhile inventions. The authentication Mr. Rivest discusses is certainly real and valid. It is basically very similar to what is already in use when a cellular radio registers with a basestation repeater on powerup. The "chaffing" idea is also similar to something in use in spread spectrum or code division multiple access cellular radios where hundreds of users are simultaneously operating in the same wide bandwidth, but below the radio's noise floor. The maximal length codes that do the actual "spreading" appear random when windowed in time like the chaffing. It's good to see this happening and being made public knowledge because the whole government interference thing in public crypto stinks. Who holds the keys you ask? The NSA (national security agency) wants to. They have, along with a incumbent president, basically killed (or almost) the use of the DES (data encryption standard) whose key the NSA found to be to damn time consuming to crack (it is encrypted and sent with the message). SO they come up with the "Clipper" encryption (a chip), which has a convenient back door for snooping. Still the safest (ideally) crypto scheme is private key where only two entities, one sender and one receiver, have the key (spy stuff). RSA (public key) is in widespread use on the internet and does have back doors as do all commercially marketed and sold crypto programs. I don't know if Mr Rivest has the clout and the goods to make this fly. I don't know if he has tested this thing and knows, for example, how much information someone could glean with let's say just a spectrum analyzer. He is up against some very brainy hard-ons in the NSA and they're bored what with no cold war and all with which to busy themselves. Best, William Burmeister ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:59:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I'm not sure I understand what this means. Although I appreciate humor >and often long for more casual discussion of poetic/political issues. If >you mean that I should counter a serious issue that is being discussed >in a serious fashion with levity, I'm not sure I think this is a helpful >way of dialoguing without being misunderstood. > >Summi I recognize the places yr coming from. But think of this for a while. Humor is not frivolous. great ernestness is not necessarily serious. Language has a lot of surprises. One of them should be that we do not own it. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 19:29:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I don't think that accepting submissions necessarily has anything to do with being a "market." How is someone supposed to "break into" a community? What if he or she doesn't want to go to readings or parties? What if he or she lives in an isolated place? What if he or she is young and sees a "call for submissions" as a first step? Or even a singular step? I try my best to go to all the readings I can and to get my hands on other journals etc... But I'm not going to encounter every (esp. emerging) poet I might like. I don't have enough time--and I live in Iowa! I don't think that either Mark or Billy is "correct" here--I think that both of them have made good points-- Best, Katy On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, George Bowering wrote: > I'm afraid that I have to agree with Billy Little on this one. I dont see > the sense or the committment in sending out a general request to poets to > "submit." Read someone's poetry. Figure out what you like. Then ASK that > poet to send you something for your magazine or whatever. Be a community, > not a market. > > > > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 20:44:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Lazy editors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >the world needs more passive, lazy editors willing to read what comes >straight out of the mailbox with no name attached. >Let them publish a magazine called TAHITI every now and then full >of stuff that just showed up one day while they were lounging around >eating grapes. let them publish good & bad poems right next to each other. >let them be totally lazy people whose only concern is avoiding >typos. >let them lie about giving away their mag directly from their hammocks. >let them be so lazy that they don't even provide URLs or CDs - you have >to read the damn stuff out loud yourself!! holding the magazine in your >bare, sunbrowned hands, wind blowing through the palm trees, coconuts >plopping gently around your towel, the waves hissing on the snore... > >zzzzzzzz. In totalitarian and totalist states editors are censors. In other countries editors are.............. (fill in the blank). Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 20:44:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: submission and dominance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I applaud Katy for daring to bring up the nasty "g" word (gender) on the >List....It sure is threatening to a lot of folks. > >Quite simply, she's right: there are still huge disparities in the >involvement, power, choices and visiblity of men and women in our poetry >circles and institutions. (...because those disparities exist in society >as inescapeable lines of torsion and inequality...) What makes anyone think that such disparities only exist between one gender and the other gender ? I think disparities tend to be as pervasive as there are differences of characteristics amongst individuals. Any characteristics, of any kind. Something as taken for granted as whether someone has a long or a rounded face can be the difference, in some circles, between inclusion and exclusion, and between success and failure. Ever hear the phrase that someone "simply did not like the cut of his/her jib", so they shot them down ? It happens all the time, everywhere. It is the commonest kind of event under the sun. It is that simple. It has very little to do with gender, except that gender offers certain noteworthy characteristics that are selected or deselected by others, quite beyond the selections they make in their personal intimate relations. I seem to recall a culture where only bearded men could do poetics. Every historical culture has expressed some kinds of prohibitions as to who can and who cannot, and they have almost all, without exception, been completely as absurd as that only bearded men can do poetics. The characteristics favoured tend to change, but even amongst men I have seen fashions of preference as to which men are in and which men are out, of any "in-group". The inner party and the outer party. The inner party is essentially parotted by the outer party. The story is almost invariably one of the included and the outcasts. It is a brahmanic and pariah type of system, even today, coverty if not overtly. The same applies to any other groups. They prefer some characteristics and they do not prefer other characteristics and sometimes they do not consciously think about what they are doing, they simply react. Of course when it is not characteristics pertaining to the person, including physical characteristics, or style of attire, or pitch of voice, or something else of that kind, it can be conformity to the currently in vogue inner party style, attire, manner of presentation and even similarity to their phyiscal features that makes it or breaks it for many others. What's new ? Nothing. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 17:58:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: not helpful billy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i certainly didn't mean to call you Katy a lazy editor, if i'm not mistaken i've earlier b/c you a rave about explosive, it's a classic, ought to be on everybody's desk, a model, i was attempting to mock the male editors on this list who i thought were trying to get off easy by saying "they don't submit," they wish they could get their work to publish but they don't go out of their way to ask for my money, the Charles Olson of this generation is Rosemarie Waldrop or Susan Howe, they're braving new territory and it stimulates my little brain. here in Canada Maxine Gadd keeps us on our toes if we backslide, Betsy Warland, Angela Hyruniak, Judith Copithorne ought to be solicited, she's a giant, i'd be happy to coedit a canadian womens issue of xplo, Phyllis Webb, Dion Brand, Lillian Allen, Anne Hebert(will you print french?), Lisa Robertson, Deanna Fergusson, Melissa Wolsak, Catriona Strang, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Kate van Dusen, Renee Rodin, Sharon Thesen, Susan Clark, Anne Michaels, Diana Hartog, Nelly McClung, Rhoda Rosenfeld, Nicole Brossard, it's all happening here in the frozen north. i'm a poetry evangelist i think it should be sold as exquisitely as bombs are sold. and Sumi some of us are here in part to learn from women(all others) and if you won't speak will we ever learn? and Elizabeth Hatmaker, a very brave post, if you are as honest in your poems as you are in you post i'd love to see them, and sometimes the wounded will have ears open only for the negative even from their supporters. sorry my expression is imperfect, i'm not dead. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 18:11:58 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: women in poetry and in the arts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elizabeth Hatmaker wrote: > > I'm likewise a by-stander (mainly because I only get e-mail at work) but have > been thinking hard about the issues raised. When I think about how much of > my academic energy has been wasted alternately not wanting to piss men off > (because they might: > > 1. Hurt me professionally > 2. Do that whole number where you show them your work and they sit there > like your dad or something and "help" you along with your little ideas. > > 3. Tell me my ideas are a bunch of whiney, privledged white feminist > bullshit and if I can't "compete" with men (meaning, usually, read the same > books they have read) I should just shut up. Or suggest I'm claiming > "victim" status--(now that's got to be the worst thing a woman in the 90s can > be called) > > 4. Not want to date me (well, since I'm being confessional here) > 5. They'll take some "devil's advocate" stance and argue some mysogynist > position (recently a very bright man and I were discussing the whole Clinton > mishmash and his position seemed to be that women can think what they want, > but bottom line, men need blowjobs and will do whatever it takes to get them) > and then when you point that out (like "hey, when did your right to a blowjob > become an ethical underpinning of our society") they suggest you've taken it > "too personally" and get offended that you thought so badly of them. > > and this isn't even having to worry that if you dump a 13 year old boy, he > might open fire on you) > > and wanting to piss men off, (I have this essay about starting a company > called dial a psycho-- where if a guy makes you feel bad and then tells you > not to make a scene, you hire an actress to do it for you anonymously. That > way you don't get the negative fallout from "making a scene" but you know > that he's had to deal with your deferred rage. There's more to it, but > that's the core. Is this art? Is it the rantings of a whiney man-hater? > I've never submitted it because I've never been sure. Maybe I will.) > > I sometimes don't trust myself to say anything. All of it's so real and > discursive. > > Elizabeth These are excellent points: they remind me of that awkward situation when a man asks to see your poetry & in response shows you his (this sounds weird already), and you're supposed to love his, preferably better than your own, and admire him for his intellect and sensitivity, with which you will fall in love. But you don't, so soon he's calling you at 2 a.m. drunk and ranting about Cleanth Brooks & how you have to see the light, you bitch. Next morning your windshield is smashed & your tires slashed. Don't you just hate when that happens? Karen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 21:29:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r. drake" Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" george, billy et al-- but wouldnt that mean that you'd only consider work from poets who had already published? closed systems such as that have led to th demise of several (celebate, but otherwise virtuous) religious communities over th years... but praps that's what we shd aim for... lbd >I'm afraid that I have to agree with Billy Little on this one. I dont see >the sense or the committment in sending out a general request to poets to >"submit." Read someone's poetry. Figure out what you like. Then ASK that >poet to send you something for your magazine or whatever. Be a community, >not a market. > > > > >George Bowering. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 22:15:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >george, billy et al-- > >but wouldnt that mean that you'd only consider work from poets who had >already published? closed systems such as that have led to th demise of >several (celebate, but otherwise virtuous) religious communities over th >years... but praps that's what we shd aim for... > >lbd And I was beginning to think that perhaps it is the company... of gods...who ultimately controls who is published and who is not. [pagan] Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 22:21:40 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 25 Mar 1998 22:15:20 -0500 from Poets really love marvy editors. Editors who really read a lot of stuff out there & know what they like & really cutting edge and cool. Who have money & confidence & a plan & connections & know how to network. So if you're one of those editors, it's time for you to check out THE PUBLISHER'S PUB ONLINE. Sponsored by Left Overbie University and featuring the latest all-sensory gadgetry, this URL is totally FREE with membership. No special downloading necessary - just put your Editor's Mug (10 litres or more preferably) in front of your screen, and watch the submissions pour down from NETWORKED POETS - TOP POETS - TOTALLY CHARISMATIC AUTHORS - AND SWELL PEOPLE. No need to make those drippy phone calls anymore - no pleading - the submissions are yours - no questions asked! Because the "PUB" is INSIDE DOPE - based in London-Beijing-Vancouver-Rio de Janeiro. Need we say more? Distributed by Bigpubdistribnameshowcoolpowerfulheadtrips, Inc. - we reach the CENTERS OF METROPOLITAN GELATO. Search no more, editors! Just "click" on the small dot [period] below!! * bye now!! -019-034895J-POJ;LKL.CV.,M0429580-457[PKJ whoops - sorry - that was Harvey Haggis Gyiurl again, trying to interpose one of his "sonnets" [sigh] - won't happen again... 10-913QIRHKJB93845... - damn! - sorry - a few bugs yet in the program... Louise Bird? Do we know you? Have you read SQUIRREL VILLANELLES by Rimroddlla Squizd? can you fill out this questionnaire please & return with three hundred thousand letters of recrimination before Friday? thanks... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 22:35:41 -0800 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: federalist ten MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Billy Little wrote: > sorry my expression is imperfect, i'm not dead. surprising only that 'gender' is the proximate inflection of exclusion. in this 'open' space. lurkers unite or vote in other plebeecites hear me roar civic-li(f)e avante-apartheid guard Oh Su-sa-na/Oh don't you cry for me/ for I come from al-abamy/with a banjo on my knee. mc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 23:55:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Real Audio Services Needed Comments: To: "Glazier, Loss" Comments: cc: silence@realtime.net, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, mangler@worldnet.att.net, darrenwh@mail.interlog.com, "Froes, Elson" , "Hennessy, Neil" , "Wright, Doc" , Augusto de Campos , "Beckman, Laurel" , mail@chbooks.com, chris@zarcrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + U B U W E B : VISUAL, CONCRETE, & SOUND POETRY http://www.ubu.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Dear Friends, Unfortunately UbuWeb, hosting one of the internet's largest collection of historical and contemporary poetry, has had its RealAudio plug pulled. We are currently seeking another generous soul who has some spare space to donate on a Real Audio server. If you've enjoyed UbuWeb and have any leads, we would appreciate hearing from you. Regards, Kenneth Goldsmith Editor, UbuWeb Visual, Concrete & Sound Poetry E-Mail: editor@ubu.com http://www.ubu.com R E A L A U D I O S O U N D P O E T R Y Guillaume Apollinaire Jaap Blonk William S. Burroughs John Cage Henri Chopin Jean Cocteau Andrew Dickinson Kelli Dipple Marcel Duchamp Brion Gysin Wyndham Lewis Jackson Mac Low Charles Manson F.T. Marinetti David Moss John Reeves John Reeves & John Bone Kurt Schwitters Cecil Taylor Gregory Whitehead + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + U B U W E B : VISUAL, CONCRETE, & SOUND POETRY http://www.ubu.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 23:47:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: <01IV3E61HMME8WXJ7V@ACS.WOOSTER.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >i happen to posses a penis (and i'm almost six foot, and can bench over >200lbs-- so i'm "manly"), and i balled my eyes out at titanic. for the whole >last hour and three hours afterward. At the risk of levity, balling for four hours during and after a tear-jerker strikes me as stereotypical male behavior, including the exaggeration. Don't know what your partner's excuse is. Sometimes spelling counts. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 03:06:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881 Subject: New Booklet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Dear Poetics List, A new booklet of poetry is available called Enigma Variations by the late Alex Smith Jr. Mr. Smith joined the majority in 1987 from complications associated with AIDS. In 1979 Mr. Smith completed an extensive bibliography of Frank O'Hara while a grad student at UConn. The Archive for New Poetry at UCSD recently purchased his papers. Enigma Variations is a sequence of 9 spare lyrics that perform a serial function and have as their subject matter certain cross-dressing tendencies as well as travel to the moon. Here is one of the lyrics: The man he met was a girl, but in the dark she was a moth, a book, a phrase in his landscape. Wait! he said as he took off her dress and landed on the moon. The booklet is published by Reverse English and is available now for $5 us currency. It is 4.5 by 6.5, hand sewn, 12 pages, the majority of which were printed on a letter press. Please support the arts. Make checks payable to 'A'A Arts. Send orders to: Bill Luoma 3029 Lowrey Ave #A-1102 Honolulu, HI 96822 maz881@aol.com Please forward this message as appropriate. Thank you. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 23:10:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Kramer Organization: none Subject: indoor plumbing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A pub privy too, "i never new" me i been all backchannel since i got my "service" a couple weeks ago. and have been lurking since i got on listserv about same time then again lurking is also Watching i LOVE to watch hEAR heh heh theres productive power innit... heh heh "i got/ a rat-proof/ crib!" (a jonathan williams quote of a found pome) and how do it all hang?!? in there. but down to biz. anybody member the dorothy richardson pooltable scene? miriam the protagonist plays pool with the men, with the other women looking on... poker that other gaming table made me think of it, and mention of pissing higher, cuz funnily i was just writing a private letter about richardson's stream "pissonit"-- of consciousness, and about consciousness not being a stream... (i'd longhanded --is that what letter writing is?)-- (piss higher honey) isnt (i wage her) a stream. epistolary lives! anyway. mr. marsh- i submit my name wendy kramer for your hyper poets. i dont have a home url but you can go to the epc and sea... like 'merican singles it was made with real cheese. enuf of this game. 500 hundred peeple? (anybody read alfred bester?) yup, intimidating. outta practice butt hadda say hey, wendy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 09:09:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: woman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable So glad to see this very important thread continuing. I feel ready now = for work & poetry. Glad I feel more like opening my mouth. All this = needs to be talked about and continued until women aren't gunned down = anymore. I love talking about and hearing talked about gender issues. Thanks all. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 09:43:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: A True Story MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Nikuko Sells and Jennifer Buys, A True Story Nikuko sells her panties in Nakasu with a sigh; Jennifer approaches her; she was just walking by. "I need some fifty-thousand yen," Nikuko tells a lie. "I'll pay you more," says Jennifer, and she begins to cry. "They're highly worn, and partly torn," Nikuko says with sighs. "I'm getting damp, I'm getting hot," wet Jennifer now buys; She pays the yen, the panties hers, brown odor on them lies. Nikuko's first in ecstasy, and comes with great loud cries. Then Jennifer is home with them, and starting with a sigh, She slips her clothes from her lean form, is naked by and by. They're on her face, she will debase, so she begins to lie Back on the bed, and smiling wan, she too begins to cry. She's brightly lit, glows in the dark, so virtual and high, The panties worth a million yen, if she could only die. ________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 09:48:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Quanta of Poetic Spin in Virtual Hyper Space (Federalist Ten) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Billy Little wrote: >> sorry my expression is imperfect, i'm not dead. >surprising only that 'gender' is the proximate inflection of exclusion. >in this 'open' space. >lurkers unite >or vote in other plebeecites >hear me roar >civic-li(f)e >avante-apartheid >guard >Oh Su-sa-na/Oh don't you cry for me/ for I come from al-abamy/with a >banjo on my knee. >mc Curious recourse to near poeticism. Assuming there is in fact a coherent system of beliefs and practices pertaining to an identifiable poetic ideology that gives a sense of socio-political group coherence and evolves through time, such that it has its own socio-cultural history. That was a digression...but returning to the gist of the comment... since all electronic data is essentially infinitely mutable, being as electronically transformable as it is, in situ, within a nanosecond of its initial inception, who is to say that the electronic YAY on the lectronic plebiansite, registered within the lectronic voting booth, does not appear as a NAY in the tally ? What is there to tell anyone that it will remain a YAY rather than a NAY ? Of course there will always be recourse to a hard copy piece of paper verifying the transaction, as to the nature of the lectronic YAY, will there not ? What has this to do with poetics ? Everything. It says that unless poetics is to devolve into infinitely mutable silly putty of hyper spaced out post-facto deconstructions and reconstructions of the poet's intentions, there is a need for a printed hard copy of the poem that most likely shall remain as it was intended to remain, as it is much more difficult to tranform and mute-ate a hard copy writing than it is to transmogrify, transmute, transubstantiate, and otherwise change an electronic work. Some might argue that there is special merit in works of art that are meant to be as mutable as silly-putty, but in that instance is it not the author, the artist, who is ultimately muted ? The work of art, of hyper anti-art, no longer states the author's intended meaning, but some other meaning unforeseen in the act of creation. Is that more true to what art ought to be ? If so, it might be that the electronic vote on the plebiancite is only another work of the same kind of art, and intentionality has no true part to play in either poetics or politics. A short step from hyper-art to hyper-politics where everything becomes a reflection of the same spin paradigm ? The vote is no more than an electron spin. Art is no more than an electron spin. Then ultimately it becomes impossible, among all the spins, to know who is doing the spinning and spin is all there is and taken for granted as how it must be. Needless to say I have very real doubts about the socio-political-cultural context of electronic hyper-art, and what I see as its co-optation to dehumanization, deindividualizion as pure reflection, and of what I tend to see as an anti-art that becomes too easily elevated to being tauted as a highest evolution of art. I cannot see the excessive valuing of infinite plasticity and mutability as a true increase in creative freedom, but rather as the opposite, where all creative freedom becomes subverted to total deconstruction of individual expression of meaning and meaning as individual creative intentionality. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 10:52:28 -0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sarah venart Subject: unmarked listserv (the female question) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Yes. It does occasionally irk me. So here are my rambling thoughts. =46irst a wee bit of pissed-offed-ness: What is it about this server and it= s male elbow nudging, name dropping banter? The word cronies comes to mind. Jolly good, all that... with an American accent, of course. Even the term unmarked as "not marked" -- as the dog (male) lifting up his little leggy and whizzing. I've been researching and looking into American modern poetics this last year; into a history that is so male dominated (look on any library shelf) it would appear that the only academics writing about the female moderns are other women -- in texts that have so much to cover they have formed a separate canon, a lesser canon, or some such thing. Of course there are exceptions, but only for certain poets who follow fairly closely with a tradition that is male (Moore, Bishop, etc.). And why, historically, are critics so quick to toss any peep from a "not-fitting-the-muse-cut-out-of-woman-poet" out the window (Molesworth on Sexton, Bawer on Plath... just as a for instance)... and that's just for starters because I am just learning the "for starters" of Modern American poetry. I'm Canadian, after all. I had to learn to speak Canadian poetry first. So, this makes me kind of ...silent. Charles Bernstein writes in _A Poetics : "We have to get over, as in getting over a disease, the idea that we can 'all' speak to one another in the universal voice of poetry. History still mars our words, and we will be transparent to one another only when history itself disappears. For as long as social relations are skewed, who speaks in poetry can never be a neutral matter" (5). But do we have to get over it, or do we have to work towards fixing it? Because of the skewed language I learned, I became bilingual. I can speak this female language, I can speak the male language, I can appreciate both. I can understand Prufrock and Anahistoric. Do males have the same chance to learn and appreciate female language? Roughly, quickly, (and please feel free to add to it, subtract from it) this female language is made up of many things. It could be the following: story telling of the home, dolls, dresses, body as a history, female fluids (our bodies drip continually, inverted candles), ummmmm... ironing? I'm sure I am making people cringe with this list, but I think that very cringe is important... because why are you cringing? Maybe it is that these things -- dresses and irons, ruffles and lace, for more obvious examples -- are condemned by (even) women themselves as being unnecessary, frilly, useless wastes -- and if these are a waste of space, then what are you saying about your childhood -- where every woman I know had at least one pair of leotards (tights) with ruffles on the bum as a toddler? And if male non-ruffled language and history is so wrapped up in my own female learning and appreciation -- these male signifiers and images, these male aesthetics -- that I have been learning and appreciating, for the most part, since the age of five (if not before) then where do males learn and appreciate my signifiers, my signs, my aesthetics -- ruffled or not? Certainly not in their tonka truck GI Joe boyhoods where, even now, female signs are dismissed. A good, non-poetic example of this is that terrible show: Bill Cosby's Kids Say the Darndest Things. Three weeks ago, a hidden camera skit where boys, age 7-8, were asked to try out for a commerical for a female doll. They were asked to brush its hair and hold it, rock it, then lie down with it on a set made up to look like girl's pink ruffled bedroom -- Bill Cosby could not keep a straight face (as he always manages to do in other skits) because the situation was, to him and to the boys who tried out, so absurd. So those are my thoughts on women on this listserv and why I am so quiet. I'm thinking, is all...and watching shitty TV. (unfortunately, my own poetry does not have a ruffle, a pot holder or a piece of macram=E9 in it. But if You, dear male or female reader, can write a good piece on a pot holder, go for it). Sarah Venart Concordia University Montreal, Canada ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 10:12:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: unmarked listserv (the female question) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well i gotta go run off to a conference at suny/stony brook, where i'll be at through sunday... anyone in the area wanna connect, please do!... i'm staying at a place called three village inn... i've been tempted from the start to post in on this question of women's participation... and subsequent discussion by women and a few men of women's issues, feminism, etc... maybe it's better that i didn't post, but i *do* feel obliged to say here that i think such discussions are crucial, that gender is OF COURSE IT IS an urgent issue and needs to be aired and re-aired on this list as elsewhere... but hey, just to say that i'll miss this chat for the next few days, looking forward to more such posts when i return!... best, joe nb for a final time, my whole conference item at http://www.iit.edu/~amato/moonlight.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:26:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19980325234724.00b8fde0@mail.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:47 PM -0800 3/25/98, Mark Weiss wrote: >> >>i happen to posses a penis (and i'm almost six foot, and can bench over >>200lbs-- so i'm "manly"), and i balled my eyes out at titanic. for the whole >>last hour and three hours afterward. > >At the risk of levity, balling for four hours during and after a >tear-jerker strikes me as stereotypical male behavior, including the >exaggeration. Don't know what your partner's excuse is. > >Sometimes spelling counts. aw come on Mark--didn't you ever hear "Whatever floats your boat"? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 09:21:11 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Feminist Poetics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Carolyn Guertin writes: > It's not particularly useful either. We get make-up tips for morons and a > catty fashion critique of the participants in the academy awards quoted to > us as a model for behaviour? I doubt that any Poetics site could get 2500 > hits a day (as James and Breslin claim)--even using their tabloid-style > approach. maybe it wasn't so obvious from my remarks, but it's not the content I meant to advocate, it's the approach... I'm sorry to see that site's taken such a turn for the bizarre, but the point is, they worked pretty goddamn'd hard to build and promote a venue for the stuff they wanted to see out there, and then put it out there. that's not the only way to do it, but I guess I think a big "fuck you" to the "industry" is a pretty impressive response (and that was the way the site positioned itself originally)... Mark Prejsnar: if I have to dig out my credentials to prove myself a good liberal (which I adamantly am not), I can tell you that roughly 60% of the mss. I've published over the last year were written by women. - so obviously I'm not wont to invoke (nor am I infected by) the bullshit anti- affirmative action rhetoric you mention. among those mss. was Rachel Daley's book, which I publisht not because of her gender, but because the work is excellent. while there's no point pretending we occupy a level playing field (of cultural production), I take her question or caveat advisedly: one does well to suspect a climate in which we desire to see more work BY WOMEN, rather than MORE WORK by women. if you read my previous post more carefully, you'll see that I'm not attacking outright the sensitivity to gender that I think most of the publishers on this list display (or @ least try for) - I was criticizing the easy assumption that a deliberate 50-50 split somehow fixes anything. more explicitly, I think we really have to ask ourselves whether our enforcement of gender categories doesn't operate within the critical doxa that the most important thing about a poem is who wrote it. for that matter I don't think any of us should still assigning women their duties, whether they be to submit or to submit, or both. -this said to the list in general, and not meant to characterize Katy's initial post (because that's not what she said). there's something distinctly patronizing about the whole contest. > Where is the feminist poetics list anyway? there is @ least one, I know, bc Linda is on it; but I don't know the listserv address - I can post this sometime next week, if anyone is interested (L. gets back from NY this wkend)... from her comments re the discussion, it seems pretty anglo-am as opposed to french/poststruct. feminist - not that such things aren't necessarily amenable to the discussion, but it sounds as if most folks there haven't read them. of course, that's only second-hand info, and it's passing through me, a clearly male-hegemonic, unreliable source. Chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:25:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Congratulations on Explosive, Katy: it really is jumping out of its orange and black skin. But I notice you're not taking ANY submissions. What's gonna happen when all the gals on the list start mailing their stuff to you? Mairead (who is about to start a magzine too) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:26:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Query ----> Comments: To: "Christopher W. Alexander" In-Reply-To: <2D364CB5F1E@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If anyone has a current contact for Anne Blonstein (see her work in latest issue of Situation) would you please back-chan...thanks. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 13:09:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: unmarked listserv (the female question) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>But if You, dear male or female reader, can write a good piece on a pot holder, go for it).<<< Sarah, I suppose I can do that, but how do I get the pot holder to go through the laser printer? Baffled in the 'Burbs (maybe we better ask Heloise) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 13:24:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r. drake" Subject: Re: unmarked listserv (the female question) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" serendipitously, th morning's post deliverd _moving borders: 3 decades of innovative writing by women_, ed by mary margaret sloan, frm talisman house (PO Box 3157, jersey city nj 07303; $29.95 paper)... 740 pages, including abt 200 pgs of poetics essays... i know its been mentioned here before but seems worth saying again... an increadible retrospect... & antidote to rumors here 'bouts that women dont send work out... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 13:58:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Nope...Sorry, but these sorts of interactions *are* oriented toward community-building. No doubt you do lotsa editing, and should certainly share your approaches. But your off-target here. Mp On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, George Bowering wrote: > I'm afraid that I have to agree with Billy Little on this one. I dont see > the sense or the committment in sending out a general request to poets to > "submit." Read someone's poetry. Figure out what you like. Then ASK that > poet to send you something for your magazine or whatever. Be a community, > not a market. > > > > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 14:04:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: submission and dominance In-Reply-To: <199803260144.UAA19245@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, morpheal wrote: > > What makes anyone think that such disparities only exist between one > gender and the other gender ? > > I think disparities tend to be as pervasive as there are differences > of characteristics amongst individuals. Any characteristics, of any kind. > > > It has very little to do with gender, except that gender offers certain > noteworthy characteristics that are selected or deselected by others, quite > beyond the selections they make in their personal intimate relations. > This requires going back to the basics of feminist political models, don't it? Of course no one said power disparities "only exist" between genders! (What kind of wierd argument is that??) But between genders is one of the places they exist. You've made certain ideological choices, I guess, that rule out seeing that. You may feel that reality is hyperindividual and has no social dimension, "but it ain't necessarily so." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 14:01:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ellay Phillips Subject: Re: unmarked listserv (the female question) In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > >>>But if You, dear male or female reader, can write > a good piece on a pot holder, go for it).<<< > > Sarah, I suppose I can do that, but how do I get the pot holder to go > through the laser printer? > > Baffled in the 'Burbs (maybe we better ask Heloise) > Of course, you could always _paste_ the poems on. Then you have poetry _and_ art or that something in-between-thing (like indoor plumbing?) that is so pleez-ing. Ellay Phillips ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:29:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: "balled my eyes out at the Titanic" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well . . . we did our share of that in the 60,s, before we recognized the weakness of the term -- but I didn't know this was allowed in movie theaters -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:47:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: conference announcement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before >From: Kala Pierson >To: cultstud-l@nosferatu.cas.usf.edu >Subject: conference announcement >Sender: owner-cultstud-l@nosferatu.cas.usf.edu >X-Info: From Loyola Marymount University, L.A. Ca. > > > * INTERROGATING INTERROGATION * > > An interdisciplinary conference coming soon > to a university near you... > > >The emerging discipline of referentiality studies has >defined itself largely in opposition to the dominant >cultures of modern academic scholarship (e.g., >subculture studies, minority studies, etc.). This >conference aims to identify strategies for analyzing >and developing referentiality studies--if you will, >to referee referentiality--and in so doing, >to interrogate interrogation within all scholarly >disciplines. > > >CONFERENCE PROGRAM > > > ---FRIDAY--- > > 3:00pm Opening Remarks: "Opening Remarks: >Necessity or Vestigial Tail In The Evolution of >Conference Structure?" > > 3:30pm SESSION 1: Foundations > >--Intradisciplinary Reproduction of Participant- >Observer Dichotomies and the Culture of Ethnography: >An Ethnography > >--The Parent(hetical) Her(etical): Gendering >the "Reproduction" of Meaning Through >Over(ly Clever)(-)Punctuation > >--The Persistence of Referentiality Studies: >One Academic Subdiscipline's Insidious Means of >Self-perpetuation > > 5:00pm Keynote Address (Douglas Hofstadter, >U. of Michigan): "Implications of Self-Referentiality >for Referentiality Studies" > > 8:00pm Special screening of "The Neverending Story" >(U.S., 1985). Discussion to follow: "'The Neverending >Story': False Advertising or Meta-self-actualization >Through Collective Belief?" > > > ---SATURDAY--- > > 10:30am SESSION 2: Culturing Pop, Pop-ing Culture > >--"I yam what I yam": Popeye, the Pop Eye, and the Pop I > >--RIP, Princess Di...? Combating Over-analysis of a >Cultural Icon's Death: Some Analytical Strageties > >--Al Bundy as Modern Freud, or, Guaranteeing Huge >Audiences for Academic Papers by Coupling >Lowcult-antihero Subjects With Outlandish, >Deliberately Provocative Claims > > 1:30pm SESSION 3: Writing Writing > >--"I'm too sexy for this paper": Gratuitous Use of >Quotations, Particularly Those Evoking Pop Culture, >in Academic Paper Titles > >--"Look Ma, no point!!": Entire Papers Written Solely >In Order To Justify a Clever Title or Opening Quotation > >--Unanimities of Concatenation: Ineluctable Verbiage and >Beguiling Misuse of Terminal Velocities as Predeterminant >of an Actualizationist Anti-aesthetics > > 3:30pm Special excursion to local art museum, where >the topic of the lecture-tour will be "Touring, Lore-ing, >Abhoring: Collective Consciousness, Fallacies of Place >and Space, and the Production of 'Taste' in the Guided >Museum Tour" > > 8:00pm Special screening of "I Shot Andy Warhol" >(U.S., 1968). Discussion to follow: "Revisionist Meta- >subjectivities and Culturally Determined Modes of >Transgressive Be-ing: Did the Film 'I Shot Andy Warhol' >Itself Shoot Andy Warhol?" > > > ---SUNDAY--- > > 7:30am SESSION 4: Special Single-Paper Session > >--Control from Above: Marginalizing Papers Deemed >Of Little Interest in Bizarrely Isolated Sessions >That No One in Their Right Mind Would Attend > > > >================================================= > The preceding is entirely (lovingly) satirical, >fictional, etc. Any resemblance to actual papers, >published or unpublished, is probably a result of >the fact that I'm satirizing an actual paper. > >Feel free to forward if you know others who might be >interested -- we do want to get the word out re. >this conference, which, needless to say, promises >to be *the* Scholarly Event of '98... > >Cheers >Kala > >___ Kala Pierson ___________________________ > Composition Dept., Eastman School of Music > kp@esm.rochester.edu 716/244.5365 >____________________________________________ > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 14:43:29 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Chaffing, contributing, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I think what Mr. Rivest has going for him are the words "chaffing" and "winnowing", i.e., repackaging. However, this exchange of messages, coded and encypted, fascinates me, as the word "winnowing" and computer "garbage" always have, as the fairy tale task of calling a variety of birds to sort the mess has. Trying to contribute to a literary journal is certainly frustrating, but even more so when there is some sort of editorial clique rather than a poetic that, if not stated, can perhaps be deduced from the work in print. It is still not the sexualized, but often complete, rejection that seems to inspire so many mass or serial murders. Regards, Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 15:06:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: i was wondering... MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i have heard a rumor that zukofsky's a-24 is available somewhere on cd or lp. i can't seem to find it if this is true. does anyone have any info they'd like to share?? thanks! jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- no quotes today... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 15:23:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Byrd Subject: Re: i was wondering... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit laura and jeff wrote: > i have heard a rumor that zukofsky's a-24 is available somewhere on cd or lp. > i can't seem to find it if this is true. > does anyone have any info they'd like to share?? > thanks! > jeff. > The only performance of "A"--24 that I have heard of took place in San Francisco, probably about the time of the Talks series--late 70s-early 80s, with, as I recall, Bob Perelman on Piano. Surely there is someone on this list who was there or knows about this. db -- ********************************************************************* Don Byrd (djb85@csc.albany.edu, dbyrd1@nycap.rr.com) Department of English State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 518-442-4055 (work); 418-426-9308 (home); 518-442-4599 (fax) The Little Magazine (http://www.albany.edu/~litmag/) ********************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 15:28:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender burmeist@plhp002.comm.mot.com ) From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: i was wondering... In-Reply-To: Don Byrd "Re: i was wondering..." (Mar 26, 3:23pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Mar 26, 3:23pm, Don Byrd wrote: > Subject: Re: i was wondering... > laura and jeff wrote: > > > i have heard a rumor that zukofsky's a-24 is available somewhere on cd or lp. > > i can't seem to find it if this is true. > > does anyone have any info they'd like to share?? > > thanks! > > jeff. > > > > The only performance of "A"--24 that I have heard of took place in San > Francisco, probably about the time of the Talks series--late 70s-early 80s, with, > as I recall, Bob Perelman on Piano. Surely there is someone on this list who was > there or knows about this. > >-- End of excerpt from Don Byrd Ask Mark Scroggins (listmember) if he knows anything about this. Mark, are you there? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 17:17:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: new pamphlet MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I have made up a new pile of my recent book _At The Motel Partial Opportunity_ and gladly offer it to listmembers and to anyone else at $5 including postage. It's big and glossy. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 17:35:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Sycamore Review: All Full Up MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Potential Benefactors, This just to let you know that Sycamore Review is no longer accepting submissions (bequests) for its issue 10.2. We have filled our charge. Please stand by. In a few weeks time, I'll post the line-up to the list. Thanks to those who submitted. Contracts and thankyou notes are, as they say in Star Trek, away. And a special thankyou to dear Joe Semenovich, where ever you are (_in tenebris_ or elsewhere) -- Gabe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:20:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900 Subject: Re: Query v. Ed Foster Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi, Does anyone have a current viable address for Talisman. I wrote to P.O. Box 3157, Jersey City, N.J. 07030 - an address Ed himself gave me - and my letter came back "return to sender." (I'm trying not to get paranoid. Let's just asume an honest mistake was involved.). I would ask him directly again, but now I can't find his e mail either. One or both of us is a bit disorganized. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:26:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maryrose11 Subject: David Bromige in Kansas Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The Lawrence Poets' Alliance is proud to present a reading by David Bromige, on April 13, 1998 at 7:30 p.m. The reading will be held at the Canterbury House, 1116 Louisiana Street, Lawrence, KS. The Lawrence Poets' Alliance is a new organization whose mission is to bring nationally known poets to Lawrence for readings and workshops. This reading is the first in a series. The next reading will be held in the Fall of 1998. This reading has been made possible by the support of the Friends of the Poetry Collection, the Canterbury House, and private donations. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 17:46:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Julie Marie Schmid Subject: Re: Query v. Ed Foster In-Reply-To: <1b6850fd.351ae2b0@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII That's the address I have. Have you tried calling (201) 938-0698 or is that number no longer working either? I'm curious to find out because I need to get in touch with him as well and I have the same address Rae has. Julie Schmid On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, RaeA100900 wrote: > Hi, > > Does anyone have a current viable address for Talisman. I wrote to P.O. > Box 3157, Jersey City, N.J. 07030 - an address Ed himself gave me - and my > letter came back "return to sender." (I'm trying not to get paranoid. Let's > just asume an honest mistake was involved.). I would ask him directly again, > but now I can't find his e mail either. One or both of us is a bit > disorganized. > > Rae Armantrout > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:46:10 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Query v. Ed Foster Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-26 18:22:05 EST, you write: << Does anyone have a current viable address for Talisman. I wrote to P.O. Box 3157, Jersey City, N.J. 07030 - an address Ed himself gave me - and my letter came back "return to sender." (I'm trying not to get paranoid. Let's just asume an honest mistake was involved.). I would ask him directly again, but now I can't find his e mail either. One or both of us is a bit disorganized. >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 19:24:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: Query v. Ed Foster In-Reply-To: <7cf38f61.351ae8c4@aol.com> from "CharSSmith" at Mar 26, 98 06:46:10 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm glancing at the remarkable (& so far not entirely remarked-upon-in-this-forum) _Anthology of New (American) Poets_, just out from Ed F's house, & the address is listed on the indicia there slightly differently, to wit: Talisman House PO Box 3157 Jersey City, NJ 07303-3157 i'm no PO expert, but i'd guess the 0-for-3 transposition might befuddle Mr. Zip... & may i take this moment to compliment the editors of this fine book for the job they've done (& with the acknowledged assumption that we can all name five or 10 persons, ourselves included, not on a roster we might prefer to see them on -- but the reverse certainly holding true as well, right?)... male/female balance hovering somewhere near 50%... surely the "first" "document" of "something," and a fine "middle period" collection of something (else) CharSSmith wrote: > > In a message dated 98-03-26 18:22:05 EST, you write: > > << Does anyone have a current viable address for Talisman. I wrote to > P.O. > Box 3157, Jersey City, N.J. 07030 - an address Ed himself gave me - and my > letter came back "return to sender." (I'm trying not to get paranoid. Let's > just asume an honest mistake was involved.). I would ask him directly again, > but now I can't find his e mail either. One or both of us is a bit > disorganized. >> > -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 19:41:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: \engine dire In poetry there are no men or women; only ears. Anthologies are no measure; critics are no measure; only ears measure. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. The gender issue is a form of politics & journalism. Important, in those disciplines. Poetry is a vocation. Does this mean I think gender is an "issue"? No. I think "issue" is a sexless noun, without memory. [speaking poetically-speaking] What is memory? Why ask? You know. I don't care anymore about the sociology of poetry. It takes ears to hear what I hear. I hear Melville, eating potato chips in his PJ's. [really?] Poetry is asked to do a lot by people who don't do poetry much. Well, it will, in its own good time. But you p.c. pharisees won't know what it is, Mr. Jones. Speak up, gals. Spandrift - he dead. I don't hear much, really. But I'm hungry for the sound of what I hear. That's what ears are for. OK - it's not only sound. You win. But it's also not just the first echo you can think of. Men wear whale penises for doilies. Women mount chargers. Aloha! [x-mate. HENRY trips again] Poetry. Everybody has their own idea of Paradise. Neutral, universal, transparent? No thanks. Equilibrium background for soaring...ok for now... "my sister, my dove". Cowwamaunsch [Narragansett for "I love you"] - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 19:56:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If you haven't already-- READ A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN BY V WOOLF Katy On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Henry Gould wrote: > In poetry there are no men or women; only ears. Anthologies are no measure; > critics are no measure; only ears measure. Those who have ears to hear, > let them hear. > > The gender issue is a form of politics & journalism. Important, in those > disciplines. Poetry is a vocation. > > Does this mean I think gender is an "issue"? No. I think "issue" is a > sexless noun, without memory. [speaking poetically-speaking] > > What is memory? Why ask? You know. > > I don't care anymore about the sociology of poetry. It takes ears to hear > what I hear. I hear Melville, eating potato chips in his PJ's. [really?] > Poetry is asked to do a lot by people who don't do poetry much. Well, > it will, in its own good time. But you p.c. pharisees won't know what it is, > Mr. Jones. Speak up, gals. Spandrift - he dead. > > I don't hear much, really. But I'm hungry for the sound of what I hear. > That's what ears are for. OK - it's not only sound. You win. But it's > also not just the first echo you can think of. Men wear whale penises > for doilies. Women mount chargers. Aloha! [x-mate. HENRY trips again] > > Poetry. Everybody has their own idea of Paradise. Neutral, universal, > transparent? No thanks. Equilibrium background for soaring...ok for now... > > "my sister, my dove". Cowwamaunsch [Narragansett for "I love you"] > > > - Henry Gould > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 21:02:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 26 Mar 1998 19:56:11 -0600 from On Thu, 26 Mar 1998 19:56:11 -0600 k. lederer said: >If you haven't already-- > >READ A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN BY V WOOLF > >Katy OK, Katy - I done Moby Dick - will try Virginia. I'm noman if not HG Well- rounded. - Odd Sissy, the UniVersal RaVlin' Wolf ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:24:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: \engine dire Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >In poetry there are no men or women; only ears. If there is anything between those ears, it is listening out of an intersection in motion that has a history, that is interested, that rubs up everywhere against teeming context. though there are, I read, those hollow men -- Melville was not one of them, I hear -- "p.c." is asked to do a lot by those who don't think poetry will do -- poetry makes one thing happen -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 21:33:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: UbuWeb Sound Poetry Saved Comments: To: "Glazier, Loss" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + U B U W E B : VISUAL, CONCRETE, & SOUND POETRY http://www.ubu.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Dear Friends, Thank you for the great outpouring of support for our Real Audio Sound Poetry section. We were very fortunate to have Zarcrom Industries donate the use of their Real Audio server. Our Sound Poetry end will be down for a couple of days while we re-ftp and reshuffle our files. However, please feel free to check out the rest of the site: Historical, Contemporary, Found & Insane, & Papers relating to Visual, Concrete, & Sound Poetry. Regards, Kenneth Goldsmith Editor, UbuWeb Visual, Concrete & Sound Poetry E-Mail: editor@ubu.com http://www.ubu.com R E A L A U D I O S O U N D P O E T R Y Guillaume Apollinaire Jaap Blonk William S. Burroughs John Cage Henri Chopin Jean Cocteau Andrew Dickinson Kelli Dipple Marcel Duchamp Brion Gysin Wyndham Lewis Jackson Mac Low Charles Manson F.T. Marinetti David Moss John Reeves John Reeves & John Bone Kurt Schwitters Cecil Taylor Gregory Whitehead + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + U B U W E B : VISUAL, CONCRETE, & SOUND POETRY http://www.ubu.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 20:46:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980326182445.006d122c@popmail.lmu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 6:24 PM -0800 3/26/98, Aldon Nielsen wrote: >>In poetry there are no men or women; only ears. > > >If there is anything between those ears, it is listening out of an >intersection in motion that has a history, that is interested, that rubs up >everywhere against teeming context. > >though there are, I read, those hollow men -- > >Melville was not one of them, I hear -- > >"p.c." is asked to do a lot by those who don't think poetry will do -- > > >poetry makes one thing happen -- well said. would i had your wit. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 21:04:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Queries: Yau and Friedman In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone have the proper mailing addresses of John Yau Ed Friedman ?? I got some things returned to sender-- Thanks! Katy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 22:11:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:24:46 -0800 from On Thu, 26 Mar 1998 18:24:46 -0800 Aldon Nielsen said: > >If there is anything between those ears, it is listening out of an >intersection in motion that has a history, that is interested, that rubs up >everywhere against teeming context. you can rub up everywhere. I'll just rub muh iconoclasmic mojo. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 22:44:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael McColl Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT On Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:51:26 -0700 George Bowering said: >I'm afraid that I have to agree with Billy Little on this one. I dont see >the sense or the committment in sending out a general request to poets to >"submit." Read someone's poetry. Figure out what you like. Then ASK that >poet to send you something for your magazine or whatever. Be a community, >not a market. > > > > >George Bowering. > , >2499 West 37th Ave., >Vancouver, B.C., >Canada V6M 1P4 > >fax: 1-604-266-9000 Read someone's poetry where? How did it get there? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 20:48:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: \engine dire MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Okie-dokie, babe, but there is the question of "who gets to decide who has ears and who doesn't, too. Also, to claim having ears, as well as to claim "Poet X has 'a great ear'" (as has been done quite often since X, Y, and Z made it such a fashionably authoritative type of comment back in 19__), can get____________. Henry Gould wrote: > In poetry there are no men or women; only ears. Anthologies are no measure; > critics are no measure; only ears measure. Those who have ears to hear, > let them hear. > > The gender issue is a form of politics & journalism. Important, in those > disciplines. Poetry is a vocation. > > Does this mean I think gender is an "issue"? No. I think "issue" is a > sexless noun, without memory. [speaking poetically-speaking] > > What is memory? Why ask? You know. > > I don't care anymore about the sociology of poetry. It takes ears to hear > what I hear. I hear Melville, eating potato chips in his PJ's. [really?] > Poetry is asked to do a lot by people who don't do poetry much. Well, > it will, in its own good time. But you p.c. pharisees won't know what it is, > Mr. Jones. Speak up, gals. Spandrift - he dead. > > I don't hear much, really. But I'm hungry for the sound of what I hear. > That's what ears are for. OK - it's not only sound. You win. But it's > also not just the first echo you can think of. Men wear whale penises > for doilies. Women mount chargers. Aloha! [x-mate. HENRY trips again] > > Poetry. Everybody has their own idea of Paradise. Neutral, universal, > transparent? No thanks. Equilibrium background for soaring...ok for now... > > "my sister, my dove". Cowwamaunsch [Narragansett for "I love you"] > > - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 21:25:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: \engine dire Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Steve: i 'ear you, buddy. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:17:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: costly clay Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Does loam contain clay? I thought clay was mineral-rich but I could be >wrong. Also remember reading about a science study showing some kind >of electromagnetic movement - sort of a shifting back & forth - in clay >that the scientists thought was a sort of primitive pre-life form. Perhaps somewhat tangential. The phrase "costly clay" is curious in that it implies the traditional cost of any ground being the human blood that was spilt in the taking of it. All ground was considered taken and held purely by cost of blood. Adds an odd kind of nuance to any discussion of soils, Russian soils included. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 00:24:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >george, billy et al-- > >but wouldnt that mean that you'd only consider work from poets who had >already published? Of course not. For instance, I am editing a magazine at the moment, and have already solicited work from one person who has NEVER published, and two others who have published once. Why would you think that soliciting work would mean restricting the soliciting to already published writers? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 00:49:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: <980326.224607.EST.V2139G@VM.TEMPLE.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Read someone's poetry where? How did it get there? If you hang around poets long enough you start finsing out where poems can be read. In each other's rooms, for instance. At the bar. At the campus if yr at a campus. It got there in someone's pocket or paper bag or backpack. It comes over the internet. It comes from the microphone or it's unplugged. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 00:40:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: stupid and lazy posts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Nope...Sorry, but these sorts of interactions *are* oriented toward >community-building. No doubt you do lotsa editing, and should certainly >share your approaches. But your off-target here. > >Mp My off-target here what? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 06:05:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: "A"-24 Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Comments: cc: perelman@dept.english.upenn.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii A performance of "A-24 was put on at the Grand Piano coffee house series, probably in 1979 (it was after LZ's death), with Bob Perelman on Piano, voices included Barrett Watten, Carla Harryman, Kit Robinson, Steve Benson and, I think, Lyn Hejinian. This was repeated a few times and one version (at UC Davis I believe) was recorded on video by the archive for new poetry at SF State. They should have copies if any are to be had. It's been awhile, so one or two of these details might have rusted in the brain somewhere. It was fabulous, slower in its pacing than I (who do not read music) had imagined on the page, thus quite anti-"speech" throughout. Great rigor and attention to detail by all the participants. I believe a thorough search of the archives of the Poetics List would turn up an earlier discussion in which a couple of other performances by other folks were also documented. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 08:07:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 16 Mar 1998 20:48:49 -0800 from On Mon, 16 Mar 1998 20:48:49 -0800 Steve Tills said: >Okie-dokie, babe, but there is the question of "who gets to decide who has ears >and who doesn't, too. Also, to claim having ears, as well as to claim "Poet X >a fashionably authoritative type of comment back in 19__), can get____________. Now that I've sobered up from last night's drunken bingo game, sure, of course you're right. That's one of the reasons this list is here for, I guess. And gender realities sure do impinge on CONVERSATIONS ABOUT poetry here & everywhere, as do the dulling effects of overposter boys like myself. Believe it or not I'm trying to cut down - I abort lotsa posts before sending, you'll all be glad to know - & hope I don't have to resort to self-inflicted carpal tunnel syndrom to cut back further. The more people that pipe up here the better, of all seven genders. HYEVER I would also respectfully add that the argument that "I keep quiet because some of those boys might criticize me" is not a strong argument; moreover, old cartoon reruns of "what women are like" or "what men are like" don't tell you much about either poetry or the sex feuds; and finally, to clinch the thing, the simple truth in a complex world is that my cartoons are just BETTER than everybody else's cartoons, so there, I win again ha ha ha. - Officer Pup Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 08:22:21 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: costly clay In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:17:09 -0500 from On Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:17:09 -0500 morpheal said: >>Does loam contain clay? I thought clay was mineral-rich but I could be >>wrong. Also remember reading about a science study showing some kind >>of electromagnetic movement - sort of a shifting back & forth - in clay >>that the scientists thought was a sort of primitive pre-life form. > >Perhaps somewhat tangential. > >The phrase "costly clay" is curious in that it implies the traditional cost >of any ground being the human blood that was spilt in the taking of it. All >ground was considered taken and held purely by cost of blood. > >Adds an odd kind of nuance to any discussion of soils, Russian soils included. costly clay - This is a quote from guess who Mandelstam. I don't have the poem handy, unfortunately. Think it was from his trip to Armenia period. The "Journey to Armenia" prose piece elaborates a complicated bunch of metaphorpheenyms around clay, lips, poetry, language, Armenia, time, and yes - sacrifice. "Abel's blood is calling from the ground". [O God those poor kids in Arkansas.] - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:12:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My God, Thank You, Henry Gould! No more bother about women's representation in publishing, publications, cartels, circles of power etc. We just have small ears! Come to think of it, this notion explains so much about literary history. Wasn't it Darwin that first pointed out the embryonic or "fetal" female ear, only now budding in the twentieth century? Sorry, twenty-first. I'm Irish, you know, it has always bothered me a little that the ranting, raging music of my poetry is often heard as ranting and raging in the U.S., rather than as music. I thought there might be a quetion of different ears, and ears being culturally biassed in some way. But Henry's post has simplified everything. What a RELIEF! Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 07:14:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In response to the news from Jonesboro, many of us non-USAmericans have been bemused by the fact that in all the traumatized editorializing about these killings, the one aspect of the situation that has not been questioned is the lack of any working gun-control laws in the states. I think the NRA recently posted this to the list: "Poems don't kill people. People kill people. Don't blame the poem." ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What bores me most about the Tyrol is its Tyrolean aspect Albert Camus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:13:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:12:39 -0500 from On Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:12:39 -0500 Mairead Byrne said: >My God, Thank You, Henry Gould! No more bother about women's >representation in publishing, publications, cartels, circles of power etc. >We just have small ears! Come to think of it, this notion explains so >much about literary history. Wasn't it Darwin that first pointed out the >embryonic or "fetal" female ear, only now budding in the twentieth >century? Sorry, twenty-first. I'm Irish, you know, it has always bothered >me a little that the ranting, raging music of my poetry is often heard as >ranting and raging in the U.S., rather than as music. I thought there >might be a quetion of different ears, and ears being culturally biassed in >some way. But Henry's post has simplified everything. What a RELIEF! Don't mention it, Mairead! Glad to be of help! I hear you soft & clear! Say, did you hear that cricket by the hearth? Whatsay? NO!! That ain't no moose! - Henry "Lobe-otomy Calamity Joan" Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:26:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've got the most giant pair of earrings, Henry. They're more like chimes. They're more like bells on a fire-engine. They're more like those honking great bells the hunchback knocked around in Notre Dame. I'm a-wearing those today. Or is this too pathetic? Over-compensation for my measly small ears? NO! Those earrings rock! Gonna get my tongue pierced too. And my nose. Patrick Kavanagh said SMELL was the most crucial sense for a poet. In an "occupation" / "preoccupation" with a shortage of sense ... words fail me. Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:31:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >In response to the news from Jonesboro, many of us non-USAmericans have >been bemused by the fact that in all the traumatized editorializing about >these killings, the one aspect of the situation that has not been >questioned is the lack of any working gun-control laws in the states. > Those two boys only acted on the example of their government. When people do not do as YOU wish them to do, you kill them. - db <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:53:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Editors finding poetry ? (was: stupid and lazy posts) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Read someone's poetry where? How did it get there? > >If you hang around poets long enough you start finsing out where poems can >be read. In each other's rooms, for instance. At the bar. At the campus if >yr at a campus. It got there in someone's pocket or paper bag or backpack. >It comes over the internet. It comes from the microphone or it's unplugged. Try perusing rec.arts.poems on the Internet. There, in that newsgroup, you would find many writers, or would-be writers, sharing their work. I post drafts of my current work there very regularly, among a large number of some very regular and some irregular contributors. Many of the poets there use that medium because they either cannot afford more costly means of publication, or have gotten lost in the nowhere poets' land of being a nobody as to name recognition when anything lands on any noteworthy editor's desk, or because they simply do not know what publications (other than occassional e-zines) to devote their submissive efforts to. It is not that they suffer from terminal rejection as much as that they have had no mentors or mentoresses to let them in on anything worthwhile and the hard line regime of forking out contest entry fees to publications that prey upon exactly that has dwindled their meagre reserves of means and ways. Although I have published one self-published book of verse, and been included in a few obscure local anthologies, I suffer from all of the above maladies, so I know the syndrome all too well of "make a name for yourself", "make a success of yourself" and the frequent corollary of "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps". The latter is indicative as to that genre of dis-encouragement because if you have ever attempted to pull on your own bootstraps to get yourself up off the floorboards of any endeavour you know how impossible it is to do exactly that, and that is in fact the often all too subtle joke in such exclamations. Morpheal aka Bob Ezergailis bob.ezergailis@ghbbs.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 10:22:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: costly clay Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Adds an odd kind of nuance to any discussion of soils, Russian soils included. >costly clay - >This is a quote from guess who Mandelstam. I don't have the poem handy, >unfortunately. Think it was from his trip to Armenia period. The >"Journey to Armenia" prose piece elaborates a complicated bunch of >metaphorpheenyms around clay, lips, poetry, language, Armenia, time, >and yes - sacrifice. >"Abel's blood is calling from the ground". [O God those poor >kids in Arkansas.] - Henry Gould The Arkansas event is so extremely irrational, so extremely insane, I suppose I can find some theoretical, intellectual, explanation for it, but beyond that I simply cannot comprehend how someone can do that. However, human history is also largely incomprehenensible, for the same kinds of reasons. I sometimes think, in an agnostic manner, that if there is a god it has to have been completely insane to create a universe of the kind it did. Considering the story has humanity as its supposedly highest pinnacle of creative effort and that leading to all the endless bloodshed strife that comprises the macrocosm of political history, and the microcosm of the kind of lesser bursts of insanity such as the one in Arkansas. The Cain and Abel story as the archetypal instance in some ways becomes a dangerously imposed paradigm. Instances that I know of where one brother is turned to playing Cain and the other must play Abel, but neither would have otherwise chosen to, in any way, enact the myth. Not every such tragedy leads to bloodshed, amongst brothers, but such tragedies are many, and some think it a part of "necessary learning" to re-enact the paradigmatic instance. Of course those who oppose that most are the non-Marxist anarchists. All other groups seem to hold to re-enactments of various mythologies, but they uniquely stand solidly against it and claim it is dysfunctional and a cause of human suffering. The Buddhists would agree, but modern Buddhists do re-enact. Armenia, of course, has its extremely bloodied political history. Much of political history has been brought about by one group seeking to have additional resources that are controlled by another group, including the clay, that in many instances is purely useable space. The other part of political history is violence utilized as means of conversion purely to push over one system of ideas onto another. Add to that the foul motives of revenge. Reminds me of the many non metaphorical roastings, sendings to the flames, and crowds tearing victims to pieces, that predominated in Europe. Civilization, such as it is, was sometimes very costly clay indeed, and those who were not as malleable as moist clay were often eaten alive for that very "failing". It is a wonder that progress ever occurred in any liberal and democratic sense of it. As for myself, I have only been involved, and indirectly, in the spilling of the blood of violent aggressors, and by fully sanctionned means. Of course that does not give oneself clean hands. Even that bloodies us. Even when the aggressors were contemplating genocide, and planning use of weapons of mass destruction. Mahatma Gandhi would have urged us to sit there and be blown away by the other side, but that does not seem to be a viable real world option. So, in a sense, all of our clay is costlier than you would imagine. Much, much, costlier than we usually imagine. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 10:01:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:26:36 -0500 from Smell? May be. Is that why all the really big-eared poets go blind? We may have to consult some complexity scientists on this issue of the one and the many, the one big ear and the many different ears. Especially when you start to wonder if verbal power is the ultimate form of power {the Word was God & all that] and poetry is the ultimate expression of verbal power [in a sealed nutcase], so that Henrygemony is only one among many expressions of small henrygemonies, and outsiders' demands to be insiders are demands within a power game, and even outsiders who claim to have different ears are still trying to catch the attention of the one big Ear [HCE that is, Ear Comes Everboddy], and every woman and every man is also everyear every year, everhear that one? The one about rat-eared rhetoric, the persuasive idiombombonbonmot? And the best way to inoculate yall again whiteyboy HennyPenny powwow trips, man, is to get an earful of DIFFEN idioms, like no shit gal y'hear me talkin? Refine yo mine sistah if you wanna stan wi me. Seein az I stole at fum yall anyway! Hah! the most powerful poems show no straining for effect beyond what's necessary for the complete repeat effect... "power contained"... "a powerful work"... "a powerful voice"... "hell of an earful"... "powerful in its delicacy & restraint"... "powerful cry of the powerless"... "TOTALLY WINNING lightheartedness & self-mockery"... "POWERFUL example of selfless impersonality"..."Henry Gould is on a total power trip and he's likely to win, too"..."yikes!!"..."lemme outa ear!!"... - Ratso Rhoziland, the sub-sub-sub-sub-Librarian ["lookout!!"] "silence is not goulden" - Oscar Whiner ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 10:40:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >In response to the news from Jonesboro, many of us non-USAmericans have >been bemused by the fact that in all the traumatized editorializing about >these killings, the one aspect of the situation that has not been >questioned is the lack of any working gun-control laws in the states. > >I think the NRA recently posted this to the list: > >"Poems don't kill people. >People kill people. >Don't blame the poem." Sadly, logic dictates that the citizens' right to bear arms is a necessity to help assure the prevention of the worst kinds of tyranny. As a nation state becomes ever more centralized and powerful that safeguard sometimes becomes insidiously undermined and the tendency is to either take away that right and risk that a dictatorship or an oligarchy might sieze power essentially unopposed, or for the citizens to seek more powerful means of protecting their freedoms. The question becomes how to prevent casualties and protect those very freedoms that are vouchsafed against the rising up of a dictator, a Hitler or a Stalin, at the head of the machinations of power ? Perhaps the failing is in education and in the what and how of it. There is no easy answer. Would sufficient force of arms in the control of the citizens have prevented the Third Reich and its reign of terror and bloodshed ? Perhaps. Would sufficient force of arms in the control of the citizens have prevented the Stalinist reign of terror and its bloodshed of many millions more lives, as well as the total enslavement of countless millions of others ? Probably. If anyone has a better answer than the citizens right to bear arms, to the problem of totalistic tyranny and the evils and sufferings wraught by some kinds of political dictatorships, please do share it. I doubt anyone can offer even one iota of alternative, practical, real world wisdom. As to what is taught to children, to form their values and to further their understanding, self control, sense of ethics, and to alleviate some of the horrible conflicts and prejudices that are rife within North America, that is a very different matter....Perhaps that is the really significant question. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 09:57:16 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: Re: \engine dire MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I agree that there's a hell of a lot more to poetry than gender and I agree that "boys criticize me" isn't a good argument not to speak (tho' I've fallen prey to it on occasion). However, a couple of things occur to me: 1. Poetry isn't just about listening. I can hear Moby Dick all I want, but it is my response to it that makes poetry a dialetical function. Action, be it in discussing Moby Dick or writing something about it, or performing something you've written, is, often beyond any one person's desires, gendered (tho' I'm certainly not arguing that this gendering is in any way natural or cannot be manipulated) 2. Boys (and girls and others) criticize, and often it's helpful, even if occasionally not ego-gratifying. However, I've often had the experience of suspecting that a criticism made of my work (either in tone or content) was specifically based in gender (like suspecting that he's majorly invested in proving his manhood more than discussing work with me) and getting that shocked look when I suggested maybe this was the case. Because, what, gender's a chick thing? I know some of my own criticisms have been questionable in similar ways (on days when I'm tired or mad, not taking a male student's Mack Bolan-type poems as seriously as I might {odd how I picked an example with a guy who would have less instituational power than I, says something, I think} or getting unneccisarily angry at fellow female poets writing "daddy" poems because I'm worried that they are repeating female "poetess" stereotypes). Dumb (and unfair), right? But the thing is, criticism's can be critiqued. If you suspect that the criticism you are going to get is not valid to your work, why put your work out there? So what now? I don't know that anyone is suggesting that men "play nice" with women writers and not criticize them. I think it's a little simplistic to think that all the posts written about why women don't post or submit as frequently as men boil down to "women are scared of criticism." I wonder, if women and other genders who historically have been marginalized were to contribute more to mags and listservs, would gender stop being an "issue" in poetry communities? Perhaps new gender "issues" would arise, but what might they look like? taste like? Oh yeah, I like Aldon's post very much. Elizabeth "observe this as you would a maniac in the woods" -- R. Sterling (possibly misheard) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:03:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Spring Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" and out of my burrow. All have been missed. Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:16:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Comments: To: Douglas Barbour In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the one aspect of the situation that has not been questioned is the lack of any working gun-control laws in the states. yes, I found this startling, it's as if: "the root of the problem isn't guns, it's [single parent families][tv shows][cigarettes][the middle east], and if there were no guns, HELL, those kids would have thrown PEBBLES, or cried out ABUSE, or squirted their victims with WATER PISTOLS. Different versions of the same problem" I remember when a man burst into a primary school in Scotland (in Dunblaine, I think) and shot several children - the FIRST reaction was a chorus of anti-gun protest, now all guns are banned in the UK (amnesty for licence holders) this situation will never change in the US, right? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:18:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ellay Phillips Subject: Re: \engine dire In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, henry wrote: > Smell? May be. Is that why all the really big-eared poets go blind? Yes it's cuz we can't stop wigglin em Especially > when you start to wonder if verbal power is the ultimate form of power > {the Word was God & all that] and poetry is the ultimate expression > of verbal power [in a sealed nutcase], so that Henrygemony is only Eye dunno if the verbal is the _ultimate_ form of power if speech is act (as the theory may go) but words are powerful yes indeed they make worlds as hannah weiner said, I see words as eye say, eye c wor(l)ds but eye also 'ear them too and words impinge on the body at least mine and eye agree with olga broumas who once said poetry can bee like el-ess-dee it has a strong kick and changes the way one can c the wor(l)d it runs through my blood and the clay of which eye am made and mixes with the blood of the ones who are gone who are within me as much as in the clod next to my foot and it overpowers me and overwhelms me and changes me as much as eye wheeled it so eye make wor(l)ds too and they are as true as anything else out there. Ellay Phillips ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:52:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Query v. Ed Foster ed tells me that he is back on line: efoster@stevens-tech.edu. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:47:27 EST5EDT4,M4.1.0,M10.5.0 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Reinfeld, Linda" Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Mar 1998 to 26 Mar 1998 A question from Toshi Ishihara (formerly in Charles Bernstein's class at UB): I'm beginning work on a paper about the integration of text and pictures in the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Michael Ondaatje. If anyone can suggest critical materials that would help me along with this project, I'd be very grateful. Responses to the list will be forwarded to me by Linda Reinfeld (lreinfeld@monroecc.edu), or you can mail me backchannel at tishihar@ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp Thanks a lot -- Toshi ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:05:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Comments: To: morpheal In-Reply-To: <199803271540.KAA11598@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII morpheal's same old "sadly, que sera sera"'s the same old non sequitur, your examples are haphazard and banal in their obviousness, DO YOU REALLY (i mean -really-, mind) BELIEVE THAT A BUNCH OF FARMERS SCHOOLBOYS AND INSURANCE SALESMEN, JUST BY 'VIRTUE' OF POSSESSING A HANDGUN EACH, COULD OPPOSE THE U.S. ARMED FORCES?!! What a load of shit! As for the Third Reich - what do you KNOW about this? The Nazis were elected both by the citizens of Germany in a democratic process and by the president of the Reichstag; most people would not even have cocked their pistols had they owned any; small pockets of armed resistance (eg anti Hitlerjugend splinter groups of young men such as the Edelweiss Pirates) were negligible in effect and of primarily symbolic importance; the Polish army, a trained body of fighting professionals with military equipment, could not prevent their country being annexed, so how the hell do you imagine a citizenry - impressed with their government and swarming to meet Hitler whenever he passed through their towns with near-hysteric jubiliation, faced with the combined military and paramilitary might of the SS, SA and German armed forces proper - could EVER have prevented (what I suppose you're driving at) the holocaust, OR even have wished to do so, OR EVEN (and here's a nice rub re: the US) HAVE KNOWN ABOUT IT (most people had no clue). Guns are outlawed in the UK - just hear those droves of shackled ankles marching to their death-camps - if only they'd had a few Uzis The murder rate there is of course -MUCH- -MUCH- lower ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:05:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf, class In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII It seems as if the discussion about gender kind of dwindled away-- I was slightly disappointed with the manner in which it devolved into witticism-- My original post--re: women submitting and participating was not about women's poetry per se--as poetry--but rather about the production of literature--the barriers that must be surmounted before a single person can manage to put pen to paper; and how these barriers seem to be higher for women. I haven't managed to be articulate about this distinction, I don't think, so thought I'd post an excerpt from Woolf's Room of One's Own. This excerpt is taken from a wonderful and absolutely necessary book--FEMINISM: THE ESSENTIAL HISTORICAL WRITINGS.(Vintage, 1972). If you haven't read these articles--by minds such as Abigail Adams, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Sand, Sojourner Truth, John Stuart Mill, Emma Goldman, and so on--it's as if you hadn't read Marx-- And if you want to talk about class, you might do well to read a little Marx, no?-- The following is one of the most basic of feminist arguments: But you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction--what has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women in fiction I sat down on the banks of the river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs. Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them; or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion... ...All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point--a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions--women and fiction remain, so far as I'm concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money... ...Life for both sexes--and I looked at them [through a restaurant window while waiting for my lunch to be served], shouldering their way along the pavement--is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority--it may be wealth, rank, or a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney--for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination--over other people. Hence the enourmous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power.... Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses ppossessing the magic and delicious power fo reflecting the figure of the man twice its natural size. (pp 345-46) Katy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:17:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Whyte Subject: On Symmetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII [wishing that this work could be symmetrical to my other work, a somewhat academic study on the decorative, which is somehow "more real;" and then something else spills out to this list, asymmetrical: lacking some kind of reverse precedent.... this is the "pause in our conversation" which is where the unpublished poem comes from, perhaps; as if the book or magazine provided a spine or hinge which the words could turn against, reflecting without a gap, back on themselves.... Ryan] On Symmetry It is very much like a desert, if it could be It depends upon a perfect hinge. It is remote, even under your fingers, gentle ridges here and there. It doesn't know whether it has a heart or not (to say a hinge.) It has already fallen silent. It is only if a storm could rage in marble It is if it were to die it would. It is a matter of its own indifference. It is indifference as it is unmoored. It is the vanity of vanities. It is the image of a bourgeois gilded mirror replete but now unhinged, and classless. It is endlessly itself and its classical facade. It is a wandering front It is an unremembered basilica. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:30:22 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ctfarmr Subject: women and men in conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit According to studies by Deborah Tannen, author of _He Said, She Said_ , women and men learn strikingly different modes of discourse from an early age. Most boys learn to use conversation as a competitive activity, emphasizing their differences and individuality, establishing a hierarchy, which contributes to group cohesion, and within which each member is constantly striving for a higher position by challenging others and by showing his own knowledge to be "superior." Most girls learn to use conversation among friends as a cooperative activity. Anyone who criticizes within the group, or tries to show superior knowledge is setting herself apart from (above) the group, and is therefore seen as making an attempt to destabilize it. Differences of opinion are more often put forward as questions rather than statements. Or they're prefaced with phrases such as, "In my experience," implying respect for the speaker's opinion while maintaining one's own. Within the cooperative mode of discourse, a direct statement of "you're wrong" is, in effect, telling the speaker to shut up. So, when folks using the two different modes of discourse, the competitive and the cooperative, come together, the competitors tend to dominate because their direct challenges and criticisms are, within the rules of cooperative discourse, telling the cooperatives that their contributions are unacceptable. This affects discussions of poetics, because academic discourse generally utilizes the competitive mode. And, while young women are now more often trained to use the competitive mode with confidence, saying that women "should" do this is really saying that women should be more like men. Until both sides recoginize these different modes of discourse, respect them equally, and take them into account in their conversations together, women will often think that men are (verbally) attacking them, and men will think the women are wimping out. This is just a very brief, and probably inadequate, summary of some of the main points in Tannen's book, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in this subject. Bobbie West ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:39:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Ishihara/Reinfeld Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Since Linda Reinfeld posted a query for Toshi Ishihara, it reminded me to recommend their wonderful 1996 collaborative translation "The Game of 100 Poems": a set of 200 cards that together make up the 100 poems of Hyakunin Isshu, based on the anthology of 100 tanka poems (5-7-5, 7-7) compiled by Sadaie Fujiwara in 1235). This version consists of 100 cards with the first line and 100 cards with the second line, which you can match up in a variety of ways. In the introduction Ishihara and Reinfeld note that "Although this anthology has frequently been translated into English, our translation is unique, for we have chosen to use couplets, rather than free verse of syllabic form, to reflect the two-part structure of the poems". I hope that copies of this remarkable box of poems are still available; if interested, write to Linda Reinfeld: lreinfeld@MONROECC.EDU. * I thought of this poem, attributed to Fujiwara no Shunzei, Master of the Grand Empress's Household, in reaction to the events in Jonesboro: _____________________________________ In all the world there's no road far from grief: Even the deer cry deep in the mountains _____________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:18:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: women and men in conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" it was very confusing for me to be raised with the "male" rules for conversation and then enter the social world. my main problem was not other women but guys, who recoiled from my "unfeminine" and combattive verbal style. i couldn't figure out what the problem was. now that i'm thoroughly therapized and midwesternized, i've learned to adopt some "feminine" conversational" skills and i must say it's helped a lot, not w/ getting guys so much as with just getting along better in society. At 1:30 PM 3/27/98, Ctfarmr wrote: >According to studies by Deborah Tannen, author of _He Said, She Said_ , women >and men learn strikingly different modes of discourse from an early age. Most >boys learn to use conversation as a competitive activity, emphasizing their >differences and individuality, establishing a hierarchy, which contributes to >group cohesion, and within which each member is constantly striving for a >higher position by challenging others and by showing his own knowledge to be >"superior." Most girls learn to use conversation among friends as a >cooperative activity. Anyone who criticizes within the group, or tries to show >superior knowledge is setting herself apart from (above) the group, and is >therefore seen as making an attempt to destabilize it. Differences of opinion >are more often put forward as questions rather than statements. Or they're >prefaced with phrases such as, "In my experience," implying respect for the >speaker's opinion while maintaining one's own. Within the cooperative mode of >discourse, a direct statement of "you're wrong" is, in effect, telling the >speaker to shut up. > >So, when folks using the two different modes of discourse, the competitive and >the cooperative, come together, the competitors tend to dominate because their >direct challenges and criticisms are, within the rules of cooperative >discourse, telling the cooperatives that their contributions are unacceptable. >This affects discussions of poetics, because academic discourse generally >utilizes the competitive mode. And, while young women are now more often >trained to use the competitive mode with confidence, saying that women >"should" do this is really saying that women should be more like men. Until >both sides recoginize these different modes of discourse, respect them >equally, and take them into account in their conversations together, women >will often think that men are (verbally) attacking them, and men will think >the women are wimping out. > >This is just a very brief, and probably inadequate, summary of some of the >main points in Tannen's book, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in >this subject. > >Bobbie West ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:48:27 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf, class MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii One of the things I'm curious about is what men think about their own gender when writing/ publishing/ reading/ discussing poetry? Do you think about gender at times like this? Given the original question: why are women often reluctant to contribute, it seems logical to ask: why are men likely to do so? I think we know some of the historical/social reasons: access to money, old boy networks, all that Jungian " spiritual wise man," ah, stuff, etc. -- but what else? If you want to avoid this stuff (or things like class and race keeps you away from money, networks, etc) what makes you contribute? Do you feel this big imperative to write based on notions you would consider gendered? If not, why? I mean, sure, I write for a lot of reasons, some not "gendered", but I feel the call of ole' Virginia Woolf to find my own room. Certainly, hashing out my gender has been a big deal in my writing. Is this just a chick thing? I don't mean to deter from the original question (because I think it's important) Katy posed and I certainly don't want to turn this into an "us gals" and "you guys" kind of debate, but, for the sake of discussion, maybe we could ask a series of different questions re: gender that might be enlightening. I got the impression people were into this debate and it sort of died. --oh, and Katy, someone had said your mag isn't currently taking contributions. Is it true? When will your mag be ready for lots of rock- and-roll poetry/prose by women? (I bet others will be interested) Rockin' in the 70 degree plus weather of Boston, Elizabeth Hatmaker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:55:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf, class Comments: To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:48 PM 3/27/98, Elizabeth Hatmaker wrote: ...all that Jungian " spiritual wise man,"... what the hell's this and what does it have to do w/ sending stuff in to be published? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 11:59:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: women & men in conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Another interesting post from Bobbie. But you know what? It's difficult for me to recognize and accord equal respect to both the modes she describes, as she, generously, advocates. I dislike intensely the male model, regret the times I may have followed it, and would very much like to see it abandoned. I hope the definiteness of tone in that previous sentence isnt a hangover from my training as a male? I've enjoyed hearing women be just that clear. And please--I know I'm an ironist, but no irony intened here. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 14:09:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Having written and published a few pieces drawn from real life experiences of shootings and killings--i.e. happened in my life to people I knew as well as to me-- it is not bemusing to regard the killings--they are part of a long tradition in American life (and art, to be sure)-- it's easy to say it's just guns--but the hells many endure living in the usa go beyond simple violence--(remember: Thoreau spoke of "lives of quiet desperation" lived in silence--violence is what happens when silence becomes too much to endure, when one does know how to speak, or if anyone will listen--) one of the great moralists of our times, one William S. Burroughs, has an exceptional passage in Maked Lunch--an out pouring of outrage at the spirit of evil which haunts the land-- millions were killed in this country without guns--drugs, alcohol, toxic waste dumps, no access to health care, locked up in reservations, beaten and starved, tortured, lynched, malnutrition, chemical and nuclear experiments, medical and biological experiments-- many of my ancestors were killed by a simple method: they were given disease infected blankets when shipped off their homelands by the us govt. there are many interesting studies tracing the origins of this violence to Puritanism--you can find the flip side of this in some of Jim Thompson's novels-- but the desire for purification, and to purge the world of impurities-- to know grace (and when you can't be rewarded with riches--why not with power--over another's life--)-- Remember Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver: "all my life I've known loneliness--in cars, on sidewlaks--in bars--loneliness has followed me everywhere--I'm God's lonely man--" . . ."Someday a real rain will come . . . " . . ."You talkin' to me?--Huh?--Then who the f*** are you talkin to?" When it's not such a short step from a desire to overcome intolerable life, or solitude, or silence to being God's lonely man-- is not this the mission of the righteous? "Huh?" --dave baptiste chirot ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 12:33:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list In-Reply-To: <199803271540.KAA11598@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In talking about the constitutional right to bear arms it helps to go back to the thinking of the founders. While the amendment guarantees the right to bear arms in order to facilitate the maintenance of a militia (as opposed to a standing army), the jeffersonians certainly had the resistance to tyranny in mind, as well. So citizens could keep their guns, which gave them a fire-power only marginally inferior to the military, which weilded at best uncertain artillery. By that logic the right to bear arms should include the right to private ownership of, say, supersonic jets armed with everything but nuclear weapons. As this is impractical, not least because if large numbers of us owned our own military aircraft every flat surface on the continent would have to be paved for private airfields, the right to bear arms has become obsolete, and stricter weapons control makes sense. On the other hand, there's no practical reason why the citizenry couldn't be armed with chemical and biological weapons, which can be stored easily (a good refrigerator does wonders for most biological weapons, except when there's a power failure). At the very least apartment living could become a lot more interesting. At 10:40 AM 3/27/98 -0500, you wrote: >>In response to the news from Jonesboro, many of us non-USAmericans have >>been bemused by the fact that in all the traumatized editorializing about >>these killings, the one aspect of the situation that has not been >>questioned is the lack of any working gun-control laws in the states. >> >>I think the NRA recently posted this to the list: >> >>"Poems don't kill people. >>People kill people. >>Don't blame the poem." > > >Sadly, logic dictates that the citizens' right to bear arms is a necessity >to help assure the prevention of the worst kinds of tyranny. As a nation state >becomes ever more centralized and powerful that safeguard sometimes becomes >insidiously undermined and the tendency is to either take away that right >and risk that a dictatorship or an oligarchy might sieze power essentially >unopposed, or for the citizens to seek more powerful means of protecting >their freedoms. > >The question becomes how to prevent casualties and protect those very freedoms >that are vouchsafed against the rising up of a dictator, a Hitler or a >Stalin, at the head of the machinations of power ? Perhaps the failing is >in education >and in the what and how of it. > >There is no easy answer. > >Would sufficient force of arms in the control of the citizens have prevented >the Third Reich and its reign of terror and bloodshed ? Perhaps. > >Would sufficient force of arms in the control of the citizens have prevented >the Stalinist reign of terror and its bloodshed of many millions more lives, >as well as the total enslavement of countless millions of others ? Probably. > >If anyone has a better answer than the citizens right to bear arms, to the >problem of totalistic tyranny and the evils and sufferings wraught by >some kinds of political dictatorships, please do share it. I doubt anyone can >offer even one iota of alternative, practical, real world wisdom. > >As to what is taught to children, to form their values and to further their >understanding, self control, sense of ethics, and to alleviate some of the >horrible conflicts and prejudices that are rife within North America, that >is a very different matter....Perhaps that is the really significant question. > >Morpheal > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 13:04:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Tills Subject: Re: women and men in conversation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is a very fruitful line of discussion, I think. I haven't, myself, read the Tannen book, but I've come to similar observations via other writers, Carol Gilligan and Nancy Chodorow and Riane Eisler, for example. I firmly believe that distinctions between "the Competitive" male models and "the cooperative" female models of discourse/language use and engagement/writing/poetics etc are going to yield exceptionally "new" poetries and world. (Also, I do not think these kinds of considerations have been "done" by even the most innovative of "reader-based" poets, though I think some (no, I'm not going to mention any names) may have taken, inadvertently, steps in such directions.) The key issue here is, as Eisler would argue in _The Chalice & The Blade_, the distinction between "competitive" and "cooperative" models, the former having dominated a good deal of, if not most of, all cultures since about 10,000 years ago. Let me leave this little diatribe at this for now, but add one more silly obsession of mine: What happens to "competition" if poetries are produced "anonymously." Do the ballfields get leveled? Do even well known poets gain freedom to "make it new," i.e., create something many folks would dig yet not be able to label as XX's or XY's poetry? Ctfarmr wrote: > According to studies by Deborah Tannen, author of _He Said, She Said_ , women > and men learn strikingly different modes of discourse from an early age. Most > boys learn to use conversation as a competitive activity, emphasizing their > differences and individuality, establishing a hierarchy, which contributes to > group cohesion, and within which each member is constantly striving for a > higher position by challenging others and by showing his own knowledge to be > "superior." Most girls learn to use conversation among friends as a > cooperative activity. Anyone who criticizes within the group, or tries to show > superior knowledge is setting herself apart from (above) the group, and is > therefore seen as making an attempt to destabilize it. Differences of opinion > are more often put forward as questions rather than statements. Or they're > prefaced with phrases such as, "In my experience," implying respect for the > speaker's opinion while maintaining one's own. Within the cooperative mode of > discourse, a direct statement of "you're wrong" is, in effect, telling the > speaker to shut up. > > So, when folks using the two different modes of discourse, the competitive and > the cooperative, come together, the competitors tend to dominate because their > direct challenges and criticisms are, within the rules of cooperative > discourse, telling the cooperatives that their contributions are unacceptable. > This affects discussions of poetics, because academic discourse generally > utilizes the competitive mode. And, while young women are now more often > trained to use the competitive mode with confidence, saying that women > "should" do this is really saying that women should be more like men. Until > both sides recoginize these different modes of discourse, respect them > equally, and take them into account in their conversations together, women > will often think that men are (verbally) attacking them, and men will think > the women are wimping out. > > This is just a very brief, and probably inadequate, summary of some of the > main points in Tannen's book, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in > this subject. > > Bobbie West ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 15:48:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: women & men in conversation In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 27 Mar 1998 11:59:16 -0800 from Women feel threatened by men; men feel threatened by ideas. Women feel threatened by men; men feel threatened by their own shadows. Gender is an idea women can identify with; for men, ideas are sexualized. For women, gender is something to write about; for men, writing IS their gender (i.e. they take it for granted). The world cultural structure is the result of men subjecting the world to their shadows. Women are strange attractors in that shadow game. The light breaks slowly into the cave. & there's - why, it's Whistler's Mother!!! - adventures in independent babbling brought to you by the inevitable HG. Now I promise to be quiet for 3-4 days. I promise. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 16:33:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: extra-tentative pt.4 of O.T.O.A.R MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 4. Bright traffic through the even lights of common day bribed back desire intact were they dociles splinters and differing heats gather make by your great promise to them, acid mandate to incite only one (skin her throat) condemned moderate hindrance by shrink-wrapped, slowed up at that same rateless attachment to go one (she is sunlit) ignorance some nameless rill gather love by shredded edict collate dead-you (and every star in the night-sky stays entire). ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 16:31:20 EST Reply-To: EHatmaker@infonet.tufts.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: Re: women and men in conversation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Slightly off topic, but. . . I also find these studies compelling. Except when I start thinking about pedagogy. Have studies been done on communication patterns of women who have positions of institutional power, like, say, that of a teacher? I've read a great number of essays by feminist comp. professors (and heard them speak) and often the most horrible issues they dealt with in essays/talks are the insolent male student who won't cooperate with their feminist pedagogies. While I suspect many can sympathize, I found that usually by the end of these essays/talks, it all seemed to come down to finding ways to make them behave, usually through the mighty grading pen. I know, I know, I should offer proof of this-- I recall one in Lad Tobin's _Taking Stock_ which troubled me. So what does this mean? Are cooperative ways of speaking (and teaching) always cooperative? Do the studies of "gender speak" tend to naturalize gender in a way which is always useful? As a female teacher, I think the idea of "gendered pedagogies" need to be rigorously thought out. Jane Gallop's essay "Teacher's Breasts" was sort of instructive to me in this vein, tho' I sometimes have problems with Gallop. But, performative pedagogy- - does it offer extra-gendered (not quite sure what that means, but sounds kind of X-filesy) teaching possiblities? Do we need them? Going on vacation, Elizabeth ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 16:31:59 -0800 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: \engine dire, etc . . . MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry Gould wrote: > I hear Melville, eating potato chips in his PJ's. Elizabeth Shaw Melville, wife We breakfast at 8 o'clock, then Herman goes to walk and I fly up to put his room to rights, so that he can sit down to his desk immediately upon his return. Then I bid him good-bye, with many charges to be an industrious boy and not upset the inkstand.... At four we dine, and after dinner is over, Herman and I come up to our room and enjoy a cosy chat for an hour or so -- or he reads me some of the chapters he has been writing in the day. Then he goes down town for a walk, looks at the papers in the reading room, etc., and returns about half-past seven or eight. Then my work or my book is laid aside, and as he does not use his eyes but very little by candle light, I either read to him, or take a hand at whist for his amusement, or he listens to our reading or conversation, as best pleases him. For we all collect in the parlor in the evening, and generally one of us reads aloud for the benefit of the whole. Then we retire very early -- at 10 o'clock we all disperse. --Letter to her stepmother, December 23 1847 constitutional guns=bang, bang, you're dead. civic-life Subject: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (Continued from No. 9.) ". . . The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. . . . " 123 " . . . learn what poetry can do, practice that, vague broadcast accusations are worse . . . " " . . . vague broadcast accusations are worse than useless, they discourage others who might have something useful to contribute." " . . . vague broadcast accusations . . . " 123 "In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists." PUBLIUS, Federalist 10, 1787 ravished, undone mc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 16:14:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: women and men in conversation In-Reply-To: <499d2ec2.351bf040@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I can't speak to these well-known studies except anecdotally, and as a member of a fractious family raised in fractious New York I have little experience of this gendered difference in conversation styles. But I am willing to accept the general acuracy of the findings, and here in San Diego I had expected experience to conform more closely to the model. So here's a recent experience. I just finished jury duty. A forty-year-old single woman claimed, and the court in a previous case had confirmed, that a prospective boss, who was holding out the possibility of a lucrative job that apparently didn't exist, had driven the woman from a business dinner (or so she had understood it) to a secluded area, instead of to her car, as he had proposed, where he proceeded to lose it in a big way, becoming verbally and gesturally violent to the point that she feared for her life and also feared that she would be raped. On the stand, when asked what her thoughts had been, she said that a multitude of thoughts had occured to her during the three or four minutes in question, including the aforesaid, and also that fleeing in high heels on wet, stony ground would be difficult, and that she would ruin her suit. This is only a piece of a wider case, but it's emblematic of the whole. We were supposed to determine, among other things, if the woman had experienced recompensable damage, and how much, due to emotional stress and fear at that moment. The jury consisted of two men, myself and a working class guy of maybe 28, one woman in her 70's, and nine married working women of various social classes between 25 and 45. All were white, none hispanic. Except for me and the older woman, all were native to the area. Us guys and the older woman were the only ones who voted for damages (or lost wages, the other matter in contention). The other nine thought that she must be lying about her fears, or she wouldn't have worried about her suit (in refusing to award lost wages the nine held that the woman should have known better, she was probably trying to use her feminine wiles, and she was a spoiled bitch anyway). The nine appeared for the most part to be motivated by distrust of single women and envy of their social mobility, although a few did raise some interesting points. All of the women participated vociferously, interrupting and drowning out opposition in a manner that would have provoked admiration even among the women of my own family. At one point towards the end I found myself, in frustration, telling the women that I must be the only feminist there. I instantly realized that I had just become a cliche, and that I was probably right. This is San Diego. After that experience I'd love to meet some women who consider conversation a cooperative activity. At 01:30 PM 3/27/98 EST, you wrote: >According to studies by Deborah Tannen, author of _He Said, She Said_ , women >and men learn strikingly different modes of discourse from an early age. Most >boys learn to use conversation as a competitive activity, emphasizing their >differences and individuality, establishing a hierarchy, which contributes to >group cohesion, and within which each member is constantly striving for a >higher position by challenging others and by showing his own knowledge to be >"superior." Most girls learn to use conversation among friends as a >cooperative activity. Anyone who criticizes within the group, or tries to show >superior knowledge is setting herself apart from (above) the group, and is >therefore seen as making an attempt to destabilize it. Differences of opinion >are more often put forward as questions rather than statements. Or they're >prefaced with phrases such as, "In my experience," implying respect for the >speaker's opinion while maintaining one's own. Within the cooperative mode of >discourse, a direct statement of "you're wrong" is, in effect, telling the >speaker to shut up. > >So, when folks using the two different modes of discourse, the competitive and >the cooperative, come together, the competitors tend to dominate because their >direct challenges and criticisms are, within the rules of cooperative >discourse, telling the cooperatives that their contributions are unacceptable. >This affects discussions of poetics, because academic discourse generally >utilizes the competitive mode. And, while young women are now more often >trained to use the competitive mode with confidence, saying that women >"should" do this is really saying that women should be more like men. Until >both sides recoginize these different modes of discourse, respect them >equally, and take them into account in their conversations together, women >will often think that men are (verbally) attacking them, and men will think >the women are wimping out. > >This is just a very brief, and probably inadequate, summary of some of the >main points in Tannen's book, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in >this subject. > >Bobbie West > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 16:52:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro In-Reply-To: <199803271540.KAA11598@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Sadly, logic dictates that the citizens' right to bear arms is a necessity >to help assure the prevention of the worst kinds of tyranny. As a nation state >becomes ever more centralized and powerful that safeguard sometimes becomes >insidiously undermined and the tendency is to either take away that right >and risk that a dictatorship or an oligarchy might sieze power essentially >unopposed, or for the citizens to seek more powerful means of protecting >their freedoms. That is not logic. That is USAmerican brainwashing. The citizens dont bear arms in most peaceful democratic societies. They are more likely to be bearing arms in countries in which oligarchies persist. There are more Serbians carrying weopans than there are New Zealanders carrying weapons. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 20:14:51 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: women and men in conversation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit What do men think of their gender when in conversation, with women, with men, with students? What do men think/feel about gender when the write poems, post to the list etc ... What do men think feel about gender (their gender) when they reflect on Jonesboro? John Berger, ages ago, wrote something to the effect "men act, women appear" and probably this could be paraphrased to make the general case "men act without reflection on their gender; woman appear always as gendered...." I read Girls on Film and Postfeminist Playground here on the net, among other gendered sites, and I read this list and I am teaching Ceremony now by Leslie Marmonm Silko and I looked at my mom's RedBook and my sister's Seventeen when I was growing up. I will buy Cosmo occasionally now and discuss the images and the advice with my students who are reading Berger. What does all this have in common, high brow or low brow, the women are telling stories that have somekind of healing power for them. I do not find men telling me stories with healing power. Instead I hear men citing the law. I badly need a story with healing power to help me comprehend Jonesboro. I want the stories of all those involved, the boys, the friends of the victims, the parents. I think Silko is right the world is fragile and it needs our stories. How did I come to think this way? I think class has more to do with it in my case than gender. I have always been aware that boys of my class are not supposed to have the interests that I have. I have had this feeling when talking with boys and men of more privileged backgrounds than mine. I have pursed obscurity in defiance of a fear of failure. I have flaunted my talents and I have failed miserably because it was expected. I have often been embarassed by my claims that I had something special to offer someone. Now I have an ear and an intellect, but I still do not have a story. I think gender is a story that helps women negotiate reality. I think class is a story that helps me negotiate reality. I think this country has produced a maximum of human misery and suffering. When I think of men with respect to gender, I loathe what I see. I see men eating their children and killing one another. I am appalled that boys have taken to gunning down girls in Jonesboro and in Paducah. And I ask does my attempt to make sense of any of this reflect the privelege of my gendered position? I hope not--but I see my post can be read as plea by one representative male for women to save him and that too is an old and tedious story--but I do love the weaving of voices around me. I have been listending to Gesualdo and Hildegaard von Bingen and it almost doesn't matter what they say anymore, because of weaving and that is what I am seeing again in Silko's Ceremony and what I have geard in Woolf's Room and something that is so difficult for both my male and my female students to grasp. Sorry to be so open-ended and unresolved ... My question comcerns the passion for words in resonant structures, the ears, and the relation of this passion to the need for healing stories. Don Wellman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 20:24:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: women and men in conversation Comments: To: Don Wellman In-Reply-To: <351C4F09.C84C21BC@ma.ultranet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII What do men think/feel about gender when the write poems, post to the list etc ... I rarely write a poem without this question at least near the forefront of my readiness, its answer is partial but in the poem somehow -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 20:23:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: women and men in conversation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If I remember correctly-- One of the threads that preceded this one had to do with some people signing off? And these people (person) had said something about intellectual smugness on the list--professorial/padagogical tones being dominant-- I at least partially agreed with this person-- But also figured that the list had more to offer. I like it that the posts lately have consisted of so many stories--especially stories that seem to relate to the composition of poetry--to the process by which people here write--and their reasons for writing. I know that I write (and edit and poeticize) for reasons not altogether clear to me. I can sometimes pin-point the sensation that prompts me to write-- Sometimes it consists of anxiety related to my gender, my age, my day--to things that someone else has said-- Sometimes it consists of a feeling of elation--of, perhaps, a kind of manic response to something provocative that I encounter--a person, a phrase, a picture. But sometimes I'm not really sure what it is-- Part of why I like the idea of this list is that it makes people from lots of backgrounds available to me. I like it when people post little reports about their day--maybe regarding a reading they went to the night before. I like it when Keston and others post poems. I like to hear about people's histories as writers--why they write. That's it. Katy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 20:38:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Explosive Editing--Ishamel Klein In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi-- Just received a wonderful batch of poems from one of my favorite poets--Ishmael Klein. She is from New York--doesn't publish much (I don't think she sends out)-- I am including her work in the next issue of Explosive. The issue has a theme--"Spectacular Emotion." Ishmael is an incredibly unique writer. She reads a lot of old stuff-- EACH DAY DIFFERENT ENOUGH TO BE SOMETHING SUN CAN SET ON These crows we see manifest ill crowd mentality. If their going off in pairs is as mate, does it as love redeem? I'm afraid no. This tree too unhappy full of messy noise i.e. crows. When a dead man dries his soul gets to go with wind. Hawks come in against crows in wheeling tournament for soul. If the black birds get it, they celebrate in a tree to scare it, living, under them. No moonlight gets past them; much less a helpful sparrow. Trees only love unambitious birds. If hawk, talons out to prize... If hawk wins, soul goes higher privately. Dust souls have nothing to say about it. They only want enough weight to be worth effort. I see today getting dark. Villagers walk home quick according to the state of the sky. They urge each other in as well I'd want myself in general. This world large insofar as has big grasp to take the unattached away which attracts certain animals. Maybe you think this emphasis of hypothetical phenomenon with questionable qualities just as well not there. But you said "Big World" yourself and not without the look of imminent icebath I've told those turned cold to go. I want to stay myself but more informed. I want the animals to like me. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 00:24:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Mar 1998 to 26 Mar 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I would also be interested in these materials. tom bell At 12:47 PM 3/27/98 EST5EDT4,M4.1., Reinfeld, Linda wrote: >A question from Toshi Ishihara (formerly in Charles Bernstein's >class at UB): > >I'm beginning work on a paper about the integration of text and >pictures in the work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Trinh T. Minh-ha, >and Michael Ondaatje. If anyone can suggest critical materials >that would help me along with this project, I'd be very grateful. >Responses to the list will be forwarded to me by Linda Reinfeld >(lreinfeld@monroecc.edu), or you can mail me backchannel at >tishihar@ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp > >Thanks a lot -- Toshi > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 23:23:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: women & men in conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Apologies in advance for the anecdotal nature of what follows. Please consider this is a Product Warning. Thank you Mark Weiss, for your anecdote, the timely reminder that the map is not always the territory. What a horror story! Your patience wit and irony notwithstanding, you must have been sorely tried. I myself was this week at a meeting where one woman was shouting down another. I must have blotted it out when I posted the other day. I guess I've been "spoiled" by the company I keep professionally, by its articulateness, and its self-injunction to question its own motives--although there have been some verbal brawls at dept meetings where gender would scarcely have been discernible to one reading a transcript which rendered the speakers anonymous. I suppose I seek out people of either gender who enjoy conjecture and entertain many viewpoints; and intuitively avoid "overriders" bent on laying down the law. Not that I havent laid it down in my time. And not to say my wife and I wont fight like cat and dog upon sufficient provocation--whatever may constitute that next time. (It's the !surprise! that trashes civility.) Then there's our 16-y-o daughter, who says a lot with a door. And I've had some horrible arguments with people that when I look back on are like lenses that focus and enlarge my pigheadedness & spite. Nor did they, man or woman, fight fair. Still I like to think there is something to the broad generalities of these gender-speak theories, and my tendency to align with what they say are women's ways. As an admirer and student (in the large sense) of Robert Duncan, I thought often about the idea of Strife as the mainspring of the human universe. "Why was he so spiteful towards the Langpos," I would ask myself, "When opposition and difference were what he was looking for? Where was his gratitude for their proving something he felt so opposite? " In short, the notion of Strife as the generative force of existence contains its own undoing, IMHO, since one must welcome what one detests, for proving one's belief right. Only those who hold with Agreement as the mainspring can properly reject the disagreeable, if it prove incorrigible, that is, if it persist in its folly despite all of one's attempts to enlighten it--to strive with it. Or so it appears to me. db3. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 08:28:16 EST5EDT4,M4.1.0,M10.5.0 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Reinfeld, Linda" Subject: Ishihara/Reinfeld Hyakunin Isshu Thanks to Charles Bernstein's generous notice, there's revived interest in our translation of Hyakunin Isshu: The Game of 100 Poems. We're selling them for $21.00 a box (that includes the cost of mailing in the USA): there are not many left, so if you want me to save you a set, please let me know by email ASAP. Our translation is now available in book form as well. Kansai University Press published it last year, a very nicely done bilingual edition, hardback, with some of our own photographs. I have plenty of copies of that, and there are who knows how many more "sleeping in Japan," according to Toshi. You can order it from me for $11.00 (again, cost of mailing included). Cash or checks made out to me, Linda Reinfeld, 50 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. Thanks, Linda and Toshi lreinfeld@monroecc.edu tishihar@ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 09:26:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: women & men in conversation In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Thank you Mark Weiss, for your anecdote, the timely reminder that the map >is not always the territory. What a horror story! Your patience wit and >irony notwithstanding, you must have been sorely tried. I want to second this, Mark. The plaintiff tells what ran through her mind, & her thoughts are found illogical, or inadequate or something, as though minds worked that way in tense moments. I'm not even sure it was illogical--clearly she'd need that suit in good shape to search for a new job! And thanks David, too. Some good stuff coming out of these discussions. Isn't this, from your last post, why we were attracted to reading/writing poetry in the first place? > I suppose I seek out people of either gender who enjoy >conjecture and entertain many viewpoints; and intuitively avoid >"overriders" bent on laying down the law. Not that I havent laid it down in >my time. good point on Duncan too. It's the paradox of revolutionaries who win & find themselves the new status quo. best, Sylvester. p.s. The snow is finally melting! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 21:51:13 +0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Sithiwong Subject: Virginia Woolf, class Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" K. Lederer thank you for putting us on track again. I am not generally the confessional type but would like to put my personal experience out there for comment. I left the United States with my family as a child just eight years old. I've been writing words to please myself since that time. They were secret words in special worlds which accompanied me as we moved and moved and moved. I never thought of myself as a writer, but rather, a passionate traveler who liked to write. One day, twenty years later, I decided to stop traveling. I built myself a home and surrounded it with a garden. I didn't get on an airplane for over ten years. Raising three children doesn't give you alot of choice about time to write; I wrote at midnight, at six in the morning, whenever I could, whenever I wasn't working or reading. One day, I looked at a corner of my garden and said to myself, I'm going to write over there. I was determined to have a room of my own. With the little bit of money I'd saved I bought an old house, hired some carpenters and built me a room. My Thai mother-in-law was worried. Are you leaving us? My children were worried. Are you going to live in it? My husband said nothing, I told him nothing. I realized that not one of them knew that I was going to write in that room. In fact, none of them thought anything about the writing they had witnessed for years. But now that I go to my room every day, the kids tell visitors: Mommy's over there, she's writing. My mother-in-law comes up every now and then to talk and excuses herself for disturbing my writing. My friends ask, what are you writing? I write because I can't imagine what to do with what I think, other than writing it in words on a piece of paper. That's where it still happens, despite the screen in front on me. I have been alone with this writing for so long in a place where no one can read my language that I can't imagine what it would mean to someone else. For me it's a part of life that needs it's own space just like my children or my dinner or my bath. Inviting someone to read it would be like asking them to share a meal or a shower. It would be like taking my children for an interview: if there was a good reason, I'd do it, but, I'd be pretty careful. Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 10:08:04 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: Ishihara/Reinfeld Hyakunin Isshu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reinfeld, Linda wrote: > > Thanks to Charles Bernstein's generous notice, there's > revived interest in our translation of Hyakunin Isshu: > The Game of 100 Poems. We're selling them for $21.00 a > box (that includes the cost of mailing in the USA): there > are not many left, so if you want me to save you a set, > please let me know by email ASAP. > > Our translation is now available in book form as well. > Kansai University Press published it last year, a very > nicely done bilingual edition, hardback, with some of > our own photographs. I have plenty of copies of that, and > there are who knows how many more "sleeping in Japan," > according to Toshi. You can order it from me for $11.00 > (again, cost of mailing included). > > Cash or checks made out to me, Linda Reinfeld, > 50 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618. > > Thanks, > Linda and Toshi > lreinfeld@monroecc.edu > tishihar@ipcku.kansai-u.ac.jp The check's in the mail, Linda. Thanks. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 10:34:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Explosive Editing--Ishamel Klein Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Please send subs and single issue purchase info. thanks tom bell trbell@pop.usit.net 2518 Wellington Pl. Murfreesboro, TN 37128 At 08:38 PM 3/27/98 -0600, k. lederer wrote: >Hi-- > >Just received a wonderful batch of poems from one of my favorite >poets--Ishmael Klein. > >She is from New York--doesn't publish much (I don't think she sends out)-- > >I am including her work in the next issue of Explosive. The issue has a >theme--"Spectacular Emotion." > >Ishmael is an incredibly unique writer. She reads a lot of old stuff-- > > >EACH DAY DIFFERENT ENOUGH TO BE SOMETHING SUN CAN SET ON > >These crows we see manifest ill crowd mentality. >If their going off in pairs is as mate, does it as love redeem? >I'm afraid no. This tree too unhappy full of messy noise i.e. crows. > >When a dead man dries his soul gets to go >with wind. Hawks come in >against crows in wheeling tournament for soul. > >If the black birds get it, they celebrate in a tree >to scare it, living, under them. No moonlight gets past them; >much less a helpful sparrow. Trees only love unambitious birds. > >If hawk, talons out to prize... >If hawk wins, soul goes higher privately. >Dust souls have nothing to say about it. > >They only want enough weight to be worth effort. > >I see today getting dark. Villagers walk home quick >according to the state of the sky. They urge each other >in as well I'd want myself in general. > >This world large insofar as has >big grasp to take the unattached away >which attracts certain animals. > >Maybe you think this emphasis of hypothetical phenomenon >with questionable qualities just as well not there. >But you said "Big World" yourself and not without the look of imminent > icebath > >I've told those turned cold to go. >I want to stay myself but more informed. >I want the animals to like me. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 09:42:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Dr. Michael J. O'Driscoll" Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Morpheal wrote: >Sadly, logic dictates that the citizens' right to bear arms is a necessity >to help assure the prevention of the worst kinds of tyranny. By "worst kind of tyranny" I wonder if you meant any of the following: -the tyranny of right wing militant organizations -the tyranny of spouse abusing husbands -the tyranny of armed youth gangs I could go on... but I'll finish on this one: the tyranny of an outdated and failed ideology that is so firmly entrenched that it leaves even well read intelligent people making reckless and ill considered suppositions about the great tragedies of the 20th century. Gimme a break. The "right to bear arms" will never stand in the way of the U.S. military, but it does make life miserable and sometimes shattering for countless innocents. MOD ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 09:52:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Manery Subject: KSW Call for Support Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thank you to everyone who has sent letters of support on behalf of the Kootenay School of Writing. The Cultural Affairs staff at the City of Vancouver are still telling us that they will not restore our funding but have indicated they are upset by the letters being sent to the mayor and city councillors (who have final approval of our appeal). This is a good indication the letters are having an effect. We are urging people to continue to send letters. The appeal will be heard by city council on April 23rd so please send letters, emails, faxes before that date. Some background info: The Kootenay School of Writing is a volunteer collective which organizes reading, lectures and workshops in Vancouver, BC. KSW has been operating since 1984 and published Writing magazine until 1992 and now publish Raddle Moon. For the last 12 years KSW has enjoyed the financial support of the City of Vancouver. Now, without any prior indication, the city has decided that our audience and scope are too limited to warrant funding. Our financial request is relatively small ($4000) but without it KSW may have to close or at the very least severely curtail our activities. Addresses: Kootenay School of Writing 112 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 1G8 email: geschwitz@intergate.bc.ca City Council City Hall, 453 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., V5Y 1V4 email: mayorandcouncil@city.vancouver.bc.ca fax: Mayor Philip Owen at (604)-873-7685 Office of Cultural Affairs, Social Planning Department, City of Vancouver, Suite 103, City Square (Box 96),555 West 12th Ave., Vancouver, BC V5Z 3X7 Fax: (604) 871-6252 Thank you ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:00:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Comments: To: "Dr. Michael J. O'Driscoll" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Sadly, logic dictates that the citizens' right to bear arms is a necessity >>to help assure the prevention of the worst kinds of tyranny. I shall answer this one, as it resembles some of the other contentions, and I do not want to take too much bandwidth on this poetics channel as regards what is mostly political content. Not that the two subjects are wholly separable. Poetics and politics, poeticians and politicians, are inextricably interwoven into a similar niche in the same fabric... (Ginsberg and Nixon, for example, such that we have to wonder sometimes who influenced peace in southeast Asia more strongly, the poetician or the politician, both playing their parts). >By "worst kind of tyranny" I wonder if you meant any of the following: >-the tyranny of right wing militant organizations The power of persuasive salesmanship could result in a illigitimate usurpation of power. That certainly is a concern. >-the tyranny of spouse abusing husbands I do not doubt there are spouse abusing wives also, but in any instance, at least individuals in those situations can leave those situations as a matter of freedom of choice. I know that I would never remain within a truly abusive relationship, and feel bound to be the martyred victim. Probably because I despise sado-masochism, having no liking for pain, and even less liking for any others being deliberately afflicted with pain. Least of all when someone doing the afflicting is _enjoying_ doing so. I think that there are at least as many sadistic women as there are sadistic men, who enjoy causing pain to some other and cause such pain intentionally. Fortunately humanity as a whole is not by its nature that way. It is simply that some people are that way. >-the tyranny of armed youth gangs The fact that those exist is a question concerning education and its efficacy. Of course, such need to be disarmed, demobilized, and demilitarized, don't they ? The world has shown, on occassion, that it knows how to accomplish such tasks, and I see no real difference in that regard between adult armies of aggression and armies of youths, commanded similarly, and armed to the teeth along with aggressive, territorial, violent intentions. I am not suggesting as violent a response as their's to each other, as might cause loss of life, as that is certainly not what is desired, but in psychological terms at least the two situations can be all too similar. Gangs of youths need peacekeeping forces as much as countries and ethnic groups that are hell bent on destroying, conquering, and otherwise violencing and brutalizing each other. Gangs often have their own unique ideologies and ritual practices. They identify with each other internally and dehumanize outsiders (from other gangs, mostly), so that it is easier for members to make war on the aliens. The best method has proven to be demilitarization and at minimum a greater force of arms to cause a standing down of the aggressors. With armies hell bent on destroying other armies that they see in conflict with them, there seems to be no other way. Diplomacy usually becomes no more than a military tactic to allow regrouping and escalation of firepower. >I could go on... but I'll finish on this one: the tyranny of an outdated >and failed ideology that is so firmly entrenched that it leaves even well >read intelligent people making reckless and ill considered suppositions >about the great tragedies of the 20th century. All ideologies, as such, are exactly as you say. I would never argue with anyone who is saying that all ideologies, religious and political, are essentially dysfunctional in light of their very natures as ideology. They are beliefs that disregard the realities and fail to respond to the realities as an inevitable consequence of that fact. As for the machinations of 20th century conflict, including such instances as German and Italian electronic inventiveness, and the attempts of all sides to manipulate the figure head leader Hitler's psyche by remote means... the historians have not yet even begun to unravel this century. The wizards of oz have been around, and active, since the previous and it will a long while until that curtain is parted. They keep writing much the same fictions, and yet most of political history is fictional. We are even further from a good account of what medeival times were like in Europe. There is such a tendency to stress civilization, and such a reluctance to realize how much worse than Machiavellian it all really is. So tell me about this beleaguered century. We can only weep for what it was and has become, in terms of the tolls exacted as to human suffering, including the silent sufferings of the brain washed and the unknown countless victims of political/ideological torture. There is a very real question as to who is doing it to whom, in such political arenas. Each aggressor group wants the others all to think it is someone else other than themselves, so you are dealing with a web of chamelion trickery of a very sophisticated kind. The KGB liked to pretend it was the CIA doing it to Americans, and were quite good at that. They fooled a lot of people. It is much worse than you think it is. >Gimme a break. The "right to bear arms" will never stand in the way of the >U.S. military, but it does make life miserable and sometimes shattering for >countless innocents. Soldiers are more likely to be split into factions and to turn on their own, if they are ordered to kill their neighbours, friends, even families. At least if they are put up against the very people they continue to partly identify with as "their own" according to national, cultural, and other factors of identity. Even sporadic guerrilla action against a military coup can lead to its overthrow by splitting the military forces involved as truly oppressive tyranny is not likely to have complete and total loyalty in any instance. What would spur such a split is armed resistance among the population. One has a harder time shooting one's friends than one has shooting the dehumanized enemy. It is much harder to dehumanize the citizenry of one's own country, to turn its army against its own people. So it is far from as simple as you seem to suggest. There are safeguards within the right to bear arms, and as you say there are risks and dangers. I hate the thought of the latter happening, as much as you do, and there ought to be better ways to address the question effectively, such as teaching responsibility at an early age and facilitating effective communication and non violent conflict resolution from an early age, as well as some respect for the well being and lives of others, without taking away the right of adult citizens to bear arms. Of course the right to bear arms ought to hinge upon some controls that regulate who can and who cannot obtain a permit. There are some people who ought not to have them, as they would predictably use them for evil and nefarious purposes, rather than the reasonable defense against illigitimate usurpations of power. The worst, most oppressive, tyranny would result where there is zero probability of resistance to that tyranny. In fact it would be inevitable and absolute. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 10:17:21 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf, class MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rebecca Sithiwong wrote: > My Thai mother-in-law was worried. Are you leaving > us? My children were worried. Are you going to live in it? Wonderful story. I, too, love the personal, but always wonder if it's "appropriate" to the list. I like to think so, but what do you, fellow listees, think? Is there a line where something is too personal for the list? This actually raises interesting questions about where life & poetry meet & mingle. In undergrad (visual art) I recall a consensus among my peers that sculpture shouldn't be "too personal," (this in the midst of minimalism/post-minimalism). And if someone, during a critique, didn't want to explain their work, inevitably they'd say: "I don't want to say any more--it's personal." My Mom always said: "Don't write down anything you don't want EVERYONE to see." She also said, when I wasn't being "good,": "Why don't you understand English?!?" Perhaps the harmless remarks of an immigrant-child turned school teacher, but it's always made every word that comes out of my mouth or off of my page seem dangerous/embarrassing/too personal. And now email & lists tempt me to write down things on the fly, which everyone will see. My Mom'd be horrified! Viva la personal! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 10:25:12 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit morpheal wrote: > I do not doubt there are spouse abusing wives also, but in any instance, > at least individuals in those situations can leave those situations as > a matter of freedom of choice. I know that I would never remain within a > truly abusive relationship, and feel bound to be the martyred victim. I'm surprised: usually you're more humane. I don't understand the workings of relationships where women get stuck in abusive relationships, but it's been pointed out time & again by shrinks & the women alike that walking away does not present itself as a choice. It's the torturer-victim bond, well-documented, the usual phrase for which I can't recall first thing in the morning. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:28:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph Subject: The Personal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-03-28 13:14:50 EST, Karen Kelley wrote: << Viva la personal! >> And I entirely agree. One of the most delicious things in writing, I find, is the juxtaposition of abstraction and personal revelation. One fulls the other forward. Sometimes it is appealing to note that someone made you want him/her to go further, but the writer did not. Intrigue, nudging desire. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:42:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: raped into a chosen martyrdom eh Comments: To: morpheal In-Reply-To: <199803281800.NAA29770@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I imagine that anyone else who managed to read to the end of morpheal's rejoinder will be, as I am, surprised at that feat; rarely (yes, rarely, despite the various urge to pessimism) do we get to see so accidentally inflammatory a note, such coarse and reckless improvising about real suffering, such a vacuous and automatic defense: "our vanity is never harder to damage than immediately after our pride has been damaged", etc. I disagree with every amateurish appeal and clownish assurance he makes ("it's more XXX than YOU know"), with a vehemence teetering on contempt, NO - fuck it - with CONTEMPT, but the recital of one passage should suffice to illuminate his obnoxiousness (not that this passage is even the most obnoxious - just recall his guarantee that in fact gang violence and international war crimes are basically the same thing): "I do not doubt there are spouse abusing wives also, but in any instance, at least individuals in those situations can leave those situations as a matter of freedom of choice. I know that I would never remain within a truly abusive relationship [sounds to me like you'd make one], and feel bound to be the martyred victim. Probably because I despise sado-masochism..." IS ANY COMMENT NEEDED? Are caps needed? Thank God for freedom of choice - let's tell all those trapped and abused wives to stop their fucking sniveling and get a -healthy- sexuality, shall we. morpheal, this comment of yours is plain idiocy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 11:05:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: women and men in conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:18:48 -0600 >From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" >Subject: Re: women and men in conversation > >it was very confusing for me to be raised with the "male" rules for >conversation and then enter the social world. my main problem was not other >women but guys, who recoiled from my "unfeminine" and combattive verbal >style. i couldn't figure out what the problem was. now that i'm >thoroughly therapized and midwesternized, i've learned to adopt some >"feminine" conversational" skills and i must say it's helped a lot, not w/ >getting guys so much as with just getting along better in society. Maria here is moving this discussion into a direction that I think is important--and that is that there's a problem with the essentialism of this gender discussion. What's "acceptable" verbal behavior for a woman is not this universal white middle class suburban norm. There are class differences, regional differences, and racial differences. I think that good middle class liberals are tolerant of racial differences in verbal expression (afterall it's a good thing to be a good liberal)--it adds "color" to parties and other gatherings--but only up to a point, there has to have been a certain degree of white middle class patterns adapted or that person had better start looking for places other than the avant garde to get published. As far as my own case, being raised working class in the Chicago area, I feel that I have to constantly contain myself when speaking in the middle class writing world in which I operate. If I express any sort of anger people act like I'm Linda Blair in the Exorcist, they're so shocked, like they're going to faint. I often think of my sister in law in terms of expressing anger. Now, I adore Marie, the sister-in-law, who is considered in her world to be a normal feminine woman in her thirties--how totally butch Marie is by the San Francisco standards I operate in, how she'll take a drag off her cigarette and say, "I wanted to tell that son-of-a-bitch to kiss my ass." This is Marie expressing mild disapproval, and everybody who she talks to understands that. No way could I say of any of tons of difficult people I deal with as an arts administrator, "I wanted to tell that son-of-a-bitch to kiss my ass." Maybe I could if I was on the East Coast, I'm always amazed at how much personality women from New York have--as opposed to the blandness that is enforced here in the Bay Area. Men on this list have dumped on me time and again for expressing opinions. Remember last summer when I was accused of "rhetorical violence." Then recently when I had my skirmish with Dale (and Dale, please, I'm not trying to bring that up again)--I was complaining to one of the other men on this list how I felt attacked and humiliated in public and this guy, who claims to be a feminist, told me, well you criticized him, you brought it on yourself. I think there are good reasons for women to not bother posting to this list. I'd just like to add, this is the post-Judith-Butler era--the binary days of male/female are over. Last night I ate dinner alone in my favorite cheap Chinese restaurant and these three drag queens were eating at the next table in the most wonderfully tacky casual attire, the three of them seemed very close and were having a great time, and I was having a great time describing their outfits in my diary, how they seemed to be in this close-knit world that I (and I imagine most of the other people in the restaurant) could never comprehend--and I got these pangs of sentimentality for otherness--to find companionship outside the claustrophobia of the middle class intelligencia. I guess my writing workshop is the closest I come to that. We have a blast in there. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 14:03:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ScoutEW Subject: Re: Farmers Schoolboys Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit you say farmers schoolboys in a way that is rude. Its as if you are saying( thems farmfolks they couldn't accomplish much) May be you don't get many farmers school boys up at havad' or wherever you are but listen to the way it sounds- Don't underestimate the farmers schoolboys, they contribute -yes, i think everyone should have the right to a weapon but you will find that the people who did not grow up around guns and don't understand that they are just machines powered by people (the machine we use to write, the internet etc is much more powerful and dangerous than guns will ever be) hell, i don't know what you are trying to say but it sounds dangerous- those boys are victims (the biggest cop-out crybaby nineties excuse word ever)-everyone is a victim now of television, bad cartoons and parents that probably don't even care- unless we all stop looking the other way... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:21:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Virginia Woolf, class Comments: To: kkel736@bayarea.net In-Reply-To: <351D3EB0.2266B8CA@bayarea.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i am a fan of the personal, but i may be too far on that side. i've been known to blurt out information about my marital status from the podium. and regretted it. At 10:17 AM -0800 3/28/98, Karen Kelley wrote: >Rebecca Sithiwong wrote: > >> My Thai mother-in-law was worried. Are you leaving >> us? My children were worried. Are you going to live in it? > >Wonderful story. I, too, love the personal, but always wonder if it's >"appropriate" to the list. I like to think so, but what do you, fellow >listees, >think? Is there a line where something is too personal for the list? > >This actually raises interesting questions about where life & poetry meet & >mingle. In undergrad (visual art) I recall a consensus among my peers that >sculpture shouldn't be "too personal," (this in the midst of >minimalism/post-minimalism). And if someone, during a critique, didn't want to >explain their work, inevitably they'd say: "I don't want to say any more--it's >personal." > >My Mom always said: "Don't write down anything you don't want EVERYONE to >see." >She also said, when I wasn't being "good,": "Why don't you understand >English?!?" Perhaps the harmless remarks of an immigrant-child turned school >teacher, but it's always made every word that comes out of my mouth or off >of my >page seem dangerous/embarrassing/too personal. And now email & lists tempt me >to write down things on the fly, which everyone will see. My Mom'd be >horrified! > >Viva la personal! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 14:53:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: raped into a chosen martyrdom eh Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Keston Sutherland wrote: >I disagree with every amateurish appeal and clownish assurance he makes I am of course a clown here because I lack a masters or a doctorate ? Though there could be other implications which I shall allude to later. >I know that I would never remain within a >truly abusive relationship [sounds to me like you'd make one], and feel >bound to be the martyred victim. Probably because I despise >sado-masochism..." This apparently goes with your retitling of your article as "Re: raped into a chosen martyrdom eh" What gives you, good sir, regardless of your eminent Harvard education, and your position of privilege within the world's most politically, economically, and militarily powerful nation, the right to imply that ? I have never come anywhere near to raping anyone, in any fantasy or any reality, and the only few times I ever came near to being raped was by somewhat older men, when I was a young teenager. Now, good sir, while you yourself might not have chosen to _always_ and in _every instance_ respect _any_ man or woman's personal free choice as to physical intimacy of any kind, I most certainly have always maintained that to be an inviolable principle. That is true even within a committed relationship and I was in one for nearly nine years with a woman. I firmly believe that consent as to ANY physical intimacy must be uncoerced between persons as equals (neither regarded as submissive or dominant and each having their own head and freedom of thought and expression say in the matter). That such consent must be freely given to one another before physical intimacy can be permissible with each other. That is even true in marriage. I can also honestly say that I have not taken advantage of any woman who was in any way inebriated, intoxicated, or unwilling to freely enter into physical intimacy, and particularly any intimacy that implied anything even remotely sexual. Also that regardless of my on rare occassion being a little under the influence, I have invariably appologized for any unwelcome casual touch. I have never even taken a liberty of the slightest contact and then excused it as being the workings of some intoxicant. That includes even the touch of a hand upon a hand, and there it stops. If that is a martyrdom then so be it. That is not going to change, despite the urgings of others, mostly men, that I am too conservative and that with that attitude I will never win my beloved, whomever she is, as they say I lack the necessary aggressive impulses to sieze by the hair and drag her down, as would a Neanderthal. Perhaps you are one of those who share that predilection. So, what are you on about, other claiming that you perhaps disagree, within your own life, about that basic principle that I uphold and maintain in mine ? That and many other principles that I have always maintained or have learned to maintain. If that implication is correct, then we certainly have a vast difference of opinion that is unresolvable, and we must go to war against each other. That is before you attempt to rape me....or make further claims that some other has raped me who in fact has not done so.... Either idea is as abhorent as the idea that I would enter into any such practice. Shall I suggest pistols at ten paces ? Who are your seconds ? Duelling seems to be the only practical recourse, all else considered.... And there we have it, a difference, a conflict, and a war. >IS ANY COMMENT NEEDED? Are caps needed? Caps, capitals, capitations, capitalizations, and caput....all relate to one another and in fact it has more to do with the heads on coins than anything else. Lose ones coins and lose one's head, is a common, but not a commensense, principle that some uphold. One is forever a clown if one does not hold on to one's money bag and all those heads in there, isn't one ? Now that is implicative. Perhaps it depends upon the reasons that one goes caput and decapitalizes. Good sir, are you, in your holy Harvard sacred business sense of American economics wisdom claim that that decision to decapitalize one's self, in any instance, ought NOT to be for the sake of any other, and much less the sake of a _woman_. Oh, ye gods, forbid, a man caput and decapitate, decapitalized, because of any woman. So stone the bastard for not having capital intentions....and put a fools cap on him that he will never get off. Is that the real digs in what you are, "eh", attempting to goad at ? Are you saying that the freely chosen agreement with another to in some way decaptilize one's self, and share what one has, where that action in fact has nothing whatever to do with any business of profits and losses, but is a personal matter, is a kind of rape ? Again, I think pistols at ten paces might be best, with you Mr. Sutherland, as you seem to know so very much about the matter you allude to, and seek to tar it over with such a black brush. Another implicative. > morpheal, this comment of yours is plain idiocy You are right, I stand corrected, as I lack an advanced degree with which to support the argument. Clearly you are claiming this list for those with academic tenure and advanced degrees, are you not ? If that is the consensual opinion then of course I shall promptly leave and never say another word about it. I cannot say best regards. Your attack was far too venemous to honestly feel that way in response. Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 13:19:18 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: women and men in conversation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: > she'll take > a drag off her cigarette and say, "I wanted to tell that son-of-a-bitch to > kiss my ass." This so reminds me of Diana, my roommate in (east coast) art school. In the midst of a discussion of esthetics spiralling pedogogically, pedantically, pontificatingly out of control, she took a drag off her cigarette and blurted, "Aw, fuck art!" That statement helped define our sculpture department in ways I can't even begin to describe. It became our rallying cry. Everyone stopped worrying & looking over their shoulders for the art-police and just made sculpture. I really miss that sort of response, as I work in the buttoned down world of Silicon Valley. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 15:22:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: women and men in conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From what I've seen on the list opinion and feelings (particularly anger) are generally ignored or trounced - it doesn't seem to matter who writes it. This seems to limit discourse to the two extremes of decorum and vituperation. The only exception I can recall started with Tom Beckett's post on depression and writers about a month ago. I'm sorry he apparently is no longer with us here. tom bell At 11:05 AM 3/28/98 -0800, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: >>Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 13:18:48 -0600 >>From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" >>Subject: Re: women and men in conversation >> >>it was very confusing for me to be raised with the "male" rules for >>conversation and then enter the social world. my main problem was not other >>women but guys, who recoiled from my "unfeminine" and combattive verbal >>style. i couldn't figure out what the problem was. now that i'm >>thoroughly therapized and midwesternized, i've learned to adopt some >>"feminine" conversational" skills and i must say it's helped a lot, not w/ >>getting guys so much as with just getting along better in society. > >Maria here is moving this discussion into a direction that I think is >important--and that is that there's a problem with the essentialism of this >gender discussion. What's "acceptable" verbal behavior for a woman is not >this universal white middle class suburban norm. There are class >differences, regional differences, and racial differences. I think that >good middle class liberals are tolerant of racial differences in verbal >expression (afterall it's a good thing to be a good liberal)--it adds >"color" to parties and other gatherings--but only up to a point, there has >to have been a certain degree of white middle class patterns adapted or >that person had better start looking for places other than the avant garde >to get published. > >As far as my own case, being raised working class in the Chicago area, I >feel that I have to constantly contain myself when speaking in the middle >class writing world in which I operate. If I express any sort of anger >people act like I'm Linda Blair in the Exorcist, they're so shocked, like >they're going to faint. I often think of my sister in law in terms of >expressing anger. Now, I adore Marie, the sister-in-law, who is considered >in her world to be a normal feminine woman in her thirties--how totally >butch Marie is by the San Francisco standards I operate in, how she'll take >a drag off her cigarette and say, "I wanted to tell that son-of-a-bitch to >kiss my ass." This is Marie expressing mild disapproval, and everybody who >she talks to understands that. No way could I say of any of tons of >difficult people I deal with as an arts administrator, "I wanted to tell >that son-of-a-bitch to kiss my ass." Maybe I could if I was on the East >Coast, I'm always amazed at how much personality women from New York >have--as opposed to the blandness that is enforced here in the Bay Area. > >Men on this list have dumped on me time and again for expressing opinions. >Remember last summer when I was accused of "rhetorical violence." Then >recently when I had my skirmish with Dale (and Dale, please, I'm not trying >to bring that up again)--I was complaining to one of the other men on this >list how I felt attacked and humiliated in public and this guy, who claims >to be a feminist, told me, well you criticized him, you brought it on >yourself. I think there are good reasons for women to not bother posting >to this list. > >I'd just like to add, this is the post-Judith-Butler era--the binary days >of male/female are over. Last night I ate dinner alone in my favorite >cheap Chinese restaurant and these three drag queens were eating at the >next table in the most wonderfully tacky casual attire, the three of them >seemed very close and were having a great time, and I was having a great >time describing their outfits in my diary, how they seemed to be in this >close-knit world that I (and I imagine most of the other people in the >restaurant) could never comprehend--and I got these pangs of sentimentality >for otherness--to find companionship outside the claustrophobia of the >middle class intelligencia. I guess my writing workshop is the closest I >come to that. We have a blast in there. > >Dodie > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 16:46:08 -0500 Reply-To: Keston Sutherland Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: raped into a chosen martyrdom eh Comments: To: morpheal In-Reply-To: <199803281953.OAA27018@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Bob - seems there've been crossed wires - I would NEVER imply that you had mistreated or abused anyone, or that your message demonstrated any such propensity; if this is how my response reads, then please please accept my sincerest apologies. I do regret the extent to which my note was venomous, and for this I'm also sorry. What I meant by my title was something wholly different - that your suggestion that women trapped in abusive relationships (often raped into and in them) as 'martyrs' to a kind of sado-masochistic impulse is crass and highly offensive - that there's no such thing as a universal opt-out clause for such individuals, and that sometimes there is no 'freedom' of choice simple enough to warrant that morally suggestive term. A few points. 1. I do not hold an advanced degree, masters or doctorate. So what. Neither do you. So what. Nothing I said made this an issue. I'm not attempting to 'claim' this list for anyone. If the mere fact of my e- address must incur this rather tangential jibing, I suspect the problem is not something I can redress. 2. This 'most powerful of nations' is not my nation. This is the first year I've lived here, and I'm sure I'd have just as many criticisms of it as you. 3. There are types of venom: whilst my message was, I admit, too severe and excessive in its irritation, I found YOUR message incredibly offensive, really quite like a venom that required a fairly potent cure. I am - again - sorry if what I said seemed personally directed. Really - it upsets me that you have written a defense of your most intimate attitudes as if they had been called into question; I had meant only to attack the published fact of an array of what I consider to be abusive remarks. I AM sorry, and hope that my next response, should this discussion continue, will be more equable. But do you see that to claim simple freedom of choice for men and women constrained (by whatever factor - economic, for instance) to accept a daily ration of mistreatment, is inconsiderate to say the least? Have you never known anybody stuck in such a situation? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 16:55:26 -0500 Reply-To: Keston Sutherland Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: Farmers Schoolboys Comments: To: ScoutEW In-Reply-To: <525794f8.351d4987@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII fer chrissake... "Don't underestimate the farmers schoolboys, they contribute" yes, I'm well aware - this has nothing whatsoever to do with what I was saying, and neither was it 'farmers and schoolboys' alone that I mentioned, was it? >FARMERS SCHOOLBOYS AND INSURANCE SALESMEN There ARE points to be made, sometimes it IS possible or even necessary to be polemical or elliptical in making them, does anybody -really- think I'm underestimating farmers' contribution to the nation just by suggesting that they (along, as I obviously implied, with everyone else) would not be able to fend off an attack from the armed forces? Must this discussion reach this level of inventive pedantry? And what's all this sneery ressentiment re: Harvard? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 16:18:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: esp Rachel, Models of Power Comments: To: Keston Sutherland In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Re: The point below and Rachel's earlier interpretation of the word "power"-- To desire that people exercise their "power" is not necessarily to imply that they subvert or otherwise hinder someone else. Power can be reactive as well as proactive--defensive as well as offensive-- When I presume that there are links between speaking, participating, and power, I am not trying to imply that "powergrabs" are the answer to anything--or that disenfranchised or otherwise "unpowerful" people need to rise up and take over the power structures that are now in "force"-- To, as Rachel puts it, "just do one's work" requires a certain degree of power--of "self-confidence" and "self-possession" as Woolf might phrase it. The exercise of one's power does not need to be synonymous with the oppression of others. Re: Keston's question below: the connection between speaking and the model of power I presented earlier is, as you imply, to try to prevent such "oppressive" conditions from arising in the first place. In other words--my use of "speak!" was meant as an incentive to use power defensively (as in speaking on the list if you disagree with something)--not offensively per se. Best, Katy *** > > > > > > wouldn't Foucault say that, whilst productive rather than repressive > (strictly speaking), power can nonetheless be used to produce repressive > conditions? And that in fact it regularly is? Why does this lead to > > > >In other words--women should speak! Everyone should speak! > > > ? Of course they should. There's a gehenna of links I'm missing > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 08:09:44 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nada Gordon Subject: my penis Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My Penis is bright and triangular. Physical fact and shape a persistent drumbeat adjectives cling up to: moist, clever, leafy, spoiled -- anagrams of my real name like flowers bigger than the world: lineaments of gratified desire --nada ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 18:33:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Publication Announcements MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------5CA2FFF4ECCB9E2E85CF9CF3" --------------5CA2FFF4ECCB9E2E85CF9CF3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New at Cartograffiti: Poems by Rod Smith, Heather Fuller, and Sean Bonney; hypertext fiction by Aaron Armstrong Skomra. Also, new (more or less) from the Small Press Collective : Print-ready PDF versions of Small Press Collective newsletters 1 and 2 (previously circulated in photocopy format in a rather limited fashion). To access the PDF files, follow the "SPC Print Publications" link from the SPC front page. -- Taylor Brady editor, Cartograffiti http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/cartograffiti (a publication of the Small Press Collective) http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc --------------5CA2FFF4ECCB9E2E85CF9CF3 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New at Cartograffiti:

Poems by Rod Smith, Heather Fuller, and Sean Bonney; hypertext fiction by Aaron Armstrong Skomra.

Also, new (more or less) from the  Small Press Collective :

Print-ready PDF versions of Small Press Collective newsletters 1 and 2 (previously circulated in photocopy format in a rather limited fashion). To access the PDF files, follow the "SPC Print Publications" link from the SPC front page.
 

-- Taylor Brady
editor, Cartograffiti
 http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/cartograffiti

(a publication of the Small Press Collective)
 http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc   --------------5CA2FFF4ECCB9E2E85CF9CF3-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 18:59:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Sutherland's Apology Comments: To: Keston Sutherland In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Look -- Gudding here rising from a recent bath in lurkerdom -- just want to say what a fine thing it is to see a nice, thoroughgoing apology on this list. Apology is, I think, an art that has regrettably made its escape from American public life. I'm glad you made one, Mr. Sutherland: it was needed. Three things, Henry James said, are necessary in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. Well done. gg On Sat, 28 Mar 1998, Keston Sutherland wrote: > Dear Bob - > > > seems there've been crossed wires - I would NEVER imply that you had > mistreated or abused anyone, or that your message demonstrated any such > propensity; if this is how my response reads, then please please accept my > sincerest apologies. I do regret the extent to which my note was > venomous, and for this I'm also sorry. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 17:22:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: women, i.e. rachel & katy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT wowzie -- i sure picked a bad week to "sign off" (being in buffalo in reality but not discursively . . .) i can't catch up on all of what went down -- but i really enjoyed reading my male(chris)-edited selection of poetix posts, thinking, is this the rachel i know & love & thinking that delivering pizzas (or reading a lot?) has sure hardened you to the wiles of the world in some way, or you just never showed yourself in my presence to be the guttermouth you are but really, katy, i think if you spent a year in salt lake city (as rachel recently has) you're eyes would be bruised with the blaring discourse of #1) female students missing classes b/c they have morningsickness, an ob/gyn appointment, or contractions, or they can't find a babysitter or #2) female students miraculously almost uniformly slim and blonde, all giggling and in quest of the sanctioned situation (i.e. #1) & thinking back a while to maria damon's remark that the higher we look in education, the higher the female dropout rates (no real mystery here, right?) -- sure I wish more women were on the list, more women were sending work out & getting it published -- but that would be simply wishing for non-existent "women" to materialize -- that is, i think WE'RE IT -- we're the women we want more of & you only get more of us by changing the discourses that force women to not -- not to, not to want to, to be afraid to -- become like us. write on -!- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:30:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" what pisses me off about the coverage is absolute lack of discussion that these boys, at their early age, felt they had the permission to kill women (girls in this case) who "rejected" them -- a theme unfortunatley picked up by one too many husbands and boyfriends as adults. Why the focus on guns and nothing on the sexism in society?? joel lewis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 19:31:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: women, i.e. rachel & katy In-Reply-To: <199803290015.RAA12475@cor.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Linda-- I'm not sure what to make of your description of (presumably) the undergraduates at U Utah. Are you trying to say that stereotyping women as such creates more women who fit the stereotype? Are you trying to say that feminism has led to some sort of gross exploitation of the menstruation excuse for skipping classes? I did gather, I think clearly, that you feel that women drop out at a higher rate from men as they climb the educational ladder because they decide to raise families instead of continuing on-- But I have to admit that I don't see the connection between Rachel's views (which I don't fully understand, I don't think) and the undergrads at U Utah-- Maybe you mean to say that Rachel doesn't want to be lumped together with these other "kinds" of women? That Rachel would like to avoid being perceived as one of these slim blond giggly people? (Though Rachel is slim and kinda blondish and has a wonderful laugh--and is very generous with her laughter)? Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:40:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: hi linda and haha ! katy In-Reply-To: <199803290015.RAA12475@cor.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hey linda- glad yer back - oh i don't think at all i's keeping my mouth shut or not showing my tru colorz or anything like that last year - just afraid of trigger words after a year of seeing tru colorz of the world of poetry mongering and stargazing - and so not so much pizza delivering or slingin other types of hash thats got me worried about the distinction continually being made between 'our world', the poetry world and the 'real world' of real world trials and tribulations - and i think you are pointing out perhaps how they areall of the world thats interpreted and 'lived' - from the slim blondes trying to sell us jesus on utah's campus to the kind of muse-infested death lyrix continually slung over women's bodies- so yeah katy, i think of a way i can understand what yer saying - the power part oh yes most definitely yes definitely coes in at the part where one feels one has the necessity, reason, hankering, space (a la woolf) to do work- that is certainly a certain position of power, of unself-consciousness i think that may be lots of what women have not had the chance to take for granted - for many it seems to be something that comes as a difficult gift from themselves luv ya rachel ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 20:42:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: Re: women, i.e. rachel & katy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII but KATY I'M NOT BLOND!!!!! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 22:02:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: women, i.e. rachel & katy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I said you were "blondish" (not a blond dish)-- Blond complected-- Something must be right at U Utah--they won at the b-ball-- On Sat, 28 Mar 1998, R M Daley wrote: > but KATY I'M NOT BLOND!!!!! > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 18:26:10 +0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Sithiwong Subject: personal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Forgive the personal, I became so intentionally to make a point about what money and a room of one's own can do for a woman who writes. I am, though, interested in the undertones of the "personal" controversy. Any backchannel commentaries or clips of previous conversations on this point will be appreciated. I am in a strange situation here, my only connection with you all is this list. I do not know any of you personally, I have never published, do not work in academia and, indeed, may be outside the pale of the interests represented by this list. It takes a great deal of courage for me to post to this list. I don't, however, feel that this is a problem of gender, so please don't anyone misunderstand, it's just a function of how new I am to this world of poetics. I hope I did not give the impression that I consider my writing personal to the point that not everyone could read it. This was not my intention. I write for everyone. There is nothing I write which I wouldn't share with anyone who can read my language, but, that includes neither my mother-in-law- nor my children. I don't think I would submit it to a random list of publications either. Why would I? My children were made for this world, it doesn't mean, though, that I would release them on a street anywhere. I don't eat just anything and I'm particular about my bath. That's me and I'm the one writing. Or, was someone making a point about a divinely inspired process? Perhaps I'm missing something about personal. Any enlightenment would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 08:50:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Guns, gender, children Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I've been none too impressed by the tone of discourse on this list over the past few weeks (dating back to the religious wars), although bright spots (David Bromige, Dodie Bellamy, Nada Gordon, Joel Lewis) always make it worth the while, eventually. I'd love it if people could actually try to read one another once in awhile and leave off the name-calling. The situation in Jonesboro (which, as a one-time SF resident, I keep hearing as "Jonestown") is heart-breaking. It's part of the American pathology (the "pure products" as WCW once put it) that people in this country hardly question why children who are not old enough to smoke, drink beer or drive are allowed to be "trained" to use automatic rifles. If ever there was an argument for the moral and psychological superiority of Canada or the UK, America's confusion of the gun with its collective penis is it. There is, I think, no question that this violence is gendered. My wife's college buddy Corinne Dufka is the chief Reuters photographer in Africa (after stints in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and central America). Her photos, which periodically can be seen on the Reuters web site (Corinne was nominated for the Pulitzer last year), all too often show armies composed of 13-year-old boys killing other 13-year-old boys. It's always boys. Corinne herself took up photography while working in Nicaragua (an interesting choice given that her mother, and I think a sister also, are blind) to show what war does to children and has been wounded three times (once when her jeep hit a land mine in Chechnya) over the past decade. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 10:00:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chrsmccrry Subject: unsubscribe poetics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Dear God, if there's any justice in this world, then please let this work-- unsubscribe poetics ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 08:23:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: re : unsubscribe poetics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is a personal squawk : I just dont get it. Granted that "chrss mccrry" in his post today is cryptic, I assume from this one-line farewell that s/he is offended by what's going on with the List. Well, you know, I dont recall seeing many or any posts from "chrss mccrry". So was s/he lurking out there, passively allowing us-all to go on without his or her attempting to intercede? I dont understanding this running away from difficulties instead of attempting to cope with them, even to turn their direction. I was sadly disappointed when Toim Beckett quit after so brief a term with us. But Tom at least tried to remake the List closer to his heart's desire. I dont think there was anything like a similar effort from "chrss mccrry". I dont understand the rudeness, either : the terse implication that we have somehow failed this pristine noncombatant. And I dont understands the cowardice : "chrss mccrry" is now presumably not around to receive feedback on his/her gesture. But maybe s/he simply posted the "unsubscribe" to the wrong e-ddress, & had been having technical trouble disconnecting, & my small rant is completely off-target--if so, most profound and english apologies to all, for projecting an argument fetched over from elsewhere, onto this innocent mistake. David ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 09:32:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: personality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" don't stop Rebecca, there is no poetics factory, working conditions create poetics as much as ideas, family creates poetics, acceptance/rejection creates poetics, pencils/keyboards create poetics, this list needs more personality not uniformity, poetry and conformity are antonymns and i couldn't agree more with David Bromige about the unpersonality of the unsubscriber, although it does provide the guilty pleasure of imagining and reimagining the reasons they quit (was it my bad breath?) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 12:59:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >So, no, I have NEVER known of ANYONE in that situation. >They claim to be in it, but they are not. well I have known such people, some very close to me, whose dependency was so thoroughly bred into their outlook as to make it impossible for them to extricate themselves. And so they were regularly beaten and sexually abused. I don't consider this a mere 'claim', no matter how those people may have changed their minds had they been more enlightened. A sore issue, in fact - yrs, k ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:00:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: personality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >don't stop Rebecca, there is no poetics factory, working conditions create >poetics as much as ideas, family creates poetics, acceptance/rejection >creates poetics, pencils/keyboards create poetics, this list needs more >personality not uniformity, poetry and conformity are antonymns >and i couldn't agree more with David Bromige about the unpersonality of the >unsubscriber, although it does provide the guilty pleasure of imagining and >reimagining the reasons they quit (was it my bad breath?) Aside: I am trying to post fewer messages so as to avoid the wrath of the list godz, but I could not resist saying something to this. You have never heard of the art factory ? It has an art assembly line, where each artist, as a self incorporated entity, MUST crank out, following the long venerated strategems and techniques of a Henry Ford, a quite precisely identifiable and narrow range of product line. They must have a style, or voice, of their own, a recognizable "signature" in the Derridean sense of that, and most of all they MUST do essentially the same thing over and over again. Even the divergence into another medium of expression could be seriously frowned upon as diletantism, as is experimentation with different styles of writing often dubbed immature style. The artist is often constrained to the realization that the artist has more in common with the mass production enterprise of products for the marketplace than the artist wanted to have. The artist too tends to feel the need to produce works that are as remarkably similar as the same model, of the same make, with various options providing the only differentiation. Of course I said previously that might be overcome in the evolution of art, but not yet. Then any artist might deviate into any style, using any media, in any ways that suit the intentionality of giving communicative form to the impulses derivative from a sense of aesthetics and a desire to express meanings. There are signs of that tendency towards liberalism in the arts, but not its full realization. I think we might see more of that in the very near future. Then there might be more acceptable differentiation of the works of art, as distinct from the works of mass production, and differentiation of the artist away from the mass producer ? Perhaps. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:18:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Byrd Subject: Re: re : unsubscribe poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit david bromige wrote: > This is a personal squawk :.......... So was s/he lurking > out there, passively allowing us-all to go on without his or her attempting > to intercede? David, I would squawk with you. I was out of town for a couple of weeks and was set to nomail. I have been back now for a week. I'll admit I have found the discussions extraordinarily dreary. The "issues" have been of the kind that inevitably, perhaps necessarily, evoke _prescribed_ responses. It is not a personal fault: to engage them at all is to assume a stereotyped posture: bad-ass renegade, enforcer of righteousness, weak-kneed liberal; I am dangerously close to being a pretentious voice of community good-sense, etc. Poetry and poetics are important precisely because they are our tools for avoiding the prescribed (already written), on the one hand, and the hopelessly (selfishly) quirky, on the other (i.e. "the private self at any public wall"; no one cares about ones private self but ones mother, and she mind be jivin you too, as B.B. King realized). I do not find the usual forms of civility interesting or very useful for mediating the difficult work of a community, but one would hope that among poets, rudeness and boorishness might find interesting new forms. Surely, if nothing more, poetry and poetics can saves us from both graduate school jargon (as a particularly authorized form of prescription) and its opposite in self-conscious, anti-intellectual grousing that brings only the language of the popular media as an alternative. The World Watch Institute notes that economic “growth during the seven years since 1990 exceeds that during the 10,000 years from the beginning of agriculture until 1950” and estimates that the earth cannot sustain this level of material production for more than twenty additional years. I will highly recommend web site of the World Watch Institute (http://www.worldwatch.org/) We are a culture deeply in trouble. We have nothing in our traditions and habits that allow us even to think about this world. Poiesis is about the only human resource in such situations. These resources, like so many others, it seems to me, are being squandered. db ****************************************************************** Don Byrd (djb85@csc.albany.edu, dbyrd1@nycap.rr.com) Department of English State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 518-442-4055 (work); 418-426-9308 (home); 518-442-4599 (fax) The Little Magazine (http://www.albany.edu/~litmag/) ********************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:36:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Myouka Sondheim Subject: Re: re : unsubscribe poetics In-Reply-To: <351EBAAC.50603F53@nycap.rr.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII why would poesis get us out of anything? if not worldwatch, there are other equally appalling statistics, and nothing changes them, not even Wired's cacaphony re: our brilliant future. if the pen is mightier than the sword, the ploughshare wins overall. alan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:53:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: D W Have Subject: "BOYS" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 3/28/98 8:30:44 PM, you wrote: what pisses me off about the coverage is absolute lack of discussion that these boys, at their early age, felt they had the permission to kill women (girls in this case) who "rejected" them -- a theme unfortunatley picked up by one too many husbands and boyfriends as adults. Why the focus on guns and nothing on the sexism in society?? Joel Lewis and Ron Silliman wrote: There is, I think, no question that this violence is gendered. My wife's college buddy Corinne Dufka is the chief Reuters photographer in Africa (after stints in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and central America). Her photos, which periodically can be seen on the Reuters web site (Corinne was nominated for the Pulitzer last year), all too often show armies composed of 13-year-old boys killing other 13-year-old boys. It's always boys. I thought I'd posts some quotes that address the subject of gender and violence from a different angle-- "Owing to greater uses of cutting objects and other weaponry, Mcleod states 'offenses against men are significantly more serious than are offenses against women.' Her examination of police reports found 'whereas just one quarter of all spouse abuse incidents involving female victims are categorized as aggrevated assaults, the corresponding statistic for male victims is demonstrably higher" 86 % are aggrevated, over two-thirds of these aggrevated events are serious assaults with a weapon. "-- Cook-- quoting Mcleod's study of Philadelphia Domestic Homicides in Abused Men - the Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. 38 % of domestic homicides among white couples in the US are committed by women .Cook, Abused Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. In black family/spousal murders roughly 47% of victims are husbands vs 53 % wives Cook, Abused Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. Women kill their children more often than fathers do ( 55% vs 45 %) Cook, Abused Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. "There are many examples where a man is charged with homicide while a woman committing a similar act is charged with a lesser offense "(Mcleod -- who attributes this fact to "chivalry and paternalism on the part of the police") "It is a well known but often neglected by policy makers that men are nearly twice as likely as women to be victims of all types of violent crime and three times more likely to be murder victims" -- Cook Abused Men - the Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. "More precise and balanced results from the most recent National Family Violence Survey reveal a woman is being severely assaulted every 17.5 seconds and a man is being severely assaulted every 15.7 seconds. The data on male spousal abuse are generally not cited. -- Cook Abused Men - the Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. McNeely, R.L.. and Robinson-Simpson, G(1987)The Truth about Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed Issue.Social Work32(6)485-490 Excerpt from the text of the book: "Yet, while repeated studies consistently show that men are victims of domestic violence as often as are women, `both the lay public and many professionals regard a finding of no sex difference in rates of physical aggression among intimates as surprising, if not unreliable,' the stereotype being that men are aggressive `and women are exclusively victims.' " Rate of violence per 1000 couples (NIMH study 1985) : Husband against Wife: Overall Violence: 113 Severe Violence: 30 Wife against Husband: Overall Violence 121 Severe Violence: 44 "The fact that women had higher mean and median rates for severe violence suggests that female aggression is not merely a response to male aggression"-- from a study by the National Family Violence Counsel "Women are often as directly aggressive as men and occasionally more so"-- Are Women Always Less Aggressive Than Men?-- Psychological Bulletin --Ann Frodi, Jacqueline McCaulay and Pauline Ropert Thome "Numerous studies show that women commit more acts of child abuse than do men" --Cook Abused Men - The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. (Studies place the percentage of incidents of child abuse perpetrated by females at somewhere around 80%-- DH) Not to suggest that statistics tell the whole story (they are always "cooked" no matter who employs them), but I thought it might be instructive to post work that show a different picture as regards gender & violence. This is in no way meant to suggest that feminist concerns are not viable in this field of inquiry-- they most certainly are, and much good has and will continue to come out of them. Rather it is meant to serve as a partial answer to some of the posts that suggest "it's always boys". As a psychotherapist who did emergency work and commitments for about two years and was in private practice for another two, I spoke to women who had beaten their husbands, men who had been treated violently at the hands of women and men who had been victims of sexual abuse by women. They were all well aware of the silence ( read disbelief) with which their stories are often met. A final note-- as far as I am aware these studies are pertinent in the United States only,& all but the McNeely citation can be found in Cook's Abused Men - the Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. There are other books and many more articles on this subject available, but Cook's is the only one I could find at the library near my home. David Hickman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 12:54:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Ron and Don: what's wrong with the conversation? In-Reply-To: <351EBAAC.50603F53@nycap.rr.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Don-- By your message I gather that you have found the discussion about feminism and women's participation on this list "dreary." This is my assumption--and if this is what you meant, then you should come out and say it (likewise w/Ron Silliman). I understand your concerns about what you characterize as stereotypical forms of response on a list like this one: "the righteous," "the victim," "the defender" etc... But by saying this I think you very much reduce the content of some of these messages. What's been going on here in the last week is far more complicated than simple "dreariness" or, as you also imply, "irrelavance." Sure, the discussion has not been particularly witty nor flush with facts. I would guess (and maybe I'm wrong) that you and many others who might find such a discussion dreary have not even cracked most of the foundational texts in regards to this issue. In which case, you may not be seeing the more subtle aspects of some of these posts. When you say that "our tradition and history" don't know what to do about a world in crisis--and that poesis is somehow a salve if not a remedy for this, then I think you must be on another planet. I am not the most energetic activist. I am not yet clear (I am 25) on what to do about this world in crisis. But I think that a working out of gender issues, and race issues, and class issues--all of which are imbricated with poverty, overconsumption, and one another--is a big first step. Part of the discussion here in the last week has regarded various forms of competition and the ways in which they are engendered. I believe quite strongly that discussions about modes of conversation, violence as it pertains to gender, and polemicism on this list have everything to do with an attempt to alter the course of this "world in crisis"-- Could you please explain to me what you see as the precise connection(s) between poesis and our impending environmental doom? Gary Snyder? Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:58:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Byrd Subject: Re: re : unsubscribe poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan Myouka Sondheim wrote: > why would poesis get us out of anything? if not worldwatch, there are > Poiesis gets us out of nothing, but one does not have a world by stumbling into it.You imagine a world from the best data you have. I mention the World Watch data as it seems actively repressed, and when crucial information in a culture is repressed, all of the modes of production are poisoned, including poiesis. db -- ********************************************************************* Don Byrd (djb85@csc.albany.edu, dbyrd1@nycap.rr.com) Department of English State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 518-442-4055 (work); 418-426-9308 (home); 518-442-4599 (fax) The Little Magazine (http://www.albany.edu/~litmag/) ********************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:33:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: "BOYS" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A lot of interesting posts flying recently; really good discussion. Mr/s D W Have posted a litany of statistics that nicely illustrate that nothing, even gender, is as simple as anybody on any side of the issue would have the rest of us believe. I have the 'joy' of living in a state where a gubernatorial candidate less than a decade ago said --on the question of rape-- that women should just lay back and enjoy it. To be even cruder (if that's possible): they asked for it. The nasty little game of labelling someone a victim and then blaming them for it, too. Neat trick that. Of course, the flip side is the argument that gender agression/problems/whatever all source in the male ultimately. Some where. Some decade. Some how. One post worried about not getting a date because of a man's reaction (like men never worry about that) while being somewhat horrified that men do very much the same thing. In simple terms, perhaps we all hope to play our half of the sexual game without an 'opponent/partner'. They don't call it a dance for nothing. Something that keeps shooting by on tangents, for me, is the notion a lot of people seem to have that there is only one kind of man/one kind of woman. I did choose 'the male' above somewhat intentionally. Which makes things interesting. "The male of the species struts about either verbally or physically, preferably both, exuding as much testosterone as possible. The male must show his superiority over all other males (not to mention those non-males over there). The male must mate." And we construct similar silly images of women. Of course, the construction is complicated: men construct images of women, women reconstruct and appropriate those images and so on. And the same thing happens in regard to the image, the role of men. Ever need a good example of the hermeneutic for class, pull other gender roles and I just bet everyone will get it. One comic boiled it down much more politely (than my nature show example) by labeling men hunters, women gathers. He started here, had sold out shows for over year & then moved off broadway and (from what I hear) still sells out. Why? Because people tend to hold every one up these little preconceptions. And there's enough truth someone in the big lies (male, female) that almost everyone seems to match somewhere. Ah ha! They must match the rest of it! Or worse yet --for the person being identified, classed, disected-- they really don't match any of it, so the mind throws out the example (don't want to add any grays to our easy map to life) or classifies that person as abnormal. How many guys on the list, who like me are 'heterosexual' remember being called "faggot" in the halls during say Junior High. Ya don't fit the image, ya ain't part of the dance or your ignored or both. Backing around to the litany of statistics, they do quite a bit to not just shine light, but confuse (as statistics are want to do). While they point out that women assaulting men tend to be more violent (ahhh! blame them lil' ol women bitches agin) they do nothing to point out how often those reactions are to the violence of men... versus how often there was no violance on the male end of the equation. Of course, statistics have a hard time quantifying (like statistics do anything but attempt to quantify) the mental games by one party or the other that lead to the situtation. Ah, yes, hopefully this doesn't start any flame wars... just thoughts, for the listserv mill. Tim ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 11:46:27 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Re: personal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Rebecca, I don't think you're missing anything about the personal. Sometimes people take the attitude that the personal is somehow less than the "objective," an idea I've always disagreed with, but an idea that some people hold nonetheless. Do you write in Thai only? I have to tell you: your notes are so beautifully written that it made me want to see more of your writing. Do you write poetry, or prose, or both? Don't feel too concerned about the sometimes clubbish attitude of the list: I know a very few of the people on the list from having met at readings, a few only through correspondence, and some just through the list. I don't know if everyone agrees, but I think a large number of listees think as I do, that anyone who writes is very welcome to participate. I for one have enjoyed your voice immensely, and you "personal" post has left me with a strong image of your garden writing house and the questions of mothers-in-law & children, a world similar to and different from the one I as a woman/mother work in. Karen ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:44:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Statistics and Silliman In-Reply-To: <351EC3FD.D99326C6@nycap.rr.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII --Yes, I think those statistics seemed awfully skewed. The point is well taken that men suffer from violence as much if not more than women. But the issue seems to be a little more complex than that. It seemed that Have's statistics left out some key information. 1. If men suffer from aggravated assault more than women, do men also perpetrate aggravated assault more than women? Who are the perpetrators statistically? Are you saying that men beat up other men as much as they beat up women, so violence isn't gendered? 2. To say that rates of violence are similar in both male and female prison populations is an interesting statistic, but isn't this a pretty specific statistical group? Does it reflect the general population in any regard? 3. Your statistics concerned domestic violence--and were informative in regards to this (though the fact that they all came from a single source--and that this source seemed interested in proving that men suffered from domestic violence, not just women, seems suspicious to me...)--what about violence in the public sphere? I would like to see some statistic about rape. How many men are raped outside of prison? I would like a clarification of your statistic about child abuse. Do women abuse their children sexually more than men do? Do they hit their children? Neglect their children? Could you be more specific? I would like to see statistic about guns and the use of guns. Do women assault or massacre others with guns as often as men do? Or is it rolling pins that they employ? *** Ron, I have to take issue again with your earlier post. In that post you seem to discourage the new voices that have popped up on this list in the last week from contributing further. The list of--was it four people?--whom you cited as having interesting things to say were to say the least very usual suspects. I enjoy their posts, but I have also been glad to see so many new voices posting as well. As Summi said in an earlier post, not everyone has to have something brilliant, tonally satisfactory, or original to say to be of interest, at least to me, on this list. You seem to imply that only well-formulated posts from brilliant minds are wanted here. Perhaps some might feel intimidated to post up here with the likes of you (this is a sincere compliment, not sarcastic)-- I found your post vague in regards to these issues--how has the list disappointed you as of late? Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 11:49:03 -0800 Reply-To: kkel736@bayarea.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Organization: Network Associates Subject: Personal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Oops, sorry: my message to Rebecca Sithiwong was meant to go b/c. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 14:53:28 -0500 Reply-To: Keston Sutherland Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: boor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >when crucial information in a culture is repressed, all of the modes of >production are poisoned, including poiesis. -when- crucial info's repressed? When HASN'T it been? If everything has always been poisoned (poetry too), the poison's slow-working into endlessness and why worry? Cannot the exhibition of crucial info poison also? Plus: (and this not directed to you Don) it's harmless enough, the general anti-boor cry and aloof semi-urge to decorum, but this though harmless stakes little in hope of redress and does nothing to counter indecorous -argument-: neat-mannered locutions are not a cure for ignorance, not a resistance to bad ideas other than the idea of bad locution (which idea can tyrannize as any other and frequently does), and do seem so dubiously efficacious in propagating a writer's tidy moral amplitude. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 12:57:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Morpheal on the need to bear arms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gee Morpheal I dont think we in Canada are any more (& perhaps not less) under a tyranny than you down there in the good ol' US of A, & we do have gun laws. And I do think that ideology can be as controlling as any 'dictator,' at least in terms of maintaining a 'way of life.' Are US citizens really that much more able to defend their 'freedom,' & change governments than we in Canada? I dont think so: we're both 'ruled' by certain oligarchic forces which seem to have no problem maintaining their power, whether or not the so-called citizens, now known as 'consumers' etc, own a bunch of guns (I think the statistic for Arkansas was at least 3 guns per person). So it goes. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What bores me most about the Tyrol is its Tyrolean aspect Albert Camus ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 14:59:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: "a"-24 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the following catalog entry was obtained via worldcat/first search and lists UCSD as holding this item -- in addition to the recorded performance ron silliman mentioned the other day....t. AUTHOR: Zukofsky, Louis, 1904-1978. TITLE: [A-24 L. Z. masque, act I / YEAR: 1986 PUB TYPE: Recording FORMAT: 1 sound cassette (ca. 47 min.) : 1 7/8 ips ; 3 7/8 x 2 1/2 in., 1/8 in tape. NOTES: "L. Z. masque is the 24th and last section of Louis Zukofsky's monumental work "A" ... Celia spliced and arranged the text to the music"--Performance program. Performed by literature students at UCSD: Dorothy Robert, Brad Westbrook, Bill Luoma, Becky Roberts and Chuck Cody. Recorded at the University of California, San Diego, on April 11, 1986. OTHER: Zukofsky, Celia Thaew. L. Z. masque. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 15:06:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children In-Reply-To: <199832993923111478@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron: While recent posts have made it clear that the assumption of violence being gendered is at least open to question, it's certainly still true that males carry most of the guns; if wars were included in the violence statistics men would come out ahead. I suspect that as traditional divisions of labor become obsolete, as they largely have in the US, this inequity will become less severe. Now that women have relative control over procreation and means of supporting themselves outside of marriage, for instance, women are being trained and employed in warfare more openly than they have been in the past, when they were content to engage in sobotage and the occasional use of their sexuality as a lethal weapon (Judith of Bethulia comes to mind). I fully expect that women will be enthusiastic participants at the next My Lai. Or do you think that violence is not only gendered but genetic? At 08:50 AM 3/29/98 -0600, you wrote: >There is, I think, no question that this violence is gendered. My wife's >college buddy Corinne Dufka is the chief Reuters photographer in Africa >(after stints in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya and central America). Her >photos, which periodically can be seen on the Reuters web site (Corinne was >nominated for the Pulitzer last year), all too often show armies composed of >13-year-old boys killing other 13-year-old boys. It's always boys. > . ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 19:04:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: re : unsubscribe poetics In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:36:36 -0500 from On Sun, 29 Mar 1998 13:36:36 -0500 Alan Myouka Sondheim said: > >if the pen is mightier than the sword, the ploughshare wins overall. right on, Alan. with the emphasis on SHARE. - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 19:11:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Aimee Grunberger I was sorry to read in today's Providence Journal that poet Aimee Grunberger had died at 44. Last I heard she was involved at Naropa, had been getting published. Back in the EARLY SEVENTIES we were in college together. She was somebody with a lot of vitality & feeling. The obit gave no cause of death. Sad to see her go. A free spirit. Spring is here, people. Whatever will ameliorate life it involves empathy and understanding. "Love has no pride", as Bonnie Raitt was singing the other day. God is neither male nor female, but spirit. Nor is God a respecter of persons, nor is God blind to oppression in any form. God has no wrath, as Isaiah puts it. Life is brief, art better be good. What's the point in complaining about the "quality" of the posts to the list? Just try to add something interesting yourself. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 19:49:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: speaking of forces that silence Comments: To: Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From another list. The press hasn't exactly been a force of the vanguardia, but this certainly seems to have the infamous "chilling effect," and to illustrate the Peter Principle that people rise to their level of maximum incompetence in an organization... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 16:34:31 -0600 (CST) From: Michael Heffernan Subject: Re: UArk Press (fwd) The closing of the U of Arkansas Press was announced by the University's Chancellor, John A. White, in a meeting with the Press staff last Tuesday afternoon, March 24th. The Chancellor made his decision without consulting the Press Board, the University chairs, deans, or other faculty, or the Board of Trustees. His decision was based entirely on the Press's current finances, which indicate an ongoing deficit, with an annual subsidy from the University of roughly $250,000--an amount which the Chancellor will transfer to the University Library. The Press has operated under University subsidy since its inception in 1980. The Chancellor's decision has aroused strong negative response from throughout the University community and around the state. His argument that "university presses are supposed to be self sustaining" has been widely questioned, especially by several university press directors at other universities. Chancellor White came to the University of Arkansas from Georgia Tech last July. His elimination of the University Press was his first major act as chancellor. The University faculty will meet later this week in an emergency session to discuss the matter, though, at the moment, there is little reason to believe that the decision can be reversed. Michael Heffernan Programs in Creative Writing University of Arkansas ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 20:33:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Not even sure if we need to play statistical games here to disagree with Silliman and this guns-boys nonsense. Withstanding any Chomskian critque that might be possible here, most of us in LA have seen a lot of press given to the rise of women within gangs, and the rise of gangs made entirely of women. Lately, the contentions made in several books about gang violence are that women are actually more violent in these situations: mutilations, choice of weapon. Perhaps to prove themselves in relation to men. Nonetheless, graffiti goes on. And a women gang member has just as much opportunity to spray paint the highway as a male gang member. A can of paint is the same price for either a man or a woman. A magazine is the same price to publish. Setting aside gender-pay inequalities for a moment, I think what some people are resistant to here, in this gender discussion, is its relevance to poetic action, much less political action. How is a women's poetry different from a man's and what does a man get from reading a women's poems? Sincerely, I'd like to hear an answer. If it turns out that they want the same thing, would still be productive discussion. I don't mean "is it "vaginal?" I mean what is not available to women as poetic technique that is available to a man. What makes it more difficult for a women to publish a magazine? As everyone here knows, this is an extremely marginalized contigent: innovative poets. At a certain point, I'm not sure that gender is contributing to much further marginalization. Am not sure that a gay writer published in some small magazine is ever going to inspire others to be bold enough to write a poem, publish a magazine or do anything that will improve the status of literature, whether or not anyone knows he's a gay poet. But it seems to me that what Katy is doing with Explosive magazine, what Post- Apollo Press is doing, what (the press that published Laynie Browne's Rebecca's Letters, name escaped) is doing is helpful to the cause. Should Katy quit publishing men? It seems to me that any discussion of gender (and I'd prefer, say, class) that does not mobilize the entire samizdat cause is a thorny issue. Because this side of literature is in such tenuous shape, I'm not sure it makes sense to critique it in terms of gender. Or at least, I don't think it is sufficient. Nor is class sufficient, etc. Wouldn't it be more productive to discuss the evolution of women's writing in historical terms. I'm leery of any gender conversations where one side cannot critique the very side they happen to be on. That is, one could have any bone to pick with Katy or Rachel or whomever, and still be more or less on their side. What can a man say to a women about gender issues without somehow becoming oppressor. I suspect that if a man picked a bone against the way a few women were handling a few feminist issues, the ensuing argument would be not all productive to making it easier for anyone to write a poem. As for this issue of women stopping school and going off to raise families, no doubt many women have felt that they lost out to do this. Norma Cole didn't publish anything until her forties, I believe, so I think it is a real issue (whatever gender a dead god happens to be). But, much more of an issue is the fact that everyone on this list could stop writing poems and write fiction. More money and more prestige, to many people's eyes. Not to mention the easy fact that anyone who would stop writing and become a doctor would get more prestige, money, etc. I tend to think class is a bigger concern here as it is prohibitive to all forms/manners/subjects of writing. And it certainly effects who gets published, who gets to go to grad school, who gets tenure, who publishes the books and who they have to kind to in order to fund their crusade. I would be interested in hearing how being a woman affect the practice, technique, and method of writing. Not at all against hearing how simple-minded all this might be. I am calling for disarmament even in the shape of a thorn. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 20:36:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children In-Reply-To: <5f994f4e.351ef655@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Standard, I found your post really provocative and clear. And I see most of your points (although I don't see how anyone is begging the question of whether or not I should stop publishing men)[?]-- I had two responses to the things you said. The first had to do with the assertion you make about the marginality of experimental writing. I think you underestimate the impact that these poetries have on the larger discourse. Here at Iowa--a bastion of various forms of institutional conservatism (a reputation to uphold, a slew of ambitious people coming through at any given time, a place where awards are taken seriously etc...)--the poetries of which you speak are taken very seriously. I have heard numerous people claim that, in fact, "experimental" poetry gets more attention here than do other poetries; that it is cooler to write experimentally; that only experimental poets are taken seriously (I don't fully agree, but don't feel that this opinion comes out of nowhere...). I, for one, have been encouraged to put out Explosive--and in fact have received free copying from the department here. I have held a number of benefit events for the magazine. At least half of the entire (fiction and poetry) have attended these and had fun. I agree that experimental poetry is marginalized in a number of ways. Prizes and other types of awards are not as available to writers who participate in this discourse-- The New Yorker and other "popular magazines" that pay are for all intents and purposes closed to these forms of poetries-- Etc... But I think that in the long run poets like Scalapino, Hejinian, Palmer, and Susan Howe will have a much larger impact on the writing that comes out of here than will, let's say, those like Wilbur or Kizer or even Hass. The reasons for this are complex--but it seems to me that experimental writing as it exists today (complete with big presses, book prizes, teaching positions and so on...) gives young writers more permission to do certain things than some of the more conservative writers who are now in vogue. Primary among the reasons for experimental poetry's ascendence here has to do with something intangible in the air--its greater "sexiness" perhaps. There are a number of examples outside of Iowa as well-- APR, The Boston Review, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review and on and on are more and more available to experimental poetries-- It may just be a trend. Or it may be because of what I allude to above--the growing presence of experimental work on the larger institutional scene (witness Sun & Moon, The Bobst Prize, New American Writing, New College, Brown, Santa Cruz etc...)-- Or it may be some form of "slumming it in the avant-garde"--I don't know. So I do think that experimental poetry is visible enough and important enough to necessitate an occassional cleaning out of its "gender house"-- *** As to what you state below: I notice that it is okay on this list to say that the topic of gender is "stupid" or "irrelavant" or "boring" (not to imply that you have said such things per se)--but it seems always okay to speak about class. When it comes to righteousness of tone, I've seen some real doozies that regarded class on this list. More to the point, however, how can you claim that more of us suffer from or are otherwise affected by class than by gender? Women aren't the only creatures of this world who are shuttled into gender category that seems to be culturally backed up by sanctions of various sorts-- It seems to me, and this is an old argument, that the fact that women are divided by cultural and class lines at all times--that women have no "culture" to call their own--translates into the notion that gender is a less "important" category than class, which, after Marx, has taken on a pretty powerful aura as its own "culture". To be gendered male is to belong to an unmarked category--or so you seem to imply in your comments below. Are you trying to say that all of us suffer from financial stress, but that only some of us suffer from stress that is gender-related? We ALL share the problems and ramifications of class. And we ALL share the problems and ramifications of gender. This does not mean that poetry written by women or men or anyone else is by nature any which way--just as poetry written by poor people or rich people or anyone else is not by nature any which way-- But it also, in my view, does not mean that trends--that circumstances that appear to produce tendencies based on categories--are not important topics of discussion. Is class more relavant to the production of poetry than gender? Is class any less of a blanket term? Is the assignment of class any less constraining in our society than the assignment of gender? Is a discussion of poetry as it relates to class any more specific than a discussion of poetry as it relates to gender, or sex, or age? As I said, your post made me think a lot. Thanks, Katy *** > It seems to me that any discussion of gender (and I'd prefer, say, class) that > does not mobilize the entire samizdat cause is a thorny issue. Because this > side of literature is in such tenuous shape, I'm not sure it makes sense to > critique it in terms of gender. Or at least, I don't think it is sufficient. > Nor is class sufficient, etc. Wouldn't it be more productive to discuss the > evolution of women's writing in historical terms. > > I'm leery of any gender conversations where one side cannot critique the very > side they happen to be on. That is, one could have any bone to pick with Katy > or Rachel or whomever, and still be more or less on their side. What can a > man say to a women about gender issues without somehow becoming oppressor. > > I suspect that if a man picked a bone against the way a few women were > handling a few feminist issues, the ensuing argument would be not all > productive to making it easier for anyone to write a poem. > > As for this issue of women stopping school and going off to raise families, no > doubt many women have felt that they lost out to do this. Norma Cole didn't > publish anything until her forties, I believe, so I think it is a real issue > (whatever gender a dead god happens to be). > > But, much more of an issue is the fact that everyone on this list could stop > writing poems and write fiction. More money and more prestige, to many > people's eyes. Not to mention the easy fact that anyone who would stop > writing and become a doctor would get more prestige, money, etc. I tend to > think class is a bigger concern here as it is prohibitive to all > forms/manners/subjects of writing. And it certainly effects who gets > published, who gets to go to grad school, who gets tenure, who publishes the > books and who they have to kind to in order to fund their crusade. > > I would be interested in hearing how being a woman affect the practice, > technique, and method of writing. > > Not at all against hearing how simple-minded all this might be. > > I am calling for disarmament even in the shape of a thorn. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:01:37 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nada Gordon Subject: women/men/communication/cherry blossoms Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One thing that irks me greatly about this list is that it keeps me away from the cherry blossoms, newly opened and splendid, not to mention the jasmine and orange & purple pansies on my veranda but my head is so full with the discussion of this past week one reason I have not been more vocal was that I was off on a spring vacation jaunt to Kanazawa and Kyoto. Kanazawa is an old castle town on the Japan sea coast. Kyoto was so gorgeous I hallucinated gardens and paper and designs for two full days after I came back I really have wanted to speak my piece, especially on the exchange that went on between Katy and Rachel I agreed with both of them/neither of them because there are two women inside of me (and I'm asking now how many other women feel this way): one who is historicized, bleating and roaring (the one who was ignored in math class -- thanks Katy; or the one with the ruffled leotard -- hey, I *still* wear those; or the one hitting misogyny over the head every day and still not killing it) and one who, while not ungendered (or maybe, as Don wrote, "poeticized and sexual, but not gendered"?), is a being -- a creature of the universe -- empowered by nature (as Rachel wrote: choosing to, not take up the burden of everything constructed as history that says YOU WOMAN,YOU ARE DISENFRANCHISED) they toggle each other, these two women both of them acknowledge their debt and express gratitude to the pioneers and strugglers; both pioneer when they can; the historicized woman struggles; the other one moves on if we are always bleating and roaring, we can't be creative we reify our disenfranchisement we should bleat and roar we are disenfranchised but we can do so much more (Katy's second model of power) exemplification: I hate women's writing workshops -- I have participated in a few and even, uh, hostessed, one on this side of the Pacific. At workshops like these the common response to my writing is puzzled silence, "what are you trying to SAY with this?" or "there are some interesting images here, but I don't you think you should be more accessible" as if that constituted a response to the work. Mostly these are pieces that, by language poet standards, might be considered highly SUBJECTIVE, even THEMATIC or LYRICAL. The kind of writing that these women's groups seem to sanction, though, is reportage -- on relationships, childhood memories, life incidents, mostly, without emphasis on the formal features of the writing, i.e. the poetry. The responses tend to the "thank you for sharing" *nurturing* *supportive* variety -- even to writing that, to my torqued-out ear, isn't interesting at all. This seems to me to be Tannen's cooperative dynamic at its most nauseating. Dodie, is your workshop any different? Or do you take issue with my description? (an aside, but when I read Tannen's book I ws struck by the similarity of the cooperative style to Japanese communication styles -- another topic altogether) On the other hand, I hate mixed writing workshops even more, where the women sit silent while the men light into each other with their ideas of how they would have written the poem, with their all-important opinions. Voila, the competitive dynamic. I posted a poem called *my penis* this week and got a response like this from morpheal. I excerpt it here: >Drumbeat sounds so damn violent. Sure you shouldn't change that ? > >I don't know....but it's too full of traditional metaphors and unclear >as to what you really want to convey..... and my response to him: >1) "unclearness" as to what I want to "convey" happens to be my poetics. >If it were clear it would be prose. > >2) language as vehicle or conveyance is an obsolete metaphor -- get over >it, dude. > >3) Did I solicit your opinion? You know, a big ugly fat guy came up to >me after one of my readings/performances and told me how he thought I >could have done it more effectively. I told him he could shove his >patronizing attitude up his ass. DITTO. Hmm, so I guess I do roar. And am boorish sometimes and violent (sorry Ms. Tannen to disprove your points). I apologize to Morpheal for that, and for quoting him here without permission. It does, though, offer an example of how some men respond to some women's public utterances. No wonder we may feel intimidated (but I guess I showed him -- gee). It also shows how the public sphere, including this list, can be sites of viciousness -- as well as (I don't remember who said it) conviviality. Or maybe that I just can't take criticism? Ending with questions again: 1) Patriarchy is a miserable farce and we should work like hell to destroy it, but not to replace it with...arggh...matriarchy! Smothering! Bossy! So how can we all parent (the) society (of the poetics list) equitably? 2) A fascinating-to-me side topic that Elizabeth Hatmaker touched on was one of women in positions of institutional power, esp. teachers (what about mothers), and a question about alternative pedagogies. Joe Amato has written about this in great inspiring detail before, and as for me, I'm delving into Paolo Freire and Julian Edge and William Glasser for ways to balance the power relationship in the classroom, because always to be cast as authority is awful. Not sure that this is directly related to POETICS (although seems like just about anything can be, that's the beauty of it), but I'd be happy to talk backchannel with any co-fascinatees. love and cherry blossoms (finally I can get to them) nada p.s. Yesterday I saw a Japanese mom teaching her adolescent daughter how to throw a baseball! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:03:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Aimee Grunberger Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I was sorry to read in today's Providence Journal that poet Aimee Grunberger >had died at 44. Last I heard she was involved at Naropa, had been >getting published. Back in the EARLY SEVENTIES we were in college together. >She was somebody with a lot of vitality & feeling. The obit gave no >cause of death. Sad to see her go. A free spirit. What a frightening, and saddening thought. I turned 44 today. >Spring is here, people. Whatever will ameliorate life it involves empathy >and understanding. "Love has no pride", as Bonnie Raitt was singing the >other day. God is neither male nor female, but spirit. Nor is God a respecter >of persons, nor is God blind to oppression in any form. God has no wrath, >as Isaiah puts it. Life is brief, art better be good. What's the point in >complaining about the "quality" of the posts to the list? Just try to add >something interesting yourself. "Love has no pride", is true enough, but I cannot say anything about "god". I would have to be completely agnostic about that, as I know of only the many human creations that they seek to dignify with that term. I also know that whatever that "god" that is so talked of is, it has never eased an ache of any kind, or met any need, or caused any passionate hope to be actualized, in itself and purely as a binary relation. Everything has been decisively and purely human, no matter how I look at it. Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:01:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael McColl Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Subject: The Personal in Poetics (fwd) (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Cap-l may be baffled by what I mistakenly sent them; frankly, I'm kind of dreading to go back there now. Anyway, readers, this was for you-- ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from TEMPLEVM (NJE origin SMTPI1@TEMPLEVM) by VM.TEMPLE.EDU (LMail V1.2b/1.8b) with BSMTP id 0839; Sun, 29 Mar 1998 22:21:11 -0500 Received: from mail.virginia.edu (128.143.2.9) by VM.TEMPLE.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Sun, 29 Mar 98 22:21:10 EST Received: from Virginia.EDU by mail.virginia.edu id aa21611; 29 Mar 98 22:15 EST Received: from node6.unix.virginia.edu by mail.virginia.edu id aa21574; 29 Mar 98 22:15 EST Received: from localhost (dmb9f@localhost) by node6.unix.Virginia.EDU (8.8.5/8.6.6) with SMTP id WAA97384 for ; Sun, 29 Mar 1998 22:15:45 -0500 Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 22:15:45 -0500 (EST) From: Dawn McCarra Bass To: cap-l@virginia.edu Subject: The Personal in Poetics (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Precedence: bulk ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 29 Mar 98 18:14:41 EST From: Michael McColl To: cap-l@virginia.edu Subject: The Personal in Poetics While the question of the personal on the list is being discussed, I thought I might ask about what seems like a contradiction to me: in the earlier discussion of depression there was quite a bit of personal disclosure, credit given to those who had made these disclosures; there was an assumption that personal experience brought with it a valuable kind of authenticity. The recent discussion is too fresh to require summing up. My question is this: why is it that when poetry is discussed the personal often seems in some way proscribed. Someone spoke of Robert Hass's "embarrassing honesty." Others have "cringed" at emotional revelations in poetry. Ted Hughe's work (which I have no interest here in defending) was criticized for employing language as a transparent medium, and for being based on the self as unitary rather than perfomative.(Now, the selves who suffered from depression did not sound performative to me, but I might be trying to grasp this on the wrong register.) But I gather that the prevailing poetics of this list would seem to rule out most of what has been termed "personal" as being unacceptable in poetry. If scores of examples to the contrary spring to everyone's mind, that's fine. My question is typed here without a great deal of planning--that's how I use email. I'm not trying to be airtight in any kind of logic. In any case, I would like to get some takes on the way the personal appears or doesn't appear in most experimental poetry, and why. Mike McColl ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:16:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: margin(-)alias MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Have to agree with Katy, that in fact so-called marginal poetics are hardly that, one of the surprises for a foreigner such as m/s hereabouts is the extent to which relatively innovative poetries are promulgated (Prynne's and Wilkinson's last books in the UK were both - even after their long careers and magnificent achievements - just stapled & xeroxed pamphlets, a hundred or two in each print-run). Not that this has much if anything uneconomic to do with that spectral enthusiasm re: 'transparent' vs. 'material' word-uses, what a load of baloney ultimately. But it's great here for young writers, there's a lot of contact and sharing - ever listen in on the British Poets list? If 'marginal' is, prior to obfuscating sketches of noble poetic tendencies, a real quality of verse rather than a kind of logo, I would be really interested to hear why (of course, some poetries are still strictly marginal, usually those which wouldn't consider themselves importantly characterized by this money-name). ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:13:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: god 44 Happy birthday, Morpheal. I just talk about God because it's so politically gauche on this list, where the main thing is to impress with your left critique in various ways. It's fun to slam & annoy people. Bumper cars. Humans, as you say, do all the caring & loving - but the thought of God is like the thought of Nature & Purpose & all those aboriginal things - sometimes when nobody's around (like in the Frost poem) that's all that's left. (I'm just giving you the barest minimum.) - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:52:50 -0500 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: my penis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nada Gordon wrote: > > My Penis > > is bright and triangular. > Physical fact and shape > a persistent drumbeat > adjectives cling up to: > moist, clever, leafy, spoiled -- > anagrams of my real name > like flowers bigger than the world: > lineaments > of gratified desire > > --nada Nada, this sounds exactly like my vagina! It also puts into question an observation by Camille Paglia: "Sex is metaphysical for men, as it is not for women." Unlike Morpheal, I hear you on the drumbeat & the Blakean O'Keefe: a dragon nod! add no organ: go and adorn (and do groan) Nada Gordon --Dan Dragoon Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:15:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Clements Subject: Re: my penis Comments: To: Daniel Zimmerman In-Reply-To: <351F24FE.3DEA@idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Daniel Zimmerman said: > a dragon nod! > add no organ: > go and adorn > (and do groan) > Nada Gordon not to mention: Dang Adorno! BC ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 00:53:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Morpheal on the need to bear arms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Gee Morpheal >I dont think we in Canada are any more (& perhaps not less) under a tyranny >than you down there in the good ol' US of A, & we do have gun laws. And I >do think that ideology can be as controlling as any 'dictator,' at least in >terms of maintaining a 'way of life.' Are US citizens really that much more >able to defend their 'freedom,' & change governments than we in Canada? I >dont think so: we're both 'ruled' by certain oligarchic forces which seem >to have no problem maintaining their power, whether or not the so-called >citizens, now known as 'consumers' etc, own a bunch of guns (I think the >statistic for Arkansas was at least 3 guns per person). >So it goes. I find this somewhat humourous. I am actually in Canada. In Canada I think there are enough weapons currently in the hands of citizens to quell any usurpation of power, if one occurred, even if a significant part of Canada's military forces joined with the usurpers to make it a coup d'etat. Not all of the military would join and add to that faction some armed citizenry, the siezing of power outside of constitutional and electoral means, is most likely currently impossible. Actually, there is tendency among American military and ex-military, including reserves and ex-reserves, to keep firepower of their own on hand. I would not want to say that on the public listserv because that might cause someone to go after someone else's stockpile. It is not so openly discussed. There is a healthy sense of paranoia of the government and of any possible abuse of power by the military, particularly among many of those who have been in it. Therefore the unofficial militia tends to always be prepared. Most of those who are miltarily trained, would, I believe, be ready to use their weapons against their own government's use of oppressive, unconstitutional, force, if that government acted sufficiently outside of the laws that govern its actions, in ways that were convincing that power had been usurped and was being maintained by illegal means such that there was no other recourse. One of the mysteries of America, but one best kept under one's hat and not spread around too much. regards, Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:20:10 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT hi standard s. --this is the first time we've engaged in discourse & granted I'm not sure where you're coming from/ how to "read" you -- but i find most of your comments engage in a sort of numbers game -- maybe because your responding in part to katy's demand for "more women" -- but i'd like to move from that place, from the place of questions about what "women" "should" do and with what amount of "difficulty" or how "they" write -- since I or katy or rachel can only tell you what we as particular people should/could/want/do, i'm not sure how we can help define this "cause" -- you mention several curious things at the end of your post -- prestige, money, improving the quality of literature (?), a "crusade" -- which speak not only this "equality rap" -- but which also curiously narrativize the actions of several individuals into a unified "cause" -- & i find your narrative to be based on certain "universal" assumptions -- this one was particularly puzzling: > It seems to me that any discussion of gender (and I'd prefer, say, > class) that does not mobilize the entire samizdat cause is a thorny > issue. Because this side of literature is in such tenuous shape, > I'm not sure it makes sense to critique it in terms of gender. Or > at least, I don't think it is sufficient. Nor is class sufficient, > etc. Wouldn't it be more productive to discuss the evolution of > women's writing in historical terms. i agree (i think) but why? You're calling on the performance of good old anglo-feminism, i think, that is to un- or dis-cover an otherwised silenced history -- ? And I couldn't do this with out discussing the historical terms!! who's terms are they? I mean who's texts will we read to discover the historical terms by which to discuss women's writing? I say let's throw the baby out with the bathwater and go find some new babies. and when you mention "relevance to poetic action": > A magazine is the same price to publish. > Setting aside gender-pay inequalities for a moment, I think what some people > are resistant to here, in this gender discussion, is its relevance to poetic > action, much less political action. I wonder if you're not assuming that "feminist" poetry must per se "voice" a feminist agenda? or that poetry is feminist because it is gendered via content? Which is the only way, i think that poetry written by women & men could be said to "differ" -- by taking up the issue of difference & expressing patiruclarly "feminist" attitudes (i.e. if it involves itself with those discourses) -- but even that is just performing gender -- but a question that for me gets more to the heart of the matter is > I mean what is not available to women as poetic > technique that is available to a man. well, i don't think the universal subject-position is as available, as that's "man" -- i mean it's necessary for "voicing" otherwise "erased" experiences -- but it can only express thus by co-opting a whole set of (male-constructed) assumptions (from Aristotle onward) -- the very assumptions that provide the context for "oppression" -- i mean i might march on washington & yell "no more coathangers" but my poems, in order to be "feminist", don't have to. my feminism, as it is engaged in my poetics, is about disengaging language from certain oppressive discourses -- one of them being that of enlightenment ideas of the subject. > > I'm leery of any gender conversations where one side cannot critique the very > side they happen to be on. That is, one could have any bone to pick with Katy > or Rachel or whomever, and still be more or less on their side. What can a > man say to a women about gender issues without somehow becoming oppressor. "i agree" -- ? again, i'm not sure what you're after -- since this statement seems to cast us into a narrative which a certain history has constructed. > I suspect that if a man picked a bone against the way a few women were > handling a few feminist issues, the ensuing argument would be not all > productive to making it easier for anyone to write a poem. -- ? -- not sure why you would want writing poetry to be easier -- Fiction. . . >More money and more prestige, to many > people's eyes. Not to mention the easy fact that anyone who would stop > writing and become a doctor would get more prestige, money, etc. I tend to > think class is a bigger concern here as it is prohibitive to all > forms/manners/subjects of writing. And it certainly effects who gets > published, who gets to go to grad school, who gets tenure, who publishes the > books and who they have to kind to in order to fund their crusade. whoa. i wish charles' b. woulda said we had to worry abt. prestige or money to join the list . . . but again, i think my problem is with the way you narrativize the actions of distinct women writers into a "crusade" -- yes, katy seems to be on a crusade when she calls for more women writing & publishing, etc. well i've already made myself clear on where i differ on that point i think. > I would be interested in hearing how being a woman affect the practice, > technique, and method of writing. well i could tell you how it affects MY writing, but would that be answering your question? yrs -- linda ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 23:20:10 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: women, i.e. rachel & katy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT katy et all: i'll clarify: katy sed: > I'm not sure what to make of your description of (presumably) the > undergraduates at U Utah. > > Are you trying to say that stereotyping women as such creates more women > who fit the stereotype? the question is who is stereotyping? is it a stereotype to say basketball players are good at basketball? I'm simply saying these women work hard to be good at what their institution tells them to do -- in the way it tells them to do it. so they're an instance of that liminal space where discourse & "reality" meet, if you like. they literally "wear" the discourse of their institution (though that metaphor may be reductive, as it tends to flatten out the complexity of what goes on, since "changing clothes" isn't that easy, & because what I call "their institution" is, well, many discourses {buy this, wear that, eat this, throw that up [I literally walked in on a bulimic in a pizza place bathroom here once -- calculate the chances of THAT happening & we'll maybe get a sense of how frequent such a coping device is, especially here in the happy gap-baby valley]. -- but this again is simplifying -- i don't mean to say that the "discourse" is the messages, the rhetoric that dictates their/our lives -- but then again, as we say, money talks . . .}) > > Are you trying to say that feminism has led to some sort of gross > exploitation of the menstruation excuse for skipping classes? rather, if feminism means winning for a woman the "choice" of whether or not to pursue an "education" (a popular one here is family & consumer studies -- ha!) -- then we're not working hard enough > > I did gather, I think clearly, that you feel that women drop out at a > higher rate from men as they climb the educational ladder because they > decide to raise families instead of continuing on-- you mean they opt to perform normative behaivor rather than risk being labeled "odd" or "maladjusted" (easy to get Freudian here -- they're simply not carrying out their prescribed narrative! & we know freud fudges on the girl-narrative anyway) > > But I have to admit that I don't see the connection between Rachel's views > (which I don't fully understand, I don't think) and the undergrads at U > Utah-- i hope i made this a little clearer above. I mean it's easy to look back on our lives & think we had a lot of "choices" -- where to go to school, what color to make our hair, whether to have hair in certain places [one day i heard a young woman in a burrito place telling two male peers (read: potential husbands) that she was going to have electrolisis on her upper lip & chin] -- but many of these choices are relegated, regulated -- & again i feel i'm simplifying, this is the good old Althusserian concept of ideology -- but the point is "reality" is saturated with discourse, it's textual (in the most vulgar sense that words construct it, i.e. when we see dense Maine woods & say a "o look a virgin forest" (or even an "old growth forest" for that matter) we can't see the forest for the words (old growth = $$$). but i'm starting to digress. . . > Maybe you mean to say that Rachel doesn't want to be lumped together with > these other "kinds" of women? That Rachel would like to avoid being > perceived as one of these slim blond giggly people? (Though Rachel is slim > and kinda blondish and has a wonderful laugh--and is very generous with > her laughter)? well that's simply not a danger! I mean she's good a playing a different game -- besides i think rachel would just like to avoid being perceived -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 00:43:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: The Personal in Poetics (fwd) (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Worth a response on both lists certainly even though I do not have a great deal to add as I share your puzzlement at the reticence. I do think it is cultural and possibly it bears some relation to the gender issue. As noted by someone earlier the personal does not always reflect the general when talking about gender issues - I live in an all-female house but feel that I am much more open t o honest expression of feeling than any of them. As a psychologist, I am tempted to say that the reticence you note has a lot to do with fear - someone who avoids touching on the p3rsonal actually reveals more about themself. However, as a poet I'm pretty sure it has to do with a distrust of our current language usage's ability to convey feeling without lapsing into hollywood bathos. At 11:01 PM 3/29/98 EST, Michael McColl wrote: >Cap-l may be baffled by what I mistakenly sent them; frankly, I'm kind >of dreading to go back there now. Anyway, readers, this was for you-- > > >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Return-Path: >Received: from TEMPLEVM (NJE origin SMTPI1@TEMPLEVM) by VM.TEMPLE.EDU (LMail > V1.2b/1.8b) with BSMTP id 0839; Sun, 29 Mar 1998 22:21:11 -0500 >Received: from mail.virginia.edu (128.143.2.9) by VM.TEMPLE.EDU > (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with TCP; Sun, 29 Mar 98 22:21:10 EST >Received: from Virginia.EDU by mail.virginia.edu id aa21611; 29 Mar 98 22:15 EST >Received: from node6.unix.virginia.edu by mail.virginia.edu id aa21574; > 29 Mar 98 22:15 EST >Received: from localhost (dmb9f@localhost) by node6.unix.Virginia.EDU > (8.8.5/8.6.6) with SMTP id WAA97384 for ; Sun, 29 Mar 1998 > 22:15:45 -0500 >Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 22:15:45 -0500 (EST) >From: Dawn McCarra Bass >To: cap-l@virginia.edu >Subject: The Personal in Poetics (fwd) >Message-ID: >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >Precedence: bulk > > > > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Sun, 29 Mar 98 18:14:41 EST >From: Michael McColl >To: cap-l@virginia.edu >Subject: The Personal in Poetics > >While the question of the personal on the list is being discussed, >I thought I might ask about what seems like a contradiction to me: >in the earlier discussion of depression there was quite a bit of >personal disclosure, credit given to those who had made these >disclosures; there was an assumption that personal experience brought >with it a valuable kind of authenticity. The recent discussion is too >fresh to require summing up. My question is this: why is it that when >poetry is discussed the personal often seems in some way proscribed. >Someone spoke of Robert Hass's "embarrassing honesty." Others have >"cringed" at emotional revelations in poetry. Ted Hughe's work (which >I have no interest here in defending) was criticized for employing > >language as a transparent medium, and for being based on the self >as unitary rather than perfomative.(Now, the selves who suffered from >depression did not sound performative to me, but I might be trying >to grasp this on the wrong register.) But I gather that the prevailing >poetics of this list would seem to rule out most of what has been termed >"personal" as being unacceptable in poetry. If scores of examples to >the contrary spring to everyone's mind, that's fine. My question is >typed here without a great deal of planning--that's how I use email. >I'm not trying to be airtight in any kind of logic. In any case, I >would like to get some takes on the way the personal appears or doesn't > > > >appear in most experimental poetry, and why. > >Mike McColl > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 01:41:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children, crusades In-Reply-To: <199803300612.XAA29196@cor.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Linda-- Thanks for clarifying your earlier post-- My response was not meant to be polemical--I was just having trouble reading your tone-- (I think both you and Rachel sometimes use a kind of happy-go-lucky light tone when speaking of "serious" matters--I, of course, have no sense of humor whatsoever!)-- --- I myself wish to clarify something as well-- I don't think I'm on any kind of crusade. And I'm not "calling for more writing and publishing by women." Rather, I feel that if a woman (or man or whoever) WANTS to write, or WANTS to publish, then they shouldn't feel that their gender is a hinderance to this-- In other words, if someone wants to keep their writing private, that's their decision. But if they are "afraid" to show their work to others--or to write that work in the first place--because they are intimidated by a real or imagined response to their gender, then that's lame. That's all I'm saying. --- Also: as to the persistent insistence that discourse IS reality--that I'm trying to draw some sort of false distinction between the "real" and the "discursive"-- (I mean gee, I've done my homework--read Derrida, Foucualt, etc....) I feel that there is a point at which discursivity as a descriptive term loses its edge-- In other words--when terrible events happen, I don't always feel that it's helpful to speak of discourse. The reason for this is that dicourse is by nature rhetorical--and rhetoric can be abused. If someone is raped, for instance, I find it risky to speak in terms of larger discourses as they lead up to or away from this event (I believe in events). If discourse is foregrounded here, then I think it detracts from the ontological immediacy of what happened. Call me a phenomenologist, but whatever.... To say that "everything is discourse" in my view is like saying that "everything is fate"--or "love"--or "truth"--or "terrific." It doesn't help me out in a jam-- --- I like your characterization of Rachel as, perhaps, a creature not wanting to be "perceived"--I like that a lot. Rachel? Yours, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 08:46:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Beth Joselow Subject: writing and family Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Brava to Nada Gordon for her lucid post(s) and her fiercely rooted stance. As much as I am aware of gender limits, and have worked to defeat them, I must say that family is not necessarily one of these. I have raised three kids for the past 24 years and have written and published all that while. During some of that time I was single. My model was my father, who said to me many times when he saw me writing as a child, "don't do what I have done-- don't ever find an excuse for NOT writing. You do not need a perfect place or a perfect condition." His "excuse" had been that he had to make a living for his family. Yes, it's difficult to find time, money, space to write. For all of us. ***----***----***----***---- Say It With Words Beth Joselow bjoselow@cais.com voice: 202/966-5998 fax: 202/364-5349 2927 Tilden Street NW Washington DC 20008 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 09:20:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: muse margin(-)aliasalia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit now here's a term to sink our teeth into, even more innuendo than experimental, I always thought marginal meant: undiscovered, too weird to be the real thing, outside the status politic, or perhaps subtextual to the "real" discourse. but then, come to thinnkk of it, some of my best writing, is the writing in the margins....or I picture books that only have text printed in the margins, with the "page" left bare. misha apostrophe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:39:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Michael J. Kelleher" Subject: Reading Comments: To: "core-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------6A8B970A293A97B82D62490F" --------------6A8B970A293A97B82D62490F Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit just buffalo Writers at Work Series presents Ted Pearson & Elaine Equi Sunday, April 5 @ 2 p.m. at Hallwall's 2495 Main St. Buffalo --------------6A8B970A293A97B82D62490F Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit just buffalo
Writers at Work Series
presents

Ted Pearson
&
Elaine Equi

Sunday, April 5 @ 2 p.m.

at Hallwall's
2495 Main St.
Buffalo --------------6A8B970A293A97B82D62490F-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:39:46 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Katy: Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I hope you are right that experimental writing is having the influence that you say it is. All I know is that it isn't on the shelves around here. Nor were people taking it seriously when I was getting my MFA. As for whether class is a clumsy term, certainly. In a zillion ways. However, I do think that it effects the actual look of certain poems. And gender may as well, but aside from sort of dull historical studies that I've read, I don't see this currently. I don't "see" it and would like to have it pointed out because I like a number of women writers and often don't understand them. Part of the allure. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:48:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Linda: Yes, if you spoke to me of how being a woman effects your poetry you would be answering my questions. As for your various successes in finding my "narratives" I can only say that while I agree whole-heartedly that I used that language, I was doing so because I think those narratives are practiced, played out. Is all. Perhaps not by anyone on this list. But I certainly wasn't trying to accuse everyone of having an agenda. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:13:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children In-Reply-To: <8c19f675.351fbeb4@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm going to go out on a limb here--as per what seems like a popular request--and talk about how I think being a women has affected my actual poems--and my poetic practices. I don't think that there is much that could in any way be called "essential" about "women's" poetry-- I think that most perceived differences are the result of cultural factors--not "natural" ones per se. I do think, though, that a good place to start is with something that Alice Notley said in an essay Anselm Berrigan posted to this list two weeks ago. In that essay, entitled "The Poetics of Disobedience," Alice pointed out (and in a way more forceful than I can do here) that there does in fact seem to be a strange absence of pregrnant bodies and babies in poetry-- Has anyone else ever noticed this? Again, this is primarily cultural--why is poetry about babies and pregnancy taken less seriously than poetry about kings and drinking and thinking and history? This is just one example--but it does seem to be question that arises only when more women begin to write. I'm not saying this is essential to women's writing--it is, rather, discursive, in my view. So what about the discourse of poetry makes poems about babies and ruffles seem garrish or precious? What about the discourse of poetry discourages what Tannen characterizes as women's more cooperative mode of conversation. As in: there are a lot of ways to talk about the connection between actual poetry and the creatures who write it (male or female) without essentializing..... I have been trained to avoid the passive in writing. I have been trained to avoid the precious in writing. I have been trained to appreciate a tradition comprised of, like, all men. This doesn't mean that all of the history of poetry is "by nature" male or masculinist, but it does seem to present some historical problems such as "no babies" "no pregnancies" "no physical births"-- It also may have something to do with the injunction against passive writing. It also may have something to do with the notion that great writers are also great "thinkers"-- That a great poet is someone like Olsen or Ginsburg or O'Hara--people who led very peripatetic lives. The traditional model seems to privelege the wandering poet--the unattached poet--the drunken poet? I think that being a female writer, at least for me, has forced me to call this model into question. These sorts of narratives, in my view, are what at least I'm talking about when I claim a connection between being a woman and the writing I produce as such. I'm not saying,"gee, I'm flush with female hormones, so I must then write, like, fluffy things" or something. I'm simply saying that there is a connection between female narratives and at least my poetry. Yours, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:26:43 -0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sarah venart Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 28 Mar 1998 to 29 Mar 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In repsonse to Mr. Don Byrd 's comment: "I was out of town for a couple of weeks and was set to nomail. I have been back now for a week. I'll admit I have found the discussions extraordinarily dreary. The "issues" have been of the kind that inevitably, perhaps necessarily, evoke _prescribed_ responses. It is not a personal fault: to engage them at all is to assume a stereotyped posture: bad-ass renegade, enforcer of righteousness, weak-kneed liberal; I am dangerously close to being a pretentious voice of community good-sense, etc." 1. First of all, there was nothing presecribed in last weeks responses. I resent that, because I was one of those responses. There were no sereotypes, only individuals repsonding. Maybe you group people under labels, but I try not to. Awwwwwww.... maybe you felt left out? 2. I am on the list, have spoken once (sigh....no one said much except for some snide commentsabout a pot holder in a printer, which promptly shut me down) however, after yesterday's comments about the dreariness of the last week of posts, I am likely pot-boiling, not pot holding. Comments such as these are just so depressing when I was actually enjoying what I was reading -- so many interesting stories and attitudes (the woman who built a room in her own back yard, the "woman-in-court" jury story that I felt was contentious and the responses to which were varied and assertively 'male-trying-to-be-pro-feminist-and-angry-for-not-being-praised-as-such' (this is just my take, but I am not condemining so much as commenting that I was enjoying the different view points... good thinking material all in all). What does Mr. Byrd's comment about not writing what has already been written say about anything really? Everything has been said, we only make it different by bringing anything -- criticism, poetry, art -- into our lives and illuminating it and MAKING IT NEW through our own individual take on... whatever. (I am typing madly before running off to class, so please forgive any errors, grammatical or othewise). 2. Now this sort of sweeping generalization about the posts, along with that terrible series of percentages on female vs male vilence were just... sigh... what am I doing tapping into this unpoetic... oh I don't know... agrh! (There! a 'shrill' uncontolled woman fer you!). So I am signing off from Canada now. And Mr. Byrd: Plougshares, not pens (penises?... sorry , I couldn't resist), are the answer -- sorry, but most people don't have time to sit atop a wordsworthian hill and spout poetry in third world counties -- I don't even have enought time to do it! Sarah Venart Concordia University Montreal, Canada ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:22:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children Comments: To: SSSCHAEFER In-Reply-To: <9d177973.351fbcc4@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >All I know is that it isn't on the shelves around here. but this is a limited measure, referring only (really) to money and hardly fit to determine a poetry's character; you'd not find Lyly, Akenside, Young, Campion, Thomson, Bowles, Churchill, Cibber, Waller or even Skelton or Bunting on many shelves, this is not by any significant necessity a measure of their marginality, it just depends whether you're in the know and if so which knows it is you're in. Thomson eg was the most popular and well-read poet of his age. There are qualities in verse which can be internally perfected even while socially latent; not every characteristic depends on discovery in order to matter. not being on the shelves is, I think, too readily a keyphrase to a vaguely leftist fetishism, the default arousal of which serves principally to obscure real differences and commitments. Maybe. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:18:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael McColl Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Subject: Re: muse margin(-)aliasalia In-Reply-To: <351F63EE.74D1@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT On Mon, 30 Mar 1998 09:20:56 +0000 Miekal And said: >now here's a term to sink our teeth into, even more innuendo than >experimental, I always thought marginal meant: undiscovered, too weird >to be the real thing, outside the status politic, or perhaps subtextual >to the "real" discourse. but then, come to thinnkk of it, some of my >best writing, is the writing in the margins....or I picture books that >only have text printed in the margins, with the "page" left bare. > > >misha apostrophe In art I'm a miniature abstractionist (my hands are normal size though) and when I'm reading and need to mark one of those "good points," all that really matters to me is the margin being just the right size, and the paper the right texture for the pen I'm holding. But when I cut the page out of Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play" to frame and show and get famous, anxiety rose, and that night my blankets were cold crackling paper. Preserved within a biography of Theodore Roethke are my best works of the year 1985 (this for the catalog essay). And my hands are warm and wet with newspaper ink, my language transparent. MM ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:30:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: disobedience (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Originally posted by Anselm Berrigan: This is a paper/essay given recently at a British poetry conference by Alice Notley upon being asked to write on her poetics. I think it carries some threads relevant to topics discussed recently: The Poetics of Disobedience by Alice Notley For a long time I've seen my job as bound up with the necessity of non-compliance with pressures, dictates, atmospheres of, variously, poetic factions, society at large, my own poetic practices as well. For a long time -- well in fact since the beginning, since I learned how to be a poet inside the more rebellious more outlawish wing of poetry; though learning itself meant a kind of obedience, so like most words the Dis words, the Dis form, cannot be worshipped either -- and that would be an obedience anyway. I've spoken in other places of the problems, too, of subjects that hadn't been broached much in poetry and how it seemed one had to disobey the past and the practices of literary males in order to talk aboutwhat was going on most literarily around one, the pregnant body, and babies for examples. There were no babies in poetry then. How could that have been? What are we leaving out now? Usually what's exactly in front of the eyes ears nose and mouth, in front of the mind, but it seems as if one must disobey everyone else in order to see at all. This is a persistent feeling in a poet but staying alert to all the ways that one is coerced into denying experience, sense and reason is a huge task. I recently completed a very long poem called Disobedience but I didn't realize that disobeying was what I was doing, what perhaps I'd always been doing until the beginning of the end of it, thought the tone throughout was one of rejection of everything I was supposed to be or to affirm, all the poetries all the groups the clothes the gangs the governments the feelings and reasons. I seem to start with my poem The Descent Of Alette these days, whatever it is that I am now seems to start there. It was for me an immense act of rebellion against dominant social forces, against the fragmented forms of modern poetry, against the way a poem was supposed to look according to both past and contemporary practice. It begins in pieces and ends whole, narrated by an I who doesn't know her name and whose name when she finds it means appendage of a male name; her important name is I. I stand with this, and with the urgency that saying I creates, a facing up to sheer presence, death and responsibility, the potential for blowing away all the gauze. In two subsequent narrative poem/proses, Close to me...& Closer (The Language of Heaven) and Desamere I felt myself pushing against ideas of reality as soley what's visible and in what shapes and colors it's said to be visible, against the idea that religion is solely an organized affair, against the pervasive idea that one must not protest what everyone else has named the Actual -- how can you fight Reality? -- against the psychology of belonging, of aiding and abetting. Desamere especially is about not wanting to belong and the process of cesing to belong to the extent that's possible. All three of thoseworks are characterized by emphatic though variable metrical patterns, in the prose as well as the poetry parts; two are very quirky as to physical presentation; all three have narratives that tend to the fabular. In a book that will soon be published, Mysteries of Small Houses, I was firstly trying to realize the first person singular as fully and nakedly as possible, saying "I" in such a way as to make myself really nervous, really blowing away the gauze and making myself too scared of life and death to care what anyone thought of me or what I was going to say. Saying I in that way I tried to trace that I's path through my past. In a more subsidiary way I decided to go against my own sense that certain styles and forms I'd participated in formerly might be used up, that autobiography was, that the personal-sounding I (as opposed to the fictional I) might be, against the rumor that there's no self, though I've never understood that word very well and how people use it now in any of the camps that use it pro or con -- I guess I partly wrote Mysteries in order to understand it better. I came to the conclusion, in the final poem of the book, that self means 'I' and also means 'poverty,' it's what one strips down to, who you are when you've stripped down. It's possible that my biggest act of disobedience has consistently, since I was an adolescent, been agianst the idea that all truth comes from books, relaly other people's books. I hate the fact that whatever I say or wrote, someone reading or listening will try to find something out of their reading I "sound like". 'You sound just like...' 'you remind me of...' 'have you read...?' I read all the time and I often believe what I read while I'm reading it, especially if it's some trashy story; intense involvement in theories as well as stories seems difficult without temporary belief, but then it burns out. I've been trying to train myself for thirty or forty years not to believe anything anyone tells me. Not believing, the, became th crux of Disobedience, which is my most recent completed book. Not believing and telling the truth as it comes up. One of the main elements in the poem is an ongoing fantasy in which the I, who is pretty much I, keeps company and converses with a man very much like the actor Robert Mitchum and that of course is not strictly believable. On the other hand it's fun, and it stands for something a sort of truth, about how we do have stories going on in our consciousness and unconsciousness all the time and about how we're always talking to some "you" mentally. I wouldn't expect you to take this book as the truth, I would expect you to go with it, given that you like to read. I find the act of reading puzzling at the moment, since in a book I've been working on since Disobedience I ask the reader to read despite the fact that I'm not really entertaining the reader or being clear in any of the traditional ways I can think of. I think books may imply a readership that simply likes to read, which may sound obvious but it's something I myself have only just thought of. But back to Disobedience. It asks the reader to read a lot of pages, about 230 A-4 pages in verse, but it's fairly easy to read and it makes a lot of jokes. I't's very feminist but men seem to enjoy it a lot, it possibly contains a rather virile approach to things riding roughshod and shooting at every little duck that seems to pop up. As I implied earlier, Disobedience didn't exactly set out to be disobedient; it set out actually to try to do the kinds of things I'd previously done in differnet poems all in the same poem, that is tell a story, interact with the so-called visible or phenomenal the despised daily, and explore the unconscious. But it got more and more pissed off as it confronted the political from an international vantage, dealt with being awoman in France, turning fifty and being apoet and thus seemingly despised or at least ignored. The title popped up in a dream, a real dream I had towards the end of writing the work, in connection with a comic poet I know: it was the title of his book in the dream and I realized later that there was probably nothing more disobedient than being a comic poet, since no one's ever sure if that's good enough, particularly the academy unless you've been dead since the 14th century or unless you've also written a lot of tragedies. I myself wouldn't want the limitation of being only one kind of poet, but I realize this comic business is something to think about. But more and more as I wrote Disobedience I discovered I couldn't go along, with the government or governments, with radicals and certianly nor conservatives or centrists, with radical poetics and certainly not with other poetics, with other women's feminisms, with any fucking thing at all; belonging to any of it was not only an infringement on my liberty but a veil over clear thinking. It's necessary to maintain a stae of disobedience against...everything. One must remain somehow, though how, open to any subject or form in principle, open to the possibility of liking, open to the possibility of using. I try to maintain no continuous restrictions in my poetics except with regard to particular works, since writing at all means making some sort of choices. But NO DOCTRINES. Rather I tend to maintain a sense that a particular form or sets of rules at a certain point might serve me for a while. Like may writers I feel ambivalentabout words, I know they don't work, I know they aren't it. I don't in the least feel that everything is language. I have a sense that there has been language from the beginning, that it isn't fundamentally an invention. These are contradictory positions but positions are just words. I don't believe that the best poems are just words, I think they're the same as reality; I tend to think reality is poetry, and that that isn't words. But words are one way to get at reality/poetry, what we're in all the time. I think words are among us and everything else, mingling, fusing with, backing off from us and everything else. Since Disobedience I've been working on this other thing which isn't as friendly as Dis is, though it isn't meant to be unfreindly. It's just hard to read, in that you have to decide to sit down and read it word by word giving each word the rhythm and weight it requires. Taht sounds like poetry but this one tends to be long in blowy sentences all down the page. I am going at several ideas at once: one is that the world is intensely telepathic, infused with the past and continual thought of all the living and all the dead. I started out with that idea adn with the idea of a Byzantince church as a sort of head, mine, full of icons and mosaics on ever expanding and shifting walls. But the church or head got bigger and bigger and more and more full of images and words until it expanded into a city. So at the moment, on page one hundred and something, I'm dealing with the idea that there are tow cities or worlds at the same time, an ideal crystalline one and the supposedly real one. Generally I'm neither all the way in one nor the other, though sometimes it seems as if I'm nowhere near the crystal one and its resonable opulence so I start beating hard at all the doors I can find in my mind. Then sometimes it seems as if the supposedly real world just isn't there or here at all though I know if I stop typing and go outside it will get me. This work is also very disobedient, in a way it picks up where Disobedience left off; but it doesn't lecture as much or shake its fist so, is less interested in the so-called real than in denying its existence in fafor of the real real. You can't fly unless you're not on the ground and this one really flies sometimes. I think I conceive of myself as disobeying my readrship a lot. I began the new work in fact denying their existence; it seemed to me I needed most at this point to work on my own existence so I couldn't afford to cater to them if they got in the way of my finding out things. But this is a work of mine, it should be published sometime. I'm now in a predicament I can't get out of, a form I can't manage for the reader, which just keeps leading me on and leading me on. It's predicated on leaving in as much mind fuzz as possible, that is being open to all that it out there in telepathy -- not a very organizeable entity, the entity. Too wordy, too long; and I've allowed in a lot of notions from my dreams again, have allowed odd images to take on the weight of truth; and I'm stubbornly involved again in what you might call mystical conceptions, but aren't those a nono? Except in icky New Age territory, yuck. The reader likes you to tell him/her what he/she already knows in a fmailiar form whether in mainstreamese or avant-gardese, but then there is the individual reader who is often not like that at all, who prefers poems to talking about them and has strange individual experiences with them. That's a very scary idea. It's possible that the reader, or maybe the ideal reader, is a very disobedient person a head/church/city entity her/himself full of soring icons and the words of all the living and all the dead, who sees and listens to it all and never lets on that there's all this beautiful almost undifferentiation inside, everything equal and almost undemarcated in the light of fundamental justice. And poker-faced puts up with the outer forms. As I do a lot of the time but not so much when I'm writing. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:40:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: critters Comments: To: subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII maybe an interesting thread - what -are- the poems about babies, or in which babies figure cameo-wise? They do always seem to be pretty strategic, occasions for abstruser musings as is Coleridge's in 'Frost at Midnight'.. Larkin crapped out a fairly dour bit re: Kingsley Amis' new bairn. Actually Prynne has a few concerns swimming about in his new _For The Monogram_ (BUY), there's a line (if I recall) something like: Lactation adds up to just this, sorted fashion cribs. also in _Her Weasels Wild Returning_ (nicely mentioned in William Fuller's new book), "saving the infant a place ahead in her mission grab to repair both." Doug Oliver's _The Infant and the Pearl_? _Pearl_? There's the narrative in book nine I think it is, in The Prelude, where the young Frenchman dashes into an outlawed pregnancy and attempts to rear the babe as a hermit, a nice scene where he lays his cheek on the mother's breast as she feeds the baby with the other (breast). But this is male-eyed. Aaron the evil moor plus his near-murdered nipper in _Titus Andronicus_. Pregnant women and women with babies are made variously festive in Sade's _Juliette_. Lynch's _Eraserhead_. Mary. And what about nurses? Nannies? There's a strong and fascinating tradition of nurse intervention in drama - Romeo and Juliet, Euripides' _Medea_ and _Hippolytus_, Racine's _Phedre_ (Seneca's Phaedrus), Mary Poppins, k ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:03:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: disobedience (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > The Poetics of Disobedience > by Alice Notley > > For a long time I've seen my job as bound up with the necessity of >non-compliance with pressures, dictates, atmospheres of, variously, poetic >factions, society at large, my own poetic practices as well. I think there is that element in it, to some amount having some effects on all poets. Some of the strands of thought, on that same subject, that I have come upon, run roughly as follows..... Poetry, by its very nature, is always considered to be disobedient, by some. It is often considered, by some, to be irresponsible use of language. Prose, on the other hand, is deemed more business-like in its demands and its declarations. Prose is considered less emotional, even when it makes statements about emotions. Poetry is considered more emotional, even when it is not about emotions. This might be a false perception, but it is a common perception as to the prosaic and the poetic. Emotions are not business-like, not conducive to calculative precision, and that some believe that all emotions ought to be eradicated, tends to transfer the same attitude toward poetics. Particularly towards romantic poetics, as opposed to political or philosophical poetics. Prose tends to follow more clearly defined and definable grammatical and syntactical regulations much more closely. At least it appears to do so, to many, sometimes overly simplistic, viewpoints. The regulations defining what constitutes a proper sentence of prose are relatively easy to communicate compared to the very complicated requirements as to a line of good poetry. Prose viewed as a technical, applied, science, and poetry as an art. Prose tends to be viewed, by some loud voices, as more appropriately pragmatic, whereas poetry is then denied that fundamental characteristic of the word used as short declarative sentence of command and acknowledgement of command. Prose is, to some ways of thinking, more apparently technical, and claims a precision of meaning that it often lacks. Poetry is denied a greater precision of meaning that it often actually has. If prose is a work horse, then poetry is a wild stallion or a wild mare. Prose is viewed as integrative and poetry as dis-integrative. Some tend therefore to associate prose with sanity and poetry with insanity. Prose can be viewed as totalistic and closed, whereas poetry could be viewed as being more anarchic and open. Some see that as dis-favourable. Prose more often follows the line, fills the space from clearly prescribed margin to clearly prescribed margin. Poetry breaks up the space more randomly, and declares itself opposed to such clearly prescribed margins. Poetry often defies punctuation. Some believe that prose tends to be more explicit and so vouchsafes more carefulness in saying, and occults certain ideas that they feel ought never to be spoken of. Poetry, on the other hand, is believed to tend to reveal by means of implication, allusion, and indirectly. While in fact prose might do similarly, and often does, the false perception as to the Luciferian nature of poetry as opposed to prose is a strata in the tradition. More prose tends to maintain the most common usage, for the more common purposes, and therefore is often more conservative. Poetry tends to push a word to the limits of its meaning, and stretch the boundaries of what is sayable. Prose often imposes silence, whereas poetry often gives voice. I am sure there are more and similar observations of various attitudes. Some held as cherished beliefs only by a very few, and some more widely held to as being true, even if many such are purely subjective prejudices.... Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:13:30 -0500 Reply-To: Gabriel Gudding Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: The personal -- A Hx In-Reply-To: <980329.230354.EST.V2139G@VM.TEMPLE.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Responding to McColl's query about the personal in contemporary poetics. There are some, like, pretty clear historical reasons why the personal is no longer in vogue. There are also many more very unclear but slightly discernible and sometimes comprehensible reasons for this -- but as to whether they can be quickly/easily articulated here is another Q. I'll give it a shot. The guy who "started" the first creative writing programs back in the 1920s, Hughes Mearns, insisted that creative writing -- and poetry especially -- was the best means of, as he put it, "transmitting experience" from individual to individual. (See his two books of, I think 1925 and 1929, _Creative Youth_ and _Creative Power_). His assumption (which was basically a misprision of Deweyean social theory) was that we are each an isolato. Certain cultural trends in America toward the end of the 19C had seriously impacted and drasticallly altered the ideas Americans had held about language and civic life, and these, coupled with some poor readig of Dewey, led Mearns to hold some very weird and very interestig ideas. And for reasons that aren't really clear, Mearns gave _poetry_ -- much moreso than prose -- the dubious honor of carrying this cross of the personal (the historical reasons for this are so numerous and many-sided that it, like, makes my head spin). Anyway, the point is that since Mearns (whose progressivist influence on national public education was in many ways as strong as, well, Horace Mann's), the personal in poetry has taken flak for becoming on the one hand Solipsistic (see everybody here from dear old Fred Chappell to, I don't know, the mandarin rantings of Derek Walcott) and on the other Passe (been there, done that, time to move on, let's let Berryman be Berryman and Berrigan be Berrigan -- and the, like, tropes of personal sincerity are exhausted anyway etc etc). So, in the eyes of some, then, "personal," as a historical cultural and poetic contruct has, like, had its day. If you want a nice gloss on Mearns' role in the institutional Hx of "creative writing" in America, read the by now increasingly well-known book by D.G. Myers, _The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880_ (Prentice Hall, 1996). Myers, you may know, is lately a student of Gerald Graff at Northwestern. The book is a drastically pared down version of his diss. Though providing an intellectual history of the creative writing movement is not Myers' explicit intent, he does give a rather left-handed and implicit history of the idea of "personal experience" and American poetics. What there is no doubt about, in tersm of the institutional history, is that the "transfer of experience" (the personalism) was affiliated more closely with poetry than with prose. Certainly the rise of prose poetry, when viewed in this light, looks, from a historian's pt of view, REALLY interesting. So there are some pretty strong historical (cultural and institutional) reasons for it. One upshot we're all familiar with is that Poetry is more and more being considered -- at least by the kinds of poets who subscribe to a list like this -- as (after IA Richards) phatic language. That is to say, like, Empty. Hence maybe here the rise of prose poetry: the attempt to be "realer," less, like, solipsistic etc etc. Dashed off, sorry. Gabriel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:05:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael McColl Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Katy--Belle Waring in Dark Blonde has very explicitly physical stuff about birth--and doctors who fuck up in a shocking way. It's in a kind of documentary mode, though, and *as poetry* would probably be rejected by most people on this list as too traditional. I think the appearance of certain subject matter tends to correlate with a use of language seen as not always problematic in the way it represents the world. Yet had her language been opaque, references cryptic, she oculd not have accomplished a very powerful occupation and domination of cultural space formerly denied to her. I understand the ex- tensive and persuasive rationale(s) for various experimental poetries; I appreciate the rationales and I write the poetry. But I've sometimes disagree with what has seemed like a strict proscription of content understandable in the usual way--as if to say that experimental poetry is the only poetry that has validity, that other uses of language in poetry are inevitably naive and retrograde. Which has seemed odd to me since in discussions of this sort various discourses and language games are used as though they work, at least provisionally or on an ad hoc basis---the way more traditional poetry is also written. MM ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:48:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Query In-Reply-To: <199803301703.MAA24652@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Anyone out there have an address or email for Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge or Arthur Sze? Address preferred, but anything is appreciated. Thanks, Summi ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:13:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: [Fwd: dsanet: No comment (fwd)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------6CF76C7D716B" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6CF76C7D716B Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message is from: Jim Hurd By VERENA DOBNIK .c The Associated Press NEW YORK (March 24) - You've come a long way, comrade. A stylish new edition of ''The Communist Manifesto'' aims to make Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels the latest in radical chic. The slender volume is being republished as a glossy, $13 hardcover for release in New York and London on May Day. The fashionable department store Barneys is thinking about it for a window display. The publisher says the 1848 work speaks to a sense on Wall Street that the party can't go on forever. ''There's a sense of anxiety tied to the millennium. People don't believe things will just carry on, with markets rising forever,'' says Colin Robinson, head of Verso publishers, which is printing 20,000 copies on the 150th anniversary of the manifesto. ''Marx's description of a capitalist system prone to shocks and convulsions captures that mood.'' The revolutionary book, now with a rippling red-flag cover, has become fodder for capitalist fantasy: With a handle attached, the book could make a snazzy accessory to a designer dress, says Simon Doonen, creative director of Barneys on Madison Avenue. One could sashay toward the new millennium, the 19th-century words of Marx and Engels dangling at one's side. Doonan is toying with the idea of featuring the ''Manifesto'' - along with red lipsticks - in the window as ''conceptual art.'' His assistants are looking for the right lipstick - preferably with a Russian-sounding name. With communism gasping around the world, ''it's OK to look at the book as camp,'' he says. Around Wall Street, the very capital of capitalism, the Borders bookstore at the World Trade Center plans to give the book center display in the front of the store. Barnes & Noble will likewise market the ''Manifesto'' at its 483 superstores as ''a storefront feature.'' ''Enough time has passed since the fall of the Iron Curtain so Marxism can again be seen as a utopian philosophy,'' says John Kulka, a Barnes & Noble merchandise manager. The new edition was designed by two trendy, Soviet-born, New York artists known as Komar and Melamid. With crimson end pages and a ribbon marker of the same color, ''it's elegant enough to grace a coffee table,'' Robinson says. That's not quite what its authors had in mind. Written during the Industrial Revolution, the ''Manifesto'' called the working class to arms against the bourgeoisie. The ''Manifesto'' opens with the famous words, ''A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism.'' It predicted that a catastrophic cycle of booms and busts would befall the new free-market system. The 23-page pamphlet was ''the most influential single piece of political writing since the French Revolution,'' historian Eric Hobsbawm, the intellectual guru of Britain's socialists, writes in the introduction to the new, 96-page edition. The Communist Party U.S.A., which is based in New York and claims 25,000 members, could use a little marketing. ''Cool,'' spokeswoman Terrie Albano says. ''It wasn't too long ago when everyone was saying communism was dead. Here it is, resurrected.'' --------------6CF76C7D716B Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from spot.Colorado.EDU [128.138.129.2] by in4.ibm.net id 890775669.78354-1 ; Tue, 24 Mar 1998 21:41:09 +0000 Received: from localhost (andersd@localhost) by spot.Colorado.EDU (8.8.5/8.8.4/CNS-4.1p) with SMTP id OAA01777; Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:40:46 -0700 (MST) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 14:40:46 -0700 (MST) From: ANDERSON DAVID To: frans@sopriswest.com, gwenv@spectralogic.com, klockeb@colorado.edu, kristen@euclid.colorado.edu, levitsk@ibm.net, lykinsg@aol.com, marella.colyvas@eds.com, mesrod@juno.com, RSell56069@aol.com, shelleyt@ucsub.colorado.edu, valenzue@spot.colorado.edu Subject: dsanet: No comment (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 This message is from: Jim Hurd By VERENA DOBNIK .c The Associated Press NEW YORK (March 24) - You've come a long way, comrade. A stylish new edition of ''The Communist Manifesto'' aims to make Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels the latest in radical chic. The slender volume is being republished as a glossy, $13 hardcover for release in New York and London on May Day. The fashionable department store Barneys is thinking about it for a window display. The publisher says the 1848 work speaks to a sense on Wall Street that the party can't go on forever. ''There's a sense of anxiety tied to the millennium. People don't believe things will just carry on, with markets rising forever,'' says Colin Robinson, head of Verso publishers, which is printing 20,000 copies on the 150th anniversary of the manifesto. ''Marx's description of a capitalist system prone to shocks and convulsions captures that mood.'' The revolutionary book, now with a rippling red-flag cover, has become fodder for capitalist fantasy: With a handle attached, the book could make a snazzy accessory to a designer dress, says Simon Doonen, creative director of Barneys on Madison Avenue. One could sashay toward the new millennium, the 19th-century words of Marx and Engels dangling at one's side. Doonan is toying with the idea of featuring the ''Manifesto'' - along with red lipsticks - in the window as ''conceptual art.'' His assistants are looking for the right lipstick - preferably with a Russian-sounding name. With communism gasping around the world, ''it's OK to look at the book as camp,'' he says. Around Wall Street, the very capital of capitalism, the Borders bookstore at the World Trade Center plans to give the book center display in the front of the store. Barnes & Noble will likewise market the ''Manifesto'' at its 483 superstores as ''a storefront feature.'' ''Enough time has passed since the fall of the Iron Curtain so Marxism can again be seen as a utopian philosophy,'' says John Kulka, a Barnes & Noble merchandise manager. The new edition was designed by two trendy, Soviet-born, New York artists known as Komar and Melamid. With crimson end pages and a ribbon marker of the same color, ''it's elegant enough to grace a coffee table,'' Robinson says. That's not quite what its authors had in mind. Written during the Industrial Revolution, the ''Manifesto'' called the working class to arms against the bourgeoisie. The ''Manifesto'' opens with the famous words, ''A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism.'' It predicted that a catastrophic cycle of booms and busts would befall the new free-market system. The 23-page pamphlet was ''the most influential single piece of political writing since the French Revolution,'' historian Eric Hobsbawm, the intellectual guru of Britain's socialists, writes in the introduction to the new, 96-page edition. The Communist Party U.S.A., which is based in New York and claims 25,000 members, could use a little marketing. ''Cool,'' spokeswoman Terrie Albano says. ''It wasn't too long ago when everyone was saying communism was dead. Here it is, resurrected.'' --------------6CF76C7D716B-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:15:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cadaly Subject: Women's Writing Workshop Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I would like more information on the women's writing workshop(s) mentioned: How is the process different from another workshop? Does the "background" subject matter of a writing workshop make a difference? The sex of the participants? The stated "topic" or focus? How is the writing different from another workshop or from feminist writing? Is a women's writing workshop different from a feminist writing workshop? Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com Writing this just made me remember: I took a lot of "lessons" as a kid: they were all single sex. I was in a co-ed school. Just struck me odd: all the sports teams except for cross country were single sex, too, so I guess it's pretty common, co-ed classes, single sex extracirricular activities. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 10:30:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: women/men/communication/cherry blossoms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:01:37 +0900 >From: Nada Gordon >Subject: women/men/communication/cherry blossoms >I hate women's writing workshops -- I have participated in a few and even, >uh, hostessed, one on this side of the Pacific. At workshops like these >the common response to my writing is puzzled silence, "what are you trying >to SAY with this?" or "there are some interesting images here, but I don't >you think you should be more accessible" as if that constituted a response >to the work. Mostly these are pieces that, by language poet standards, >might be considered highly SUBJECTIVE, even THEMATIC or LYRICAL. The kind >of writing that these women's groups seem to sanction, though, is reportage >-- on relationships, childhood memories, life incidents, mostly, without >emphasis on the formal features of the writing, i.e. the poetry. The >responses tend to the "thank you for sharing" *nurturing* *supportive* >variety -- even to writing that, to my torqued-out ear, isn't interesting >at all. This seems to me to be Tannen's cooperative dynamic at its most >nauseating. > >Dodie, is your workshop any different? Or do you take issue with my >description? I could say lots of things here, Nada, but, first of all, my workshop isn't a women's workshop. It's mixed, but basically queer, meaning lots of gay men and women of a variety of pursuasions, though most of the women I know in their 20s claim some sort of bisexuality, if only psychological, like one "straight" woman said to me last week, "I used to have such a crush on Jocelyn Saidenberg." Straight guys have been in the group and worked out very well, but I always interview them first, my main question being, "Can you deal with overt sexual descriptions by gay men and women?" Any straight guy that's willing to sit through descriptions of butt-fucking is usually going to be okay. Many people have taken the workshop because they wanted to work on sex writing in a serious way, writing that they wouldn't feel comfortable taking to a college workshop. Though at the moment, the group is quite tame in that area. I haven't had much of a problem with males dominating the group and I've had very little difficulty creating a warm, sharing, but very productive space with serious feedback, not just compliments. The writing varies from "experimental" to conventional and it's officially a prose workshop. I'm more rigid about it being a prose workshop these days because once I let three young poets in who refused to write prose the whole time they were there and gave off unpleasant vibes that the prose writers were somehow inferior and the whole experience didn't meet their high (read "immature") intellectual standards. That workshop I hated and I haven't allowed any poets in unless they commit to writing prose. Though, actually, one of my people now is bringing in some interesting poetry at times. I try to be non-authoritarian and create a non-competitive environment and everybody gets lots of close readings of their work and people's work improves--like some conceptual "I get it" happens and their approach to language changes. Kevin K. takes the workshop as a student, bringing his own work in each week to be critiqued--he's such an excellent editor, and his giving feedback as another student, not a "teacher," is wonderful. As far as women's workshops go, I don't see why there couldn't be a good one if you had women coming from the same place. I haven't been in a women's workshop since the early 80s, and I had not very good experiences in them. When I first came here I got involved in the Women's Writer's Guild, and the writing responses there were dopey as you describe, but many of the women were quite well off, living in Marin and the East Bay and I'd just moved to San Francisco from Chicago and I was amazed at all these hot tubs I was sitting around naked in discussing feminism and writing, I thought it was just great how all these women writers have hot tubs in their homes. Sadly, I now know no one with a hot tub. The hot tubs are the main thing I miss about no longer being a feminist. I also took Kathleen Fraser's Feminist Poetics class and women's writing workshop at SF State and those were very useful, rigorous, enlightening. When the class ended Kathleen urged the women from the women's workshop to continue a group on their own, which happened. At that point I was still writing poetry and clearly there was a struggle going on between what I wanted to do in writing and formal issues in poetry. I hadn't yet figured out you could write prose without writing short stories. But, as soon as the women's workshop no longer had Kathleen as a facilitator, it turned vicious in its hierarchical reorganization, with the wanna-be language poets (none of which are on the scene any more) at the top, and then the tolerated in-betweens, and me at the bottom. The queen of the workshop told me that I was writing about sex and violence and therefore should go into therapy. I remember yelling back that I wasn't writing about sex and violence. I had sex on page two and violence on page 4--that's not sex and violence! Remember, this was the early 80s, it wasn't yet cool to write about sex and violence and anything narrative was the scum of the earth. I was moved when Johanna Drucker read at Small Press Traffic a couple of weeks ago and she talked about her interest in narrative when she was growing up, how she'd always imagined herself writing huge narrative books. Then she fell in with the Bay Area scene and was told that that wasn't valid, so she developed other strategies in writing. She spoke of how she was still struggling with this "self-censorship." I often wonder the same things about my own work. I see so much competiveness and turf guarding among women writers, it can be very depressing. I think some of the people who are railing about inequalities with men should think about being nicer to the women they know. And this isn't aimed at you, Gordon, I have no idea how you are to the women you know. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:18:56 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Keston: "not being on the shelves" is no less a key phrase than someone saying that at "my" m.f.a. program people are very interested in experimental poetry. I'm surprised to find that there is all this resistance to the notion that outside elite academies, poetry is marginalized, and experimental poetry more so. Is it startling to anyone that here in LA we have these readings sponsored by various national poetry organizations where people like Stephen Dunn are put out as the great poets because "they have a vision of the middle class" as was recently said at a reading here. As always, I'm a little put off by the pedantic tone on this list. Katy: No offense, but no one is askig you or me to make an essentialist argument about what is women's poetry. I think I find it troubling that on this list people tend to try to posture themselves and direct there arguments in pedagogical terms. Which words like "discursive" can be. I'd like to believe that this list was a space where communication could take place with an understanding that it is taking place in a zone or similiar "interpretative community." Very interesting these remark on maternity and the "training" that you recieved. Back to the other note: I still think shelf space counts. When you see people outside the academy looking for a language they can think it and they go to the store and Scalapino is not on the shelf or is buried under 27 volumes of Robert Hass, this has an effect. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:24:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Katy: Did I say thanks for sharing your thoughts on this thread and thanks for posting the artical? I meant to. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:42:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: CAPA Wanted to mention that the CAPA archive produced by Wendy Battin has upgraded the online collected poems of Edwin Honig, which I announced here last year sometime. It's still under construction but more accessible now. Thanks always to Wendy. at: http://capa.conncoll.edu - H. Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:00:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children In-Reply-To: <980330.121923.EST.V2139G@VM.TEMPLE.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hard to know what you're talking about without a sample. At 12:05 PM 3/30/98 EST, you wrote: >Katy--Belle Waring in Dark Blonde has very explicitly physical >stuff about birth--and doctors who fuck up in a shocking way. >It's in a kind of documentary mode, though, and *as poetry* would >probably be rejected by most people on this list as too traditional. >I think the appearance of certain subject matter tends to correlate >with a use of language seen as not always problematic in the way >it represents the world. Yet had her language been opaque, references >cryptic, she oculd not have accomplished a very powerful occupation and >domination of cultural space formerly denied to her. I understand the ex- >tensive and persuasive rationale(s) for various experimental poetries; I >appreciate the rationales and I write the poetry. But I've sometimes > >disagree with what has seemed like a strict proscription of content >understandable in the usual way--as if to say that experimental poetry >is the only poetry that has validity, that other uses of language >in poetry are inevitably naive and retrograde. Which has seemed odd to >me since in discussions of this sort various discourses and language >games are used as though they work, at least provisionally or on an >ad hoc basis---the way more traditional poetry is also written. > >MM > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:06:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: what does Jonesboro have to do with women & poetry & Poetics list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am just getting through reading about six weeks of posts, two days more to go before I'm clear. I am gearing up for a belated contribution on the gender thing. Rachel and Katy--you rock. I was just so glad to read this with all the knee jerk press analysis and no one talking about repression and denial (of the very goods marketed/flaunted all in front of your face). Though perhaps there is some hope via resisitance. Friend Akilah Oliver says that since the activism/press exposure of Nike's repression of labor, Nike sales are down by half. --Rachel Democracy Christina Fairbank Chirot wrote: > > Having written and published a few pieces drawn from real life > experiences of shootings and killings--i.e. happened in my life to people > I knew as well as to me-- > it is not bemusing to regard the killings--they are part of a long > tradition in American life (and art, to be sure)-- > it's easy to say it's just guns--but the hells many endure living > in the usa go beyond simple violence--(remember: Thoreau spoke of "lives > of quiet desperation" lived in silence--violence is what happens when > silence > becomes too much to endure, when one does know how to speak, or if anyone > will listen--) > one of the great moralists of our times, one William S. Burroughs, > has an exceptional passage in Maked Lunch--an out pouring of outrage at > the > spirit of evil which haunts the land-- > millions were killed in this country without guns--drugs, alcohol, > toxic waste dumps, no access to health care, locked up in reservations, > beaten and starved, tortured, lynched, malnutrition, chemical and nuclear > experiments, medical and biological experiments-- > many of my ancestors were killed by a simple method: they were > given disease infected blankets when shipped off their homelands by the us > govt. > there are many interesting studies tracing the origins of this > violence to Puritanism--you can find the flip side of this in some of Jim > Thompson's novels-- > but the desire for purification, and to purge the world of > impurities-- > to know grace (and when you can't be rewarded with riches--why not > with power--over another's life--)-- > Remember Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver: "all my life I've known > loneliness--in cars, on sidewlaks--in bars--loneliness has followed me > everywhere--I'm God's lonely man--" > . . ."Someday a real rain will come . . . " > . . ."You talkin' to me?--Huh?--Then who the f*** are you talkin > to?" > When it's not such a short step from a desire to overcome > intolerable life, or solitude, or silence to being God's lonely man-- > is not this the mission of the righteous? > "Huh?" > --dave baptiste chirot ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:33:29 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Ron and Don MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To have a better sense of Don Byrd's concerns people on the list should read his book, The Poetics of the Common Knowledge. I have recently finished it. The intellectual history he draws on is vast including modernist literature, philosophy, science and technology, and more recent and radical departures such as autopoesis and recursive systems. Its not only an enormously literate and erudite work but for this long time anchorite/student of Western intellectual history it is a tight discourse which draws on fundamental texts and proposes a program of poetics and aesthetics that should be more widely considered and debated.--Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 14:45:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keston Sutherland Subject: Re: margerine Comments: To: SSSCHAEFER In-Reply-To: <81184079.351fe212@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Of course some poetries get good journalism and of course it's usually because they give good journalism, are middle-class (though everything here is) etc, lots of good stuff is not well known (believe me - the academies are no exception, or this one isn't anyhow), BUT: I am trying to look a little more closely at the semiologic range of 'marginal', the politics of literary identity that it incites or that it can potentially incite, the kinds of decision made regarding its values as a description and the implied values of the work so described, the extent to which the term and what it designates have already been appropriated and fetishized commercially, etc. It's not pedantic to attempt thoroughness, it's myopic to arrest one's judgement of a situation with whichever explanation seems most ready to glorify one's status. k ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:55:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Stadard S, "truth," Dodie's wkshps In-Reply-To: <81184079.351fe212@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Standard, Points well-taken. Just to clarify something: I don't mean to say "my" mfa program is any sort of touchstone per se-- It just happens to be the place from which I'm coming from right now. I am, admittedly, pretty academic in my concerns. My father and sister both hold advanced degrees in linguistics and I have led an extremely academic life thus far (which I think will change when I leave this place...). ___ As per the issue of essentialism. I don't think that anyone here is necessarily demanding an essentialist reading of "women's poetry." But I do think that the line between essentialist and historical readings of any "sort" of poetry is all too often blurred. The following quote speaks well to this concern: A truth, it must be admitted, is not easy to recognize, once it has become accepted. Not that there are established truths, but they then become so easily confused with the reality that surrounds them that no other artifice has yet been found to distinguish them from it than to mark them with the sign of the spirit, to pay them homage, to regard them as coming from another world. (Lacan, Ecrits, "The Freudian Thing," p. 120, Norton 1977)-- --- As per the character of Dodie's workshops. I took one of her workshops oh... maybe three years ago. I thought it was really terrific. As she says, there was a lot of variety of all sorts in my particular group--different sexualities, genders, ideas, goals etc... I remember being completely refreshed by it as it was pretty much the first time I had actually encountered "intellectuals" outside of an academic environment. The students and the writing were totally impressive and interesting to me. One friend (a poet, I suppose) brought in sound collages, which were fun to hear. Another woman was working on a very strange novel. I believe (correct me if I remember incorrectly Dodie) that her protagonist was supposed to be ungendered or somehow ambiguous? I remember that her work challenged narrative in a really provocative way. One guy was writing about a kind of nutty gay man who moved through an equally nutty art world--paintings were stolen, blackmail was attempted--all of it happened within a highly sexualized milieu. Kevin K was working on a wonderfully sharp piece-- It treated the AIDS epeidemic with a light yet maccabre sort of humor-- As in: it portrayed its characters as just getting on with things, in spite of but also with a deep regard for the dead who still haunted the SF landscape of the period depicted.... And there was another woman (a regular, I believe) who was writing these strange pieces about a movie critic? (Dodie?)--she was a journalist herself in "real" life..... Anyway--just taking this opportunity to refresh my memory of it-- I thought it was a really productive workshop--and I didn't feel any tension or any sense of competition or disapproval on anyone's part... Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 12:56:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: no guns Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" given the messages, part of whose subject is 'guns' lately, I thought I'd forward the following, which came to me from a Waldorf school my daughter attends. While not necessarily, or usually, supportive of such grand gestures, I have to admit that I'd be amazed if such a thing actually happened. charles _______________________________ ONE DAY IN PEACE, JANUARY 1, 2000. This is a 24-hour concept where no guns are fired anywhere on earth.. including on television. What if, for 24 hours, whosoever happens to be at war on December 31st, 1999, agrees that for one whole day no guns would be fired? The silence would be golden. And what if the television programmers of the world agreed to not air any programming with a violent content? (It would probably be easier to get warring nations to stop firing than it would be to get the world's television programmers to not air violent programming.) At present, this ONE DAY IN PEACE concept is beginning to get further circulation. On April 6, 1997, there were 1000 days until January 1, 2000. This is a thought-wave campaign. Which is to say, the more people who grasp this thought, the more it comes into reality.. One Day In Peace, January 1, 2000..pass it on..expect a miracle. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 14:32:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: iceberg lettuce MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was in Barnes and Nobles and came up with a great book concept: "Ice-berg Lettuce for the Soul: Insipid Anecdotes for a Superficial Age." I welcome all your contributions; we can make a million bucks off this. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:44:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: Stadard S, "truth," Dodie's wkshps In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:55:40 -0600 from On Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:55:40 -0600 k. lederer said: > >The following quote speaks well to this concern: > >A truth, it must be admitted, is not easy to recognize, once it has become >accepted. Not that there are established truths, but they then become so >easily confused with the reality that surrounds them that no other >artifice has yet been found to distinguish them from it than to mark them >with the sign of the spirit, to pay them homage, to regard them as coming >from another world. > >(Lacan, Ecrits, "The Freudian Thing," p. 120, Norton 1977)-- > The other side of the coin, though, comes from Wittgenstein, who wrote that the truth can only be known by standing outside of the world. Lacan, I guess, is speaking as a nominalist. Wittgenstein (if he admits the possibility of such an "outside" perspective), as a realist. This outsider position relates to the "status" of marginality. The broken off splinter reveals the macrocosm. Synecdoche. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:15:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: bay-bee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Keston you must know Williams's White Mule. the baby is terrific, it's one of the great things to read I want chucked in my grave. Here is a poem I wrote a long time ago about a baby: HAPPY BABY In the park in a carriage Dressed like (a little) your mother The sun speaks to you And you talk back So fast the sun says "I'm sorry?" your sister a concerto Scowls over you Smiling Your head leaning this Way and that and thank you for sending at the motel partial opportunity it is lovely looking I will read it as soon as I get some food in me. I had my students write for a solid half hour today and they did rebel, god's wounds! Also in the mail today the Alex Smith Jr. book Bill Luoma mentioned. It is lovely and sad just what I needed today when it is so hot out. I wonder what anybody wants. Hey two of my students are reading at Town Hall in this poet laureate project of read your favorite poem. So have mercy on the project, please. J (happy to be superceded by many Ks) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 17:13:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: iceberg lettuce Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I was in Barnes and Nobles and came up with a great book concept: >"Ice-berg Lettuce for the Soul: Insipid Anecdotes for a Superficial Age." >I welcome all your contributions; we can make a million bucks off this. > >Jonathan Mayhew >Department of Spanish and Portuguese I would only go along with it if the pages decomposed in roughly the way lettuce does. IT would be symbollic of the life expectancy of the current work of art. Imagine pages that change colour slowly, then begin to slime, and rot, right before your very eyes, after the plastic wrapper is taken off and activates a special ingredient within the vacuum pack. You have only three days to read this book...after opening the wrapper. You can extend the keeping qualities to as long as one week,in the vegetable compartment of your household refrigerator. Patents Pending. Trademarks Registered. P.S. This could be bigger than "pet rocks" and sieze a larger market niche if marketed aggressively enough. Can we interest anyone in buying shares in a newly formed corporation ? Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 17:44:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: submission and dominance MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> >>i happen to posses a penis (and i'm almost six foot, and can bench over >>200lbs-- so i'm "manly"), and i balled my eyes out at titanic. for the whole >>last hour and three hours afterward. > >At the risk of levity, balling for four hours during and after a >tear-jerker strikes me as stereotypical male behavior, including the >exaggeration. Don't know what your partner's excuse is. sorry. sorry. "bawling". geesh. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen, if the stars are lit it means there is someone who needs it. It means it is essential that every evening at least one star should ascend over the crest of the building. -vladimir mayakovsky, from "Listen!" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:06:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: no guns In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980330125642.007bc100@theriver.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Charles: If this comes to fruition it's the opportunity we've been waiting for. Let's plan our coup for that date. Catch 'em with their pants (and skirts) down. At 12:56 PM 3/30/98 -0700, you wrote: >given the messages, part of whose subject is 'guns' lately, I thought I'd >forward the following, which came to me from a Waldorf school my daughter >attends. > >While not necessarily, or usually, supportive of such grand gestures, I >have to admit that I'd be amazed if such a thing actually happened. > >charles > >_______________________________ > >ONE DAY IN PEACE, JANUARY 1, 2000. > This is a 24-hour concept where no guns are fired anywhere on earth.. > including on television. What if, for 24 hours, whosoever happens to be at > war on December 31st, 1999, agrees that for one whole day no guns would be > fired? The silence would be golden. > > And what if the television programmers of the world agreed to not air any > programming with a violent content? (It would probably be easier to get > warring nations to stop firing than it would be to get the world's television > programmers to not air violent programming.) > > At present, this ONE DAY IN PEACE concept is beginning to get further > circulation. On April 6, 1997, there were 1000 days until January 1, 2000. > > This is a thought-wave campaign. Which is to say, the more people who grasp > this thought, the more it comes into reality.. > > One Day In Peace, January 1, 2000..pass it on..expect a miracle. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 15:02:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Stadard S, "truth," Dodie's wkshps In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >The following quote speaks well to this concern: > >A truth, it must be admitted, is not easy to recognize, once it has become >accepted. Not that there are established truths, but they then become so >easily confused with the reality that surrounds them that no other >artifice has yet been found to distinguish them from it than to mark them >with the sign of the spirit, to pay them homage, to regard them as coming >from another world. > >(Lacan, Ecrits, "The Freudian Thing," p. 120, Norton 1977)-- > This has been a truism for at least 300 years, but I suppose it's nice of Lacan to remind us. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 19:16:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: no guns Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Charles: If this comes to fruition it's the opportunity we've been waiting >for. Let's plan our coup for that date. Catch 'em with their pants (and >skirts) down. Actually I should have mentionned that guns are much too messy. They are also terribly old fashioned. There have to be better ways. In this final twilight of the 20th century, coming into the 21st century, and progressing beyond Buck Rogers, we ought to be able to kill nearly anything with one single THOUGHT.... So that is what must be so dangerous about poets....They think too much. Sometimes, even worse, they give voice to what they think. After plotting the coup attempt, your next electronic mail arrives and says something to the effect that: For attempting a poetic coup of a listserv your poetic license is revoked for a period not less than five years for each instance of standing out as an individual and recognizable poetic voice....all such sentences to be served consecutively. That's it. Poetic license revoked. No appeal. Simply revoked. --------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 18:39:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Re: Stadard S, "truth," Dodie's wkshps In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19980330150204.00baa9c0@mail.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark-- The gist of this passage may have been a "truism" for 300 years-- But I think you forget the context from which it has been plucked-- As in: Lacan's view of "reality" and its relation to the subject. Yours, Katy On Mon, 30 Mar 1998, Mark Weiss wrote: > > > >The following quote speaks well to this concern: > > > >A truth, it must be admitted, is not easy to recognize, once it has become > >accepted. Not that there are established truths, but they then become so > >easily confused with the reality that surrounds them that no other > >artifice has yet been found to distinguish them from it than to mark them > >with the sign of the spirit, to pay them homage, to regard them as coming > >from another world. > > > >(Lacan, Ecrits, "The Freudian Thing," p. 120, Norton 1977)-- > > > > This has been a truism for at least 300 years, but I suppose it's nice of > Lacan to remind us. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 19:44:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: Chris Funkhouser search MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Does anyone have Chris Funkhouser's e-mail? And if Chris Funkhouse = responds to this, what I actually need is a short bio sent to me c/o the = Poetry Project (tomorrow if possible):=20 poproj@artomatic.com Thanks Marcella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 19:55:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: no guns MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Actually I should have mentionned that guns are much too messy. >They are also terribly old fashioned. There have to be better ways. > >In this final twilight of the 20th century, coming into the 21st century, >and progressing beyond Buck Rogers, we ought to be able to kill nearly >anything with one single THOUGHT.... word?? this is starting to sound like dune. >So that is what must be so dangerous about poets....They think too much. >Sometimes, even worse, they give voice to what they think. which is why: when an autocratic gov takes over the poets are usually among the first killed. tendencies in history are fun, and aparently deadly. jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen, if the stars are lit it means there is someone who needs it. It means it is essential that every evening at least one star should ascend over the crest of the building. -vladimir mayakovsky, from "Listen!" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:30:37 -0500 Reply-To: soaring@ma.ultranet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Wellman Subject: Re: women/men/communication/cherry blossoms MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I thought Dodie's post terrificly important in many ways. Here is where I am on this thread: "stories heal" (I wrote that earlier). Stories also terrify. Even every poet has a story... (whether or not that story gets told, whether or not the poet wants it to leak through the words ... To second how Katty has read Lacan, some of what I mean by story hovers among the words, alongside the "language" that censors as well as constructs how we tell or hear those stories-- one aspect of caring for language is in lending an ear to such stories (stories now from different people, different ethnicities, sexualities ... another picks at the inadequacies and incoherences that a deconstruction reveals Or am I being so "biunivocular" that I should have myself carted away? Don Wellman I never thought this latter care an end in itself--only a way to supplement the first? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:35:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: disobedience (fwd) MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" a problem i see with this is: comformity is impossible. any attempt to comform is done thru your perceptions, etc. and so whatever you are attempting to conform to becomes your own, whether or not you intend that. so: to automatically make some arbitary descision about disbelief or belief (to pre-judge) before you know the ideas and/or arguments of the individual/group will limit your growth as an individual because of the lack of exposure to others due to your closed mind. jeff. >Originally posted by Anselm Berrigan: > > > This is a paper/essay given recently at a British poetry conference >by Alice Notley upon being asked to write on her poetics. I think it carries >some threads relevant to topics discussed recently: > > > > The Poetics of Disobedience > > by Alice Notley > > > For a long time I've seen my job as bound up with the necessity of >non-compliance with pressures, dictates, atmospheres of, variously, poetic >factions, society at large, my own poetic practices as well. For a long time >-- well in fact since the beginning, since I learned how to be a poet inside >the more rebellious more outlawish wing of poetry; though learning itself >meant a kind of obedience, so like most words the Dis words, the Dis form, >cannot be worshipped either -- and that would be an obedience anyway. I've >spoken in other places of the problems, too, of subjects that hadn't been >broached much in poetry and how it seemed one had to disobey the past and >the practices of literary males in order to talk aboutwhat was going on most >literarily around one, the pregnant body, and babies for examples. There >were no babies in poetry then. How could that have been? What are we leaving >out now? Usually what's exactly in front of the eyes ears nose and mouth, in >front of the mind, but it seems as if one must disobey everyone else in >order to see at all. This is a persistent feeling in a poet but staying >alert to all the ways that one is coerced into denying experience, sense and >reason is a huge task. I recently completed a very long poem called >Disobedience but I didn't realize that disobeying was what I was doing, what >perhaps I'd always been doing until the beginning of the end of it, thought >the tone throughout was one of rejection of everything I was supposed to be >or to affirm, all the poetries all the groups the clothes the gangs the >governments the feelings and reasons. > I seem to start with my poem The Descent Of Alette these days, >whatever it is that I am now seems to start there. It was for me an immense >act of rebellion against dominant social forces, against the fragmented >forms of modern poetry, against the way a poem was supposed to look >according to both past and contemporary practice. It begins in pieces and >ends whole, narrated by an I who doesn't know her name and whose name when >she finds it means appendage of a male name; her important name is I. I >stand with this, and with the urgency that saying I creates, a facing up to >sheer presence, death and responsibility, the potential for blowing away all >the gauze. In two subsequent narrative poem/proses, Close to me...& Closer >(The Language of Heaven) and Desamere I felt myself pushing against ideas of >reality as soley what's visible and in what shapes and colors it's said to >be visible, against the idea that religion is solely an organized affair, >against the pervasive idea that one must not protest what everyone else has >named the Actual -- how can you fight Reality? -- against the psychology of >belonging, of aiding and abetting. Desamere especially is about not wanting >to belong and the process of cesing to belong to the extent that's possible. >All three of thoseworks are characterized by emphatic though variable >metrical patterns, in the prose as well as the poetry parts; two are very >quirky as to physical presentation; all three have narratives that tend to >the fabular. > In a book that will soon be published, Mysteries of Small Houses, I >was firstly trying to realize the first person singular as fully and nakedly >as possible, saying "I" in such a way as to make myself really nervous, >really blowing away the gauze and making myself too scared of life and death >to care what anyone thought of me or what I was going to say. Saying I in >that way I tried to trace that I's path through my past. In a more >subsidiary way I decided to go against my own sense that certain styles and >forms I'd participated in formerly might be used up, that autobiography was, >that the personal-sounding I (as opposed to the fictional I) might be, >against the rumor that there's no self, though I've never understood that >word very well and how people use it now in any of the camps that use it pro >or con -- I guess I partly wrote Mysteries in order to understand it better. >I came to the conclusion, in the final poem of the book, that self means 'I' >and also means 'poverty,' it's what one strips down to, who you are when >you've stripped down. > It's possible that my biggest act of disobedience has consistently, >since I was an adolescent, been agianst the idea that all truth comes from >books, relaly other people's books. I hate the fact that whatever I say or >wrote, someone reading or listening will try to find something out of their >reading I "sound like". 'You sound just like...' 'you remind me of...' 'have >you read...?' I read all the time and I often believe what I read while I'm >reading it, especially if it's some trashy story; intense involvement in >theories as well as stories seems difficult without temporary belief, but >then it burns out. I've been trying to train myself for thirty or forty >years not to believe anything anyone tells me. Not believing, the, became th >crux of Disobedience, which is my most recent completed book. Not believing >and telling the truth as it comes up. One of the main elements in the poem >is an ongoing fantasy in which the I, who is pretty much I, keeps company >and converses with a man very much like the actor Robert Mitchum and that of >course is not strictly believable. On the other hand it's fun, and it stands >for something a sort of truth, about how we do have stories going on in our >consciousness and unconsciousness all the time and about how we're always >talking to some "you" mentally. I wouldn't expect you to take this book as >the truth, I would expect you to go with it, given that you like to read. I >find the act of reading puzzling at the moment, since in a book I've been >working on since Disobedience I ask the reader to read despite the fact that >I'm not really entertaining the reader or being clear in any of the >traditional ways I can think of. I think books may imply a readership that >simply likes to read, which may sound obvious but it's something I myself >have only just thought of. But back to Disobedience. It asks the reader to >read a lot of pages, about 230 A-4 pages in verse, but it's fairly easy to >read and it makes a lot of jokes. I't's very feminist but men seem to enjoy >it a lot, it possibly contains a rather virile approach to things riding >roughshod and shooting at every little duck that seems to pop up. As I >implied earlier, Disobedience didn't exactly set out to be disobedient; it >set out actually to try to do the kinds of things I'd previously done in >differnet poems all in the same poem, that is tell a story, interact with >the so-called visible or phenomenal the despised daily, and explore the >unconscious. But it got more and more pissed off as it confronted the >political from an international vantage, dealt with being awoman in France, >turning fifty and being apoet and thus seemingly despised or at least >ignored. The title popped up in a dream, a real dream I had towards the end >of writing the work, in connection with a comic poet I know: it was the >title of his book in the dream and I realized later that there was probably >nothing more disobedient than being a comic poet, since no one's ever sure >if that's good enough, particularly the academy unless you've been dead >since the 14th century or unless you've also written a lot of tragedies. I >myself wouldn't want the limitation of being only one kind of poet, but I >realize this comic business is something to think about. But more and more >as I wrote Disobedience I discovered I couldn't go along, with the >government or governments, with radicals and certianly nor conservatives or >centrists, with radical poetics and certainly not with other poetics, with >other women's feminisms, with any fucking thing at all; belonging to any of >it was not only an infringement on my liberty but a veil over clear thinking. > It's necessary to maintain a stae of disobedience >against...everything. One must remain somehow, though how, open to any >subject or form in principle, open to the possibility of liking, open to the >possibility of using. I try to maintain no continuous restrictions in my >poetics except with regard to particular works, since writing at all means >making some sort of choices. But NO DOCTRINES. Rather I tend to maintain a >sense that a particular form or sets of rules at a certain point might serve >me for a while. Like may writers I feel ambivalentabout words, I know they >don't work, I know they aren't it. I don't in the least feel that everything >is language. I have a sense that there has been language from the beginning, >that it isn't fundamentally an invention. These are contradictory positions >but positions are just words. I don't believe that the best poems are just >words, I think they're the same as reality; I tend to think reality is >poetry, and that that isn't words. But words are one way to get at >reality/poetry, what we're in all the time. I think words are among us and >everything else, mingling, fusing with, backing off from us and everything else. > Since Disobedience I've been working on this other thing which isn't >as friendly as Dis is, though it isn't meant to be unfreindly. It's just >hard to read, in that you have to decide to sit down and read it word by >word giving each word the rhythm and weight it requires. Taht sounds like >poetry but this one tends to be long in blowy sentences all down the page. I >am going at several ideas at once: one is that the world is intensely >telepathic, infused with the past and continual thought of all the living >and all the dead. I started out with that idea adn with the idea of a >Byzantince church as a sort of head, mine, full of icons and mosaics on ever >expanding and shifting walls. But the church or head got bigger and bigger >and more and more full of images and words until it expanded into a city. So >at the moment, on page one hundred and something, I'm dealing with the idea >that there are tow cities or worlds at the same time, an ideal crystalline >one and the supposedly real one. Generally I'm neither all the way in one >nor the other, though sometimes it seems as if I'm nowhere near the crystal >one and its resonable opulence so I start beating hard at all the doors I >can find in my mind. Then sometimes it seems as if the supposedly real world >just isn't there or here at all though I know if I stop typing and go >outside it will get me. This work is also very disobedient, in a way it >picks up where Disobedience left off; but it doesn't lecture as much or >shake its fist so, is less interested in the so-called real than in denying >its existence in fafor of the real real. You can't fly unless you're not on >the ground and this one really flies sometimes. > I think I conceive of myself as disobeying my readrship a lot. I >began the new work in fact denying their existence; it seemed to me I needed >most at this point to work on my own existence so I couldn't afford to cater >to them if they got in the way of my finding out things. But this is a work >of mine, it should be published sometime. I'm now in a predicament I can't >get out of, a form I can't manage for the reader, which just keeps leading >me on and leading me on. It's predicated on leaving in as much mind fuzz as >possible, that is being open to all that it out there in telepathy -- not a >very organizeable entity, the entity. Too wordy, too long; and I've allowed >in a lot of notions from my dreams again, have allowed odd images to take on >the weight of truth; and I'm stubbornly involved again in what you might >call mystical conceptions, but aren't those a nono? Except in icky New Age >territory, yuck. The reader likes you to tell him/her what he/she already >knows in a fmailiar form whether in mainstreamese or avant-gardese, but then >there is the individual reader who is often not like that at all, who >prefers poems to talking about them and has strange individual experiences >with them. That's a very scary idea. It's possible that the reader, or maybe >the ideal reader, is a very disobedient person a head/church/city entity >her/himself full of soring icons and the words of all the living and all the >dead, who sees and listens to it all and never lets on that there's all this >beautiful almost undifferentiation inside, everything equal and almost >undemarcated in the light of fundamental justice. And poker-faced puts up >with the outer forms. As I do a lot of the time but not so much when I'm >writing. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen, if the stars are lit it means there is someone who needs it. It means it is essential that every evening at least one star should ascend over the crest of the building. -vladimir mayakovsky, from "Listen!" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:33:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: more boring chit-chat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Kind of wierd to tune in after a few days and find a thread I found = interesting & provocative getting strangely bogged down?? And what is = this bizarre list of statistics? It reminds me when that study came out = that a woman had about much chance of getting married after--what was = it, 30??--as being captured by a terrorist. Now I feel like I'm helping = to "silence" men who have been abused by their wives and girlfriends, = and I'm sure that such abuse happens, the human race being such as it = is, but I can't believe in greater amounts than women being abused!=20 I feel like I need to defend that there is sexism in the world and back = that up with various stories I have seen, heard and experienced. And it = definitely happens in how we're taught reading and writing, in both the = classroom and out. Although I try to keep myself as sensitized as = possible, doing counts of everything to try and make it 50/50 men/women, = last night I was asked who my biggest influences were. I automatically = reeled off 2 male writers, then had to consciously think, I must now = include 2 women writers. My first impulse was to name men, even though = the women have been just as big influences. When my "affirmative action" = becomes automatic & unconscious, then maybe I won't need to talk about = it so much. However, since this thread started, I've definitely become = more involved with reading the list and feel more comfortable about = responding.=20 Here is one study I vaguely remember reading about: Two groups were = given the same piece of writing but with two different names: one = female, one male. When asked if they thought it was a good piece of = writing, the "female" group said (mostly) no. The "male" group said = (mostly) yes. If anyone has info on this study, I'd like to verify. =20 I think it would be interesting to have a more precise discussion of = gender and poetry--ESPECIALLY experimental poetry. I've disagreed with = Irigaray that women write with their vaginas (but maybe the movement = from pen to keyboard means something ...) But Helene Cixous's theories = on a female language are interesting when applied to experimental = syntax. Perhaps we could talk about Alice Notley's work?=20 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 19:58:39 -0800 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: women/men/communication/cherry blossoms MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nada Gordon wrote: > > One thing that irks me greatly about this list is that it keeps me away > from the cherry blossoms, newly opened and splendid, > > > Hmm, so I guess I do roar. And am boorish sometimes and violent > Ending with questions again: > > > love and cherry blossoms (finally I can get to them) > > From: Beth Joselow > Yes, it's difficult to find time, money, space to write. For all of us. > 2927 Tilden Street NW the cherry blossom is a complicated bloom. with all its social hopes at the tidal basin. tourists and a western rapproachment. global economy. a tea ceremony of geo-political importance in the margins of 'yen' and 'dollar'. I walked up tilden the other day. sleeping in the park, because the park divides. and divisions, distinctions are important. the cop-man told the homeless man with the spotlight in his eye before sunrise that he'd have-ta move on. move on. the cherry blossoms is bluumin'. i love *this* spring. but i prefer that bullshit daffodil. cherry blossoms be damned. photosynthesis and all that civic-life. fake, it seems. love, and boys and girls and things. mc ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 10:55:26 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nada Gordon Subject: to dodie/wmn's wrkshps/my personal story Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dodie Thanks so much for the detailed response. Your workshop sounds great and I wish I could be part of it, although I haven't written narrative (except letters)seriously since I was 18. I began writing fairly normal stories about love betrayals and the like, but found myself bored by their literalness (although they were well-liked by my teacher and felllow students in a fiction workshop I took at Merritt college). I started putting in dream sequences and then cut out the rest of the story; only the dream sequences felt powerful to me. My teacher and classmates were no longer generous in their praise, but seemed befuddled. I wanted to be ambiguous and transcendent of logic and combine words more aurally/physically. That desire could have harked back to my childhood reading and constant rereading of Alice and Rutabaga stories, or my teenage anarchic punk explosions -- I wanted to make poems or stories that somehow reached the same part of my ear and brain. It wasn't until I got to State in 1982 that I was exposed to works that did just that. Doors flew open: Stein; the NY School; various local writers -- especially Carla Harryman. Didn't you give a talk in Kathleen Fraser's Writers on Writing class (I guess I was at State just a little while after you were) at around that time? I have some memory of it, but distant... anyway I also took Kathleen's women's writing workshop; it was one of the workshops I was thinking about when I wrote my post. Jessica Grim was in that workshop (although she had not taken the turn into language writing yet) and so was Colette Lafia -- both, along with Lori Lubeski, later became my writing comrades. I remember bringing in about four pages of writing that was a rush of language -- prose (maybe the combined influences of Silliman, Hejinian & Rodefer), and after I read it, that puzzled silence. Kathleen said something about how more and more of her students were writing "like this." I felt characterized but not attended to, as if she was not looking at the writing I had done but was instead categorizing it. It seemed a politicized categorization, like there was some kind of polemic lurking under her words. I don't remember the reactions of the other participants but I remember feeling unsatisfied. Maybe they didn't have techniques for responding to writing "like that" -- writing like wind, writing from the ear, not trying to make anything whole or tell a story or make a point. The other women's workshop I was thinking of was one I started here in an attempt to forge some community. The thing about being an expat is that you can't be too picky about who you let in; the potential participants are limited. Almost none of the women identified themselves as writers, although they wrote a little or wanted to write. Our sessions were most interesting when we actually spent some time writing together (but not collaboratively) in them. Otherwise, mostly "dopey" responses. As you wrote, though, >>As far as women's workshops go, I don't see why there couldn't be a good >>one if you had women coming from the same place It's just that, in Tokyo, people writing in English never come from the same place, geographically or otherwise. It's a great place for hot tubs though -- almost as good as Marin. >I also took Kathleen Fraser's Feminist Poetics class and women's writing >workshop at SF State and those were very useful, rigorous, enlightening. >When the class ended Kathleen urged the women from the women's workshop to >continue a group on their own, which happened. At that point I was still >writing poetry and clearly there was a struggle going on between what I >wanted to do in writing and formal issues in poetry. I hadn't yet figured >out you could write prose without writing short stories. But, as soon as >the women's workshop no longer had Kathleen as a facilitator, it turned >vicious in its hierarchical reorganization, with the wanna-be language >poets (none of which are on the scene any more) at the top, and then the >tolerated in-betweens, and me at the bottom. The queen of the workshop >told me that I was writing about sex and violence and therefore should go >into therapy. I remember yelling back that I wasn't writing about sex and >violence. I had sex on page two and violence on page 4--that's not sex and >violence! Remember, this was the early 80s, it wasn't yet cool to write >about sex and violence and anything narrative was the scum of the earth. Was it? In your crowd there were people doing such amazing things -- Bruce Boone, Bob Gluck, Michael Amnasan. You all seemed pretty cool to me. That's too bad about the bossy wanna-be-langpos. I don't deny that part of the real langpos' attractiveness as a group was their power -- I've said so before on this list. I always wanted to be powerful (in my childhood I fantasized about being a rock star -- I really wanted to *be* --not *marry*-- John Lennon & Roger Daltrey -- does this make me male-identified? I never dreamed about being, say, Carole King) and still have to work hard to control my arrogance -- or I use it in my writing (i.e. my old booklet, Rodomontade, which means "boastful, bragging speech"). I think it's the flip side of the chutzpah a writer or a teacher or a performer needs to assume (even if it's an act) in order to do her work -- I would guess that you understand that. Living in Japan for a decade *has* made me see the virtue of having a little bit of humility -- I guess now I'd like to be a kind of combination of Maria Callas and Lao Tsu. I'm pretty sure Kathleen picked up on my arrogance -- Lori, Jessica, Colette & I took an independent study course with her -- it was great -- she'd read aloud sections of The Tale of Genji or Remembrance of Things Past and we'd write as she read -- but I'm sure I was snotty sometimes and remember hearing that she'd mentioned to someone that as a group we were "difficult." At that time, I would have considered that a compliment -- remember I came to writing fresh out of punk rock. >I was moved when Johanna Drucker read at Small Press Traffic a couple of >weeks ago and she talked about her interest in narrative when she was >growing up, how she'd always imagined herself writing huge narrative books. >Then she fell in with the Bay Area scene and was told that that wasn't >valid, so she developed other strategies in writing. She spoke of how she >was still struggling with this "self-censorship." I often wonder the same >things about my own work. Yes, me too. I never send work out partly for this reason, and I don't write nearly enough. One thing that annoys me about my writing is its obsession with gender in its content. Why should that annoy me? Noting this obsession, I called a manuscript "A Gender" (think of a midwestern farmer saying agenda) and then later changed it to "Foriegnn Bodie", which still seems annoyingly topical. >I see so much competiveness and turf guarding among women writers, it can >be very depressing. Really? Like what? I don't remember that being the case -- and now I'm too far away to know about it. I think some of the people who are railing about >inequalities with men should think about being nicer to the women they >know. And this isn't aimed at you, Gordon, I have no idea how you are to >the women you know. It depends on the women, I guess. I only know a couple women writers here, and they have poetics very different from mine. Remember I only see the USA women writers I know *at most* once a year. And I LOVE them: Andrea Hollowell (who was here with me for two years), Lori Lubeski, Pat Reed, Lee Ann Brown, Julie Reagan, Norma Cole, Carla Harryman ... all brilliant and inspiring. OK, cherry blossoms calling again. I have only a few days left in my spring vacation before I start teaching and I no longer have time to write long posts like this. --nada ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 18:20:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: the shelf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as far as poetry being on the shelves of bookstores, this largely depends on the education of the book buyer. When i was managing the hardcover department of a large bookstore in boston, the publishers reps would come in and show me the new jackets of books about to be published, often they'd skip right over the new poetry releases thinking they were published solely for libraries, one time I'm staring at the jacket of Pablo Neruda's latest and the guy turns the page saying: that's poetry i won't waste your time. Of course i said: back up that guy's going to win the nobel prize. So it's a struggle even to get the giants on the shelf. one thing poets and readers might do is conscientiously request their libraries order every book they're interested in reading whether they've already bought it or not, it only takes a few minutes and they won't order every one you ask for but if you don't request you'll never get and if they only order ten percent that's five or ten books that wouldn't have been there and are now available to thousands of readers, sometimes it helps to lie, tell them in Minneapolis and Alberquerque both that Alice Notely is a local writer, that Katy Lederer, the editor of this dynamite mag, Explosive, just moved down the street from the library in Dubuque. You're poets, you've got imaginations, get out there and fabricate, it's your future you're creating. Epiphany (for Matthew Ezra) One of the reasons i still have the affections of my handsome and intelligent child now twenty seven years old is that i stopped smoking 27 years and 8 mos ago enabling him to be 100% cuter and 3 times as smart as his IMProv/Ident dad enabling his dad to have the stamina to sing to the squalling babe 3 am rock him in my arms my voice enCHANTing him soothing him lulling him sweetening his dreams irritating his mother no end she needed her sleep she went to work in the morning working at home--parenting and writing cooking, cleaning, shopping, many mornings i'd push him in his stroller to the county art museum to the farmers market along The Walk of The Stars past Gruman's Chinese to the newstand at Hollywood and Vine Sunset Boulevard, LaBrea Tar Pits, the Miracle Mile and i love him and never miss a chance to tell him so and his children are cuter and smarter than both of us billy little ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 22:16:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: Stadard S, "truth," Dodie's wkshps In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>A truth, it must be admitted, is not easy to recognize, once it has become >>accepted. Not that there are established truths, but they then become so >>easily confused with the reality that surrounds them that no other >>artifice has yet been found to distinguish them from it than to mark them >>with the sign of the spirit, to pay them homage, to regard them as coming >>from another world. >> >>(Lacan, Ecrits, "The Freudian Thing," p. 120, Norton 1977)-- >> > >The other side of the coin, though, comes from Wittgenstein, who wrote that >the truth can only be known by standing outside of the world. Lacan, I guess, >is speaking as a nominalist. Wittgenstein (if he admits the possibility of >such an "outside" perspective), as a realist. This outsider position relates >to the "status" of marginality. The broken off splinter reveals the >macrocosm. Synecdoche. Which is complicated all the more by the "fact" that besides those who have achieved life after death or (the) God(s)ess(es) there is no true outsider position. Particularly in the U.S., where the 'culture', at least the mass marketed one(s), saturate the geography of our lives, there is no way to be completely apart from the world. There is a certain blindness one develops to things and a certain apriorizing (pardon the word creation) that occurs in the process of negotiating the days. Tim ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 22:51:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881 Subject: Re: re : unsubscribe poetics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Don Byrd wrote: <> Don, thanks for the warning. Personally, I'm more worried about tsunamis and all the nuclear weapons stockpiled here on oahu. But one of your old students dug rothschild is spreading the notion that allegorical subtext of the movie titanic, ie. a supposedly unsinkable ship that sinks, is about the "immanent" crash of the stock market. I'm not sure if he made up the allegory or he got it from you or you planted that kind of thinking in his head. ?? Joe Amato, you being a student of Don's, don't have this titanic vision do you? Best, Bill Luoma ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 21:30:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: more boring chit-chat Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Marcella: Yes, this is what I'd like to hear talked about. In a message dated 98-03-30 20:37:31 EST, you write: << think it would be interesting to have a more precise discussion of gender and poetry--ESPECIALLY experimental poetry. I've disagreed with Irigaray that women write with their vaginas (but maybe the movement from pen to keyboard means something ...) But Helene Cixous's theories on a female language are interesting when applied to experimental syntax. Perhaps we could talk about Alice Notley's work? >> ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:12:41 -0800 Reply-To: ttheatre@sirius.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen and Trevor Organization: Tea Theatre Subject: kelsey st press (women in publishing) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kelsey St. Press published Laynie Browne's _Rebecca Letters_ as well as Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's _Sphericity_ (someone last week said it was published by Bridge St Press). Also, we have published Mei-mei's _Endocrinology_ with drawings by Kiki Smith, and are working on Mei-mei's next book. Susan Gerwirtz is also being published this year. Please visit our updated website- www.sirius.com/~kelseyst/ Karen McKevitt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 21:22:15 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: prunus Comments: To: mcx@bellatlantic.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit michael corbin wrote: > the cherry blossom is a complicated bloom. with all its social hopes at > the tidal basin. tourists and a western rapproachment. global economy. a > tea ceremony of geo-political importance in the margins of 'yen' and > 'dollar'. > > the cherry blossoms is bluumin'. > > i love *this* spring. but i prefer that bullshit daffodil. cherry > blossoms be damned. photosynthesis and all that civic-life. fake, it in the hardscrabble of the corncow frontier, the cherry trees of dreamtime are just budding, even too early for this asyntactic quick spring--growing sand cherries & nanking cherries & korean cherries & pie cherries & black cherries & chokecherries & bird cherries. a long way from the cameras & tourists & the money that makes them smell so good...and the damned cherry gets planted more every year... ezra farmhand deluxe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 23:30:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: nanostep Subject: recommendations sought - poets' theatre Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi folks, I put on a literary and arts radio program here in Los Angeles and have been wanting to produce a "poets' theatre" piece, but have had trouble locating anything suitable. You're help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Christine Palma ___________________________________ needle: christine@drumandbass.com static: kxlu los angeles . 88.9 fm . saturday evenings . 8 to 9 pm echo in the sense . contemporary authors . poets . artists 28 mar . poet david trinidad ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 04:19:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Hilda Morley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From The New York Times, March 27 Hilda Morley, 81; Wrote Poetry Shaped by Abstract Expressionism By WOLFGANG SAXON Hilda Morley, an American poet who gained wide recognition late in life, decades after she first published her imagist free verse, died on Monday at Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London. A former resident of Sag Harbor, N.Y., she was 81 and had moved to London last year to continue work on a biography of her late husband, the avant-garde composer Stefan Wolpe. The cause was liver failure after a fall at home, said a spokeswoman for her publisher, Moyer Bell. Ms. Morley published five books of poetry in which she articulated emotions and feelings in free verse, but a type of verse as measured as dance or music. She was a "master of that ability," Robert Creeley, a fellow poet, said. She wrote that her poetry was shaped by the visions of Abstract Expressionism, which can create metamorphoses. Artists like Klee and Picasso, she said, gave her the means to create word canvases depicting the world around her. Born Hilda Auerbach in Manhattan, Ms. Morley considered herself an inhabitant of the world. She was educated in New York, Haifa (in what was then known as Palestine), London and at Wellesley College, Ohio State University and New York University. Along the way she taught English at a private school in England and at Walden School in New York, where she also worked as a researcher for the Zionist Youth Commission and as a Hebrew translator for the Office of War Information. Starting in the 1940's, she intermittently lectured at Rutgers University. After her marriage in 1952, she taught English literature at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Once recognized as a poet, she took academic assignments, lecturing, leading poetry workshops and judging poetry. She was a resident poet at Northeast Missouri University in 1992. Ms. Morley is survived by a stepdaughter, Katherina Wolpe of London. The first collection of her previously published poetry was _A Blessing Outside Us_ (1976). It was followed by three others that remain in print: _What Are Winds & What Are Waters_ (1993), _To Hold in My Hand: Selected Poems, 1955-83_ (1984) and _Cloudless at First_ (1988). Her final collection was _The Turning_, which has just been published. It includes "Fiesta, Ibiza," her evocation of a place she savored: Warm crystal of my little city; the fishes swim over the bay, rooftops swooping with light, the wreaths & garlands bursting gently in night's element, the sunlit branches exploding softly, the sea baring its lights burning the unshadowed joys Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 08:16:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: *you're never a latent anything MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jeff your response to Alice Notley's essay reminds me of a line from Notley's book _How Spring Comes_. She says that one is never a latent anything because one is always living and experiencing. Maybe someone with the book can correct that? Anyway in re conformity take away the smog from the word and you have the problem. Speaking to someone in a recognizable way is conforming, no? not speaking just drives people mad with wanting to know what you're thinking, and speaking unrecognizably, well it's ok for art in bursts. This time it's different, right? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 08:48:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Loss Pequen~o Glazier" Subject: Note for Hilda Morley Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bob Creeley's Note for Hilda Morley is now up at the EPC. It's available from the EPC home page and also from http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/creeley/morley.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 08:02:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Guns, gender, children, crusades, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just want to say, as someone who got a little behind reading my digests, that all the new names talking like mad here are great to have present & accounted for. That many are women not heard here that often is also terrific. But it's just that there have been a number of interesting & provocative threads recently, & that's a good thing. But, however erratic the approaches, surely everything we say is personal in some way? Even as it might also register resistance to 'just being personal, eh?' It's the ways in which such a contra/diction plays itself out, like maybe in Nada's neat penis poem, or the various posts about writing & being, that hold our (or my) attention. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the year the old ones, the old great ones leave us alone on the road. Denise Levertov ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 09:02:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Chris Funkhouser search funkhouser@admin.njit.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 08:04:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Dowker Subject: The Alterran Poetry Assemblage - #3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ANNOUNCING: the third installment of (((((((((THE ALTERRAN POETRY ASSEMBLAGE))))))))) Featuring: Adam Cornford, Karen Kelley, Craig Watson, Christina Thompson, Andrew Joron, Lissa Wolsak, Laynie Browne, Lisa Samuels, Gary Sullivan, Virginia Hooper, Spencer Selby, Erin Moure, Lisa Jarnot, William Fuller, Kristin Prevallet, David Dowker. alterra@ican.net http://home.ican.net/~alterra/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 10:33:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: more boring chit-chat In-Reply-To: <01BD5C1B.1FD0EC60@dd73-035.dub.compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 30 Mar 1998, Marcella Durand wrote: > Kind of wierd to tune in after a few days and find a thread I found > interesting & provocative getting strangely bogged down?? And what is > this bizarre list of statistics? It reminds me when that study came out > that a woman had about much chance of getting married after--what was > it, 30??--as being captured by a terrorist. Now I feel like I'm helping > to "silence" men who have been abused by their wives and girlfriends, > and I'm sure that such abuse happens, the human race being such as it > is, but I can't believe in greater amounts than women being abused! > > I feel like I need to defend that there is sexism in the world and back > that up with various stories I have seen, heard and experienced. And it > definitely happens in how we're taught reading and writing, in both the > classroom and out. Although I try to keep myself as sensitized as Marcella, I feel very much the same way. It's an indication of the fact that even among people with much else in common, feminist politics is still contested ground. But what you say above is certainly true, and in this context anodyne. For instance, one post that disturbed me: I think Standard is one of the really exciting and important young poets and editors on the scene. But I found his recent post terribly worrisome. He seemed to imply that he saw no way for men to fit into an anti-sexist stand; something to the effect of, how can *a man* speak against sexism? He seemed to be assuming that the concerns about gender disbalance various people had stated were rooted in people's essences; whereas I assume them to be social constructs that can be critiqued and worked against and understood. I thought "we" (as a society) had at least established that as one major political/analytic position. But the word hasn't reached everywhere I guess. In addition to your suggestions, there is the very broad topic of non-mainstream poets whose work engages gender politics on various levels, even though those poets have not *extensively* theorized the feminist underpinnings (if that's what they are) of what they are doing. The two who came immediately to my mind were Susan Howe and Rosmarie Waldrop. Not having a direct-address componant to one's poetics (where say, Adrienne Rich drops into a somber soliloquy on the violence facing women in american cities) presents the question of just how political stresses are woven into a body of poetry. A political poetry can take up and amplify processes of violence and inward abrasion, forcing them to a kind of ultimate verbal breaking-point (Andrews in "I Don't Have any Paper," for instance). This seems a very abrupt (not to say masculine) approach and its relationship to a feminist politics is a very tangled question. Gender encodings and nodes of pressure exist in S. Howe's work through confrontation with (and I think that's a good word for how she does it) historical material that is felt as palpably present in the lived matrix of the poet and her audience. Even when on a literal documentary level this "history" "took place" in 1645 or 1820..... I actually think that many (mostly women) poets appearing today in the mags, are approaching these tensions with similar creativity. (A very large proportion of 'em being poets who participate on this list) I wish I had seen more of their work, in larger chunks, so I could comment on it intelligently. Anyway, Marcella, compliments on a valuable post. Mark Prejsnar @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 11:05:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Ex Ed--Emily Wilson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Here are a couple of terrific poems that I love from another wonderful poet who doesn't seem to send out. Emily is originally from New England, and is, oh... maybe 30. PASTORAL The mordants in their noise, the night transports. A means of coming to the switchyard of the tongue. To have once set such store by forced creatures. Not changed toward something of my own. The towns raised chaffed seas to ground the. In that frieze before storm you went on. Effigy loomed out of cornfield. Future inside its trussed forms. GREEN RIVER There is the mountain that became the barren of rudiment silt. There is emergent instinct that stalled, acquainted then strayed to what odds. Far above the miniature tamarisk-imperfect shore the sediments burn in their curtains. You've taken so long to come through. The archival exit speech still stayed at the mouth. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 10:36:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: to dodie/wmn's wrkshps/my personal story Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 10:55:26 +0900 >From: Nada Gordon >Subject: to dodie/wmn's wrkshps/my personal story > >Didn't you give a talk in Kathleen Fraser's Writers on Writing class (I >guess I was at State just a little while after you were) at around that >time? I have some memory of it, but distant... anyway I also took >Kathleen's women's writing workshop; it was one of the workshops I was >thinking about when I wrote my post. Jessica Grim was in that workshop >(although she had not taken the turn into language writing yet) and so was >Colette Lafia -- both, along with Lori Lubeski, later became my writing >comrades. No, at that point, I don't think anybody would have even considered inviting me to that class. Michael Amnasan, however, did speak and that's how he and Jessica met--at least that's the way my memory goes. [Editorial comment: Michael and Jessica were "together" for several years.] And yes you must have been at State just a little after me because I knew Jessica then, Lori a bit later. >I remember bringing in about four pages of writing that was a >rush of language -- prose (maybe the combined influences of Silliman, >Hejinian & Rodefer), and after I read it, that puzzled silence. Kathleen >said something about how more and more of her students were writing "like >this." I felt characterized but not attended to, as if she was not looking >at the writing I had done but was instead categorizing it. It seemed a >politicized categorization, like there was some kind of polemic lurking >under her words. I don't remember the reactions of the other participants >but I remember feeling unsatisfied. Maybe they didn't have techniques for >responding to writing "like that" -- writing like wind, writing from the >ear, not trying to make anything whole or tell a story or make a point. This is odd, considering it was in her classes I first read Lyn and Carla, many of the female Lang-Pos. And I remember "experimental" works turned in by students to be praised. Your bringing up categorizing is interesting because the whole How(ever) project was about bringing "female" experience/perspective into experimental forms. The poetic avant-garde, it was perceived, was ruled by men, and Kathleen's project was to create a sort of antidote to that. But, I always thought there was a (mostly unspoken) privileging of what was acceptable femaleness. A certain lady-likness. Thank god Kathy Acker was around at the same time. As I remember you from those days, Nada, you were rather punked out with a lot of attitude (your arrogance as you put it). I wonder how that impacted your perceived relationship to jouissance? I had the dreadful combination of arrogance and absolutely no self-confidence. I needed constant approval from others to really get me started in writing. I think I still use Kevin for that more than I should. >Was it? In your crowd there were people doing such amazing things -- Bruce >Boone, Bob Gluck, Michael Amnasan. You all seemed pretty cool to me. That scene, the failed attempt to forge a New Narrative movement was much a reaction to the then disrespect of narrative, an attempt to reinvent narrative so that it could be as arty as lang-po--that's what I'd say on a bad day. On a good day, I'd say it was about admitting the falsity of the conventional absent author, bringing the act of writing into the piece, experimenting with different subjectivities, stuff about community in its early idealistic days, etc. Studying (that's the wrong word, hanging out endlessly is more accurate) with Bruce, it was a lot about seduction, he was heavy into Bataille then--he was always talking to me about the relationship between the writer and the audience, would compare it to an SM relationship, the author being the top, the reader being the bottom. A far cry from How(ever). I was heavy into being corrupted by these sicko perverts. We'd lie on his bed and he'd read me Baudelaire. It was thrilling. >Yes, me too. I never send work out partly for this reason, and I don't >write nearly enough. One thing that annoys me about my writing is its >obsession with gender in its content. Why should that annoy me? Noting >this obsession, I called a manuscript "A Gender" (think of a midwestern >farmer saying agenda) and then later changed it to "Foriegnn Bodie", which >still seems annoyingly topical. I don't know, I don't have problems with this. I'm in a female body/consciousness in a fucked up world--and that's what I write about, I can't imagine wanting to write about anything else--unless I was getting paid. x, Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 22:02:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: iceberg lettuce In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The sad thing is that something so one-dimensional would --if you p.c.'d the title-- would make huge amounts of money. Iceberg Lettuce for the Soul: Light anecdotes for a thinful Age, Iceberg Lettuce for the Soul: Jack Handy's thoughts for a post-big hair world. Iceberg Lettuce on Soul (Food): a cookbook for the deep(ness) challenged You could almost publish a whole book of just the titles. At least turn it into a perverse Exquisite Corpse. One of our cat either hates the idea or loves it. She just jumped up here and started batting at the keys... Tim At 02:32 PM 3/30/98 -0600, you wrote: >I was in Barnes and Nobles and came up with a great book concept: >"Ice-berg Lettuce for the Soul: Insipid Anecdotes for a Superficial Age." >I welcome all your contributions; we can make a million bucks off this. > >Jonathan Mayhew >Department of Spanish and Portuguese >University of Kansas >jmayhew@ukans.edu >(785) 864-3851 > ______________________________________________________________ Tim Wood tim_wood@datawranglers.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 10:54:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Moving Borders reading at SPT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Small Press Traffic presents a reading and book launch for Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women (Talisman House) with Dodie Bellamy Norma Cole Beverly Dahlen Jean Day Patricia Dienstfrey Susan Gevirtz Barbara Guest Lyn Hejinian Myung Mi Kim Laura Moriarty Camille Roy Leslie Scalapino Mary Margaret Sloan Here it is at last--Mary Margaret Sloan's ambitious, groundbreaking anthology of formal innovation by US and Canadian women over the past thirty years, and tonight, like Salome, it's unveiled, with brief readings from its Bay Area contributors (and editor Sloan herself). They're all here, front and center, a dazzling chorus line of fragmentation and history. "It is the specificity of each author's art that is most rewarding here: the exhilarating originality of each poetic project and the deep reflection with which these poets explore not just poetry but the possibilities of meaning through language." (Charles Bernstein). Thursday, April 9, 7:30 p.m. New College Theater 777 Valencia Street $5 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:51:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Re: Ex Ed--Emily Wilson Comments: To: "k. lederer" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for posting Emily's work to the list, Katy. I'd just like to add that Emily will have two poems in the second (summer) issue of Kenning. And no, she doesn't send out. It takes some sleuthing sometimes. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, k. lederer wrote: > Here are a couple of terrific poems that I love from another wonderful > poet who doesn't seem to send out. > > Emily is originally from New England, and is, oh... maybe 30. > > > > PASTORAL > > The mordants in their noise, > the night transports. > > A means of coming to > the switchyard of the tongue. > > To have once > set such store by > > forced creatures. > Not changed toward > > something of my own. > The towns raised chaffed > > seas to ground the. > In that frieze before > > storm you went on. > Effigy loomed out > > of cornfield. Future > inside its trussed forms. > > > > GREEN RIVER > > There is the mountain > that became the barren > > of rudiment silt. > There is emergent > > instinct that stalled, > acquainted then strayed > > to what odds. Far > above the miniature > > tamarisk-imperfect > shore the sediments > > burn in their curtains. > You've taken so long > > to come through. > The archival exit > > speech still stayed > at the mouth. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 13:55:05 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith Subject: Re: Chris Funkhouser search Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Marcella, Steve Cope recently gavce me this for Chris' email (I haven't tried it yet): funkhouser@tesla.njit.edu good luck, Charles ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:56:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: Ke n n i nG Comments: To: "-->*<--" , Andrea Troolin , Dave Lofquist , arteaga@altavist.net, BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU, bernstei@BWAY.NET, bluebed@hotmail.com, cf2785@cnsvax.albany.edu, chax@theriver.com, DarraghM@gunet.georgetown.edu, dee-morris@uiowa.edu, dfar@erols.com, djmess@CINENET.NET, duplij@physik.uni-kl.de, Easter8@AOL.COM, editor@qwertyarts.com, emily-d-wilson@uiowa.edu, exact@world.std.com, joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU, jtaylor@ideal.net.au, John Kinsella , levyaa@is.nyu.edu, llerner@mindspring.com, mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU, MODERN_POETS-L@lists.missouri.edu, Moxley_Evans@Compuserve.com, mtata@hotmail.com, pollet@maine.edu, potepoet@home.com, smallpress@onelist.com, SSSCHAEFER@AOL.COM, wint0025@metnet.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Announcing the premier issue of KENNING, a not-for-profit newsletter of poetry, poetics, and other genres of new non-fiction writing, including the work of Mark Wallace, John Kinsella, Daniel Zimmerman, Juliana Spahr, Summi Kaipa, Michael Angelo Tata, John Lowther, Ryan Whyte, and Stephen Ellis. This initial issue is produced on demand and is available by mail-order only. To order issue #1, send a check for $4.00 payable to the editor, Patrick F. Durgin, to the address below. Beginning with issue #2, Kenning subscribers will receive a hand printed slip-case which ought to hold four to five subsequent issues, which will be sent to subscribers in loose leaf. A subscription (beginning in June of 98) of two issues is available anytime at a cost of $9.50. Those requesting single issues will, instead, receive a stapled copy. A single issue of Kenning #2 will be available also through direct mail-order at a cost of $5.00. These prices are meant as an accurate reflection of costs incurred in printing and distributing the magazine. Authors featured in forthcoming issues include Ron Silliman, Taylor Brady, A. L. Nielsen, Emily Wilson, Andrew Levy, and many more. KENNING is currently seeking submissions of short critical, theoretical, or polemical prose for possible inclusion. All editorial correspondence may be made to the address below. Please include a SASE with all submissions. Thanks and hope to hear from you. Patrick F. Durgin ` ` ` ` ----->*<----- ` K E N N I N G| ` anewsletterof| ` poetry&poetic| ` s418BrownSt.#| ` 10IowaCityIA5| ` 2245USA\/\/\/| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 13:59:59 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: more boring chit-chat Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Mark: Hate to think of myself as an essentialist, but am not sure what I did to convey this. I do, however, think that people are afraid of the personal and tend to over-intellectualize in response instead of just take care not to exploit it. (Judith Butler makes excellent points about this, better than I can.) I always thought that the point of the critique of the subject was to reveal the social within the personal, but the personal doesn't go away, does it? We have the perception, however distorted, of a self. I think all I was trying to say is that I'm always a little nervous around the ways in which a group I belong to are unable to reflect on what they are doing, what effect it is having. I consider myself anti-sexist, but I don't always agree with everybody on my side of the issue. Sometimes they get suspicious if you disagree with some tiny point. Does this make me an essentialist? Mark, please straighten me out as I have appreciated many of your comments to the list and feel you're a solid voice for these kinds of issues. If you or anyone can straighten me out about what was "worrisome" in those posts, would like to be enlightened. Standard ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:30:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Welcome Message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Rev. 3-31-98 (This message is sent out to all new and renewing subscribers and it is sent out to the list at the beginning of every month) ____________________________________________________________________ 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 Postal Address: 438 Clemens Hall, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260 ___________________________________________________________ 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@acsu.buffalo.edu), Loss Peque=F1oGlazier (glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu), and Joel Kuszai (poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu). ___________________________________________________________ Above the world-weary horizons New obstacles for exchange arise Or unfold, O ye postmasters! 1. About the Poetics List The Poetics List was founded in late 1993 with the epigraph above. There are presently over 600 subscribers. Please note that this is a private list and information about the list should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. The idea is to keep the list to those with specific rather than general interests, and also to keep the scale of the list relatively small and the volume manageable. The Poetics List, while committed to openness, is moderated. While individual posts of participants are sent directly to all subscribers, we continue to work to promote the editorial function of this project. The definition of that project, while provisional, and while open to continual redefinition by list participants, is nonetheless aversive to a generalized discussion of poetry. Rather, our aim is to support, inform, and extend those directions in poetry that are committed to innovations, renovations, and investigations of form and/or/as content, to the questioning of received forms and styles, and to the creation of the otherwise unimagined, untried, unexpected, improbable, and impossible. **ffff,0000,0000We also encourage subscribers to post information on publications and reading series that they have coordinated, edited, published, or in which they appear (see section 9 below).** (THIS MEANS *YOU*). Please keep in mind that all posts go out immediately to all subscribers, and become part of an on-line archive. *Posting to Poetics is a form of publication, not personal communication.* Participants are asked to exercise caution before posting messages! While spontaneity of response may seem the very heart of the list at its best, it also has the darker side of circulating ideas that have not been well considered (or considered by another reader -- editor or friend). Given the nature of the medium, subscribers do well to maintain some skepticism when reading the list and, where possible, to try to avoid taking what may be something close to a spontaneous comment made in the heat of exchange as if it were a revised or edited essay ("Let the Reader Beware!").=20 The "list owner" of Poetics is Charles Bernstein. Joel Kuszai is list manager. For subscription information contact us at POETICS@acsu.buffalo.edu. ___________________________________________________________ 2. Subscriptions Subscriptions to Poetics are free of charge. But we ask that you subscribe with your real name and we reserve the right to request additional information, including address and phone number. All subscription information you supply will remain confidential. You can subscribe (sub) or unsubscribe (unsub) by sending a one-line message, with no subject line, to: listserv@listserv.buffalo.edu the one-line message should say: unsub poetics {or} sub poetics Jill Jillway (replacing Jill Jillway with your own name; but note: do not use your name to unsub) We will be sent a notice of all subscription activity. Please allow several days for your new or re-subscription to take effect.=20 * If you are having difficulty unsubscribing, please note: Sometimes your e-mail address may be changed slightly by your system administrator. If this happens you will not be able to send messages to Poetics or to unsubscribe, although you will continue to get your Poetics mail. 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This list is alphabetized by server not name. or try: review POETICS by name review POETICS by country which will give you the list alphabetically by name or a flawed list by country (since all ".com" and ".net"s are counted as US) *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 Peque=F1o 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 glazier@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 yourword 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.=20 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: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:44:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: women/men/communication/cherry blossoms MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Nada--I really appreciate this post. I can't seem to catch up on the list and I keep having more I want to respond to but reading takes all the time and no time for considered response. I was particularly relating to the part about men's response to your poems. (Morpheal generally seems way out there and not at all in the discourse that I for one am having) I write a lot of raunchy poems. I don't consider them particularly autobiographical though of course life is a source of information. Men are always coming up to me after reading such poems. "I never thought that way about lesbians before" i.e. sexualized. I think often they want me to do to them physically what the poems do linguistically. Really they are so obvious. Admittedly, part of me enjoys this play. Their effort to define 'lesbian' and my slipping through the cracks. Someone, perhaps Katy wrote about becoming feminized in the west. I think that's happened to me too, west + age and choosing battles carefully. I recalled to a friend that from when I was a little girl I understood that I was the sort of girl the boys, and later, the men, would hit, because I always managed to piss them off so. I think its about defining the rules of the dialogue. If we break the rules by adding the complexity of our experience, i.e. we want to get fucked by something muscular and powerful without giving up power, there is a gap which calls for an inventive response. And I have still to see the demand for inventive/imaginative permutations of gender enter into the mainstream. Its one of the reasons I love my queer community--despite all the problems of being a pre-defined other. more to say but later, no? Rachel Democracy Nada Gordon wrote: > > One thing that irks me greatly about this list is that it keeps me away > from the cherry blossoms, newly opened and splendid, not to mention the > jasmine and orange & purple pansies on my veranda > > but my head is so full with the discussion of this past week > > one reason I have not been more vocal was that I was off on a spring > vacation jaunt to Kanazawa and Kyoto. Kanazawa is an old castle town on > the Japan sea coast. Kyoto was so gorgeous I hallucinated gardens and > paper and designs for two full days after I came back > > I really have wanted to speak my piece, especially on the exchange that > went on between Katy and Rachel > > I agreed with both of them/neither of them > > because there are two women inside of me (and I'm asking now how many other > women feel this way): > > one who is historicized, bleating and roaring (the one who was ignored in > math class -- thanks Katy; or the one with the ruffled leotard -- hey, I > *still* wear those; or the one hitting misogyny over the head every day and > still not killing it) > > and one who, while not ungendered (or maybe, as Don wrote, "poeticized and > sexual, but not gendered"?), is a being -- a creature of the universe -- > empowered by nature (as Rachel wrote: choosing to, not take up the burden > of everything constructed as history that says YOU WOMAN,YOU ARE > DISENFRANCHISED) > > they toggle each other, these two women > > both of them acknowledge their debt and express gratitude to the pioneers > and strugglers; both pioneer when they can; the historicized woman > struggles; the other one moves on > > if we are always bleating and roaring, we can't be creative > we reify our disenfranchisement > > we should bleat and roar > we are disenfranchised > but we can do so much more (Katy's second model of power) > > exemplification: > > I hate women's writing workshops -- I have participated in a few and even, > uh, hostessed, one on this side of the Pacific. At workshops like these > the common response to my writing is puzzled silence, "what are you trying > to SAY with this?" or "there are some interesting images here, but I don't > you think you should be more accessible" as if that constituted a response > to the work. Mostly these are pieces that, by language poet standards, > might be considered highly SUBJECTIVE, even THEMATIC or LYRICAL. The kind > of writing that these women's groups seem to sanction, though, is reportage > -- on relationships, childhood memories, life incidents, mostly, without > emphasis on the formal features of the writing, i.e. the poetry. The > responses tend to the "thank you for sharing" *nurturing* *supportive* > variety -- even to writing that, to my torqued-out ear, isn't interesting > at all. This seems to me to be Tannen's cooperative dynamic at its most > nauseating. > > Dodie, is your workshop any different? Or do you take issue with my > description? > > (an aside, but when I read Tannen's book I ws struck by the similarity of > the cooperative style to Japanese communication styles -- another topic > altogether) > > On the other hand, I hate mixed writing workshops even more, where the > women sit silent while the men light into each other with their ideas of > how they would have written the poem, with their all-important opinions. > Voila, the competitive dynamic. > > I posted a poem called *my penis* this week and got a response like this > from morpheal. I excerpt it here: > > >Drumbeat sounds so damn violent. Sure you shouldn't change that ? > > > >I don't know....but it's too full of traditional metaphors and unclear > >as to what you really want to convey..... > > and my response to him: > > >1) "unclearness" as to what I want to "convey" happens to be my poetics. > >If it were clear it would be prose. > > > >2) language as vehicle or conveyance is an obsolete metaphor -- get over > >it, dude. > > > >3) Did I solicit your opinion? You know, a big ugly fat guy came up to > >me after one of my readings/performances and told me how he thought I > >could have done it more effectively. I told him he could shove his > >patronizing attitude up his ass. DITTO. > > Hmm, so I guess I do roar. And am boorish sometimes and violent (sorry Ms. > Tannen to disprove your points). I apologize to Morpheal for that, and for > quoting him here without permission. It does, though, offer an example of > how some men respond to some women's public utterances. No wonder we may > feel intimidated (but I guess I showed him -- gee). It also shows how the > public sphere, including this list, can be sites of viciousness -- as well > as (I don't remember who said it) conviviality. Or maybe that I just can't > take criticism? > > Ending with questions again: > > 1) Patriarchy is a miserable farce and we should work like hell to destroy > it, but not to replace it with...arggh...matriarchy! Smothering! Bossy! > So how can we all parent (the) society (of the poetics list) equitably? > > 2) A fascinating-to-me side topic that Elizabeth Hatmaker touched on was > one of women in positions of institutional power, esp. teachers (what about > mothers), and a question about alternative pedagogies. Joe Amato has > written about this in great inspiring detail before, and as for me, I'm > delving into Paolo Freire and Julian Edge and William Glasser for ways to > balance the power relationship in the classroom, because always to be cast > as authority is awful. Not sure that this is directly related to POETICS > (although seems like just about anything can be, that's the beauty of it), > but I'd be happy to talk backchannel with any co-fascinatees. > > love and cherry blossoms (finally I can get to them) > > nada > > p.s. Yesterday I saw a Japanese mom teaching her adolescent daughter how > to throw a baseball! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:47:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSSCHAEFER Subject: Re: more boring chit-chat Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Mark (sorry, but I feel I must go on): Still thinking re: essentialism I think it should be a commonplace by now that one does not use collective nouns without suspicion, anxiety, etc. The performative aspects of gender seem to me to be quite clear on this list. I think I’m getting in trouble for not knowing exactly how to play my part. What is my motivation? Perhaps, I should try to be clearer, however, I don’t think quoting a passage from Lacan will help in this regard. (May help in other regards, for other things, no offense to Katy.) One thing I’m noticing is that exactly what I feared would happen, is happening. I’m ‘worrying’ people simply by trying to get "women" to tell me exactly what the relevance of a gender conversation is to the act of writing poetry. Dodie implies, I think, that as to the degree that she is a "woman," it effect the content of her writing. Have not heard anyone address the form or technique issue. Here, I am reminded of John Shoptaw’s interesting book on Ashbery wherein he outlines how Ashbery’s "homosexuality" effected the way he wrote. Does not in any way imply that all homosexuals are "homotextual" writers, etc. I am trying to find out if people still feel that poetry can be seen as "a haven" of sorts where various languages, techniques, forms can be explored, deployed in a way that is relatively ideologically less policed than say fashion or mainstream fiction. (Vaguely recall Bernstein making a point in Diacritics, I think, about this space I am trying to describe.) h I can easily accept that poetry is necessarily theoretical, but I am wondering if Katy and others are attempting to make active methodological interventions into critical/philosophical discourse. I would ask them if they think their "poetry" is some how formally enhancing/progressing their thoughts on gender. Does anyone have thoughts about this? The reason I am asking is that when I see a title like "Artificial Memory #1" which is from Norma Cole (just happens to be on my mind), I tend to think first about "artificial memories," memory, construction, artifice, whathaveyou. I do not tend to focus entirely on "the gap" where I might discover only that her poem has some trace or residue that is the result of her gender construction which I already suspect since I have participated in the pedagogy that is fascinated with what is "not on the page" sometimes to the exclusion of what is "on the page." For this reason, I have to ask questions. Or else I have to I leave that entire conversation to the "writers of dissertations" as Pound called them. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:50:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Feminism or barbarism In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Standard, In response to what's quoted below.... I read your first substantial post (I think it was the first) in response to Katy, as questioning whether a man could genuinely critique sexism. This is where the lack of special other clues, tone of voice etc. gets us into all kindsa trouble on the Net. Entirely my fault and I apologize. It seemed in context that the sentences I'm thinking of meant, "Men by their nature probably can't rebel/work against sexism," rather than what you meant, which is apparently, "This is a very problematic, unresolved issue: how *do* men work effectively against sexism anyway?" or something like that.... Anyhow, glad for your comments; as quite a number of folks on the List (unless I'm misreading them too!!) question the importance of these issues altogether! Mark P. @lanta On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, SSSCHAEFER wrote: > Mark: > > Hate to think of myself as an essentialist, but am not sure what I did to > convey this. I do, however, think that people are afraid of the personal and > tend to over-intellectualize in response instead of just take care not to > exploit it. (Judith Butler makes excellent points about this, better than I > can.) I always thought that the point of the critique of the subject was to > reveal the social within the personal, but the personal doesn't go away, does > it? We have the perception, however distorted, of a self. > > I think all I was trying to say is that I'm always a little nervous around the > ways in which a group I belong to are unable to reflect on what they are > doing, what effect it is having. I consider myself anti-sexist, but I don't > always agree with everybody on my side of the issue. Sometimes they get > suspicious if you disagree with some tiny point. Does this make me an > essentialist? > > Mark, please straighten me out as I have appreciated many of your comments to > the list and feel you're a solid voice for these kinds of issues. If you or > anyone can straighten me out about what was "worrisome" in those posts, would > like to be enlightened. > > Standard > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 11:53:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Gitin Subject: unsubscribe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD5C9B.A6703660" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD5C9B.A6703660 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable unsub poetics David Gitin ------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD5C9B.A6703660 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

unsub poetics David=20 Gitin
------=_NextPart_000_0004_01BD5C9B.A6703660-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 15:08:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: readings in NYC this week Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Various readings coming up this week: > > > Wednesday night: Renee Gladman & Diane DiPrima at the Poetry Project 8pm > > Saturday at Here (145 6th ave) - Tonya Foster & Anselm Berrigan. 3pm. > > > Sunday at Zinc Bar (90 W. Houston) - Daniel Bouchard & Ange Mlinko. > > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 15:17:16 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: essentialistically non chit-chat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Standard....In response to your *second* post (we seem to be criss-crossing each other in real time here, an odd experience..) I think you raise very important points. I don't always follow your exact arguments; but these are very important issues. Part of what I believe you are questioning, is whether political weight should be allowed to squash the areas of free-play and kindling-flash out of contemporary poetry. I don't feel that that is a danger, but this may just be my temperment. I don't feel that a poet such as Fanny Howe (see: Introduction to the World) or Susan Howe, or Bernstein or Silliman, or Spahr in Response, or Mark Wallace, have allowed political concerns, often with gender dimensions, sometimes not, to flatten the space for free play inherent in the act of poetry. But then they all *feel* the exigencies of political twist and strain, as a part of their consciousness and concrete lives. When that is the case neither poetry nor poetics are narrowed by including a political dimension (--the only narrowing would take place, if they *excluded* it). Thus, in my own work as poet and editor, and in the way I see most poetry I encounter today, there is a strong political component. And if there weren't (given who I am) my work and consciousness would be "ideologically policed." But this shouldn't (can't, actually) be imposed from without. If you don't feel certain political issues (including gender ones) as at the flash-point of what you're doing at a given moment, then you shouldn't include those issues in your work. I might argue with someone that, as a person, they need to give more thought/involvement to one political issue or another....But until they had begun to feel it as lived turmoil, it would have no place in their poetry. And twenty years on the left will convince you that you don't get people feeling stuff in a lived way, by bullying, only by arguments and respect. The equation is: the person, enmeshed in the grinding societal matrix, generates concerns, politics, values, commitments; that helps shape who the person is; and that person is the poet...only what that person feels is important, can inform the poetry. It can't be imposed from the outside. You should indeed resist "ideological policing" if you feel it is being imposed on your or anyone's poetry....But people who are deeply involved with the political edge of things, are not necessarily ideologically policing you. I never looked good in a uniform, myself. Mark P. @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 15:31:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Misc. Proj. #5 available MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ANNOUNCING: issue #5 of Atlanta's inscrutable poetry mag, ***Misc. Proj.*** Now available...... *%*%* FEATURING: *a review of the Schulz/Kinsella chapbook, voice-overs *a polemic on recent debates in U.S. poetics *new work by: Mark Wallace, Bobbie West, Sheila E. Murphy, Tom Mandel, Jacques Debrot, Standard Schaefer, T.L. Effbesee, M. Magoolaghan, Nick Piombino, John M. Bennett. *%*%*% single issue: $3.00 subscription for four issues: $11.00 make checks payable to Mark Prejsnar Misc. Proj. c/o Prejsnar 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11 Atlanta, GA 30306 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 15:36:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carkoo Subject: No R¿ses Review Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable The final issue of No R=F8ses Review is now available for $6. Send check = to: 150 Duane St. #8, Redwood City, CA 94062. Or e-mail request to: Carkoo@AOL.COM. The issue contains many wonderful poems, including work by Elaine Equi, G= raham=0AFoust, Paul Hoover, Caroline Knox, Maryrose Larkin, Rachel Loden,= Gale Nelson,=0ARosmarie Waldrop, Susan Wheeler and MANY others. -Carolyn Koo, editor=0A ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:51:35 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Xerolages 26 + 27 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 2 new Xerolages from Xexoxial Editions [Xerolage 26] Steve McComas "The Book of Not Seeing Things" "One who is, or those who are, of the functional eyes must catch and identify a phrase of thought in which one is unable to be objective; closes itself by its own screen or shutter that obstructs or shuts off dazzle, screen, for protecting from the enemy's fire; hinders physically or mentally: the movements of luminous ruse." -from the author's introduction. __________________________________________ [Xerolage 27] Jean-Francois Robic “haut et bas” This work for Xerolage must be called “high” and “low”; “up” and “down”......It’s about the possibility for these images to be read in any direction. About the life to be read like that; between autobiography & history, between roots & exile, fight & slavery. So I mixed my family old pictures & historic events (especially about eastern & communist history), signs & words in all languages concerned by the images: french, russian, breton, spanish, german.....So you need a dictionary to appreciate all the images’ meanings. It’s up to you to link all these meanings together; to connect signs, words, & images; to give them back a signification; your signification. Jean-François Robic, december 1995. _______________________________________________ ....upcoming issues by Stewart Home, Carla Bertola, Edgardo Vigo, Janet Janet, Carlyle Baker, & many others.... XEROLAGE IS AN IRREGULAR MAGAZINE OF VISUAL POETRY, COPY ART & COLLAGE GRAPHICS. EACH ISSUE IS DEVOTED TO THE WORK OF ONE ARTIST. XEROLAGE IS A WORD COINED BY MIEKAL AND TO SUGGEST THE NEW WORLD OF 8.5 & 11 ART PROPAGATED BY XEROX TECHNOLOGY. “THE MIMEO OF THE 80’s”. THE PRIMARY INVESTIGATION OF THIS MAGAZINE IS HOW COLLAGE TECHNIQES OF 20TH CENTURY ART, VISUAL AND CONCRETE POETRY MOVEMENTS, & THE ART OF XEROX HAVE BEEN COMBINED. EDITED BY MIEKAL AND. Submissions encouraged but query first with sample of work & please be familiar with the magazine and/or the work we publish. 8.5”x11”, 24 pages each. Subscriptions $18/4 issues. For overseas delivery, add $7 for airmail printed mattter. Back issues available for $4.50 each. Add 15% postage & handling. Xerolage, Xexoxial Editions, Rt 1 Box 131, LaFarge, WI 54639. email: dtv@mwt.net x1 DiMichele x2 Michael VooDoo x3 Scott Helmes x4 Joe Napora x5 Antonio Nelos x6 Serse Luigetti x7 Vittore Baroni x8 Joe Schwind x9 Elizabeth Was x10 Lloyd Dunn x11 American Living x12 Greg Evason x13 Gaetano Colonna x14 Malok x15 Ben Allen x16 Bern Porter x17 Geof Huth x18 Clemente Padin x19 Cesar Figueiredo x20 Ross Martin x21 SCORE x22 Ruggero Maggi x23 Bill Keith x24 James Koehnline x25 Marilyn Rosenberg x26 Steve McComas x27 Jean-François Robic _______________________________________________ Xexoxial catalogue online http://net22.com/neologisms/xe.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 14:34:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Clark D Lunberry Subject: Woodland Pattern Book Center In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980331200837.00752fe0@po7.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Excuse the length of this posting but the world needs to know about this bookstore. Below is an article/interview about Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that was just published in "The Review of Contemporary Fiction" (spring 1998). In all my journeys, no bookstore (with an emphasis on poetry) has even come close to the quality of this place. Others on this list may be able to vouch for this, and if you are in the area it is definitely worth a visit (or by phone: (414) 263-5001). (Any errors in spelling, etc. are due to my faulty scanner). ------------------------------------- The Bookstore in America: Woodland Pattern The previous article in this series focused on Borders Books and Music as one possibility of what the bookstore and bookselling might be in the future, and what forebodes for the future and avail ability of books in the United States. Following that article with one devoted to Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee might seem a ridiculous second step, but Woodland Pattern is a very interesting alternative to, not only a chain bookstore, but conventional independent stores. My first experience with Woodland Pattern must have been just about the time that it opened in 1979, now almost twenty years ago. It had been recommended to me by the poet-novelist Paul Metcalf, who had either given a reading there or was about to give a reading. Located in a neighborhood of Milwaukee rather than in prime retail space in the downtown, and rather inconspicuously settled in the middle of a block that does not, I believe, have any other retail space, it's rather easy to drive by the store a few times without noticing it, something I usually manage to do. My first visit to Woodland Pattern meant that I had to drive from Chicago to Milwaukee, approximately 90 miles, or 180 round-trip, solely for the purpose of going to what Metcalf had promised me was a very good store. What I found was a store that had an incredible selection of literary magazines that could not be found in Chicago (and also had several back issues of these magazines, which perhaps spoke to the popularity of the magazines but also to the proprietors' commitment to keeping things available), and the best selection of poetry (perhaps this should be "poetry," because it was an in-depth selection of what one of the proprietors most liked-the Black Mountain poets, the New York School, San Francisco poets, the Objectivists; noticeably absent were the poets who were receiving the big awards and those most often published by Knopf, Norton, and Farrar, Straus). There were also tapes of writers reading, a criticism section, a rather unconventional children's section; at least, this is all that I remember. I spent several hours there, and began what became a once or twice a year trip there, and one that cost me (aside from travel expenses) far more than I could afford. And several of those trips over the years were also related to or planned around attending one of the readings that were held (and still are) in a special room attached to the store, which is also used for art exhibits (that is, there are no books in the room). As the interview that follows makes clear, Woodland Pattern was begun as an alternative store, not a marketing endeavor to counter competitors, which at that time would have been Webster's (now defunct) and Schwartz's; the chains, at least as we know them now, did not exist. Woodland Pattern began as a conception of its founders, one of whom was obsessed with poetry, the other with ... a variety of things. They saw their role as serving a community. Because of their interests, they thought that poetry should be the primary focus of the store and that it should be well stocked and kept there, regardless of sales; and there should be this public reading space that would feature the writers they liked and would become a very interesting space for exhibits of various kinds; if the store failed financially, then at least the failure would be on their terms. And they began as a nonprofit endeavor, not just (I assume) because there in fact was no profit to be made, but because such a status made them eligible for the little amount of grant money available to things bookish. Woodland Pattern has now survived almost twenty years, despite being so noncommercial. And it has survived long enough to see itself modeled in other forms of retail-the "boutique." So, twenty years ago, the only kind of "coffee shop" was the greasy spoon on the corner, and no one could have foreseen such a thing as Starbucks, never mind the several non-chain specialty coffee- houses that exist even in the smallest of American towns. Woodland Pattern is, aside from some of the other products it sells, a specialty store that emphasizes what everyone knows cannot support a bookstore-poetry. And yet, because of this specialization and because of other strategic thinking on the part of its founders, the store goes on, and on. Despite what the founders fear would be the effect of a superstore moving in nearby, Woodland Pattern Book Center is, I think, an example of the kind of store that a chain could not compete with, nor would want to compete with. Woodland Pattern is doing something essentially different from traditional retail bookselling, and stays carefully within the niche it has created for itself. In terms of the future of bookstores in America, one question is whether a Woodland Pattern-type store can be duplicated elsewhere by people who could learn from its experience, or whether this is a store/center that is unique and completely dependent upon its founders. So, for instance, could Chicago sustain such an operation, in effect becoming the place for poetry, the place for poets to read, and then the place for whatever other interests the founders have? And if this is possible for poetry, isn't it also possible for literary translation? perhaps even literary fiction? experimental writing? In other words, if the chains have become the all-purpose and widely stocked bookstores, is there room now for highly specialized stores that can do things that are beyond what the chains are doing? Of course, all of the above represent rather small markets, and therefore perhaps all must of necessity be nonprofits. If Woodland Pattern could be duplicated, we then have another model-other than that presented by the chains-for what the future of bookselling in America might be. (John O'Brien) INTERVIEW WITH WOODLAND PATTERN OWNERS, KARL GARTUNG AND ANNE KINGSBURY RCF: Let's start at the beginning. How did the idea for Woodland Pattern come about? Karl Gartung: Well, there was a bookstore called Boox, Incorporated that was started by Karl Young and Tom Montag when they were running Margins magazine and Tom had a little distribution deal he was running on the side out of Margins-that was about the time that Leonard Randolph was at the National Endowment and they decided to set up a distribution project. Since Margins was pretty well regarded, they were invited to submit a grant. So they submitted a grant for both distribution projects at Boox, Incorporated. It was not nonprofit at that point, so they had to route all the money through the state arts board. It was a piddling grant, $5,000 or something like that. One of the things they were supposed to do was to hire someone to watch the store and they hired me. They had a little gallery hooked to it. It was in the "lobby" of a theater called Theater X here in downtown Milwaukee. RCF: When did Boox, Incorporated open? KG: That was opened in 1973-74. When I arrived, it was altogether voluntary. Publishers sent in their books and it turned out to be a donation; they never got paid for them because there was no money. The grant gave Boox, Incorporated money for salary and they had money to buy some books. When they interviewed me, I was complaining that the only person I was really interested in at the time, which shows my limitations I suppose, was William Carlos Williams. I had been looking around for all this poetry and all I could find were poets like Richard Wilbur and Robert Lowell and all the confessional poets and the Beats and so on and so forth. The Beats were interesting but not very sustaining as far as I was concerned. Now that judgment on them is just a judgment on me, but what I was really looking for were the Objectivists and the Black Mountain poets but I didn't know they existed, let alone where they were. RCF: When does this hook up with something called Woodland Pattern? KG: Well, I worked in this store and here were all these books. Charles Olson and the Objectivists were on the shelves already. So I was home at that point. I had always been involved with theater and Anne was a visual artist and here we were in the lobby of this theater and it had a little gallery and it had a bookstore. But we outgrew the situation of sharing the building with the theater. It got to be cumbersome and we wanted to invite people into town to do readings and we couldn't guarantee that we would have a room for them to read in. We started looking around to move. At that point we also decided that we didn't want to be running all the money through the arts board. We also decided we'd change our name. We found it in Paul Metcalf's book Apalache. That's where "Woodland Pattern" came from: ". . . south of Lake Superior, a culture center: the Woodland Pattern, with pottery but without agriculture, imported without loss from Lake Baikal, Siberia . . ." We found this little building that we could afford; Anne was losing her job with the university, so we had some of her retirement money and she was willing. We bought the building and moved Woodland Pattern up there. By that time we had gone from one hundred titles to about five thousand titles. Anne Kingsbury: We decided we wanted to buy a building because we wanted to keep the rent stable. We were looking with some other groups and they found a building before we did and they didn't have room for us. They fixed it up beautifully, but they had only a year lease. At the end of the year they couldn't afford the rent of the building they had improved so much. We decided that we weren't going to do that. KG: We had another opportunity: there was a high school that was closing and they offered us room. I thought to myself that this is still a teaching facility and some parent is going to come through here and see William Burroughs or John Giorno or our exhibits. So the first time that would happen we thought we wouldn't have a place anyway. RCF: In what year did the current location open? AK: We stepped into the building to start tearing down walls on December 26th, 1979. We opened to the public about six to eight weeks later with one room. That included changing the building and getting that one room ready, which is currently the middle room. And people went through what looked like a dingy, warehouse type thing to get to it. The second room we opened up was the gallery. Our first program was an independent filmmaker from Chicago. KG: We had a whole series of independent films. That became our performance series at the time. There were several local filmmakers who were involved, and some Chicago filmmakers came up. Then came independent music and then the poetry program and fiction readings. And then we had the gallery shows and we quickly started the mural project on the building. RCF: When Woodland Pattern was started, was it nonprofit? KG: Yes. We knew that if we wanted to be a bookseller and make a profit, we wouldn't be able to sell new literature. AK: There are a lot of really good bookstores in Milwaukee. There are some good independent bookstores and I know that some of the chains are better than others. But to carry the back issues of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, for instance, and to give it shelf space and to carry some of our chapbooks and to keep the prices consistent, well, you're not going to make the money per square foot on these books if you want to hang onto them and not turn them over after a certain amount of time. You need a subsidy or independent wealth. In 1982, we had a book conference, a small press book fair. We got Ted Wilentz to come in as a keynote speaker. He used to run the 8th Street Bookshop in New York and he was also a consultant around the world. We held the event at the university. I took him over to Woodland Pattern. I knew about his background as a bookseller and consultant and I worried that when he walked in he would say, "You better get some romance and mysteries and Westerns in here." And when he walked in he looked around and he said, " You need to be subsidized. You need to keep going but it won't be possible in a commercial situation. But it's important that you keep going so you're going to need to get other kinds of help." It was a reinforcement for us. When you're getting started, you're not quite sure if everything will work out. KG: At that time, if you walked into any commercial bookstore in the country they would always have a poetry section of twenty-five titles and they were always the same ones. To have a bookstore where people would walk into the store, and even if they were literate they wouldn't recognize ninety-nine percent of the titles, well, to think you could make that self-supporting is ludicrous. RCF: What kind of support was available at the time? AK: We received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts from the time we were incorporated until they reconfigured last year and eliminated the literature program. Last year was the first year we did not receive NEA funding. I applied under one of their categories and we didn't make it. But before that, we had received money every year. So you never could take it for granted, but there was always that. The state has an arts council and we would get a little funding there. It's a source that has been consistent. The city has program money and the county has organizational operations support money But everything is diminishing, partially because of the National Endowment cutbacks. The state receives money from the NEA, and when those funds dry up or are reconfigured, then they eliminate the kinds of funds that we can apply for. So where we used to be eligible to receive money in three categories, now we are eligible only for one. And the city is the same way; we used to receive money in two categories, now we can apply only for one. Thank goodness they're still going, hut there is less to apply for. RCF: How do you compensate for this? AK: Well, we've been lucky. I have this pouch that I'm making with a quote from Emily Dickinson. The quote says, "Luck is not chance, it's toil. Fortune's expensive smile is earned." We've been fortunate that when something has been taken away, we've been in a position to take advantage of an opportunity, which is luck. Doors close and you scramble around and you try to find something else. So far, we've been able to do that, although last year we lost a big part of our budget. With last year's budget, we figured we lost over a third because we lost funding from the National Endowment. But now it's back up to what it was before. Our grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund helped us leverage money from the other foundations in town. And the Lannan Foundation has helped us out with funding for programming for a second year, which is really great. And we're trying different fund-raising techniques. KG: We're involved in a really big project right now. They're building a big convention center downtown. We sold them on the idea that a Wisconsin convention center ought to be different than any other by having the words of our own writers on the walls. AK: It's a four-block convention center. It will be the biggest one in the state. We submitted a response to the public arts and we were the top proposal that was accepted. We're putting in the work of between fifty and seventy-five writers, historical and contemporary, throughout the building. It's not going to be painted on the walls because they will eventually have to be repainted, of course. So the letters will be raised or etched in glass or cut into the wood. Words from Wisconsin writers or ones that had substantial connections to Wisconsin. That was and is a big project. So we have that money But since the budget was reconfigured, we're going to end up doing a lot of the work without compensation because we want the project to be successful. KG: When we first started our programming here, and it carries right through to this project for the Midwest Express Center, we always said that we should pay writers that we brought in for readings. We've always made sure we've had enough to pay people's way, but normally more than that. This may be the first project in the country of it's kind where people are actually getting paid for their writing. RCF: Have you ever done much with mail order? Do people come here and recognize your store as a place to get poetry and then order via the mail? AK: We've been working on that. Years ago we received funding for two years under the Community Development Block Grant. They gave us money for computers and an inventory program and a half-salary to do this. We have all the inventory on computer, which is twenty- seven thousand titles right now with fourteen pieces of information on each title, for cross- referencing. So you could call and all we have to do is look it up and send it out. The second step for us was to create annotated lists of ethnically specific areas. We don't have an annotated list of the poetry because it's just too huge. But we do have lists for Native American, Asian/Asian American, Africa/African American/Caribbean, and Hispanic/Latino. This information is available at no cost to people who ask for these catalogs. There's a lot of information in them. They've gone to almost every state in the union, plus Japan and Norway. We also get orders from tribal libraries across the country. There is some mail order, but we would not exist on mail order. It's sort of a supplement to the mission of letting people know what's available. KG: It has actually become quite a substantial part of our book sales. We've been working hard at that and it will improve some more. Pretty soon we're going to have a web page. We can generate a catalog on demand and that's what we'll do, so that it's up to date. We had the opportunity to become a distribution company at one point and just do a traditional kind of mail-order distribution. But I thought it was really important for some kid to be able to walk in the store and find his way. I think it's really important for there to be a point of contact. Maybe that will happen more and more on the web, I don't know. AK: We would like to use the internet to reach those people who would be interested in what we have but don't know about us. It never made sense for us to do an expensive catalog for two copies of something that was $1.95. But over the computer you can just enter it or take it out. RCF: How many readings do you sponsor in a year, poetry and fiction? KG: The most we've ever done in a year was eighty. But that was eighty readings, music performances, exhibitions, whatever. AK: We do between forty and fifty public events annually. And that includes gallery openings and music events, but the majority of our events are readings. Some are invited national readers coming in, some are regional, some are local. And then we have things like our classes. They have a reading at the end of a class. RCF: What are these classes? And who teaches them? AK: We have writing classes for kids, teenagers, and adults. We have a group of people who are teaching. If someone wants to teach a class, they would send a proposal to us. If it looked pretty good we would work out a percentage payment with that person. We would then advertise it and we would run a class. RCF: Do you track the amount of people who come in for the readings and performances? AK: Yes. We track the number of people coming in. We have exhibits running all the time. KG: We've had all kinds of exhibits, although we're moving more and more towards having people who have done books or are involved with book art. In the spring we're going to have a show by the Waldrops, Keith and Rosmarie. RCF: Why did you move into the least likely neighborhood in Milwaukee? AK: Many of our decisions have been both philosophical and pragmatic. Philosophically, what's the point of moving next-door to the university when there are so many commercial bookstores as well as university bookstores? There's not as great a need. We wanted to be where there wasn't something. Pragmatically we could afford the location, so it worked together. KG: And it's close enough to the university and a lot of university people live in the neighborhood. It's low rent. It's an old working-class neighborhood. RCF: How would you describe your role in the community? AK: I would say that ideally our role would be that of a catalyst. We're putting people together with literature and we hope that something special is going to happen. You may come in and say, "Well I really don't like poetry but I'm interested in baseball." And I could pull out Tom Clark's book on baseball. You might suddenly think that poetry wasn't just something that you hated in public school and was boring and was for ladies with teacups. There are these preconceptions of what it might be. Our role mainly is to put people in touch with their interests so they can say, "This is part of my life and poetry can be part of my life and it's dealing with subject matter I'm interested in." You start where a person is. If they like one thing, you can show them something else. I really believe a lot of it has to do with exposure. When people first come into the new music concerts we're having, especially the improvisational concerts where nothing is notated and it isn't necessarily melodic or rhythmic, some people say "This is awful." But after you've heard it you start saying, "I like this better than that." You start making judgments on experience instead of an uneducated conception. I think our role is to be a matchmaker between people and books. Because we are nonprofit we are able to do that. Everybody who works here-and our tastes are widely different-has a commitment. They have their own enthusiasm. RCF: Is Woodland Pattern a model for what others could do in other places? AK: I think every place has it's own kind of need. That's what makes all the literary centers different because they're responding to their community. You could have people that have equal commitment, but they have different interests so it would take a slightly different spin. It really has been a part of our lives. It's something that you wake up in the middle of the night with or you poke your partner when they're trying to go to sleep and start bringing up these conversational things. It is your life. In a sense, that's really a fortunate situation because you don't spend a lot of your life doing a job while you spend a little of your life doing what you want to do. KG: We didn't start out from the standpoint of wanting to be a commercial bookseller. We were plopped into a situation where it was already turning towards a nonprofit grant world. That's fortunate-and unfortunate because it shouldn't be necessary. In some ways we've been sort of straddling. You can't just decide what you're going to do based on what people are willing to fund, which is what a lot of people do. They may not die out but they don't look like themselves after a month. AK: We've also had an amazing piece of luck and I don't know that that credit has been given. But one of the reasons we were able to survive at a certain time was because of David Wilk's Truck Distribution. KG: David and I got to be good friends. We used to drive up to Minneapolis and I would go into his basement, which is where he was running his distribution project. We worked out a deal because he was trying to get the books out, too. He was committed the same way we were. He would put things in our store on consignment. We were able to have a lot more books in the store than we had bought. At one point, between David and a lot of other friends who would consign stuff to us, the stock was about two-thirds consigned because there was no other way. AK: When the distribution changed hands and turned into Bookslinger, it grandfathered in. I think we were probably the only account that they sent books on consignment-but of course that's not happening anymore. Consignment allowed us to have a range of things that we didn't know were wonderful but if you don't know it and you don't have a lot of money, where are you going to put your money? Because we ve had those books, we know we want to keep having them. But we've also built up our finances. KG: Another good piece of luck is that we were always profoundly aware of our ignorance. There were two things that came out of that. One was that if we found a press that published a book we liked, we would order pretty much the whole catalog. We would let the editors make our choice for us. The other thing was that we had to trust friends from the beginning. Karl Young and Tom Montag would go through catalogs with me. We would choose to order that way. But it wasn't by committee. Karl had one set of tastes and I respected him. Tom had another set and I respected him and anybody in town that I respected had another taste and if they wanted to go through the catalogs and mark things I would order them. In that way we could build up a store that wasn't made up of just one sensibility. RCF: How does that work now? AK: The same way. We all have input. People can come in and suggest things. Whenever a writer comes through Karl always asks them, "Who are you reading? Who are you interested in?" If it's not someone we have on hand, then we make sure we order them. Lately we've had a lot of it on hand, which is really nice. But there is still so much we don't know. We just keep asking. RCF: Who had the idea for your promotional mailings? KG: That was a practical thing. At one point it was cheaper to do it that way. It's not cheaper to do it that way anymore. We were holding these events by people that no one knew anything about, which was the whole point of doing them. The way we do our reading series is that we feel somebody is an important writer, we bring him into town and then acquaint people in town. So say you're having this event by Paul Metcalf. You can send out a press release saying he is the great-grandson of Herman Melville and you can put it in a calendar and maybe get it announced in the paper and maybe get yourself and your wife and some friends and Paul Metcalf to come. Or you can ask Paul to send you some stuff that hasn't been published yet and put it in the brochure with a little biography and so on. I wanted to do that for each individual person because it seemed like a way to honor them. I've always hated getting stuff in the mail where I had to keep the whole thing because there was only one thing I was interested in. So I thought if you have this thing and it's not tied together with staples or something people could open it up, go through the envelope and throw everything away except the one thing they were interested in and put that on their refrigerator. The other thing was that printers always have pieces of paper that they cut off to make specific lengths. We developed a relationship with our printer where we could go in and check their waste and design stuff to fit it. AK: Now our mailing list has grown and it's a lot harder to print cutoffs because it's harder to get three thousand pieces of whatever it was. We have gone to a self-mailed flyer for the majority of the newsletters and things we're sending out because it costs the same whether you're doing a small piece or whether you're doing a big piece. They don't want to throw this stuff away if it can be used. We're trying to save money and we're trying to work around what they have. KG: We used to do a mailing for every single event. But then when we started having two or three events in a month, even in those days when it would be cheaper, it would become really time consuming and expensive, let alone counting the time staff puts into it. Now we would have a whole bunch of odd sheets and we could just stuff them in a brown envelope and mail the whole thing. RCF: Do you think everybody in Milwaukee who should know about Woodland Pattern does know? If not, how much does that bother you and what do you do to try to change that? KG: We've done all kinds of different things. We used to have a dial-a-poem service, but that finally died a couple of years ago. I would record a reading or I would read a poem. And we had an answering machine and we would put that on there and they would get that as a greeting instead of "How are you? Call me back when I'm home." We ran that for about fifteen years. That was the reason we started recording the readings. AK: We have chosen to put our money into the programming and into the newsletter rather than buying adds. The publicity we get is community listings. But because we've been around so long we have a pretty decent working relationship with certain people at the newspaper. They're not going to do a big article on every event, but we re getting some coverage now, so that's okay. KG: It's really hit and miss though. We don't have somebody who trusts us the way we want to trust other people. So we can't get regular attention for all the writers that come through. RCF: What about radio attention, NPR? Do you get any attention from them? KG: Barely. Very little. We've worked at that hard from time to time. I think what we're going to do if we can afford it is to start being a donor, as Woodland Pattern, to public radio so that they have to put something on the air and then maybe we can persuade them to use our tapes. AK: Our goal is for Woodland Pattern to reach a point where we would be recognized as a major cultural institution in the literary arts. Now that doesn't mean we would be downtown in a glamorous edifice. We want the literary arts to be taken as seriously as the symphony. We're not an alternative, we're the thing. We're not an alternative to something else for literary arts; there isn't anything else. KG: We're a public institution. The "public" literary institutions have basically been the university English departments. But they're not really public. And they're not really user friendly. When Anne was involved with the university, we both had decided that the university had become a kind of a priesthood, all these people were speaking in a specialized language to each other. I was pretty disillusioned already. And I wasn't finding any better stuff there, up until we moved to Milwaukee, than I was finding in the commercial bookstores. The reason I got into the position at Boox, Incorporated was that I had taken a class with Jerry Rothenberg, who was here at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. So in two years I basically went from rereading Williams to seeing live John Cage and Jerry Rothenberg, Charlie Marrow, Gary Snyder, David Antin, Jackson Mac Low, Jack Higgins, and Allan Kaprow. All these people were coming to the university, but I just had this feeling that we didn't want to be part of it. They can do what we do any time they want to and they can do it better but they won't. RCF: Do you work with the university at all? KG: We're trying to work with teachers for textbooks. Actually one of the members of our board is a special-collections librarian. He's ordering hooks from us (we've be en assured that that's not a conflict of interest). When we have writers come through, their books will end up in that collection. And if they're book people, they might give a talk at one of the university's book forums. AK: It works better when it's person-to-person so that there are people over there in the university that we work with on an individual level and then they use their connections there. KG: Like Native American studies. Kim Blaeser is a very good fiction writer and poet at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. We cosponsor some writers with her. They'll come into town to work with her and then we'll have a public event. AK: We supply a lot of books for Native American studies. A lot of students come to Woodland Pattern to buy books for their Native American classes. We have a good Native American section. But then the money we make from those books is almost always turned over into bringing a writer that fits that particular group. Maybe the money you spend here can turn into a writer for your class. That works out for both of us. KG: Our new idea is to have a literary center in the schools, to have somebody there to bring writers in when they come to us. AK: We're now working with one high school-this is part of our Lila Wallace proposal- Marquette University High School. This happens to be a private high school but there is a teacher there who is really interested in expanding her kids' experiences beyond the normal classroom. She's taking them to readings. She's taking them to plays. Because we met she is now assigning them to come to several readings at Woodland Pattern. And they're going to write or draw responses to these experiences. Now she's broadening her curriculum to work with other faculty members in the arts and music. Then they're going to come back to Woodland Pattern and do a public presentation of what they got from the semester. It's for the kids that they want to come. I think anytime you say, "You forty people have to go somewhere" you're going to get people who are not as interested. But the ones who are interested are the ones who are going to come and then they will respond. RCF: By working with high-school students you begin teaching them about how you go into a bookstore, and how to feel comfortable in them. AK: The other thing is, at least in the arts, and I won't generalize for every city, but in Milwaukee the major core audience for the ballet, the symphony, the theater, is an aging audience. It's people in their forties and above. They're trying to reach a younger audience, and that's not that far off from us. We want to reach into another generation of readers and writers. One of the things that may make us a little different from some of the other centers is that we've always felt that the reader was an important part of the center. Some of the other centers are very much writer-oriented and that's not bad. But now they're seeing that maybe they need to connect the writer and reader. That's something we've always felt was really obvious. We want younger readers to get involved. If you get younger readers, you'll get younger writers because there is going to be some overlap there. RCF: If Barnes and Noble moved in down the street from you, what effect would it have? I've always thought of Woodland Pattern as a model for how a chain really couldn't compete. It seems if a Borders or Barnes and Noble opened up near you, your business would increase because they wouldn't have a number of poetry books that you have and they would send customers down the street to you. KG: We do have relationships with those people out of necessity, somewhat. It's not necessary for us to carry some things, some of the really mass-market things by writers that might be of interest to many people. We can save our money on that by sending those people to Barnes and Noble and likewise for them. AK: Actually, we have a good working relationship with every bookstore in town. They know they can send people to us. They know what we have. Even Barnes and Noble will send people over. That's the advantage of their hiring locally because they have local people that know what we have. But we will also send other people to other bookstores and we might call to make sure they have it on hand. The primary thing is service to people who want to find whatever it is they want. For instance, we do not have a spirituality section. But there is a bookstore in town that has a lot of books that deal with that and we regularly send people. That works out fine. They send people to us for what we carry. RCF: If you could project ten years from now and if money were not a problem, what would you be doing that you're not doing now? AK: We'd be paying benefits to staff. KG: I'd probably be working here for money instead of as a volunteer. I've always kept my truck-driving job as a buffer against the rise and fall of business. AK: Whatever happens ten years from now is going to be different because we'll both be ten years older and we need to find people who want to continue on and there will be some overlap with what we are doing. RCF: Are those younger people coming along? KG: They're coming along now. Peggy Hong is the person who is running the workshop program and getting workshops and writers into schools. She's working half-time Lisa Corona was an intern last year from a little college called Cardinal Stritch and now we re hiring her. She's really good. She'll be working on audience development and financial management projects. Carolyn Elmer does all of our ordering. She's a real book person. Amy Hoffman is doing a lot of volunteer coordination. And Brooke Barker does all of the work on our catalogs and does inventory work on our computers. AK: There may be new things that we don't see yet, but we've never had the idea that we wanted to grow just to grow. We want to do what we do really. really well and maybe make it deeper rather than wider. We don't know what we don't know, so I'm not sure of what we're not doing that we haven't thought of yet. We would also like, I think, to maintain and keep a professional staff. What we're finding is that younger people are in greater debt coming out of school. I'm amazed at what students have to pay on student loans. It's incredible. Bright, young, literary people, at this point, might not be able to work for a place like Woodland Pattern because we can't afford to pay the money they would need to pay for their education. We want to get to a point where we can pay people like that, to pay people that would be satisfied with making a lot less money than they could make in other places. At this point, it's so much less-not compared to commercial bookstores because bookstores notoriously don't pay well for general staff-than other kinds of occupations or locations. You can have a passion, but you still have to eat. Especially if you have a family. Those are things you take into account. We've been really fortunate with the people who are on the floor now with us. But I don't know if we can expect the next generation to subsidize the center the same way the current generation has been subsidizing it with wages and no benefits and stuff like that. RCF: How important is it that Woodland Pattern continue after both of you are retired or gone? KG: I don't know. Obviously it's important to me to have it be here, and I think for Anne as well, just for our own education. If it isn't, then people will be back where they were. AK: I would like to see it continue but that will kind of depend on who wants to see it continue past us. We can do what we can but we can't force it. We're not going to be able to make someone have the same feeling for it. It will depend on the demand. RCF: One of the theories about publishers is that they have their own special, limited time. You can look back at Barney Rosset at Grove Press. In some ways he got absorbed by commercial publishing which could then do the books that he broke the ground for. I don't know that the same thing applies to what you're doing; that it's so dependent upon the time in which it was happening, that you only do something really unique for a while and then you become like everybody else. KG: That's a good question because we've always tried to fill a kind of cultural gap. My reason for doing this was because, traditionally, you would only find out about a writer after they were already dead. The ones I was interested in were the ones whom I would find out about after they were gone. I think that finding writers is still going to be necessary whether of not we do it or whoever replaces us. I think someone will find a way to be a conduit. AK: What we've tried, and what I hope continues, is to make people aware of the number of choices that they have amongst all these titles, all these writers. And as Karl said, emphasizing a current group of people who are writing rather than people who are gone. Classics are wonderful and they're classics because they're really good. KG: But they're classics because they had an audience in their own time. AK: And we want to encourage people, in a sense, to find the classics of now and to have the chance to speak with these writers. Some of the really exciting things that we've had the privilege of being part of is introducing a writer to a publisher and have something come out of it. Sometimes it ends up being a book a year or two years later. It's exciting to know that that happened in our living room or at Woodland Pattern, to see those kinds of connections being made. So maybe when Karl or I aren't here anymore, it will stop for whatever reason and it will be an encapsulated, special time. But I'm hoping that it can continue. And it won't be the same, it wouldn't be the same. No one is going to be our clones. So it will be different with whatever, whoever it is that cares about it. RCF: Could you imagine some student who is interested in books coming here to study what you're doing and then going off to wherever that person's from to start something very similar? Because what you have set up really is, in my experience, unique. Perhaps someone who could look at what you've done, study what mistakes you may have made, how you would have done certain things differently, and go off and do their own thing or make a variation on it. KG: Sure. I could see that, but there would probably have to be a Borders or a Barnes and Noble or an independent bookstore there, too. There would have to be other resources for the kinds of books we don't sell. What we've tried to do here is fill in the cultural gaps. If a graduate student were to start up something like Woodland Pattern, if would be because they have something that they're interested in and that they want to share, but also to fill a gap that exists in their community. Someone night be able to do what we're doing where there really isn't any kind of resources at all. I think it depends on the needs or wants of the community. We almost always have one or two people here at Woodland Pattern, employees or otherwise, that are reading the store carefully No one has gone off and created another literary center, but they've done other things, like magazines. What we think Woodland Pattern could become is a place where you can find a writer and that writer's sources, the writers he or she read. AK: I think what you might find is unique about Woodland Pattern has to do with us being a literary center rather than a bookstore. KG: And the readings being a literary activity and not a booksale opportunity. AK: We're thrilled if we sell books when the writer comes through but the writer is not considered a commodity. They're coming because they're doing something important and we want to share them and whatever they're writing about, with our community. KG: Our readings haven't been directly tied to book publications. Now it's more and more likely that it would be connected to the publication of a particular book, but it's not probable. It happens more regularly now but I bet you eighty percent of our readings have nothing to do with a new book. Maybe more than that. If it has to do with a book it's probably a happy accident. If we hear somebody is on a book tour, like with Curbstone or Coffee House or some other press, or if somebody contacts us and they're going to be on a book tour and they want to read at our place, then it would be connected with a particular book. But it would happen because we were already interested in them. AK: That's true. We're at a point now where we do get a lot of inquiries from people coming through. We can't do all the readings that people ask us to do, at least not the way that we're doing them now. Each reading, each event is special. We really do try to build an audience for each event and not just throw them out there. RCF: Do you have any sense of how many people become buyers of books in your store because they've been to the readings or vice versa? KG: One of the things that's different about us is that we charge admission to readings. The only other places that do that are places like the Art Institute. Most of the universities have them for free and students are required to attend anyway. People would pay their admission and the books would be there and they would think, "Well I already did my job." But now more and more people are buying books, maybe because of the Barnes and Noble readings. Just before every reading I say, "You have the opportunity to do what you should do in the presence of a writer which is buy their books." RCF: Do you think that your customers first come to the store to buy books or first come to the readings? AK: It cuts both ways. It really does because, in a sense, for each reading we get a different kind of audience and I can use Walter Mosley and Kenneth Koch as two examples. With Walter you might obviously get people who are interested in him because he's a mystery writer. And then you get people who are interested in him because he's a black writer, so people in the black community want to come and support that. And then you get people who are interested in him because he's a big name. And then maybe you get some people who are core who just want to come to a reading, trying things out. Some of those people would only come because it was Walter at Woodland Pattern and then they would buy a book. But it would also be because someone would be there and find out about it and then come to the reading. So it goes both ways. As for Kenneth Koch, there are a lot of people who know him in the educational field because of his teaching books. But then there are those that know him as a poet and they will come to hear his poetry. KG: He is somebody who came because the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund paid his way on a tour. I don't think we ever could have invited him on our own. It turned out to be a really interesting reading. AK: So there is a case of maybe you wouldn't have selected a person but once they're here you're really glad they came. RCF: Do you establish relationships with a lot of the people you bring in to read? KG: We hope to. You always want to. That's really interesting and that's the part that's really been difficult, psychologically I suppose, to know how much of a relationship you have and if it's strictly a business relationship. With literary relationships it's a lot tougher to make the distinction. It turns out that not very many of them are not more than business. If you can't offer another reading or whatever, then a lot of the times the relationship goes away. If you have a project that involves them, there is a relationship. AK: I think, because we don't really want to treat a writer as a commodity, that some of them are willing to come back when it's less convenient for them. That's a good thing. And there are people who might stop by when they don't have a reading in town or just to say hi. It becomes a friendship that grows out of this other thing. But we always try to have a good time with a person coming through. So you're not just waiting at the hotel until we take you to your reading. Walter enjoyed his reading with us before when he was brought through with the Lila Wallace touring project, even though he can always read at some of the commercial places. Actually, last time he was in town he read at the library, which was a huge event. I talked to his agent and she said that she would like to have him in our thirty by thirty room. Every other city is having him in these huge auditoriums but she said, "No, that's where he wants to read. With you." Because that's what he wants to support. (John O'Brien and Christopher Paddock) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 16:10:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry gould Subject: sound politics Regarding the poetry/politics plexus: has anyone thought much about poetry and art as a contribution to noise? May sound ironic coming from the Official Loudmouth himself. And this is not a subtle attempt to suppress the femmes. I am glad for multiplicity here & so graciously always bend low the orb & sceptre of Henrygemony. I wonder about the ability to hear, apprehend, and respond. And if "get your act out there" is always politically liberating. I talked once a few months back about a quiet homemade reserved shy private approach to this art form. That has come up in recent threads with the talk about people who don't send out their work. Imagine a solidarity not based on ideology so much as on a practice of shy collaborators, extremely local. Who try to focus on hearing what a writer's doing in depth. A lot of what's "out there" seems to celebrate surface, edge, superficiality, topicality, immediacy, power, and stuff like that there. What if it takes a different kind of hearing? Just had to mumble from the rooftop again. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 17:02:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: sound politics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Who try to focus on hearing what a writer's doing in depth. A lot of >what's "out there" seems to celebrate surface, edge, superficiality, >topicality, immediacy, power, and stuff like that there. What if it takes a >different kind of hearing? >Just had to mumble from the rooftop again. - Henry Gould A lot of writers, or perhaps moreso wannabe and would-be-if writers, are definitely co-opted and even brain washed into the cult of Happy Word. If they join the cult of Happy Word, and make nothing but joyful noises, they get something published as their reinforcing reward to do more of that same. That is somewhat likenable to the franchise served Happy Meal, but definitely more ideological than cardboard sandwiches in styrofoam packaging.... In other words, I think you understated that bit about superficiality. M. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 16:55:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: iceberg lettuce Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Iceberg Lettuce for the Soul: Light anecdotes for a thinful Age, >Iceberg Lettuce for the Soul: Jack Handy's thoughts for a post-big hair >world.Iceberg Lettuce on Soul (Food): a cookbook for the deep(ness) challenged >You could almost publish a whole book of just the titles. At least turn it >into a perverse Exquisite Corpse. One of our cat either hates the idea or >loves it. She just jumped up here and started batting at the keys... >Tim There, another stroke of brilliance.... Another edition that does not decompose on its own after the wrapper is removed from the vacuum pack, but one that is made of kitty litter. Yes, the very pages crumble up as they are read into useful, recycled, kitty litter. After all, how many people actually read the same book of verse twice ? Of course, Decompositions Incorporated now has a subsidiary called Reclamations Incorporated and it holds patents pending and trademark registered on the new product line. So get those penny shares now, before they rise sky high to current Wall Street values..... M. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 16:17:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Creative Reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Did someone on the list ask about Ron Padgett's book "Creative Reading" a few week (possibly months) ago? You might have got your answer but I did find the book while looking at others things in the library. It is published by the NCTE (who also did Rasula's Wax Museum [someone there must an intelligent editorial policy]). This book sits on the shelf next to books on how to teach Johnnie to read, but its approach is totally refreshing--kind of like Kenneth Koch on how to teach children poetry (the book is dedicated to Koch in fact). Lots of Oulipo style games and techniques and a discussion of reading "errors." I sure hope some teachers of "reading" at all educational levels find this book. My next money-making scheme: an anthology entitled "Language poetry for Children." Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 17:01:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Creative Reading II MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sorry to post again in such rapid succession but I couldn't resist. I used one of Padgett's "creative reading" which consists simply of making a list of nouns and then substituting them for the words in an unrelated text. This is the result of my transformation of a Merwin poem. It made me realize how unsurrealist much "deep-image" surrealism really is: he says my orchid said maybe you have important turn you are doing or maybe you should be seeing incongruity I dont want to keep you I look out the man my bebop is older than I am he says and I told my orchid it was so and I got up and left him then you know though there was business I had to go and immoralist I had to do Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 18:14:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: laura and jeff Subject: Re: *you're never a latent anything MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Anyway in re conformity take away the smog from the word and you have the >problem. Speaking to someone in a recognizable way is conforming, no? i was thinking conformity in the ralph waldo emerson conform to society or group or whatever way. but even in speech: each person brings his/her own set of connotations into the conversation, whether they want to or not. so you are making the attempt to conform (just as in person trying to take up, say, christianity) but your individual integrity is still maintained via your individual perceptions. and so: what i was getting at: the problem is the attempt to conform to stuctures. it is the attempt to try to be like someone/thing else. the attempt to deny your individuality. (of course, the attempt to communicate is not neccessarily a negative attempt, but it can be.) so: my hope is that if people begin to realize that they can not conform, they will 1) rely on themselves more; and 2) be more open to other people's ideas, etc. ahh... idealism. =) jeff. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Listen, if the stars are lit it means there is someone who needs it. It means it is essential that every evening at least one star should ascend over the crest of the building. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 18:07:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: screening process/feminism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dodie--I think that is an excellent screening process and am not surprised that it works as a filter. I was curious about your comment about no longer being a feminist. I often feel like a bad feminist myself but I don't think anything to drastic has changed in me--I'm just more willing to be vocal about all of me, pervert and feminist. Can you enlighten?? R Democracy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 17:27:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Hale Subject: Reading Notely's Disobedience Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable K. Ledrer's recent post of Alice Notley's "The Poetics of Disobedience", recalls another Notley paper: "Epic & Women Poets" which appeared in "Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School" (University of New Mexico Press, 1994). The following text is excerpted from a review I wrote for Sulfur: Any language or materially-oriented approach to writing is formidably challenged in Alice Notley's, "Epic & Women Poets" -- one of this anthology's riskier essays in its assertion that "to break and recombine language is nothing" and that "dreams are not language; they are fleshy and vivid, they are 'real.' And they are 'about' us & everything; both the source and paradigm of art. They are the bed of new beginnings, the place to turn." Proceeding against the margins of what the Twentieth Century discourse of language and literature, from Naropa to France, has been about -- (1) the elimination of the subject from language; the deconstruction of language as mimesis of human nature, presence, vision and voice; (2) the critique of the unconscious as the production of desire via the interpretation and use of dreams to cure neuroses or create illusions of self-realization -- Notley discards "language" as a male-dominated, over-determined, dead system. Accordingly, the writing (and reading) of poetry is no longer an exploration of systems of language -- a new way of writing, traceable to Stein through the Objectivists, and to today, via the Language School, that was (and still is) tired of the over-explanation and hegemony of the subject (regardless of its gender), that sought (and still seeks) to make of writing an action, conscious of the fact that what is internal to what is called action is that it does not know itself (which suggests the heart of Buddhism or Su=F1=F1at=E3 -- voidness: all things,= without any exception, especially, the self). For Notley, whatever "language" was is back to being about the author and the author's dreams, which as Notley asserts, are "more real" than language.=20 I would add today, moreover, in light of the Disobedience text, that Notley's strategy involves the self in a literalization of the gap between saying and doing. I would equate her two worlds, the "ideal crystalline" one and the "supposedly real" one, with saying and doing, respectively -- This oscillation as a line of escape from perpetually false forms and discourses to "fundamental justice" which is at some point embodied in the act of writing itself, which is only a vehicle for self-realization and coming to terms with "death and responsibility," or "not believing and telling the truth as it comes up" -- historically and politically it is both this revelation, and much more seriously, a mutation in the natural dimension of Western culture: the end of history in the sense in which it is secretly implied by Notley.=20 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 20:20:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Creative Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" uh-oh. a friend and i just put together a book for grades 3-5 w/ lots of this kind of stuff in it. i better check this one out. ours won't be out for about a year.-md At 4:17 PM 3/31/98, MAYHEW wrote: >Did someone on the list ask about Ron Padgett's book "Creative Reading" a >few week (possibly months) ago? You might have got your answer but I did >find the book while looking at others things in the library. It is >published by the NCTE (who also did Rasula's Wax Museum [someone there >must an intelligent editorial policy]). This book sits on the shelf next >to books on how to teach Johnnie to read, but its approach is totally >refreshing--kind of like Kenneth Koch on how to teach children poetry (the >book is dedicated to Koch in fact). Lots of Oulipo style games and >techniques and a discussion of reading "errors." I sure hope some >teachers of "reading" at all educational levels find this book. > >My next money-making scheme: an anthology entitled "Language poetry for >Children." > > >Jonathan Mayhew >Department of Spanish and Portuguese >University of Kansas >jmayhew@ukans.edu >(785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 20:24:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Creative Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ps ours will be called, or its working title is, The Secret Life of Words At 4:17 PM 3/31/98, MAYHEW wrote: >Did someone on the list ask about Ron Padgett's book "Creative Reading" a >few week (possibly months) ago? You might have got your answer but I did >find the book while looking at others things in the library. It is >published by the NCTE (who also did Rasula's Wax Museum [someone there >must an intelligent editorial policy]). This book sits on the shelf next >to books on how to teach Johnnie to read, but its approach is totally >refreshing--kind of like Kenneth Koch on how to teach children poetry (the >book is dedicated to Koch in fact). Lots of Oulipo style games and >techniques and a discussion of reading "errors." I sure hope some >teachers of "reading" at all educational levels find this book. > >My next money-making scheme: an anthology entitled "Language poetry for >Children." > > >Jonathan Mayhew >Department of Spanish and Portuguese >University of Kansas >jmayhew@ukans.edu >(785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 21:44:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aviva99999 Subject: Re: more boring chit-chat Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 3/31/98 1:42:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, SSSCHAEFER@AOL.COM writes: << But Helene Cixous's theories on a female language are interesting when applied to experimental syntax. >> I'd love to hear more about this...