========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 14:44:57 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Jacket # 4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jacket # 4 is now under construction, at this URL: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket04/ So far . . . David Lehman on Postmodernism, Eliot Weinberger on the mysterious ghosts of Iceland, a review of Enzensberger's "Kiosk" by Lawrence Joseph, John Tranter: Mr Rubenking's "Breakdown" - on computers and writing, Ric Caddel and Peter Quartermain : OTHER British and Irish Poetry since 1970, Forrest Gander - review of Yasusada : DOUBLED FLOWERING, Noel King's interview with Pete Ayrton, publisher of Serpent's Tail books, a selection of poems by M.T.C.Cronin, Gary Catalano, Robert Vandermolen, Adam Aitken, Elaine Equi, Rod Mengham, Tony Lopez, David Lehman, Charles Alexander and Sheila Murphy, and Ian Patterson, as well as "Great Moments in Literature # 13 - Kleist reduced to haiku", "Dangerous Liaisons # 91 - Jo and Meg in Mexico", and a perspicacious and peculiar Portuguese perspective of the April 1998 Cambridge (England) Conference of Contemporary Poetry - and more pieces are being added week by week. Final fitting: late July 1998. Earlier issues of Jacket remain on view. Please tell your friends . . . John Tranter, editor, Jacket magazine, http://www.jacket.zip.com.au ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 00:46:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: trbell Subject: Re: [Fwd: Solidarity] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Bob, In light of recent discussions here about the political impact of poetry, could you give some more information or ask Clemente for further background. tom bell At 08:19 AM 6/30/98 -0400, you wrote: >>Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 18:12:35 -0300 >>From: Clemente Pad=EDn >>Subject: Solidarity >> >>SOLIDARIDAD >> >> >> Finalmente, Humberto Nilo Saavedra, Director y Acad=E9mico de= la >>Escuela de Artes de la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad de Chile fue >>virtualmente echado de su cargo por los sectores universitarios >>reaccionarios pinochetistas. La gota que colm=F3 el vaso fue la exposici= =F3n de >>arte correo "STOP: libertad, diversidad y pluralismo" en el Museo de Arte >>Contempor=E1nea de Santiago que Humberto Nilo hab=EDa organizado para >>defenderse de las persecuciones que estaba soportando desde hace largos >>a=F1os por esos sectores. Es sintom=E1tico que Humberto Nilo ya haya sido >>expulsado de su c=E1tedra en la Universidad bajo la dictadura de Pinochet. >>Hoy que Pinochet ocupa un cargo de senador vitalicio sus partidarios >>levantan cabeza y est=E1n cobrando venganza sobre todos aquellos que, como >>Humberto Nilo han jugado un papel progresista en el campo de la cultura y >>se han opuesto, siempre, a toda forma de autoritarismo y vasallaje en la >>ense=F1anza de las artes. >> >> Humberto Nilo fue, tambi=E9n, quien acogi=F3, en 1996, en la= Escuela >>de Artes, la exposici=F3n de homenaje al recientemente fallecido Guillermo >>Deisler, otro perseguido por la dictadura de Pinochet, tambi=E9n acad=E9mi= co de >>artes en la Universidad de Chile, en Antofagasta, quien debi=F3 huir a= toda >>prisa de Chile con toda su familia a un destino incierto bajo la amenaza= de >>muerte. Esos mismos sectores dictatoriales est=E1n hoy expulsando a todos= los >>profesores y catedr=E1ticos que han dicho NO a la brutalidad y a la >>violaci=F3n constante de los derechos humanos. >> >> Ante el temor de que los desplantes y la brutalidad del r=E9gim= en >>puedan poner en peligro la vida de Humberto Nilo y de sus familiares >>iniciamos esta campa=F1a mundial solicitando a todos los artistas-correo y >>networkers del mundo entero a que env=EDen, a su direcci=F3n postal, >>expresiones de apoyo solidario para que, de alguna manera, sus ofensores= no >>puedan llevar a cabo sus amenazas impunemente: >> >> Humberto Nilo Saavedra >> Calama 8435 >> La Cisterna, >> SANTIAGO >> CHILE >> >>hnilo@hotmail.com >> >>WEB:: http://members.tripod.com/~TERRITORIO/STOPINFO.html >> http://members.tripod.com/~TERRITORIO/DENUNCIA_INTERNACIONAL >> >> >> >>SOLIDARITY >> >> >> Finally, Humberto Nilo Saavedra , Director and Academic of the >>Arts School of the University from Chile was virtually tossed of their >>position for the reactionary pinochetists sectors of the University. The >>drop that filled the glass was the exhibition of mailart "STOP: freedom, >>diversity and pluralism" in the Art Contemporary Museum of Santiago that >>Humberto Nilo had organized in order to defend of the persecutions that he >>was supporting for long years. It is symptomatic that Humberto Nilo has >>already been expelled of their class in the University under the >>dictatorship of Pinochet. Today, that Pinochet occupies a position of >>senator during life, his acolytes lift head and are collecting vengeance= on >>all those that, like Humberto Nilo, had played a progressive paper in the >>field of the culture and has been opposed, always, to all form of >>autoritarism and vassalage in the teaching of the arts. >> >> Humberto Nilo was, also, who showed, in 1996, in the Arts= School, >>the exhibition of homage to the recently died Guillermo Deisler, another >>pursued by the dictatorship of Pinochet, also academic arts in the >>University from Chile, in Antofagasta, who should flee as quickly as >>possible from Chile with all their family to an uncertain destination= under >>the threat of death. Those same dictatorial sectors are today expelling= all >>the professors and professors that they have said NO to the brutality and >>to the constant violation of the human rights. >> >> In the face of the fear that the menaces and the brutality of >>the regime could put the life of Humberto Nilo and his relatives in danger >>, we want began this world campaign requesting to all the mailartists and >>networkers of the whole world that to send expressions of support to their >>postal address so that, somehow, his offenders could not carry out their >>threats: >> >> Humberto Nilo Saavedra >> Calama 8435 >> La Cisterna, >> SANTIAGO >> CHILE >> >>hnilo@hotmail.com >> >>WEB:: http://members.tripod.com/~TERRITORIO/STOPINFO.html >> http://members.tripod.com/~TERRITORIO/DENUNCIA_INTERNACIONAL >> >> >>Clemente Pad=EDn >>C.Correo Central 1211 >>11000 Montevideo - URUGUAY >>Fax (598 2) 915 94l7 >>E-mail >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 02:56:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Differance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (I realize the difficulty of the following, which is based on the compar- ison of two files, the difference between two signs, re: Saussure or for that matter Derrida, Lacan. But diff here is restrained; what it produces also reproduces/constitutes virtual subjectivity. You can take this far- ther, just as moon is a word, just as in rl "moon" is a word.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Differance What is difference, and how are subjects constituted? {k:3}diff subject-now subject-then How do they differ, and in what lines do they differ? 71a72,74 > Jun 30 23:17:42 166 PAM_pwdb[276]: (login) session closed for user root > Jun 30 23:17:47 166 PAM_pwdb[559]: (login) session opened for user root by (uid=0) > Jun 30 23:17:47 166 login[559]: ROOT LOGIN ON tty1 {k:4}diff where-am-i-now where-was-i-then Binary files where-am-i-now and where-was-i-then differ (strings where-am-i-now > aa; strings where-was-i-then > bb; diff aa bb >> zz) How do they differ, and in what lines do they differ? 53a54,58 > tty1 > tty1 > LOGIN > tty1 > root You see, differance is a file or array; you see, it's not the subtle wisp of cloud caressing the moon, gone before your aware-ness (mono no aware) catches up with you... Nikuko would write the difference with the edge of the brush; back erect, shodo following breath upon the horizontal page. But here, she'd say, were she next to me, hands on shoulder, lips lightly brushing the erect back, it's a question or answer of five strings, well- defined, pure information which only happens to appear in this or that font, of this or that size, bold or italic or underline, or any other de- fault setting the subject might predispose herself to reading within. She, subject-Nikuko, turns back to the brush. Kanji is not always a question or problem of difference, however subtle; it is also a memory. Isn't every alphabet. Only to the extent that bandwidth reduces to the twenty-six, and then further to the two, harbored against the one. Always coherent, the two, Nikuko said; it's literally bound that way. One swallows the other. Moon, fogging. __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 03:21:39 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: lib of poetry [what I suggest we should do] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit poets in some parts of North America DONATE copies of their works, gratis, to [libraries] I understand poets do this. They receive their copies from publishers. In your experience as a publisher is this your suggestion? Some publishers use their time and resources to manifest materials for causes they consider to be of value. Having our publication sold to libraries has played a part in achieving this aim. The inevitable consequence of a well-directed life is death and the inevitable consequence of a misdirected life is also death. At night I keep telling myself go to sleep nobody is to blame we are what we are the world is what it is --Richard Shelton I think of this poet and Joe Bruchac and how much work they have done for poetry whenever I hear of people patting themselves on the back and telling others what to do when they haven't done the action themselves. The anthology _House of the Dead_ edited by Joe Bruchac and William Witherup changed my life because it opened up the realm of possibilities as both a writer and editor. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 05:39:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Pinsky as union busting Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I didn't read the Pinsky piece as being so much about jobs for poets as much as only slightly papered-over union busting. Either that or he is incredibly naive about what public school districts, especially in underfunded urban areas, would do if they could hire employees with no formal training. For every posh prep school that hires MFAs to enrich already well-funded programs, there are 10 neo-Christian fundamentalist home church type environments that use the same approach to provide who knows what in the name of education. If you want inner city schools that look even more like concentration camps, his proposal would be one quick way to get there. I found this to be a most curious use of the laureate-ship indeed. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 06:46:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: [what I suggest we should do] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David, let this be your reality check. >I understand poets do this. They receive their copies from publishers. Most poets PAY for the printing and binding of their works. They also PAY for any promotion of their works, such as advertising. They get nothing for nothing, in most instances. Few poets actually get published and paid for publishing. Most poets also pay all their own expenses to go to readings, unless someone passes the hat and takes up a collection. It is hardly a step up from begging on the streets as usually it does not pay for dinner and gas for out of towners. At least that is how it is in Canada. I assume similarly in the United States. >In your experience as a publisher is this your suggestion? Actually I self published one book, and a couple of pamphlets. All of it poetry, and all of it was 90% give-away, rather than gaining any revenue. >Witherup changed my life because it opened up the realm of possibilities >as both a writer and editor. Ah, you are a censor. I lacked an experienced censor, to tell me what to include and what to leave out, when I self published mine, so I failed at it. A lesson for others who too fearlessly attempt that path. I would counsel any that they need 1). an experienced censor 2). an experienced mass marketer 3). an experienced agent / public relations person 4). a mass advertising capability 5). an economical mass distribution system 6). to know, or know an agent or publisher who knows well and personally a large enough number of book reviewers and editors All of those factors are _essential_ and all of them will be rubbed in one's face as essential and unavailable to self publishers. None of them are optional if we are talking about anything that even resembles _real_ "success". That ought to do it, in most instances, as to making publication of a title reasonably "successful" as to any significant "market share" or even as to recovery of costs put into it. The alternative is for another publisher who has turned a profit and survived at it, to invite one to dinner. It is traditional to go with holes in one's own pockets. In the give and take of it all one has to learn to take one's defeats with some elements of grace and style. That's about all there is to it. It actually happened, and the small press publisher and I, remain friends despite having given our nod to custom and tradition. Anyway, that happens when oneself is deceased as publisher, having failed to thrive. My experience at self publishing cost me some thousands of dollars, so as to have some poetry in print to give away. That was not the original intention, but that is how it ended up. Not to even begin to add in the amount of hours put into writing, typesetting, producing, and getting it out there. I will recover my postage costs, due to a government of Canada program, that pays authors a small fee based on how many copies of their books are found on the shelves in random sampled Canadian libraries. Only the postage for some give aways. Lessons are always expensive, and some lessons more expensive than others. Morpheal aka Bob Ezergailis (deceased publisher) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 08:49:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William A Sylvester Subject: Re: READING ANNOUNCEMENT In-Reply-To: <3599120D.2D106B38@acsu.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Many thanks, Taylor, for the announcement. It will be a really interesting reading-- In her recent posting Wendy referred to Arp--part of the Dada group in Zurich around War I-- We did a reading of one of his sound poems, years ago in the Electronic Poetry Workshop--also a multilingual poem read by Ray Federman, Ron Hauser and me. Bill whistles and horns included. Lots of fun. Cheers Bill On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, Taylor Brady wrote: > Listmembers in and around Buffalo should check this out: > > Scratch & Dent > (a slightly irregular reading and performance series) > presents an evening of > poetry in alternate tunings > > with > > Wendy Kramer > > Stephen Cope > > and > > Joel Kuszai > > Friday, July3, 8pm > @ Cornershop, 82 Lafayette > > ------------------------------------------------------ > > Taylor Brady > editor, Cartograffiti > http://writing.upenn.edu/spc/cartograffiti > > (a publication of the Small Press Collective) > http://writing.upenn.edu/spc > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 09:47:01 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: AZ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'll be in Phoenix and Tucson 7/7 through 7/9. Anything going on out that way next week? Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 09:56:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grotjohn Organization: Mary Baldwin College Subject: Re: yamanaka protest MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Below is something else about the Yamanaka un-award. For more on the haole and multiethnic in Hawaii, people might like to read *Ono Ono Girl's Hula* by Carolyn Lei Lanilau (U of WI, 1997). After getting a job that she didn't want in a cannery: "Shock, denial, genuine nightmare is how I felt when the lady grinded out 'Report to work tomorrow' in the pidgin tone, go-to-hell enthusiasm. While it is my habit to analyze a situation which appears irrational, I now realize that at that moment, I embraced Language Poetry" (35-36). Dear Writer: I am writing to inform you about a situation of concern regarding Asian American writers and the Association of Asian American Studies. This situation centers around the work of Lois-Ann Yamanaka and the decisions of the AAAS literary awards committees and the Board of the AAAS. Ultimately, I think it also concerns the complexity and freedom of our work, the need for an understanding of how literary works function, and a tribal policing for “political correctness” which has characterized a certain part of the way members of the AAAS have regarded the work of Asian American authors. In November 1996, Jinqi Ling (UCLA), Sau-ling Wong (UCB) and Traise Yamamoto (UCRiverside) were asked to serve on the literary awards committee for the 1997 Asociation of Asian American Studies conference to be held in Seattle. The committee was be responsible for reading fiction and poetry published in 1996. In February of 1997, the committee selected Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers to receive the AAAS book award. Jinqi Ling, the Chair of the committee, wrote up a letter announcing their decision. Subsequently, certain AAAS Board members objected to the committee’s decision. Apparently, no one was objecting to Wild Meat itself; rather the objection was based on the fact that Yamanaka’s previous volume, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater, a 1994 AAAS award winner, had contained poems which some regarded as offensive to the Filipino American community or as protraying Filipino Americans in an unfavorable and stereotypical way. This sentiment was voiced by other AAAS members, including the Filipino Caucus. Eventually, the board voted to pull the award. As I understand it, no public announcement was made recording the judges’ decision and the overturning of that decision. In 1998, the Board appointed another literary award committee--Caroline Chung Simpson (chair), David Eng (Columbia) and Wendy Ho (UC Davis). They chose Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging as this year’s award winner. Again a protest has started up. Apparently, at this year’s AAAS conference in Hawaii, there will be a discussion of Yamanaka’s work and the controversies surrounding it. One of the Board Members to vote against the award in 1997, was Dr. Jonathan Okamura (UH), the only member from Hawaii. In a Hawaiian publication, Honolulu, Okamura said, “I and other board members objected because of Yamanaka’s continued stereotyping of Filipinos.” In the same article, though, Okamura admited that his complaint was not necessarily with Wild Meat, which he said he had never read, but with Yamanaka’s third and latest book, Blu’s Hanging. “In Blu’s Hanging, she equates Filipinos with rats and depicts them as oversexed,” said Okamura, who pointed out that he had not read Blu’s Hanging either, but did thumb through it looking for passages he felt maligned Filipinos. Nowhere in Okamura’s response was there any consideration of the fact that the speaker in the poems he objected to was a character and not the author or to the fact that Blu’s Hanging is not an autobiographical work or personal essay but a work of fiction narrated by a fictional character. In other words, with both works, views are attributed to the author which are actually those of a fictional character. To read literary works with such logic completely misreads the way literarary works create a complex and multi-voiced picture of the world and would shackle authors in any number of problematic ways. For one thing, it implies that no characters or narrators should espouse anything other than politically correct views. All this does not mean that I do not think that authors should be protected from criticism of their work. Nor do I feel that one needs to agree that Yamanaka has succeeded aesthetically in all aspects of her work or that one cannot critique the portrayal of Filipino American’s in her work. But I am disturbed by Board member Okamura’s refusal to read Yamanka’s work and his misunderstanding of the literary enterprise, and I question his qualifications to judge individual literary works and his understanding of the writer’s enterprise (I can only wonder if other Board members displayed similar tendencies in their reasoning). I am even more disturbed by the process through which the AAAS literary awards committee’s decision has been overturned and may be again. I am writing other writers and organizations and asking them to protest the AAAS Board’s refusal in 1997 to recognize the decision of its own literary awards committee and to urge that such an action does not take place again in 1998. Those who oppose Yamanka’s work and her receiving the award have and are continuing to lodge their own views with the board. The other side need to be heard. You can write the AAAS at the following e-mail adress: AAASBoard@uclink.berkeley.edu If you wish additional information on these matters or if you do not have e-mail, you can also contact Wing Tek Lum at 808-531-5200 (work); 808-988-2009 (home); fax (808-521-7710). We ask that you send a copy of your response either to him or to me (e-mail: DAVSUS@aol.com fax: 612-672-0573). We would like to receive your response before the roundtable on Lois-Ann Yamanka’s work on June 26, 1998 at this years AAAS conference in Hawaii. I have also prepared a statement below, which you may choose to send as part of your e-mail. These are a list of my objections. Feel free to choose whatever part of this statement feels appropriate for you. I thank you for taking the time to read this e-mail. Please feel free to pass this information on to any interested parties. All best, David Mura 1920 East River Terrace Minneapolis, MN 55414-3672 (fax 612-672-0573) e-mail: DAVSUS@aol.com Letter to the Board of the Association of Asian American Studies 1) I wish to protest the AAAS Board’s decision in 1997 to ignore the choice of its 1997 literary awards committee to give a book award to Lois-Ann Yamanka for Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers. I also urge the Board to recognize the decision of its literary awards committee to give a book award to Yamanaka’s Blu’s Hanging in 1998. 2) I am concerned too with a reading of Yamanaka’s work which ignores or misreads the way a fictional character or narrator functions in a literary work. 3) I also wish to reaffirm that writers often must, by the nature of their enterprise, upset and question prevailing views, evoke extreme and visceral reactions, and write in ways where ambiguity and complexity take precedence over “political correctness” or safe and comforting portraits of the world, our community, or the individuals who reside there. 4) I am also concerned with the way the AAAS has sometimes seemed to organize “witch hunts” against various writers. This is not to say that writers should be immune from criticism. Indeed, criticism is a necessary part of the creation of a literary culture. Perhaps, though, it might be helpful for people to look into the mechanism and psychological reasons why those within a community wish to tear someone from the community apart once they have become successful. Rather than encouraging literary variety and creativity and recognizing the difficulty of the tasks which writers and other artists perform, the AAAS seems at times to have been attempting to invoke comformity and silence. Sincerely, signature, e-mail/fax/phone/address ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:27:32 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: [what I suggest we should do] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I cannot speak for most poets as I am not most poets. I can say that every book our press has published has paid its authors in copies plus a cash amount. The industry standard in small press publishing is 10 to 15% of press run usually paid in copies, we do a little better. If vanity publishing were the industry standard wouldn't it be called industry standard? Eh? >Witherup changed my life because it opened up the realm of possibilities as both a writer and editor. I am talking about reading an anthology edited by these individuals and taken from writers "from the streets" who ended up in prison because of what they had to do to survive or would be writers who never thought they could be one. And how it expanded the realm of the possible for a guy like me. I have no idea where your censor comment came from, perhaps your unfamiliarity with the subject of Bruchac, et tal. "to know, or know an agent or publisher who knows well and personally a large enough number of book reviewers and editors. All of those factors are _essential_ and all of them will be rubbed in one's face as essential and unavailable to self publishers." In NY state small press editors are given a chance through the NYState arts council to do a learning process where a larger press donates their time to mentor a smaller press and show them the ropes in all of the areas mentioned above. In Philadelphia, individuals such as Gil Ott (Singing Horse), Valerie Hanson (Boulevard), Ethel Rackin (APR), were willing to do the same if you sought them out. Journals are also willing to do the same if you donate your time to them.I was unaware that presses weren't willing in Canada to do the same for the good it would bring the community of writers in the particular area you speak of. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:41:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: lib of poetry Comments: To: David Baratier In-Reply-To: <3599343E.409A@thewebpeople.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 30 Jun 1998, David Baratier wrote: > Fred and the others close to libraries (I deleted mail too quick) bring > up an interesting point for the small press publishers on here. In my > experience with trying to get issues into libraries, even with someone > requesting material, every so often I have run into a panel situation > where I send them a sample copy and the continuing subscription never is > ordered. It only seems to happen at the largest of academic > universities. Is this practice common? > > Be well > > David Baratier > David, What do you mean by "a panel situation?".... In any event, i always try to hedge my enthusiasm with a certain number of qualifiers..There are *definitely* libraries out there (academic and public) where attempts to introduce half-way decent poetry (my phrase for poetry outside the workshop mainstream) would be resisted or flatly repulsed. But a larger number where it would be met with interest and responsiveness. Perhaps your past experience is with some of the resistant strain... But there is this: your phrasing above makes it sound like you may have been dealing with poetry mags....Now this is a trickier situation. I always encourage people to try with book acquisitions, because changing the patterns of a library with respect to periodicals is often *much* harder. This may be part of the problem you've encountered. Periodicals represent an ongoing commitment, and in this day and age when capitalist crisis and extremely right-wing fiscal agendas have trashed most libraries' budgets, it is very hard to get them to consider new serials commitments, unless they are certain a substantial number of their patrons are going to use the title in question....Also, poetry mags as we all know don't follow the strict publication patterns of commercial periodicals, for the most part, and for a variety of reasons violate the expectations and work-habits of library serials departments; and this tends to make it a harder sell. Starting out with books is easier. mark @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:54:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Subject: Racist Poetics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear List, I have been watching the string of postings concerning the protest of Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent award, based on what apparently were interpreted as racist views of hers. As I am watching this conversation unfold, I cannot help but wonder if i missed something somewhere along the way when so much attention was given to the genius of Maya Angelou, without regards to her - dare I say- OVERTLY racist viewpoints. I have heard Dr. Angelou (though I hate to call her that, since the degree is an honorary one, and not an academically earned one) speak on several occasions, and EVERY time she has lectured she has addressed the audience (which for some reason is always almost entirely white middle-to-upper-class) as if she were back in Stamps, Arkansas. In her novels and poetry, the word "black" is always capitalized, while the word "white" is never, and her views are almost bordering on rhetoric (to say it lightly). yet nobody ever says a word about it...why now all the attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue, Brent Brent_Long@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:02:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Slammin MFA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Great to read the whole of Padgett's tender stroll and Miller's pierced screed in a sitting! I'd give Padgett a 9.8 and Miller a 9.7 because I'm just back from the Slam at Chelsea Feast (507 W. 23, NY, NY, 10001) where Beau Sia hosts 'em every Tuesday at 8. Padgett is the clearest writer I've ever met. So, how does he get clearer? Amazing. And Miller pounds away at the inside out, making it public, always has, and it's a mess, still. But we've got the Supreme Court voting aesthetics now, huh? and he makes me look where I don't wanna see. Thomas Salia blech. I, too, am proud of my poetry reading vet stripes. Many of the crowd at last night's Slam (average age: 20) will go on to: Readings. This is a "good" "thing." They do not go to readings now; the raucous commotion churns is what they want. Too young to "drink," must poetry be denied them? Matt Levy (18 y.o.) was featured --his zine "Schemantiks" is a hoot -- TipoDeSol@aol.com. He won a high school poetry contest this year -- will be taking his $10,000 scholarship prize at Emerson in the fall. As for the historicity of slam, it's clear enough at Kurt Heintz's site: http://www.tezcat.com/~malachit/slam/. If anyone has some deeper interest, lemme know. It's an energizing marvel to find Pinsky on OpEd. We need the word careening top down, too. Poet Laureate on date with First Lady -- great! Kenny Carroll, DJ Renegade, and Nancy Schwalb getting props -- totally great. None has MFA however. And institutions like T&W and PITS and WritersCorp need support. Alliance between MFA and Slam via Poets in Schools programs to get art in and voices out of middle and high schools is the platform. (Next issue of Radio Poetry News [http://www.mouthalmighty.com/radio/htm] will feature poems from the Slam that Hil and Robert heard. POEMS THE TIMES REFUSED TO PRINT!!!!) Bob Holman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:15:41 -0500 Reply-To: Julie Marie Schmid Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Julie Marie Schmid Subject: Re: Slams/Pinsky as union busting In-Reply-To: <1998716226411478@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Amen to Ron's post! The idea of using non-certified MFAs to teach in public schools could be seen as a serious attempt to errode the teachers unions' bargaining units. Likewise, it appears to me that the "more bang for your buck" theory of education would work just like the ethically questionable practice of hiring adjuncts and one-year contracts, etc., that is all the rage in most universities and colleges. It's just a way to hire people for very little money, offer them no job security, and then work their asses off because they are so pleased to get a chance to be in front of a classroom. I also find it curious that no one has mentioned any of the slam poets who ARE high school or middle school teachers. Daniel Faery of the Berwyn team and Taylor Mali (who did teach at one time--I'm not sure he still does) immediately come to mind. There is also Michael Brown, who is a professor at Mount Ida College in Boston. This might be a bit naive on my part, but it seems clear to me that the qualities that make one a good teacher would also make one a good slam poet--enthusiasm, eloquence, and the ability to make you think about something in a new way. Of course, not all slam poetry does this. But, then again, not every teacher does either. Julie Schmid Dept. of English University of Iowa ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:35:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: three items... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (1) bob holman makes a convincing case for the value of slams, whatever you think of them... the only danger of course is that folks come out of slams expecting ALL poetry to do thus & so in terms of oral performance... but worth the risk to get the word out, i think, and to contribute to the flows... btw: is it true that both slams and bouts had their origins in chicago?... i've heard marc smith go on about slams... in any case, this makes the cultural-historian-hobbyist in me wanna ask what is it about chicago that cultivates same?... broad shoulders?... (2) i agree with ron and julie on the union issues, being mself prone toward collective bargaining... somehow it sounds like pinsky just wasn't thinking... but julie: i'm not sure i'd make that correlation between performance and teaching quite so strong... (3) brent long: "Another poet, American, citizen sick of the 'race' issue"... are you joking or something?... i don't have much use for angelou's poetry mself, but that's quite beside the point it seems you're making here... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 20:28:34 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: they don't? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jordan Davis wrote: > > Actually, many poets _do_ teach middle and high school. Conversely, many > middle and high school students like poetry and prefer stranger kinds of > writing. Here are a couple of poems by middle schoolers at the School for > the Physical City in Manhattan: > > POEM > > meaning of poem > America is not contrary to popu- > wow said Mr. Pinsky. After > students and an adult literacy stu- > we too are a virtual part of America. > and Mike Wallace read those guys > ments came as poems were read by > was also the opening day of National > happy to say I'm not the Mayor of Mr. > Town Hall to read selections of their > relishing their > the reading which brought about > archive of 1,000 average America > weren't bad > to asking a parent to pick a favorite. > > --David Frey > > IT'S ALWAYS FAIR > > I will never finish any of this > because I decided to boycott all the things I need > Nowadays I dine in and take my drinks in the Mediterranean > Sometimes I'm the stone people tend to send > skipping over ripples in a lake > and I've always slept like a rabbit > I am on everywhere's vacation to anywhere > I am a big shiny disco ball that loves people who dazzle > and makes the seagulls choke on their own ocean > > --Molly Ahern > > The classroom teacher was Anne Yerger, and the writers-in-residence from > Teachers and Writers Collaborative were Chris Edgar and myself. Anyway, > Pinsky's _met_ David Frey, and I believe he knows that > writers-in-residence programs put poets in schools in New York, San > Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, and smaller cities > across the country. He may also be aware that some places consider an MFA > qualification enough to apply to be certified (as teachers, you wags). > > Releasing the umfas on the schools might not be such a bad idea -- not for > full year classes, but for ten or twenty-day gigs. Why not make it a > movement at the next AWP convention? or the MLA, for that matter, to have > some kind of community service (e.g. public school) requirement for > graduation might be a little old-shoe, but what about offering that > service to the community? > > Jordan Davis RE: these: Yes: the "academics" could lovingly learn from these children. (As we all can.) Having taught at both the college level and now at the middle school level--I prefer the middle school. As a poet the language comes as primary source--thus the language is put primary--as primer--more so in middle school (for my exp.) than at the art college I taught at. The children do like "odd" poems because the children can be allowed to love and engage language. The notions (all "language" "marxist" "post marx" "post mod." "confessionals" "blah blah blah" mean beautiful NOTHING to the children. When we read they want to know about LIFE and the LANGUAGE. Allowing a reading text to be smart for middle schoolers is also a joy. I've put together readings specific to my writing workshop that were filled with Ashbury, Baraka, Lyn Hejinian, Celan, Rumi, Dickinson, Whitman, Hughes, Creeley, Duncan, even Silliman (only the "even" cause these kids are 11-14!) and they've "gotten" them all. A discussion the other day with Diane Ward: she mentions that her son's 4th grade teacher did a poetry "section" and that all the poems were directed toward that notion that "this equals that" --as if the poems had to HAD TO be a direct relationship to the living everyday. Iused to be 6...now I'm 9.." etc. In my workshops I often stress SOUND as Meaning, Meanings as Sound, etc. I would argue that these kids get poetry in a way that refreshes MY ear and continually gives me energy. My other (personal, obviously) exp. at the academic level often showed a death and dearth of care towards the poem and a much more elevated level of "grasping at ..." . I guess I just like kids! Everyone should have a go at the experience of teaching/writing with children. You'll find out what you really believe in a vastly rhetorical manner. Todd Baron ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 12:36:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: used to .. but now MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Todd -- It sounds like Diane Ward's child's teacher was using Kenneth Koch's book _Wishes, Lies & Dreams_, and was not giving very inspiring examples (if lines like "I used to be six but now I'm nine" were what the teacher was getting -- unless there was some Hendrix playing in the background?). I'm surprised to see those lessons criticized for overdependence on the world of things; when the book came out, many (including Teachers & Writers stalwart Phillip Lopate) saw Kenneth's exercises as too much promoting the surreal among children, the fear being that kids would detach from reality. Oh well! people always will complain about the atmosphere. Incidentally, Ted Berrigan and Bruce Andrews have both used the "used to .. but now" exercise in their work. Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 20:37:50 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: #2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit #2 I actually meant "non-rhetorical" way. But hey! ps: the fiction and drama I teach in my English courses at the same 7th grade level is also a joy and a stretch for the kids: N. Mahfouz, Fugard, Alan Paton, Borges, Allende, etc. Certainly a stretch for a 12 year old--but a stretch they intend to met because we allow (not ask or demand) them to. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 10:57:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Racist Poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just to state the obvious: Without being a fan of Dr. Angelou, nothing you say Brent indicates racism on her part. The issue of reverse racism is a long debated one among white hysterics who love to react to the issue of "P.C." Racism is an issue of institutional domination, which despite her honorary degree, Dr. Angelou does not, will never, possess. See how easy it was for you to place her "back in Stamps, Arkansas." Furthermore it is never a simple accidental/coincidental "reason" why the audience is always almost entirely white middle-to-upper-class. Check out the June 21 NYSlime article on the reorganiziation of private college aid which favors just the abovementioned folk. as for her views, rhetoric, poetry--no need for me to defend them, her political use of capitalization a racist make her? please please now. yours, rachel [J]ewish democracy [L]esbian levitsky Brent Long wrote: > > Dear List, > > I have been watching the string of postings concerning the protest of > Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent award, based on what apparently were interpreted > as racist views of hers. > > As I am watching this conversation unfold, I cannot help but wonder if i > missed something somewhere along the way when so much attention was given > to the genius of Maya Angelou, without regards to her - dare I say- OVERTLY > racist viewpoints. I have heard Dr. Angelou (though I hate to call her > that, since the degree is an honorary one, and not an academically earned > one) speak on several occasions, and EVERY time she has lectured she has > addressed the audience (which for some reason is always almost entirely > white middle-to-upper-class) as if she were back in Stamps, Arkansas. > > In her novels and poetry, the word "black" is always capitalized, while the > word "white" is never, and her views are almost bordering on rhetoric (to > say it lightly). yet nobody ever says a word about it...why now all the > attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets > her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in > literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? > > Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue, > > Brent > Brent_Long@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 12:36:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: without established connections self published goes nowhere Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I can say that every book our press has published has paid its authors >in copies plus a cash amount. The industry standard in small press >publishing is 10 to 15% of press run usually paid in copies, we do a >little better. That is rare to non existent in Canada. At least in Southern Ontario, and as far as I know throughout the country. Here the full cost must be paid by the author, for everything. Including any mail out of copies by the publisher, at an extra cost, to institutions and/or reviewers. That is the standard here for authors who are not established, and do not have a relatively long string of successful titles behind them. A short run of poetry books, perfect bound, here, simply printed, costs in excess of $1500. That is cost to the author. Chapbooks, in short run printings, and of a few dozen pages tend to cost around $250 to $500 stapled depending on the size of the press run. Any promotional expenses extra. Postage extra. It is considered alright to pay for publishing all those titles, though. It is _never_ referred to as 'vanity publishing'. It is also considered alright to finance any amount of self promotion, if one has the ability, the know how, the connections, and the money to do it. There are no restrictions on that either, but free promos usually only go to people who have paid for some promos in the past. To pay for promo also pays for insurance, in some places, against negative publicity. It is somewhat alike to the mob. You pay us, for getting not much of anything, so we do not break your kneecaps. Some of media here works exactly that way. Not all, but some. Keep the money rolling out of your pocket, or die. (Not quite literary payola, but not that much different, and you have to know who to give money to, but you quickly do learn that most of what appears to be friendship has a price. Rare exceptions to that.) One almost _has to be_ a national award winning, laureled poet, to get a publisher to pick up the costs of publishing. Very few exceptions. Even national award winners, after winning the nation's most coveted literary award, tend to do a reading circuit in small cafes, pubs and libraries, with a bag of volumes that they have to peddle themselves as would a door to door salesman. Enough, successful, self publishing can win a significant award, but often a factor in that is how much money was invested into publication. Three colour litho covers get a lot more points scored than do one colour letterpress or offset covers. So self publishing authors are encouraged to put money into their cover design and printing, on their second attempt, if they financially survive their first meagre effort. We do not question it. It simply is our cultural life here. It is how it is. It is a nation of chapbooks, mostly unadvertised to the mass market, and on consignment in a limited number of stores. >If vanity publishing were the industry standard wouldn't >it be called industry standard? Eh? Perhaps that distinction makes sense in America, but here if one does not have a relatively current, self-published book out, one does not get to read at any worthwhile readings. The readings are controlled by a few people who invite one of two kinds of people 1). people who have paid them money for one or another service rendered and 2). people who have afforded to publish books. Others are limited to the occassional open mic and to very tiny audiences in most instances. The publishers control some of the better reading venues, and are not reluctant to put poets to gunpoint extortion to pay to publish if they want to read at readings. If you cannot afford it then read to your own four walls is usually the answer. I would never spend as much as it takes to publish a book of poems on vanity. It is simply not my nature to do so. I did spend it on it because I have been writing poetry for a long time, and felt some of my poems might have some merit as poems, as works of art, and be worthy of a literary audience's interest and enjoyment. I decided to compile such a book. I typeset the book. I arranged the pages ready for press. Then when the book was ready to be printed, I thought somewhat long and hard about how to dedicate it on that page that says "to......". I chose an event, involving another person, that had had a profound influence on some of my writing. Then I added those words and the initials of the person, after the book was done. The book was conceived when a local friend, a fellow poet, somewhat encouraged putting something together. He had the established connections to get me some readings, at least locally, IF I had a book. He did not ask me to pay him to publish one. He only asked if I had a book so he could include me where possible. Then it went to the printer who had to be paid cash on the barrel. Then I was allowed some slightly better readings, locally and in Toronto, and invited to some others a little further afield, by another more established poet. So it goes here. There were a few real, though small, audiences. When the book runs its course, the question then becomes "do you have another book out, yet ?" If the answer is yes, then it is possible to schedule in to a few more readings. >I am talking about reading an anthology edited by these individuals and >taken from writers "from the streets" who............ It is nearly taken for granted in Canada that nearly every artist, writer, poet, MUST have another vocation and a paying job to support their own artist. There is nearly zero tolerance for artists financing their work from anything else. At one time some artists used to collect welfare so as to have some time to work on their art. It was only a few, and they often were disfavoured otherwise for doing so, but now welfare recipients are given workfare jobs to do and that practice is much more difficult, if not impossible. Now some try to go insane and collect disability. Personally I prefer to avoid those means by no means, and cannot speak for any others. I consider my "press" bankrupt and closed down. >In NY state small press editors are given a chance through the NYState >arts council to do a learning process where a larger press donates their >time to mentor a smaller press and show them the ropes in all of the >areas mentioned above. In Philadelphia, individuals such as Gil Ott >(Singing Horse), Valerie Hanson (Boulevard), Ethel Rackin (APR), were >willing to do the same if you sought them out. Journals are also willing >to do the same if you donate your time to them.I was unaware that >presses weren't willing in Canada to do the same for the good it would >bring the community of writers in the particular area you speak of. There is nothing of that kind, as far as I know, in Canada. Even if there were, in one way or another, it would cost a huge amount of money. Most people cannot afford that. There was a local program of business mentoring and a little financial assistance during startup, but they were totally uninterested in anything to do with the arts, and would not supply mentoring to any arts oriented venture. An advertising business, doing advertising for other businesses, run by someone who has connections enough to do that, would have been applauded and taken on, but someone who has scrounged dollars to publish a book of poems, was of no economic interest to anything of that kind. There is no other money or other assistance available for anyone who is not "established" in the arts. To know the right people one must be established, and to be established one must know the right people. Chicken and the egg..... The yolk was on me. I thought I could finance my own art, on the basis of the product returning the costs, while financing myself on the basis of a full working day at a non arts job. It does not work that way. At least not here....So tell me, how does it work there ? M. aka Bob Ezergailis poetry as poetry is meant for an audience to experience so the poet went out into the world..... and found that everything costs a lot of money. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 12:54:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Subject: Re: Racist Poetics In-Reply-To: <359A6A7B.21C6@ibm.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well, I think you've stated your case... and that's about all you've done. At 10:57 AM 7/1/98 -0600, you wrote: >Just to state the obvious: > >Without being a fan of Dr. Angelou, nothing you say Brent indicates >racism on her part. The issue of reverse racism is a long debated one >among white hysterics who love to react to the issue of "P.C." Racism >is an issue of institutional domination, which despite her honorary >degree, Dr. Angelou does not, will never, possess. See how easy it was >for you to place her "back in Stamps, Arkansas." > >Furthermore it is never a simple accidental/coincidental "reason" why >the audience is always almost entirely white middle-to-upper-class. >Check out the June 21 NYSlime article on the reorganiziation of private >college aid which favors just the abovementioned folk. > >as for her views, rhetoric, poetry--no need for me to defend them, her >political use of capitalization a racist make her? please please now. > >yours, >rachel [J]ewish democracy [L]esbian levitsky > >Brent Long wrote: >> >> Dear List, >> >> I have been watching the string of postings concerning the protest of >> Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent award, based on what apparently were interpreted >> as racist views of hers. >> >> As I am watching this conversation unfold, I cannot help but wonder if i >> missed something somewhere along the way when so much attention was given >> to the genius of Maya Angelou, without regards to her - dare I say- OVERTLY >> racist viewpoints. I have heard Dr. Angelou (though I hate to call her >> that, since the degree is an honorary one, and not an academically earned >> one) speak on several occasions, and EVERY time she has lectured she has >> addressed the audience (which for some reason is always almost entirely >> white middle-to-upper-class) as if she were back in Stamps, Arkansas. >> >> In her novels and poetry, the word "black" is always capitalized, while the >> word "white" is never, and her views are almost bordering on rhetoric (to >> say it lightly). yet nobody ever says a word about it...why now all the >> attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets >> her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in >> literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? >> >> Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue, >> >> Brent >> Brent_Long@brown.edu > > Brent_Long@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 12:55:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: without established connections self published goes nowhere In-Reply-To: <199807011636.MAA19272@bserv.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII if the authors pay for everything, are the publishers really publishers, or would it be more accurate to call them printers? if i write a book i can call mcnaughton&gunn in michigan and have them print as many copies as i can pay for. but this is far different from sending a manuscript to a publisher and hoping they like it enough to print it. eryque On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, morpheal wrote: > >I can say that every book our press has published has paid its authors > >in copies plus a cash amount. The industry standard in small press > >publishing is 10 to 15% of press run usually paid in copies, we do a > >little better. > > That is rare to non existent in Canada. At least in Southern Ontario, and as > far as I know throughout the country. Here the full cost must be paid by the > author, for everything. Including any mail out of copies by the publisher, > at an extra cost, to institutions and/or reviewers. That is the standard > here for authors who are not established, and do not have a relatively long > string of successful titles behind them. > > A short run of poetry books, perfect bound, here, simply printed, costs in > excess of $1500. That is cost to the author. Chapbooks, in short run > printings, and of a few dozen pages tend to cost around $250 to $500 stapled > depending on the size of the press run. > > Any promotional expenses extra. Postage extra. > > It is considered alright to pay for publishing all those titles, though. > It is _never_ referred to as 'vanity publishing'. > > It is also considered alright to finance any amount of self promotion, if > one has the ability, the know how, the connections, and the money to do it. > There are no restrictions on that either, but free promos usually only go to > people who have paid for some promos in the past. To pay for promo also pays > for insurance, in some places, against negative publicity. It is somewhat > alike to the mob. You pay us, for getting not much of anything, so we do not > break your kneecaps. Some of media here works exactly that way. Not all, but > some. Keep the money rolling out of your pocket, or die. (Not quite literary > payola, but not that much different, and you have to know who to give money > to, but you quickly do learn that most of what appears to be friendship has > a price. Rare exceptions to that.) > > One almost _has to be_ a national award winning, laureled poet, to get a > publisher to pick up the costs of publishing. Very few exceptions. Even > national award winners, after winning the nation's most coveted literary > award, tend to do a reading circuit in small cafes, pubs and libraries, with > a bag of volumes that they have to peddle themselves as would a door to door > salesman. Enough, successful, self publishing can win a significant award, > but often a factor in that is how much money was invested into publication. > Three colour litho covers get a lot more points scored than do one colour > letterpress or offset covers. So self publishing authors are encouraged to > put money into their cover design and printing, on their second attempt, if > they financially survive their first meagre effort. > > We do not question it. It simply is our cultural life here. It is how it is. > > It is a nation of chapbooks, mostly unadvertised to the mass market, and > on consignment in a limited number of stores. > > >If vanity publishing were the industry standard wouldn't > >it be called industry standard? Eh? > > Perhaps that distinction makes sense in America, but here if one does not > have a relatively current, self-published book out, one does not get to read > at any worthwhile readings. The readings are controlled by a few people who > invite one of two kinds of people 1). people who have paid them money for > one or another service rendered and 2). people who have afforded to publish > books. Others are limited to the occassional open mic and to very tiny > audiences in most instances. The publishers control some of the better > reading venues, and are not reluctant to put poets to gunpoint extortion to > pay to publish if they want to read at readings. If you cannot afford it > then read to your own four walls is usually the answer. > > I would never spend as much as it takes to publish a book of poems on vanity. > It is simply not my nature to do so. I did spend it on it because I have > been writing poetry for a long time, and felt some of my poems might have some > merit as poems, as works of art, and be worthy of a literary audience's > interest and enjoyment. > > I decided to compile such a book. I typeset the book. I arranged the pages > ready for press. Then when the book was ready to be printed, I thought > somewhat long and hard about how to dedicate it on that page that says > "to......". I chose an event, involving another person, that had had a > profound influence on some of my writing. Then I added those words and the > initials of the person, after the book was done. > > The book was conceived when a local friend, a fellow poet, somewhat > encouraged putting something together. He had the established connections to > get me some readings, at least locally, IF I had a book. He did not ask me > to pay him to publish one. He only asked if I had a book so he could include > me where possible. > > Then it went to the printer who had to be paid cash on the barrel. > > Then I was allowed some slightly better readings, locally and in Toronto, > and invited to some others a little further afield, by another more > established poet. So it goes here. There were a few real, though small, > audiences. When the book runs its course, the question then becomes "do you > have another book out, yet ?" If the answer is yes, then it is possible to > schedule in to a few more readings. > > >I am talking about reading an anthology edited by these individuals and > >taken from writers "from the streets" who............ > > It is nearly taken for granted in Canada that nearly every artist, writer, > poet, MUST have another vocation and a paying job to support their own > artist. There is nearly zero tolerance for artists financing their work from > anything else. > > At one time some artists used to collect welfare so as to have some time to > work on their art. It was only a few, and they often were disfavoured > otherwise for doing so, but now welfare recipients are given workfare jobs > to do and that practice is much more difficult, if not impossible. Now some > try to go insane and collect disability. Personally I prefer to avoid those > means by no means, and cannot speak for any others. > > I consider my "press" bankrupt and closed down. > > >In NY state small press editors are given a chance through the NYState > >arts council to do a learning process where a larger press donates their > >time to mentor a smaller press and show them the ropes in all of the > >areas mentioned above. In Philadelphia, individuals such as Gil Ott > >(Singing Horse), Valerie Hanson (Boulevard), Ethel Rackin (APR), were > >willing to do the same if you sought them out. Journals are also willing > >to do the same if you donate your time to them.I was unaware that > >presses weren't willing in Canada to do the same for the good it would > >bring the community of writers in the particular area you speak of. > > There is nothing of that kind, as far as I know, in Canada. > Even if there were, in one way or another, it would cost a huge amount of > money. > Most people cannot afford that. > > There was a local program of business mentoring and a little financial > assistance during startup, but they were totally uninterested in anything > to do with the arts, and would not supply mentoring to any arts oriented > venture. An advertising business, doing advertising for other businesses, > run by someone who has connections enough to do that, would have been > applauded and taken on, but someone who has scrounged dollars to publish a > book of > poems, was of no economic interest to anything of that kind. > > There is no other money or other assistance available for anyone who is > not "established" in the arts. To know the right people one must be > established, and to be established one must know the right people. > > Chicken and the egg..... > > The yolk was on me. I thought I could finance my own art, on the basis of > the product returning the costs, while financing myself on the basis of > a full working day at a non arts job. It does not work that way. At least > not here....So tell me, how does it work there ? > > M. > > aka Bob Ezergailis > > poetry as poetry is meant for an audience to experience > so the poet went out into the world..... > and found that everything costs a lot of money. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 13:12:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Racist Poetics Brent -- I sympathize somewhat with your points; it is often a little distasteful to see artists such as Dr. Angelou (in my case, Dolores Kendrick) with an obvious race "agenda" gaining so much noncritical adoration from the very institutions that she criticizes. And the artists, god bless 'em, often aren't very nice people anyway. This dynamic shows up in arenas other than race, of course; writers with a distinct "feminist", "class based", regional, (&c...) stance often fail to translate their aesthetic positions into action. It's wonderful to admire writers such as Rich who manage to keep their politics "correct", but important to note that it's not a requirement for good art. I do agree with Rachel, though. The entirely media induced hysteria about "reverse discrimination" has been ungracefully gracing the back pages of Time magazine for years now, and it seems that even George Will is getting tired of complaining from Conneticuit. While I'm not a fan of Angelou, I do love, say, Morrison's work, which is all so full of "racist" violence; do you have the same problem, Brent, with her work? _Paradise_, _Jazz_...? >> Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue One of the few, I guess. Race is forever a part of American life in a way that it will never be (hopefully) for any other nation. Some of the great work of America is generated out of "the race issue", if that's what you want to call Faulkner's muse. Gould may point out that biologically speaking, race does not exist, but as a cultural and aesthetic entity, it's here to stay. > > attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets > > her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in > > literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? Because nobody's tying up white people and dragging them behind pickup trucks. Because I turned on the shortwave this morning and heared the BBC World Service interviewing the KKK at a demonstration in Texas. Even if it weren't for the fact that whites in America have held the "language privilege" for years. I don't believe Yamanaka's work (fiction, not poetry, I believe) should be censored, but it's a totally different question there, where the writer may be taking cheap shots at racial group that can't respond because Y holds an position of economic power. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com > Just to state the obvious: > > Without being a fan of Dr. Angelou, nothing you say Brent indicates > racism on her part. The issue of reverse racism is a long debated one > among white hysterics who love to react to the issue of "P.C." Racism > is an issue of institutional domination, which despite her honorary > degree, Dr. Angelou does not, will never, possess. See how easy it was > for you to place her "back in Stamps, Arkansas." > > Furthermore it is never a simple accidental/coincidental "reason" why > the audience is always almost entirely white middle-to-upper-class. > Check out the June 21 NYSlime article on the reorganiziation of private > college aid which favors just the abovementioned folk. > > as for her views, rhetoric, poetry--no need for me to defend them, her > political use of capitalization a racist make her? please please now. > > yours, > rachel [J]ewish democracy [L]esbian levitsky > > Brent Long wrote: > > > > Dear List, > > > > I have been watching the string of postings concerning the protest of > > Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent award, based on what apparently were interpreted > > as racist views of hers. > > > > As I am watching this conversation unfold, I cannot help but wonder if i > > missed something somewhere along the way when so much attention was given > > to the genius of Maya Angelou, without regards to her - dare I say- OVERTLY > > racist viewpoints. I have heard Dr. Angelou (though I hate to call her > > that, since the degree is an honorary one, and not an academically earned > > one) speak on several occasions, and EVERY time she has lectured she has > > addressed the audience (which for some reason is always almost entirely > > white middle-to-upper-class) as if she were back in Stamps, Arkansas. > > > > In her novels and poetry, the word "black" is always capitalized, while the > > word "white" is never, and her views are almost bordering on rhetoric (to > > say it lightly). yet nobody ever says a word about it...why now all the > > attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets > > her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in > > literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? > > > > Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue, > > > > Brent > > Brent_Long@brown.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 13:39:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Subject: Re: Racist Poetics In-Reply-To: <9807011711.AA23827@nevis.naic.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Simon (and list), I do not see the similarities between Morrison's work (with the exception of _Paradise_) and Angelou's. However, I do resent the implication from rachel (who has never met me) that I am a "White Hysteric". I do not even need to defend such a ridiculous blanket statement. (I do, however, wonder if she has ever read the correspondence between Hurston and Langston Hughes, and whether or not that correspondence places Hughes in the "White Hysterics" group right along with me...an ironic idea, don't you think?) I do now see the difference between Y's stance and that of Angelou, and am glad to have it stated as you have done. Hopefully, now this can fade out...old shit only stinks when you stir it... Brent At 01:12 PM 7/1/98 -0400, you wrote: >Brent -- > > I sympathize somewhat with your points; it is often >a little distasteful to see artists such as Dr. Angelou (in >my case, Dolores Kendrick) with an obvious race "agenda" >gaining so much noncritical adoration from the very institutions >that she criticizes. And the artists, god bless 'em, often >aren't very nice people anyway. This dynamic shows up in arenas >other than race, of course; writers with a distinct "feminist", >"class based", regional, (&c...) stance often fail to translate >their aesthetic positions into action. It's wonderful to admire >writers such as Rich who manage to keep their politics "correct", >but important to note that it's not a requirement for good art. > > I do agree with Rachel, though. The entirely media >induced hysteria about "reverse discrimination" has been ungracefully >gracing the back pages of Time magazine for years now, and it seems >that even George Will is getting tired of complaining from Conneticuit. >While I'm not a fan of Angelou, I do love, say, Morrison's work, which is >all so full of "racist" violence; do you have the same problem, Brent, >with her work? _Paradise_, _Jazz_...? > >>> Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue > >One of the few, I guess. Race is forever a part of American life >in a way that it will never be (hopefully) for any other nation. >Some of the great work of America is generated out of "the race >issue", if that's what you want to call Faulkner's muse. Gould >may point out that biologically speaking, race does not exist, but >as a cultural and aesthetic entity, it's here to stay. > >> > attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets >> > her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in >> > literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? > >Because nobody's tying up white people and dragging them behind >pickup trucks. Because I turned on the shortwave this morning and >heared the BBC World Service interviewing the KKK at a demonstration >in Texas. Even if it weren't for the fact that whites in America have >held the "language privilege" for years. I don't believe Yamanaka's >work (fiction, not poetry, I believe) should be censored, but it's >a totally different question there, where the writer may be taking >cheap shots at racial group that can't respond because Y holds an >position of economic power. > >-- Simon > >http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html >sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu >sdedeo@naic.edu >lydianmode@ucsd.com > > > >> Just to state the obvious: >> >> Without being a fan of Dr. Angelou, nothing you say Brent indicates >> racism on her part. The issue of reverse racism is a long debated one >> among white hysterics who love to react to the issue of "P.C." Racism >> is an issue of institutional domination, which despite her honorary >> degree, Dr. Angelou does not, will never, possess. See how easy it was >> for you to place her "back in Stamps, Arkansas." >> >> Furthermore it is never a simple accidental/coincidental "reason" why >> the audience is always almost entirely white middle-to-upper-class. >> Check out the June 21 NYSlime article on the reorganiziation of private >> college aid which favors just the abovementioned folk. >> >> as for her views, rhetoric, poetry--no need for me to defend them, her >> political use of capitalization a racist make her? please please now. >> >> yours, >> rachel [J]ewish democracy [L]esbian levitsky >> >> Brent Long wrote: >> > >> > Dear List, >> > >> > I have been watching the string of postings concerning the protest of >> > Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent award, based on what apparently were interpreted >> > as racist views of hers. >> > >> > As I am watching this conversation unfold, I cannot help but wonder if i >> > missed something somewhere along the way when so much attention was given >> > to the genius of Maya Angelou, without regards to her - dare I say- OVERTLY >> > racist viewpoints. I have heard Dr. Angelou (though I hate to call her >> > that, since the degree is an honorary one, and not an academically earned >> > one) speak on several occasions, and EVERY time she has lectured she has >> > addressed the audience (which for some reason is always almost entirely >> > white middle-to-upper-class) as if she were back in Stamps, Arkansas. >> > >> > In her novels and poetry, the word "black" is always capitalized, while the >> > word "white" is never, and her views are almost bordering on rhetoric (to >> > say it lightly). yet nobody ever says a word about it...why now all the >> > attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets >> > her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in >> > literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? >> > >> > Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue, >> > >> > Brent >> > Brent_Long@brown.edu >> > > Brent_Long@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:21:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Parnassus MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Not the mountain, but the molehill ... does anyone have a current address for them? Are they still around, even (yet)? Pls backchannel, thanks. In the dark, Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:59:48 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Racist Poetics In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980701125436.007d9740@postoffice.brown.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Brent Long sez: > well, I think you've stated your case... and that's about all you've done. how remarkably snotty of you... I guess this is in contrast to the uncompromising analytical skill you displayed in the post that inaugurated this exchange? I'm not especially interested in defending Angelou on this issue or any other, but I think Rachel Levitsky raises a worthwhile objection to your assessment, viz. that whatever claims you can make against this person are far outweighed by the institutional-structural racism that operates in clear favor of whites - compounded by a class structure that favors "middle-to-upper class" etc., which certainly bears on the supposed mystery of her audience. This not to mention overt acts of racist violence... The temptation must be overwhelming to lash out at the 'concerned' and 'open-minded' white liberals who come to hear her - most of them likely believing that they are by this act of hearing working to 'broaden American democracy' and solve the race problem, blind to their complicity in a system of this sort etcetera. This is not to say that Angelou isn't just capitalizing on race - but if she is, that's certainly no worse than any of her audience, both in terms of monetary capital and it's fruits (e.g., education, jobs) and the cultural capital that comes of proving themselves Good Liberals by their attendance. And if she's simply a racist, well, that's a shame but not the most pressing instance of bias, either. chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ **site temporarily unavailable** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 13:33:14 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: pinsky racism publishing squid I read the Pinsky op-ed thing; the main thrust seemed to be the excitement of the school visit, & the call for getting more poets working in schools, plus a brief defense of the MFA system. Rather than complaining about the teaching certification system it might have been better to examine ways to get more money to Poets in the Schools programs in order to pay the poets more & get them more integrated into a regular curriculum. This seems like an achievable goal. Plus instead of blaming the schools he might have looked at MFA programs that integrate certification into the degree (if there could be such a thing). Racism? Ey, we'd all like to kiss it goodby. But race (whatever blend of skin-color, genealogy, culture) I think is going to be around for a while, along with the history behind it & the present based on it - to say it's not an "issue" is the ostrich option. The Hawaii situation sounds extremely charged & complicated. I do think it's possible to read and discern between a fictional narrator's attitudes and the general thrust of an author's position. And if an author denigrates a group of people in their work then I have no problem with people politically protesting a public award for it. Whether that's actually the case with the author in question I don't know!! & it probably doesn't help to spread rumor, second-hand info, & so on if you haven't read the work, especially if you're one of the "judges"! My sister by adoption, white mother, Af-American father, lived in Hawaii for several years & loved it. But race is made an "issue" for her, every day - & not just in Hawaii. On the state of publishing & so on - I don't think we've absorbed yet what websites, micropublishing, and readings - the active combination of these three - are doing to the audience for poetry & the process of what gets read and circulated. It's sort of like mass market film versus indies. But websites & micropublishing have strengthened the hand of the indies, so it's sort of an alternative to the big publishers, the grants, the awards... or a DIFFERENT KIND of stepping stone for those writers aiming for a wide public. Maybe aiming is the wrong word. But this indie world throws groups, trends, celebrity, prestige, styles in a new light. Maybe not as big a change as Gutenberg but a similar KIND of change happening. (this is po-biz not poetry, I guess). - Henry Gould oh right, "squid". ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 14:05:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Racist Poetics Comments: To: calexand@library.utah.edu In-Reply-To: <48B759D1491@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU> from "Christopher W. Alexander" at Jul 1, 98 11:59:48 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just one quick thought on this Angelou thing, don't want to get wrapped up in it - I just question one of the premises w/ which this all began, namely, that anyone in the Academy likes Maya Angelou's work. I know many, many Af-Am Lit & Studies people who don't think she's any good at all and aren't interested in her work in the least, though they may not say so publically (and indeed, why should they waste their time doing so?). In my interview w/ Harryette Mullen, she makes the interesting, and completely sincere, comment that she believes Angelou's intended audience is often adolescent girls, and should be contextualized as such. Alright, enough from me. -m. According to Christopher W. Alexander: > > Brent Long sez: > > well, I think you've stated your case... and that's about all you've done. > > how remarkably snotty of you... I guess this is in contrast to > the uncompromising analytical skill you displayed in the > post that inaugurated this exchange? > I'm not especially interested in defending Angelou on > this issue or any other, but I think Rachel Levitsky raises a > worthwhile objection to your assessment, viz. that whatever > claims you can make against this person are far outweighed > by the institutional-structural racism that operates in clear > favor of whites - compounded by a class structure that favors > "middle-to-upper class" etc., which certainly bears on the > supposed mystery of her audience. This not to mention > overt acts of racist violence... > The temptation must be overwhelming to lash out at > the 'concerned' and 'open-minded' white liberals who come > to hear her - most of them likely believing that they are by this > act of hearing working to 'broaden American democracy' and > solve the race problem, blind to their complicity in a system of > this sort etcetera. > This is not to say that Angelou isn't just capitalizing on > race - but if she is, that's certainly no worse than any of > her audience, both in terms of monetary capital and it's fruits > (e.g., education, jobs) and the cultural capital that comes of > proving themselves Good Liberals by their attendance. And > if she's simply a racist, well, that's a shame but not the most > pressing instance of bias, either. > > chris > > .. > > Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective > > email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com > snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 > press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ > **site temporarily unavailable** > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:14:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Slams/Pinsky as union busting Comments: To: Julie Marie Schmid In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Julie, I haven't been following the discussion about Slams, but I know something of its history, as one of my former students, Inka Alasade, was an undefeated six-time champs (who retired to study linguistics at the graduate level). Also, the famed post-punk poet Lorri Jackson was my student at Columbia College Chicago just before dying of a heroin overdose at age 28 (Lorri was "performative" and read with Jim Carroll at the Cubby Bear). I just want to emphasize that the distinction between the slams and the academic is complex and misunderstood, though that distinction was very useful in helping to publicize the slams as a late "beat" phenomenon. It's interesting to note that a number of the poets invited to appear as headliners by slam organizer Marc Smith, such as Reginald Gibbons and Marvin Bell, have long been associated with universities and, more importantly, mainstream practice. One night, the slam featured the poetry of James Dickey! Only Andrei Codrescu, of those in the tradition of New American Poetry (Allen), appeared at the slam that I know of. So there was a gap between what the slams intended as a late Beat poetics and the poetry they appeared to promote. I'm not putting down the slams; they're fine by me (now). I'm suggesting that the town/gown difference is complicated. At one of the best-known slam locations, run by poet Michael Warr, classes in how to write for performance (and to perform) have been offered for years. Does this suggest that the slams are becoming academic or simply culturally institutionalized? One of the real oddities of the late 80s and early 90s in Chicago was that I was speaking against the slams (though I have long supported experimental practice and included performance poetry of the first two postwar generations in Postmodern American Poetry) and the more conservative Reg Gibbons was for them. Go figure. Hostilities were suspended by me incidentally just before Maxine Chernoff and I moved to California. Paul Hoover On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Julie Marie Schmid wrote: > Amen to Ron's post! The idea of using non-certified MFAs to teach in > public schools could be seen as a serious attempt to errode the teachers > unions' bargaining units. Likewise, it appears to me that the "more bang > for your buck" theory of education would work just like the ethically > questionable practice of hiring adjuncts and one-year contracts, etc., > that is all the rage in most universities and colleges. It's just a way > to hire people for very little money, offer them no job security, and then > work their asses off because they are so pleased to get a chance to be in > front of a classroom. > > I also find it curious that no one has mentioned any of the slam poets who > ARE high school or middle school teachers. Daniel Faery of the Berwyn > team and Taylor Mali (who did teach at one time--I'm not sure he still > does) immediately come to mind. There is also Michael Brown, who is a > professor at Mount Ida College in Boston. > > This might be a bit naive on my part, but it seems clear to me that > the qualities that make one a good teacher would also make one a good slam > poet--enthusiasm, eloquence, and the ability to make you think about > something in a new way. Of course, not all slam poetry does this. But, > then again, not every teacher does either. > > Julie Schmid > Dept. of English > University of Iowa > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 14:15:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: part(y) In-Reply-To: <199807011805.OAA69526@dept.english.upenn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Happy canada day--- A question: ANybody in the NY area know of any interesting parties going on the July 4th period (most everyone I know is leaving town)..... And an invitation: Me, and my roommate Gary Sullivan, will be hosting a Brooklyn roof party (well, not just on the roof) on JULY 24th (friday). For more info, backchannel etc.--------chris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 14:20:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Slams and Lorri Jackson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hey, does anybody know if the Lorri Jackson posthumus collection ever came out. There was talk about it several years ago (the gentleman who edits the Chiron Review might have been involved), but I've lost track, and haven't heard anything...... chris On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: > Dear Julie, > > I haven't been following the discussion about Slams, but I know something > of its history, as one of my former students, Inka Alasade, was an > undefeated six-time champs (who retired to study linguistics at the > graduate level). Also, the famed post-punk poet Lorri Jackson was my > student at Columbia College Chicago just before dying of a heroin overdose > at age 28 (Lorri was "performative" and read with Jim Carroll at the Cubby > Bear). I just want to emphasize that the distinction between the slams > and the academic is complex and misunderstood, though that distinction was > very useful in helping to publicize the slams as a late "beat" phenomenon. > It's interesting to note that a number of the poets invited to appear as > headliners by slam organizer Marc Smith, such as Reginald Gibbons and > Marvin Bell, have long been associated with universities and, more > importantly, mainstream practice. One night, the slam featured the poetry > of James Dickey! Only Andrei Codrescu, of those in the tradition of New > American Poetry (Allen), appeared at the slam that I know of. So there > was a gap between what the slams intended as a late Beat poetics and the > poetry they appeared to promote. I'm not putting down the slams; they're > fine by me (now). I'm suggesting that the town/gown difference is > complicated. At one of the best-known slam locations, run by poet Michael > Warr, classes in how to write for performance (and to perform) have been > offered for years. Does this suggest that the slams are becoming > academic or simply culturally institutionalized? One of the real > oddities of the late 80s and early 90s in Chicago was that I was speaking > against the slams (though I have long supported experimental practice and > included performance poetry of the first two postwar generations in > Postmodern American Poetry) and the more conservative Reg Gibbons was for > them. Go figure. Hostilities were suspended by me incidentally just > before Maxine Chernoff and I moved to California. > > Paul Hoover > > On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Julie Marie Schmid wrote: > > > Amen to Ron's post! The idea of using non-certified MFAs to teach in > > public schools could be seen as a serious attempt to errode the teachers > > unions' bargaining units. Likewise, it appears to me that the "more bang > > for your buck" theory of education would work just like the ethically > > questionable practice of hiring adjuncts and one-year contracts, etc., > > that is all the rage in most universities and colleges. It's just a way > > to hire people for very little money, offer them no job security, and then > > work their asses off because they are so pleased to get a chance to be in > > front of a classroom. > > > > I also find it curious that no one has mentioned any of the slam poets who > > ARE high school or middle school teachers. Daniel Faery of the Berwyn > > team and Taylor Mali (who did teach at one time--I'm not sure he still > > does) immediately come to mind. There is also Michael Brown, who is a > > professor at Mount Ida College in Boston. > > > > This might be a bit naive on my part, but it seems clear to me that > > the qualities that make one a good teacher would also make one a good slam > > poet--enthusiasm, eloquence, and the ability to make you think about > > something in a new way. Of course, not all slam poetry does this. But, > > then again, not every teacher does either. > > > > Julie Schmid > > Dept. of English > > University of Iowa > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 12:28:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: yo katy lederer Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" katy contact me bc. or, if she's not on the list anymore, please someone send her address to me. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:28:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: three items... In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Joe Amato, et al: One more thing about the history of slams. Yes, the slams were founded by Marc Smith at the Green Mill bar on Broadway in Chicago. He took the concept from Al Simmons, who now does the Taos Poetry Circus or whatever it's called. In the late 70s and early 80s, Al organized poetry competitions along the lines of a boxing match. Jerome Sala, who's married to poet Elaine Equi and now lives with her in NYC, was by far the outstanding performer of the time, Mayakovskian and punk. Marc changed the boxing metaphor to wrestling, and the rest is history. Marc Smith deserves a lot of credit as an impresario and also as a performer. He's tireless and energetic, and he stirred things up. Those studying this phenomenon might find it of interest that Baraka once spoke against slams as commodification rather than a political force field, or something to that effect. Probably the energy behind it is the desire to get poetry ready for the age of mass communications. But those successful at slamming, like Paul Beatty, always find a home on the page as well. Paul Hoover On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > (1) bob holman makes a convincing case for the value of slams, whatever you > think of them... the only danger of course is that folks come out of slams > expecting ALL poetry to do thus & so in terms of oral performance... but > worth the risk to get the word out, i think, and to contribute to the > flows... btw: is it true that both slams and bouts had their origins in > chicago?... i've heard marc smith go on about slams... in any case, this > makes the cultural-historian-hobbyist in me wanna ask what is it about > chicago that cultivates same?... broad shoulders?... > > (2) i agree with ron and julie on the union issues, being mself prone > toward collective bargaining... somehow it sounds like pinsky just wasn't > thinking... but julie: i'm not sure i'd make that correlation between > performance and teaching quite so strong... > > (3) brent long: "Another poet, American, citizen sick of the 'race' > issue"... are you joking or something?... i don't have much use for > angelou's poetry mself, but that's quite beside the point it seems you're > making here... > > best, > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 11:45:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Slams and Lorri Jackson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Chris (Stroffolino): Yes, the posthumous Lorri Jackson book appeared. It's called SCAT, 82 pp. in ring-binder format. The publisher is Oyster PUblications, P.O. Box 4333, Austin, TX 78765. The same publisher has on its list MY MOUTH IS A HOLE IN MY FACE by the same author. Can't give you the list price. Very much a small press publication, with cover art of a young woman sitting on an exploding toilet. The poems in the book include some earlier work that I can remember from workshops, but overall the collection is too uneven and doesn't serve Lorri very well. Best, Paul Hoover ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 14:49:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: in public service MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Bob -- Anything you can do to get wider funding for writers-in-the-schools programs would be welcome, by the writers, the teachers, and the hassled administrators .. most principals I know these days are more like development officers (grant writers) than the clueless despots I remember lumbering around. Poets in Public Service (formerly known as Poets in the Schools; they changed their name when they noticed that PITS was kind of a self-fulfilling acronym) isn't in business anymore, by the way. Send people to Teachers & Writers (1-888-266-5789). Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 15:58:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: a l y r i c m a i l e r 7 Comments: To: core-l MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poets & Friends a l y r i c m a i l e r 7 Cloud to Cloud a poem for three voices by Carrie Anne Tocci on the page and for the first time here with REALAUDIO sound!!!! is up at http://writing.upenn.edu/spc/alyric/index.html Carrie Anne Tocci, a native of Fairport, NY, earned her MA in English and Creative Writing at CCNY, where she was the 1997 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Malinche Translation Award. Her poems have appeared in Whatever and are forthcoming in Promethean. She teaches in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Ceili. upcoming issues include an issue devoted to the participants of the recent place(less Place) gathering of poets in Buffalo and a special critical issue on the work of Ben Friedlander. Enjoy. Truly, Mike ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 16:20:07 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Need Address of Jonathan Fernandez MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A friend of mine, Harry Burrus, needs to get in touch with Jonathan Fernandez, another friend of mine, but neither Harry nor I have a current address for Jonathan. Anyone out there have his present snail or e.mail address? Thanks, Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 16:51:41 -0400 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: pinsky racism publishing squid In-Reply-To: henry gould "pinsky racism publishing squid" (Jul 1, 1:33pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > I do think it's possible to read and >discern between a fictional narrator's attitudes and the general thrust >of an author's position. And if an author denigrates a group of people >in their work then I have no problem with people politically protesting >a public award for it. Whether that's actually the case with the author >in question I don't know!! Right! Don't mean to sound like an ass-haole here--the author not only bears the brunt for such criticism, but actually (and gladly) exchanges it for the attention (notoriety?) that goes along with it. The award notwithstanding, Yamanaka is getting a lot more out of this than anyone else (this is not a criticism of her at all), and for that matter so is the panel, who get to assert themselves. I mean that her name, her works will probably still stand long after the judges, and panels (and their names) are forgotten. Or is our concern here only for the NOW, the works throwaways? William ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 16:56:44 -0400 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: Hawai'i/Esperanto In-Reply-To: juliana spahr "yamanaka protest, dan's questions" (Jun 30, 2:15pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii "In Hawaiian schools, for example, the study of Esperanto is a basic part of that state's innovative English program" Can anyone shed light on this statement (taken from the www)? Is it true? William ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 01:55:21 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: used to .. but now MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit yes--of course--but with children the realization that language need not be tied to the everyday--or the "self" is very important. The idea of generating a world with the word instead of reorting on it. I used Koch's book--but don't generally use the exercises that stress formula. I used to but now I don't. Tb ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:01:46 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: Bad History Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi- By the way, I notice Publisher's Weekly just ran a positive review of Bad History. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 17:07:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "s. kaipa" Subject: Re: protest of award for Yamanaka In-Reply-To: <3595470F.11780AA@lava.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I too would like to thank Julianna for making us aware of the controversy surrounding Yamanaka. I must admit, I'm rather taken by Yamanaka's work and I wonder--for those of us who have read her--whether Yamanaka's books are not filled with a questioning of many "perverted" sexualities. In Saturday Night, I get the sense that many of the Japanese Americans are also depicted as "oversexed" or as having bizarre sexual affiliations. Also, there seem to be Japanese American characters taking shots at other Japanese American characters--on racist terms--in the book. I guess this kind of attack goes back to Morrison's technique (or at least it seems related in my own mind) in The Bluest Eye. The "black people who hate black people" narrative as evidence of self-hatred. But in Yamanaka's case, the Japanese American vs. Japanese American suggests a general sense of hating being Asian in the general sense. The us vs. them is not, in my opinion, the us of Japanese vs. the them of Philipinos. But, again, I'm hesistant to take position--am instead talking around the subject and am only following the thread and wondering. Also--any information on how Philipino/a writers have felt about this controversy, specifically? Jessica Hagedorn? Alarcon? Summi ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:11:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Mudlark Poster In-Reply-To: <30b033be.359ab1cc@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics 'never in and never out of print' http://www.unf.edu/mudlark ________________________________ New and On View: MUDLARK POSTER NO. 13 (1998) The Immortals, In Question and Report from the Front Poems by Robert Sward * * * * * * * * * * * * * Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert Sward is the author of sixteen books including Uncivilizing (Insomniac Press, Canada); A Much-Married Man, A Novel; and Four Incarnations, New & Selected Poems (Coffee House Press). Contributing Editor to eZines Blue Moon Review and Pares cum Paribus (Chile), Sward also served as editor for eSCENE 1996, "the best short stories to be published on the Internet." * * * * * * * * * * * * * Spread the word. Far and wide, William Slaughter _________________ mudlark@unf.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:01:37 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Smith Subject: Re: they don't? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I don't really understand how Pinsky's remarks on the MFA led to a debate about teaching poetry in school, but i'd like to talk about my school's programs. First, at my school the MA is considered as good as a teaching certificate. I go to Mountain Brook High School, which has been twice named a Blue Ribbon school and is overall very prestigious (though public). The MA with additional teaching experience yields an increase in one's paycheck. I suspect that the same goes for the MFA, so yes, some schools do take a degree as a teaching certificate regardless of experience (of course, I think that any school would much rather hire someone with classroom experience). Secondly, we have a creative writing program. The AP English teacher, Melinda Cammarata, who used to teach at a local university, teaches it. Last year there were 10 students. The class worked like this: every week for at least 2 days, we had a forum in which we read and commented on each other's work. The other three days we wrote or tossed ideas back and forth. Every quarter, we had requirements like "write a haiku, a short story, a dramatic monologue, and a villanelle." Most of us had to research at least one of those forms to figure out what they were and how best to write one (for instance, I think Collins' "The Story We Know" is better than Thomas' "Rage, Rage" (i'm not sure that's the title)). This left a lot up to the students. We had to think for ourselves, learn rules, forms, sound techniques, etc. on our own. Those of us who were concurrently taking AP english were lucky because in English class we went through many time periods of poetry and learned a lot about meter/sound/devices/etc. The last quarter of Creative Writing was free-- we were each to choose what forms we wanted to experiment with (although we had been able to write whatever we wanted in the other quarters, we'd also had form requirements... in the last quarter we set up our own requirements to supplement our usual free writing). We also had to do a project (one class period presentation) highlighting one author, period, or style. Some of the projects done were Whitman, Dickinson, Dr. Seuss, John Grisham, and Kurt Vonnegut (I did John Cage). I think it was a very good program. I think that one with an MFA could probably teach in just about any school as long as there was a demand for a poetry (or creative writing) teacher. Since most schools probably would not want to pay for such frivolity when they can't even afford math and english teachers, then it's not really a secure place to be job-hunting. However, I don't think that letting people with MFAs teach would defeat bargaining claims amoung teachers or turn any school into a "concentration camp" (i think the parallel drawn is immature, hyperbolic, and disrespectful to the actual holocaust survivors, but that is another story altogether). As there are teachers who have MAs (or MFAs) who do not have certificates or even hours, I don't think that other teachers are in much danger of losing anything if someone with an MA gets a job. The reason that I disagree is that people with MFAs have a special talent and can fill a niche that few "normal" teachers can. Jessica Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 02:15:58 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: alice n. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone have a current mailing address for Alice Notley? Remap business of a few years ago has left me with an old(er)one. Todd Baron thanks! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:44:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: without established connections self published goes nowhere Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >if the authors pay for everything, are the publishers really publishers, >or would it be more accurate to call them printers? if i write a book i >can call mcnaughton&gunn in michigan and have them print as many copies as >i can pay for. but this is far different from sending a manuscript to a >publisher and hoping they like it enough to print it. Of course they are publishers. They offer design, typesetting, artwork, coordination of the printing and binding through subcontracts....and sometimes other services. They usually offer a package price of so many dollars for so many copies printed. The publisher often also puts out a catalogue and might arrange for distribution via a distribution company. That is not always the case with short run, short length chapbooks. A printer only does the printing, and sometimes makes the printing plates. Although some printers do offer creative services that do those other things. I do not know any printers who put out catalogues or arrange distribution. M. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 16:31:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: they don't? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The issue, Jessica, is not what degrees your teachers have but whether they are hired as low-paid non-union labor. It's important to remember that before the Teacher's Union full-time teachers were paid poverty-level wages. It was quintessential "women's work," and women who were their own or their family's sole support were regarded, conveniently, as anomalies. You're certainly right, by the way, that few school systems, in the current environment in which art and music programs are being eliminated, can afford to fund a full-time creative writing teacher. My thought was that it wouldn't be a terrible thing for folks with MFAs to work as regular classroom teachers with special talents and training that they could bring to their schools and students. Participants in poets-in-the-schools type programs too often see themselves as better than the regular teachers because their students are so enthusiastic. They don't realize that the poetry class is like recess, for students and teacher. Most of the serious work of the school gets done by teachers who remain in contact with their students and community for many years of full-time work. They may be more tired and less enthusiastic than whatever dog-and-pony show the schools can get as freebies (because funding doesn't usually come from the school's budget), but their investment in the process is also much greater. Which might not be bad for a lot of otherwise semi-employed MFAs to experience. Incidentally, I've done my share of gigs as poet-in-school. My mother was a fulltimer. I know the difference. At 06:01 PM 7/1/98 EDT, you wrote: >I don't really understand how Pinsky's remarks on the MFA led to a debate >about teaching poetry in school, but i'd like to talk about my school's >programs. > >First, at my school the MA is considered as good as a teaching certificate. I >go to Mountain Brook High School, which has been twice named a Blue Ribbon >school and is overall very prestigious (though public). The MA with >additional teaching experience yields an increase in one's paycheck. I >suspect that the same goes for the MFA, so yes, some schools do take a degree >as a teaching certificate regardless of experience (of course, I think that >any school would much rather hire someone with classroom experience). > >Secondly, we have a creative writing program. The AP English teacher, Melinda >Cammarata, who used to teach at a local university, teaches it. Last year >there were 10 students. The class worked like this: every week for at least 2 >days, we had a forum in which we read and commented on each other's work. The >other three days we wrote or tossed ideas back and forth. Every quarter, we >had requirements like "write a haiku, a short story, a dramatic monologue, and >a villanelle." Most of us had to research at least one of those forms to >figure out what they were and how best to write one (for instance, I think >Collins' "The Story We Know" is better than Thomas' "Rage, Rage" (i'm not sure >that's the title)). This left a lot up to the students. We had to think for >ourselves, learn rules, forms, sound techniques, etc. on our own. Those of us >who were concurrently taking AP english were lucky because in English class we >went through many time periods of poetry and learned a lot about >meter/sound/devices/etc. The last quarter of Creative Writing was free-- we >were each to choose what forms we wanted to experiment with (although we had >been able to write whatever we wanted in the other quarters, we'd also had >form requirements... in the last quarter we set up our own requirements to >supplement our usual free writing). We also had to do a project (one class >period presentation) highlighting one author, period, or style. Some of the >projects done were Whitman, Dickinson, Dr. Seuss, John Grisham, and Kurt >Vonnegut (I did John Cage). I think it was a very good program. > >I think that one with an MFA could probably teach in just about any school as >long as there was a demand for a poetry (or creative writing) teacher. Since >most schools probably would not want to pay for such frivolity when they can't >even afford math and english teachers, then it's not really a secure place to >be job-hunting. However, I don't think that letting people with MFAs teach >would defeat bargaining claims amoung teachers or turn any school into a >"concentration camp" (i think the parallel drawn is immature, hyperbolic, and >disrespectful to the actual holocaust survivors, but that is another story >altogether). As there are teachers who have MAs (or MFAs) who do not have >certificates or even hours, I don't think that other teachers are in much >danger of losing anything if someone with an MA gets a job. The reason that I >disagree is that people with MFAs have a special talent and can fill a niche >that few "normal" teachers can. > >Jessica Smith > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 04:10:42 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: they don't? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Mark: MFAs--you're right--it ISN"T a terrible thing to bring that to a regular classroom. My MA was the terminal degree at New College and damn if the teachers I work with with credentials/etc don't truly know squat about literature--certainly not poetics--and turn to --even enlightened but still--textbooks or others to tell them how to teach. This educational system--private and public--needs good teachers--I agree --MFAs would be a welcome sight--and of course--the money needs to reflect that those in middle and upper schools REQUIRE a salary comparable to academics--that ain't no bitter rose for me--I work 5 days a week from 7:30-3:30--love it--and am tired and underpaid! Even at a private school! So--hey..phew! Tb ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:24:34 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: twiggy twiggy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Keston - where, once they've been prepared, am I to mail yr copy of the 'galleys' for PIN POINT CHRONIC CARTOONS? I'm hoping to do that soon, in order that they might be returned for me to finish the book by the last week of July... chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ **site temporarily unavailable** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 18:26:28 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: twiggy twiggy In-Reply-To: <491DFB27FD7@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT oh, now that's very nice... sorry, all. chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ **site temporarily unavailable** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 19:51:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: three items... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > But those successful at slamming, like Paul Beatty, always find a home on the > page as well. Paul's a friend of mine--we met in grad school, where he was often attacked for using what was actually referred to as "substandard" English in his poems. It was suggested that he supply footnotes. Gregory Corso asked him if he played basketball, Allen asked him if he had ever smoked crack. Another poet who dislikes Angelou, knows race is biological, but still secretly thrills to hear white people told off, Karen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 20:00:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: three items... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yikes! The sentence was supposed to say, "Another poet who dislikes Angelou, knows race is *not* biological..." A word to the wise: if you format a word w/italics & bold print & yr message loses its formatting in email translation, it may drop the word entirely. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 23:19:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: payment In-Reply-To: <199807011636.MAA19272@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>I can say that every book our press has published has paid its authors >>in copies plus a cash amount. The industry standard in small press >>publishing is 10 to 15% of press run usually paid in copies, we do a >>little better. > >That is rare to non existent in Canada. At least in Southern Ontario, and as >far as I know throughout the country. What this person is saying is simply not true. In fact it is an enormous distance from the truth. When I first saw the statement in an earlier post I thought the source was the USA. I dont know who he is. I have never run across his name outside this e-mail set. But I have been involved in Canada as a poet, publisher and editor for many years. It would be hard to find a publisher of poetry in Canada that does not pay the poets---unless one is talking about a little local mimeo outfit somewhere. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 19:44:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: publish poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I inadvertently deleted a message in which someone wondered, if poets are paying for their publications, whether the publishers can legimately be considered publishers, as opposed to "printers," or "book producers," or something else. I think every publisher is absolutely different. There is no standard for the small press, for what makes a press a press, for what makes a publisher a publisher. I used to think there was some ideal to live up to; I no longer believe that. Chax Press is nonprofit, and I'm the founder and executive director and one member of the board of directors.. Technically that means, among many other things, that the money to publish books is not supposed to come out of my pocket, or pockets of members of the board of directors -- if too much comes from any one source so connected with the press, we could get in trouble with the IRS, as I understand it. Nevertheless, I have personally managed to get thousands of dollars into debt because I have chosen to publish poetry. As a result, in part of my own foolish commitments, less books were published by the press from 1993-1997 than in the four years preceding that. Only in 1998, for the first time in a long time, has Chax managed to publish more than four books in a year, and that only because I decided to make a commitment to publish managable chapbooks which are elegantly made but which don't take a lot of money to produce. Chax has been helped, at times during all of these years, yet increasingly in the last five years, by author contributions to their own publications, by author's friends contributions to publications, and by authors the press doesn't even publish contributing to the overall work of the press. Chax has also had a lot of contributions by non-authors, and several grants from government and foundation sources. I've taken loans from people to publish books, and these loans have been terribly difficult to pay back, but I'm still working on it, for more years than I ever thought it would take. If Chax had to pay for all book publications through grants and non-author contributions, I do not think the press could still be publishing books. As it is, there have been many times when I have thought that Chax should return to the practice, pre-1990, of publishing only handmade limited editions, and not venturing into the more commercial bookpublishing world at all -- but so far I haven't made that decision. So, is Chax a publisher? I got into this work primarily because I wanted to make books by and to some extent with, poets -- to design them, to make them by hand, and to help them get out to some readers. For most of the now-14 years of Chax Press I have worked primarily on the bookmaking, book design, and fundraising aspects of the work, and, extensively, with setting up readings and residencies locally, something it's actually somewhat easier to raise funds for (than for book publications). I've struggled more at the promotion and distribution/sales parts of the work (but yes, Chax has worked with distributors, has put out announcements and catalogues, put up a web site, and more), roles which I know are essential but which come much less naturally to me. It's difficult for me to choose to spend time doing that work (no matter how important I know it is) rather than writing, reading, bookmaking, or engaging myself with income-producing work outside the press altogether. Chax has had limited success and non-success with distribution, sometimes managing to sell a couple of thousand copies of a book, sometimes struggling to sell a hundred copies of a book. I have not paid authors in cash except for one instance more than a decade ago; I have paid them in copies. I am still making difficult choices with each book in terms of how to pay for it, while trying to honor the sequence of books, to publish a book in the order in which its manuscript was accepted (something which I usually, but not always, have been able to do); and trying to honor words spoken or written to authors about when a book would come out (something which, unfortunately, all too often I have not been able to do). I'm quite comfortable if someone wants to think of Chax as a printer or bookmaker (these are honorable sorts of work, in some ways less suspect than the work of a publisher sometimes is) rather than as a publisher. Mostly I just look at the work that is to be done, and try my best to do it. Some days, weeks, months, and years, it works better than others. It rarely, possibly never, works as well as I would like it to. On the other hand, all of it still, after some years, seems worth doing. charles ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 19:44:38 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: ad hoc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Ad hoc approximations abound in modern mathematical physics. They play a very important part in the quantum theory of fields and they are an essential ingredient in the correspondence principle. At the moment we are not concerned with the reasons for this fact, we are only concerned with its consequences: ad hoc approximations conceal and even entirely eliminate, qualitative difficulties. They create a false impression of the excellence of our science...."---from Against Method by Paul Feyeraband---cp ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 23:31:51 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rodrigo Toscano Subject: Re: racist poetics; a retort to Brent Long's posting Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit So many (crytpo or no-so-crypto retrograde elements) these days speak as if they were the very guarantors of (intellectual? aesthetic? political?) freedoms...just about now (timely) when (oh the horror!) cultured "minorities" (running rampant, afoot, closing in, locking up the gates, downright oppressing your ass!) -- some of them not even "real" doctors at that! (the horror, again, revealed!).. and that they dare strut around like that (as per your words, Brent, "EVERY time").. still speaking like theys all..... And had Angelou..talked like a____ (how should she talk, to y'all, carnalito..what wouldn't be ojectionable to you... tell us... "Poet, American, Citizen".... generic right-wing shock-jock dismay at it all....(but "poet" there added..very respectable indeed...) The supposed "OVERTness" of Maya Angelou's "racism"...is a joke, ...especially when you try to prove it by saying that she capitalizes the word Black and not wHITE...Girlfriend! and if the opposite were true, what insidious strategy (literarily, ideologically) would that reveal? ...whoa, but what a racist Angelou is! And Adrienne Rich, what a sexist! (by that very logic).......and here comes the Class of 1848...pushing their (oh-so-pushy) class agenda... I'm not going to give you a "despite-my-differences-with-Angelou's -political-outlook." (implied, I think, as too reformist) that other listees posted (the spirit of that, however, appreciated) but rather, as you so baldly collude with the right with your shoddy polemics, I'm going to give you an ("my") unconditional defense of Angelou against rightist genius...in the spirit of a Untited Front. ____________________________________ (who stands where?) ________________ Rodrigo Toscano ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ Brent Long wrote "Dear List, I have been watching the string of postings concerning the protest of Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent award, based on what apparently were interpreted as racist views of hers. As I am watching this conversation unfold, I cannot help but wonder if i missed something somewhere along the way when so much attention was given to the genius of Maya Angelou, without regards to her - dare I say- OVERTLY racist viewpoints. I have heard Dr. Angelou (though I hate to call her that, since the degree is an honorary one, and not an academically earned one) speak on several occasions, and EVERY time she has lectured she has addressed the audience (which for some reason is always almost entirely white middle-to-upper-class) as if she were back in Stamps, Arkansas. In her novels and poetry, the word "black" is always capitalized, while the word "white" is never, and her views are almost bordering on rhetoric (to say it lightly). yet nobody ever says a word about it...why now all the attention concerning the recent award for Yamanaka's poetry??? What sets her up for the chopping block, when ever more severe examples of racism in literature are allowed to pass us by without note??? Another poet, American, citizen sick of the "race" issue,Dear Mr. "Poet, American Citizen" who's, so sick of the "race" issue.... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 09:05:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Welcome Message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Rev. 6-1-98=20 (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)=20 ____________________________________________________________________=20 Welcome to the Poetics List=20 &=20 The Electronic Poetry Center=20 sponsored by The Poetics Program, Department of English, Faculty of Art &= =20 Letters, of the State University of New York, Buffalo=20 Postal Address: 438 Clemens Hall, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260=20 ___________________________________________________________=20 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc=20 ___________________________________________________________=20 _______Contents___________=20 1. About the Poetics List=20 2. Subscriptions=20 3. Cautions=20 4. Digest Option=20 5. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail=20 6. Who's Subscribed=20 7. The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC)=20 8. Poetics Archives at EPC=20 9. Publishers & Editors Read This!=20 [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).=20 ___________________________________________________________=20 Above the world-weary horizons=20 New obstacles for exchange arise=20 Or unfold, O ye postmasters!=20 1. About the Poetics List=20 The Poetics List was founded in late 1993 with the epigraph above.=20 There are presently over 600 subscribers.=20 Please note that this is a private list and information about the list= should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. 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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. **We 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*).=20 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! 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What is the Electronic Poetry Center?=20 our URL is=20 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc=20 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.=20 The EPC is directed by Loss Peque=F1o Glazier.=20 ____________________________________________________________________=20 8. Poetics Archives via EPC=20 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.=20 Or set your browser to go directly to:=20 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics/archive=20 ____________________________________________________________________=20 9. Publishers & Editors Read This!=20 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 your word processor will save files in Rich Text Format= (.rtf) this is also highly desirable=20 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.=20 Initially, you might want to send short announcements of new publications directly to the Poetics list as subscribers do not always (or ever) check= the EPC; in your message please include full information for ordering. If you have a fuller listing at EPC, you might also mention that in any Poetics posts.= =20 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.=20 ____________________________________________________________________=20 END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME=20 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 09:11:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Parnassus patrick, i don't have the address in front of me but you can probably find parnassus' editor herb leibowitz in a phone book or net search (i believe he's on west 89th street, and that is the magazine's address now too. a new issue is just out. burt ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 09:15:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: ad hoc [the end of "uncertainty" makes all uncertain] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"Ad hoc approximations abound in modern mathematical physics. They play >a very important part in the quantum theory of fields and they are an >essential ingredient in the correspondence principle. At the moment we >are not concerned with the reasons for this fact, we are only concerned >with its consequences: ad hoc approximations conceal and even entirely >eliminate, qualitative difficulties. They create a false impression of >the excellence of our science...."---from Against Method by Paul >Feyeraband---cp In many instances ad hoc approximations accomodate anomalies. In some instances they are the quantitatively small, but exceedingly important, differences between the observable and the real. (We tend to immediately think of Heisenberg, and the relation between approximations and uncertainties.) To incoporate those anomalies more completely, eventually without many of those ad hoc approximations requires a paradigm shift. In my opinion it will be a paradigm shift from a four dimensional space-time to a five dimensional space-time, from Einsteinian 4d to post-Einsteinian 5d modeling of reality. This will come about as new devices, instruments, are designed, build and perfected, at the same time, that further deviate away from a tradition that was grounded in a reality based upon the human sensory system. The "invisible world", where many anomalies were a part of the occult, divided away from "hard" science, will become "visible" to science and science will become increasingly inclusive rather than exclusive. That is where the scientist, the artist-poet,and the magician (as the practitioner of magick), eventually meet and merge their knowledge to achieve new effective power over the natural world. The results are morphealist where all "reality" eventually becomes "virtual". Those results are the achievement of the dreams of the alchemists, extended beyond the limits of the alchemical worldview. The perception of a larger reality gives rise to the transmutations of realities, and the paradigm shift _is_ in fact the mythic "philosopher's stone". We are currently living in that epoch of human history, within the history of science, where that is in fact happening. It is happening right now. Morpheal aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 09:11:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: racist poetics; a retort to Brent Long's posting In-Reply-To: <4c114900.359aff28@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" one word about this capitalization of "Black," and a response to the false cry of "reverse discrimination" --the practice arose in the 1970s and is not an assertion of racial supremacy but of cultural pride, part of the nationalist practices of that time. to capitalize "white," in my view, *would* be to assert white supremacy, and i cringe when i see it done by students etc who think they are simply being "fair" by treating both adjectives the same. likewise, the subtext of brent's text was this "reverse discrimination" red herring thing, whereby attempts to redress injustice are seen as unjust because they undermine privilege which is so naturalized it is not experienced or perceived as privilege by its recipients. and all of these matters have little or no bearing on whether or not you like Maya Angelou's poetry. As far as i'm concerned, it should be understood in context. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 10:51:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: NOISE news :: perforations 18 and 17 (FWD and not) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - (please note Perforations #17 is still taking submissions - I'm guest editing - including a description at the end of this - Alan) @@@@ @@@ @@@@@@@@ @@@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@ @@!@!@@@ @@! @@@ @@! !@@ @@! !@!!@!@! !@! @!@ !@! !@! !@! @!@ !!@! @!@ !@! !!@ !!@@!! @!!!:! !@! !!! !@! !!! !!! !!@!!! !!!!!: !!: !!! !!: !!! !!: !:! !!: :!: !:! :!: !:! :!: !:! :!: :: :: ::::: :: :: :::: :: :: :::: :: : : : : : :: : : : :: :: "The bit of noise, the small random element, transforms one system or one order into another." M. Serres "Between the rationality for which the analysis speaks and the law that history repeats there remains a gap, infinitesimal to be sure, but fundamental" M. De Certeau ---------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to NOISE NEWS, a notification publication of PERFORATIONS and Public Domain, Inc. a non-profit organization devoted to examinations of the crossing points of art, theory, technology and community. (see www.pd.org) *** *** *** CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: PERFORATIONS 18 RELICS co-editors: Richard Gess (libgess@emory.edu Robert Cheatham (zeug@pd.org) All types of media will be considered, but especially approaches which explore new relations between content and form. Each issue of PERFORATIONS (we now call them 'nodes' since each thematic is an ongoing site of investigation/crativity) includes straighforward articles articles as well as artistic web projects. Deadlines are fluid. Contact above editors for more information. In conjunction with PERF. 18, RELICS, we will have a juried show of artifacts, intrusions, evidence, impedimenta, incanabula, hauntings, debris, tibias, fibias and etcs, to take place late winter or early fall. For more information contact info@pd.org (note: the call for submissions can be viewed temporarily in its entirety at: www.pd.org/~zeug/p18-call/relics-call.html ) PERFORATIONS may be viewed at: www.pd.org/perforations/perf-topics.html ________________________________________________ RELICS ...... so: two things (at least) coming to odds--everything is on the road to the relic--and nothing seems (yet) capable of making it cross the border, either to 'finally' disappear or be 'totally' reconstituted. These two slots correspond roughly to a circumscribed scientific world view and a more 'ontological' rendition: relics are mere evidence in the first instance of matter's relationship with itself. In the second, they function as evidence of matter's relationship with consiousness (notwithstanding the chiasmatic turnings which 'evidence' goes through at the hands of both--so called 'postmodernism' and its significant other(s)--which threatens to illuminate evidence till it chars and disappears/evinesces/ashes-- or to ignore the possibility of the 'judgement of matter' (evidence) even as one views it through the bars.) At any rate, the relic waits, co-terminous with time... even as it attempts to subtly cruise 'through' it...yet strangely anxious. ________________________________ More PD news: ----Preliminary stages of PERFORATIONS 17, ILLEGIBILITY, co-edited with Alan Sondheim, is up and running (but may still be contributed to. If you had contacted us about inclusion and don't see your material, please get back in touch since some email got inadvertently lost). ----The Public Domain CD, VEIL, is now out and available. Go to our sound and music section or contact info@pd.org for more information. Public Domain, Inc. is a 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization. http://www.pd.org info@pd.org Illegibility - for Perforations #17 - An assumption of this century, Foucault's analysis of _divinatio_ not- withstanding, is that the world is becoming increasingly legible - that there are one or more _readings_ of the world - either through the foreclosing of textuality (what is, can be said), or through an increased understanding aligned with progress and progressivity. If the world is an encoding, then decipherment continues to reduce the unknown, and this might even be measured in terms of bandwidth, toler- ances, and so forth. On the other hand, one might argue towards an essential and irreduci- ble _illegibility,_ that not everything is decipherable - that there may, perhaps, be unknown or unknowable signs - as well as phenomena masquerading as signs - as well as phenomena having no relation to the symbolic at all. I am not arguing for a "horizon" of the illegible, but a seepage that occurs perhaps _within_ as well as without the legible. (For example, it may not be the case that every culture can be traced or translated - even in part - into every other.) Perhaps every domain is inherently illegible; perhaps foundations are not always interpretable across the board (and there for are not foundations sub specie aeternis). Consi- der the illegibility and illiteracy of the world, and consider the following, somewhat practical, concerns. 0 Issues of identity, recognition, self-reflexivity / asservation: To what extent does identity depend on legibility? Can one "read" another culture (without or without literacy in that culture) in such a manner that anomie or the sensation of exile do not occur? Can one "read" one's own culture in this manner? What is the phenmenology of anomie? Of exile? 1 Illiteracy - the inability to read and write. Every text is illegi- ble. (But if one is literate in the language of a text, and the text is visually "clear," does that _necessarily_ mean it is legible?) What is the post-Ivan Illich "take" on language, reading and writing? 2 Computer illiteracy - the inability to use computer technology. (Are computers legible _all the way down_? What constitutes legibility in this case?) What is the political economy of computer technology? Of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) in relation to this? (Think of the division between haves and have-nots for example. What - today - constitutes _having_? Is bandwidth a consideration?) 3 Dead Media (Bruce Sterling) - illegible remnants, archeologies. (What constitutes "media" in the first place?) 4 Infinite _kanji_ - wandering across a Borgesian world in which uni- versals do not exist, in which each signified (in the sense of refer- ence in the world) possesses its own sign. Nothing and everything are simultaneously interpretable in writing. All signs are illegible and legible; all are strictly indexical, ikonic, blurring the distinction. 5 Illegibility of or on or off the Net: What constitutes Internet illegibility; what constitutes Net illiteracy? Do TCP/IP and other protocols play a role here? Since virtual subjectivity is largely textual (or entirely textual, if bit-mapping is considered as such), what would be an _illegible subject_? What sorts of reception theory apply here? 6 Are cultures translatable? Is habitus a discourse or discursive for- mation? What is the political economy of legibility, of illegibility? 7 What constitutes misrecognition? How does misrecognition play into the above? (Misrecognition: an alternative or alternative reading, a non-intended reading, a reading-degree-zero, an absent or absent-mind- ed reading.) 8 Reading and writing "foreign" cultures or the cultures of one's own. Reading and writing on the Net. 9 And finally, to what extent is illegibility _inherent_ in the world at large? And what constitutes this inherency? _______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 12:06:48 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph@AOL.COM Subject: Re: publish poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Thanks for an insightful post, Charles. Money aside, what comes to mind immediately for me is that a publishing center (press, house) represents an expression of what the publisher/editor considers valuable work that s/he wants to make available for others to read. It's the TASTE of the individual, often quite varied and wide-ranging, that matters. And, as Charles points out, sometimes this is done at considerable sacrifice, because the labor given to the effort is often unlikely to be rewarded except in intangible ways. Depending upon the respect that a publisher has gained over a period of time, that individual's vote of confidence (to use a crusty phrase) has meaning. While none of us has a default nod in place for any given individual, it does mean a great deal to me to know that a particular publisher, be it Charles, Bill Slaughter, the Waldrops, Peter Ganick, Douglas Messerli, or any of several publishers has recognized a work as worth publishing and distributing. Looking at little magazines, some of them very inexpensively made, and looking at web zines, less expensive still, we'd need to ask the question, "Why submit work there?" Often, it's the quality and the thinking behind the selection that attracts us. The act of duplicating something is a very small act. The long-range effort of developing credibility over time is large and, in my mind, worthy. There is all the difference in the world between printing and developing a PRESENCE. Hats off to those who continue to do the latter. It makes a huge difference, even if not a monetarily worthwhile one. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 12:11:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Secret Location: Last Weeeks Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing 1960-1980 -- the "mimeo (and xerox) revolution" show curated by Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips will be closing on July 24. It's at the The New York Public Libary, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, in the Berg Exhibition Room, on the third floor of the library. Library hours: Monday, Thursday=96Saturday, 10 a.m.=966 p.m. (closed Saturday, July 4), Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m.=966 p.m. Closed Sundays. Worth a detour.=20 All of us involved with the poetry publishing documented here owe the curators a huge debt of thanks in making this work so visible and for the enormous care and intelligence they brought to the mounting of this show. It is very good news that an extensive and detailed catalog, with many statements from the press editors and many reproductions, and of course detailed bibliographic information, as well as an introduction by Jerome Rothenberg, is forthcoming from the library and Steve Clay's Granary Books. I am sure more will be posted on this soon. for more information on the show: http://www.nypl.org/admin/pro/press/secret.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 12:20:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: f.y.i. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** Fla. man says injured by dancers' breasts A Florida man has filed suit against a nightclub, claiming he suffered whiplash when a topless dancer knocked him out with her oversized breasts, the Tampa Tribune reported Wednesday. "Apparently she jumped up and slammed her breasts on my head and just about knocked me out," the newspaper quoted plaintiff Paul Shimkonis as saying. Shimkonis, 38, filed suit seeking more than $15,000 in damages from the Diamond Dolls club. The dancer, known as Tawny Peaks, was not named in the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, Shimkonis and friends visited the bar on Sept. 27, 1996. Because he was the guest of honor, the dancers asked him to sit on a low chair, rest his head on the back of the chair and close his eyes. The lawsuit said Peaks danced in front of him, and without warning or consent "jumped on the plaintiff forcing her very large breasts into his face causing his head to jerk backward." (Reuters) *** Bingo - the scourge of Albanian marriages Divorce in Albania is increasingly being blamed on husbands' passion for chance games - particularly bingo - a newspaper said Wednesday. Bingo and booze were cited as the deciding factor in half of all divorce cases lodged at the courts of Europe's most impoverished country in the last three months, the daily Gazeta Shqiptare said. The burgeoning obsession with bingo has pushed the traditional causes for divorce - adultery and violence - to under a third of all complaints. (Reuters) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 12:12:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Notley/Gare du Nord pitch & address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Because a few people have expressed interest: Introducing GARE DU NORD Have you checked out Notely & Oliver's new publication _Gare du Nord: A Magazine of poetry and opinion from Paris_ ? It promises to be for the 90s what their newsletter/zine _Scarlet_ was for the 90s [sic]: a fun/serious mix of poetry, commentary, criticism, dreams, premonitions . . .. Subs $18 for 3 issues. 8.5 x 12 xerox/staplebound. Black & White w/art & graphics. Issue 2, which they hope to make "interactive" (see "Reader Inquiry Feature,"below), I hear, is in the works . . Issue 1, '97 includes Notley's column "Cosmic Chat" part dream sequence, part poetics, part political commentary satire (well, what did you expect . . .? Remember "Dream Gossip" in _Scarlet_?) "We've gotto get syntax rid of, eh?" An intriguing dialogue (between "X" and "Y" -- though at one point a typo reveals that" X" is really "A"), and, in the Notley "outrider" experiemental poetic tradition, a bipartisan critique and discussion of utopianism and some radical assumptions about syntactic experiment. Ultimately a discourse on "change" in poetry. In short, in agreement with the notion that "conventional syntax freezes the genre" but problematizing the assumption "that changing language changes the hegemony of political languages, etc." The dialogue, a procces/working-through rather than a judgement, catalogues syntactical innovations (with a few examples/explications), and ruminates on the relationship between cognition and writing, and discusses interestingly the aleatory and the "mannered" as both intersect with syntactic experiment. Worth the price of the issue. "The Reader Inquiry Feature" where, for constructing an "interactive issue" they request "anecdotes of strange occurences" such as "premonitions of death or appearances of dead people and mental events involving time bending experiences or extraordinary awareness" Poems by Andrew Duncan, Patrick Miles, Ishmael Klein, Katy Lederer, Elio Schneeman, Grace Lake, D.S. Marriott, Jack Collom, Anselm Hollo, Mattie J. Peterson, Nicholas Johnson, Bill Griffiths, Dawn Michelle Baude, Alice Notley and Tony Lopez. prose: Douglas Oliver & "From Joe [Brainard]'s Secret Journals 1961" Alice Notley & Douglas Oliver Gare du Nord 21 Rue des Messageries 75010 Paris France ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:53:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: publish poetry? In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980701194433.007e6b80@theriver.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" call it what you will, charles, just please keep it coming three cheers bill At 07:44 PM 7/1/98 -0700, charles wrote: >I inadvertently deleted a message in which someone wondered, if poets are >paying for their publications, whether the publishers can legimately be >considered publishers, as opposed to "printers," or "book producers," or >something else. > >I think every publisher is absolutely different. There is no standard for >the small press, for what makes a press a press, for what makes a publisher >a publisher. I used to think there was some ideal to live up to; I no >longer believe that. > >Chax Press is nonprofit, and I'm the founder and executive director and one >member of the board of directors.. Technically that means, among many other >things, that the money to publish books is not supposed to come out of my >pocket, or pockets of members of the board of directors -- if too much >comes from any one source so connected with the press, we could get in >trouble with the IRS, as I understand it. Nevertheless, I have personally >managed to get thousands of dollars into debt because I have chosen to >publish poetry. As a result, in part of my own foolish commitments, less >books were published by the press from 1993-1997 than in the four years >preceding that. Only in 1998, for the first time in a long time, has Chax >managed to publish more than four books in a year, and that only because I >decided to make a commitment to publish managable chapbooks which are >elegantly made but which don't take a lot of money to produce. Chax has >been helped, at times during all of these years, yet increasingly in the >last five years, by author contributions to their own publications, by >author's friends contributions to publications, and by authors the press >doesn't even publish contributing to the overall work of the press. Chax >has also had a lot of contributions by non-authors, and several grants from >government and foundation sources. I've taken loans from people to publish >books, and these loans have been terribly difficult to pay back, but I'm >still working on it, for more years than I ever thought it would take. If >Chax had to pay for all book publications through grants and non-author >contributions, I do not think the press could still be publishing books. As >it is, there have been many times when I have thought that Chax should >return to the practice, pre-1990, of publishing only handmade limited >editions, and not venturing into the more commercial bookpublishing world >at all -- but so far I haven't made that decision. > >So, is Chax a publisher? I got into this work primarily because I wanted to >make books by and to some extent with, poets -- to design them, to make >them by hand, and to help them get out to some readers. For most of the >now-14 years of Chax Press I have worked primarily on the bookmaking, book >design, and fundraising aspects of the work, and, extensively, with setting >up readings and residencies locally, something it's actually somewhat >easier to raise funds for (than for book publications). I've struggled more >at the promotion and distribution/sales parts of the work (but yes, Chax >has worked with distributors, has put out announcements and catalogues, put >up a web site, and more), roles which I know are essential but which come >much less naturally to me. It's difficult for me to choose to spend time >doing that work (no matter how important I know it is) rather than writing, >reading, bookmaking, or engaging myself with income-producing work outside >the press altogether. Chax has had limited success and non-success with >distribution, sometimes managing to sell a couple of thousand copies of a >book, sometimes struggling to sell a hundred copies of a book. I have not >paid authors in cash except for one instance more than a decade ago; I have >paid them in copies. I am still making difficult choices with each book in >terms of how to pay for it, while trying to honor the sequence of books, to >publish a book in the order in which its manuscript was accepted (something >which I usually, but not always, have been able to do); and trying to honor >words spoken or written to authors about when a book would come out >(something which, unfortunately, all too often I have not been able to do). > >I'm quite comfortable if someone wants to think of Chax as a printer or >bookmaker (these are honorable sorts of work, in some ways less suspect >than the work of a publisher sometimes is) rather than as a publisher. >Mostly I just look at the work that is to be done, and try my best to do >it. Some days, weeks, months, and years, it works better than others. It >rarely, possibly never, works as well as I would like it to. On the other >hand, all of it still, after some years, seems worth doing. > >charles > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh | PaperBrainPress http://bmarsh.dtai.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 15:03:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Another Dispatch from Naropa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Three weeks of non-stop poetry and some 8000 words of improvised, impressionistic (and frequently stilted) reporting from Naropa have left me exhausted. I+d decided I was more or less finished with these posts, but the dulcet Jane Dalrymple Hollo convinced me last night to keep going, albeit with briefer posts. Okay, I said. Once more into the murky etcetera. Last night+s reading (July 1) featured Ali Zarrin, Kai Nimenen, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Victor Hernandez Cruz. Ali read first from his own work, a long, headstrong rush of a poem, beautifully cadenced, about coming to America, followed by a formal and very lovely metaphysical love poem, this latter prefaced by a funny letter from Ginsberg telling Ali to forgo this sort of rot and adhere to the doctrine "no ideas but in things." These were followed by marvelous translations of Hafiz and Attar from classical Persian, including ghazals. Kai Nimenen+s delivered his poems in Finnish, with Anselm Hollo providing the English. Kai, who is extraordinarily modest in person, possesses a very deft sense of wit and these poems, with their affectionate examination of the ironies and absurdities of our age, had the audience in stitches. I don+t know if a translation of his work exists yet in English but I highly recommend him all the same. Lorna Dee Cervantes began her reading with a very candid erotic poem, then read from a long section of her forthcoming _Drive_ entitled "Coffee." "Coffee" is an impassioned litany of the atrocities committed by Mexican troops against the people of Chiapas. As a political tract, it+s fairly compelling; as poetry, somewhat less so. Propelled by the best of intentions, it belongs to the genre of the poetry of mere denunciation -- whose chief aim is to whip the poet and maybe the listener as well into a froth of righteous indignation. A woman two seats over from me was moved to tears by this brow-beating work. I found it to be over-the-top: hyperbolic, full of dramatic posturing, self-importance and stale, outworn language. Maybe I+m just too damned obtuse. Victor Hernandez Cruz closed the evening. Watching his expansive gestures, arms flying over the lectern, feet shifting as in some slow-motion tango, it was easy to see why he+d claimed the Taos Heavyweight Whatchamacallit two years in a row. At times he seemed poised over his poetry like some great ferruginous raptor, ready to impale the very lines he read by a sheer act of will. Some poems were in English, some in Spanish. The wit was sharp, the passion exuberant, the language vivid. He may have read a little too long, judging by the weary looks of fellow listeners. But how can you begrudge a poet who invites everyone to join him for salsa dancing the next night at a local bar? Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 14:23:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: Various Items; Federal Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Thanks to Linda Russo for that info about Alice and Doug's new publication -- it sounds great! Perhaps there's hope for the _Impercipient Lecture Series_ to re-emerge after all . . . Thanks to Charles Alexander for his dedication and his consistently interesting and absorbing posts. I recently subscribed to _American Poetry Review_ for the first time in many moons -- I used to look at it every now and then in the early 80s, and must have gradually considered it too "mainstream" (though I know that's a loaded word) -- at any rate, it seems these days to be a fairly attractive mix, still mostly loaded with recent MFA grads, but Ann Lauterbach has a interesting column in the current issue, which also reprints Stein's "What are Masterpieces". And there's also a poem by Jeff Clark (whose poems, I think, recently made an appearance on the list) -- he's identified as "an agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's PHO Unit." This takes me aback. Does anyone know, first, what the "PHO Unit" might mean? And second . . . isn't it a little MUCH for a poet to be a member of the FBI? Insurance vice-presidents are one thing, but this just seems beyond the pale to me! An "extra-textual" consideration, to be sure, but I'd welcome any comment about this . . . choice of profession. CNN has now retracted the nerve gas story that was discussed here two weeks ago. So I guess we can all go back to trusting the government now. I dunno Pat -- I wasn't there, of course, but I could use a little righteous indignation every so often . . . didn't Blake call it "the voice of God" in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"? Joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 14:48:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Pecqueur" Subject: Re: racist poetics; a retort to Brent Long's posting In-Reply-To: <4c114900.359aff28@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Did I really read _institutional racism_ in a previous post? And I had begun to worry about the metaphorical state. To define a metaphor against the crowd of people that protest against them. This is neither of our businesses. Spicer Maybe I'll take that underemployed nap now. Polemics so wear me out. J.P. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 15:07:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Various Items; Federal Poetry In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pho are vietnamese noodles, usually served in soup. The FBI investigates the messages hidden in the noodles (written in cursive script, natch). Hope that's helpful. And there's also a poem by >Jeff Clark (whose poems, I think, recently made an appearance on the >list) -- he's identified as "an agent in the Federal Bureau of >Investigation's PHO Unit." > >This takes me aback. Does anyone know, first, what the "PHO Unit" might >mean? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 18:22:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: publish poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >call it what you will, charles, just please keep it coming >three cheers bill >>Chax Press is nonprofit, and I'm the founder and executive director and one >>member of the board of directors.. Technically that means, among many other >>things, that the money to publish books is not supposed to come out of my >>pocket, or pockets of members of the board of directors -- ..... I have >>managed to get thousands of dollars into debt because I have chosen to >>publish poetry. As a result, in part of my own foolish commitments, less >>books were published by the press from 1993-1997 than in the four years >>preceding that. Only in 1998, for the first time in a long time, has Chax >>managed to publish more than four books in a year, and that only because I >>decided to make a commitment to publish managable chapbooks which are >>elegantly made but which don't take a lot of money to produce. That is more realistic. Though I do not know of any "non profit" presses of that kind in Canada, that are in fact surviving. There are a few that have gone defunct, that tried to do it, but lost too much money. >>it is, there have been many times when I have thought that Chax should >>return to the practice, pre-1990, of publishing only handmade limited >>editions, and not venturing into the more commercial bookpublishing world >>at all -- but so far I haven't made that decision. There is a small market for that also. There are a few small publishers, artisans really, who do that kind of thing, here also. >>So, is Chax a publisher? I got into this work primarily because I wanted to >>make books by and to some extent with, poets -- to design them, to make >>them by hand, and to help them get out to some readers. Yes, definitely a publisher, and without such publishers chancing to be lucky enough to be able to survive, freedom of expression, diversity in literature, and in fact a lot more that we value and take for granted, would not have any chance to survive either. It is more important than you think it is. >>paid them in copies. I am still making difficult choices with each book in >>terms of how to pay for it, That is a lot more than authors get for having to PAY to have a chapbook published, per copy, cost plus margin. M. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 18:27:32 -0400 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: Various Items; Federal Poetry In-Reply-To: Safdie Joseph "Re: Various Items; Federal Poetry" (Jul 2, 2:23pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >And there's also a poem by >Jeff Clark (whose poems, I think, recently made an appearance on the >list) -- he's identified as "an agent in the Federal Bureau of >Investigation's PHO Unit." >This takes me aback. Does anyone know, first, what the "PHO Unit" might >mean? And second . . . isn't it a little MUCH for a poet to be a member >of the FBI? Insurance vice-presidents are one thing, but this just seems >beyond the pale to me! An "extra-textual" consideration, to be sure, but >I'd welcome any comment about this . . . choice of profession. I had let my subscription run out on that photo-opportunity fest, so like J.Carson, "I didn't know that." I've been had! Now I have to tear down my Jeff Clark poster. Fuck! (Maybe I can hang the Jeff Clark poster next to my agent Scully and Molder posters). Now I suppose Lois Yamanaka works for Hawaii five-O too? I'm sure glad Muriel Rukeyser isn't here to see this. Billyum ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 12:53:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: juliana spahr Subject: hawaii/esperanto/summi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Never heard of anyone learning Esperanto here but what do I know? It sounds possible. Although weird I admit. Are you sure they don't mean Hawaiian? Hawaiian is the other official state language (it is in the constitution--Hawai'i might be the U.S.'s only in name bi-lingual state; anyone know?; but the state really acts like it is monolingual--you can't, although you should be able to, get a drivers permit in Hawaiian). There are Hawaiian immersion schools here (you learn the U.S. curriculum in Hawaiian; schools still must meet what the mainland determines as important to learn--a continual complaint). And Hawaiian is being relearned and rewritten as a result. It was close to dead at one time. Lots of discussion about the "new" Hawaiian not being "real" Hawaiian. Etc. Similar to Ireland. Re: Summi's questions... Filipino community has been split, of course. Jessica Hagedorn has come out in support of the book as fiction. Michelle Cruz Skinner also. Several other writers against. Don't know abou Alarcon. Candace Fujikane actually addresses the _Bluest Eye_ issue in her work. She argues that Bluest Eye contextualizes the rapist (that moment when readers see into him) and thus places his rape in context. _Blue's Hanging_, she argues, does not do this. I think the Japanese v. Filipino issue comes to play here in Hawai'i more than elsewhere where Japanese-Americans are part of the system (the government, the hotel industry, the fancy houses, etc.) while Filipinos still tend to not be part of that system. Us v. them, in its many forms, might be the trope of Hawai'i anyway. Although, Summi, I agree with you that this issue is hard to sort out. In Yamanaka's work there is this examination of sexuality (which is so necessary here--sexuality issues seem to be on the back burner to a disturbing degree; I just went to a reading where the U.S.'s colonialism was compared to butt fucking and the poem said that no one could possible like either). There is this reply to Hawai'i as "paradise" that feeds the tourist industry. There is this valuation of pidgin (which is such a relief to many students who have been told things like not to speak pidgin even on the playground in grade school and are angry about it). All good things. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 19:02:01 -0400 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: hawaii/esperanto/summi In-Reply-To: juliana spahr "hawaii/esperanto/summi" (Jul 2, 12:53pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >>"In Hawaiian schools, for example, the study of Esperanto is a basic part of >>that state's innovative English program" >Never heard of anyone learning Esperanto here but what do I know? It sounds >possible. Although weird I >admit. >Are you sure they don't mean Hawaiian? It is strange I admit. Came from the ELNA(Esperanto) web page. They never backed the claim with more details tho. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 17:35:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: publish poetry? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Shemurph@AOL.COM wrote: > Looking at little magazines, some of them very inexpensively made, and looking > at web zines, less expensive still, we'd need to ask the question, "Why submit > work there?" Often, it's the quality and the thinking behind the selection > that attracts us. This is so true: the best reason to publish anywhere is that you are pleased to have your work included alongside the work of other writers the mag/website/publisher presents. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 05:00:59 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: publish poetry? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the only real reason to publishis to have dialogue. a dialogue that engages both a reader and a writer: as one /the same. No matter a stapled rag or Sulfur. The work's to be read, anyway, isn't it? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 05:01:20 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: publish poetry? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the only real reason to publishis to have dialogue. a dialogue that engages both a reader and a writer: as one /the same. No matter a stapled rag or Sulfur. The work's to be read, anyway, isn't it?Karen Kelley wrote: > > Shemurph@AOL.COM wrote: > > > Looking at little magazines, some of them very inexpensively made, and looking > > at web zines, less expensive still, we'd need to ask the question, "Why submit > > work there?" Often, it's the quality and the thinking behind the selection > > that attracts us. > > This is so true: the best reason to publish anywhere is that you are pleased to > have your work included alongside the work of other writers the > mag/website/publisher presents. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 20:00:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: Re: Secret Location: Last Weeeks Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I'll never forget the look on the faces of all these people as they entered the room for the first time. It was as if they had seen a ghost. There they were, hands on their hips , some staring off in the pigmented distance. Some looking straight-on in their nakedness said; "this is us." "We are these who they recognize." Beyond this they didn't know what to think. We all had a party after. The Bowery was never the same... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 22:00:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: You woulda never known your uncle [but uncle knew about the lack of MANAGEMENT in global problem solving] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"The "hot" issues of environmentalism--the possibility of major global >warming, the ozone "hole," species impoverishment, overpopulation and >its consequences--are issues that would be unknown and unknowable but >for the accomplishments of professional science. They exist only because >of, and specifically as products of, science."---from Higher >Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels With Science by Paul R. >Gross and Norman Levitt 1). Global warming can be alleviated by existing technologies being more rapidly perfected and implemented. This includes world wide effecting of gaseous emissions control technologies in factories and in transportation. This also includes implementions of new motive technologies utilizing such means as electromagentism, and hydrogen engines. 2). The ozone depletion can be reversed using technology, if necessary. Ozone is not that difficult to manufacture, if necessary. 3). Overpopulation is solvable, by means of education and technology. 4). Species impoverishment requires an effort to map and store the genetic code of all species that are known to be in danger, or are rare and known to exist. This is currently possible. Replication of those species in the future, on this or other planets, will then be equally possible, for whatever purposes. When world population is under control and brought to a more viable level as to long term quality of life for all the wildlife areas, the preserves, can be re-established and restocked for human enjoyment. There is one problem that defies solution. That is MANAGEMENT. There is lack of management skill, and management effort, in identifying the real problems, analyzing the properly, identifying potential solutions, proving those, and implementing them on a large enough scale to be effective. There is quite a lot of management in effect as to profit margins. The two factors, of management of those kinds of problems and management of profit margins need not be in conflict with each other. The two can be synonymous rather than oppositional. It is only a problem of how you happen to look upon it. Marxism always teaches seeing it as irremediably oppositional, as dialectic, as conflict that can only be resolved by violence of one side against the other. We are brain washed too easily into Marxist dialectics and fail to see it any other way, even in North America. When we are, it makes us into absolute fools, and marxism potnetially becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. In fact it is not a dialectic between profits and global problem solving where the problem cause is constantly being attributed to the quest for profits. That making of a devil out of profit fails to see that it is not profit that is the evil, but how, specifically, the profit happens to be made. Martin Heidegger in his consternation about modern technology and what he saw as its horrors said "only a god can save us". The was lamenting the failure of technology to be the great liberator that it once promised to be. He was wrong. A god could never save us. Without proper managment even a god would fail miserably at the task. So far I see almost no MANAGEMENT in any significant global problem area. >"The reduction of one unsolved problem to another is some sort of >progress, unsatisfying though it may be, but it is not an option in this >case. The frame problem is not the problem of induction in disquise. There potentially is a practical, or at least effective, solution for every world problem, of the kinds mentionned. Many of the existing solutions are the same as applying a tourniquette to an open wound. The bleeding is reduced, but if nothing else is done the limb is completely lost. If the tourniquette is loosened once in a while, the process of bleeding to death is usually prolonged, or the limb is lost anyway. Essentially that is what the ecological movements, the environmentalists, and others, have been doing. They have been attempting to convince people to apply tourniquettes to the wounds, rather than actually solving the underlying difficulties. Instead of coming up with new effective solutions to the problems they have a "do without" mentality. That is only a tourniquette. It is not a solution to the problem. We have to get out of that mode of thinking. M. aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 23:24:14 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Erik Sweet Subject: Jeff Clark aint a fed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I doubt very much that Mr. Clark is a fed... even if he was who cares... do all of you that would have a problem with this have a nice clever list of jobs that are acceptable for a "poet" good for you. rulesthatwillgetyounowhere erik sweet ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 20:04:53 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: To sum up: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "To sum up: wherever we look, whatever examples we consider, we see that the principles of critical rationalism (take falsifications seriously; increase content; avoid ad hoc hypothesis; 'be honest'--whatever that means; and so on) and a fortiori, the principles of logical empiricism (be precise; base your theories on measurements; avoid vague and unstable ideas; and so on)give an inadequate account of the past development of science and are liable to hinder science in the future. They give an inadequate account of science because science is much more 'sloppy' and 'irrational' than its methodological image. And, they are liable to hinder it, because the attempt to make science more 'rational' and more precise is bound to wipe it out, as we have seen. The difference between science and methodology which is such an obvious fact of history, therefore, indicates the weakness of the latter, and perhaps of the 'laws of reason' as well. For what appears as 'sloppiness', 'chaos' or 'opportunism' when compared with such laws has a most important function in the development of those very theories which we today regard as essential parts of our knowledge of nature. These 'deviations', these 'errors', are preconditions of progress. They permit knowledge to survive in the complex and difficult world which we inhabit, they permit us to remain free and happy agents. Without 'chaos', no knowledge. Without a frequent dismissal of reason, no progress."---from Against Method by Paul Feyerabend---cp ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 21:11:32 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: publish poetry? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit What charles describes is not unique among _fine_ press publishers. My friend Brian Richards at Bloody twin press expects the authors to chip in because the papers he uses or has people make for him are very expensive, Gary Metras at Adastra expects authors to chip in with time to produce (hand set galleys) and a minimum number of books sold. They are well worth it. Look at Ted Enslins _Music in the Key of C_ by Bloody twin or _Niagara Falls_ by Jim Daniels by Adastra. A book worth owning every page of like chax and granary. While I admire the fine press trade, unfortunately, I am a publisher, primarily because I move around too much to have one of those things in my basement. I can work out a better deal in copies and cash but the production value is not even close to comparable. Then we are back to Sheila's statement which buoys it up. By the way charles, Adastra printed the larger run books on not as fine a run, like yr PB book, and seems facing a similar quandry. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 01:52:55 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: payment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I wrote: >>I can say that every book our press has published has paid its authors in copies plus a cash amount. The industry standard in small press publishing is 10 to 15% of press run usually paid in copies, we do a little better. Morpheal wrote: >That is rare to non existent in Canada. At least in Southern Ontario, and as far as I know throughout the country. I just got back from Toronto and heard no such thing from the folks I met with there. I didn't pay money to read either. George wrote: "What this person is saying is simply not true. In fact it is an enormous distance from the truth. When I first saw the statement in an earlier post I thought the source was the USA. I dont know who he is. I have never run across his name outside this e-mail set. But I have been involved in Canada as a poet, publisher and editor for many years. It would be hard to find a publisher of poetry in Canada that does not pay the poets---unless one is talking about a little local mimeo outfit somewhere." George, I have and have seen a number of your books and its a good thing you didn't have to self publish them. You would have to be the richest poet in Canada. Be well David Baratier Mr. Shmeederer shows he knows nothing of either restaurant prices or the Four Quartets. Eliot himself felt $17.50 for good chicken tetrazzini was (I quote from an interview in Partisan Review) "not out of line." Indeed, in The Dry Salvages, Eliot imputes this very notion to Krishna, though not precisely in those words. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 01:36:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: payment or perish Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George Bowering, David Baratier, _is_ the richest poet in Canada. As a footnote, I will add that i have never received payment other than in books, from any of my Canadian publishers. (This info may be incorrect; I could have been given money which I spent and then forgot about.) I have never paid to be published there--nor here, in the U S of A. But many do, one way or another; if you have the funds, many small presses will appreciate your donation. There is no way any so-thought "poetry world" can make itself different from the wave of history. Is there? So money is allowed to talk. Good for money. In Canada, leastways, were one to pay to publish a book, one might, over the years,and given it is at least 48 pp long, recoup the outlay through the Library Roaylties Fund. In the USA, no such system of recourse exists. I register your complaint, & await suggestions for its removal. db3 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 07:50:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In yesterday's NY Times, poet laureate Robert Pinsky declines to comment on the US Supreme Court's ruling in the NEA vs. Karen Finley case on the grounds that he has yet to read the decision. I guess that this is an area into he doesn't want to tread simply based on some principle like the freedom of speech without a lot of additional research. Unlike his recent foray into educational policy. Kind of makes you feel special about the post of poet laureate, doesn't it? Just so that you don't find yourself in the same foolish predicament, the entire ruling can be found at: http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/97-371.ZS.html I'd reproduce it here, but it's 33 pages long. Definitely worth a read, though. Somebody should tell Pinsky. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 14:45:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Conditions For Writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable As part of the King's Talk series: augmented line-up for this one day long event. PLEASE remind all you know and see who might be able to get there. It looks set to be a shaker. READINGS, PERFORMANCES, DISCUSSION and INTERACTION between: Caroline Bergvall Karlien van den Beukel Miles Champion cris cheek Andrew Duncan Khaled Hakim Sianed Jones Drew Milne SATURDAY 4th JULY 1998. 10:00am - 4pm. Connaught Hall, Tavistock Square. Lon= don WC1 (Southwest side of the square; Euston / Euston Sq Tube stops) Suggested Donation: =A34 and 2 pounds (waged / unwaged). 10.00 - 10.15 arrivals 10.15 - 11.00 cris cheek - Sianed Jones 11.00 - 11.45 Scenes / Values / Generations / Gender Miles Champion - Karlien Van Den Beukel 11.45 - 12.30 Academia / Practice Caroline Bergvall - Drew Milne ('The Embarassment of the Blurb') 12.30 - 13.15 Interactive Reading by all of those above 13.15 - 14.30 Lunch 14.30 - 15.15 Poetics / The Social Andrew Duncan ('Impersonality, Legitimacy, and Prestige in Modern Poetry') Khaled Hakim ('The Way to Nothingness') 15.15 - 16.?? Round Table Discussions (stockpile of Audience Questions and and) looking forward love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 10:59:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: To sum up: [the idea projected onto world as revelatory of the world's presentation of meaning, is a schizophrenic reading into world as the text which is being deciphered by intelligence] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"To sum up: wherever we look, whatever examples we consider, we see that >the principles of critical rationalism (take falsifications seriously; >increase content; avoid ad hoc hypothesis; 'be honest'--whatever that >means; and so on) and a fortiori, the principles of logical empiricism >(be precise; base your theories on measurements; avoid vague and >unstable ideas; and so on)give an inadequate account of the past >development of science and are liable to hinder science in the future. The absolutely false statement that if we cannot measure it it does not exist becomes the most unreasonable, when it was once the most reasonable attitude. Old Bill had it right when he wrote about there being more things in the heavens and upon earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies [meaning natural philosophy, therefore sciences]. >They give an inadequate account of science because science is much more >'sloppy' and 'irrational' than its methodological image. And, they are >liable to hinder it, because the attempt to make science more 'rational' >and more precise is bound to wipe it out, as we have seen. The >difference between science and methodology which is such an obvious fact >of history, therefore, indicates the weakness of the latter, and perhaps >of the 'laws of reason' as well. For what appears as 'sloppiness', >'chaos' or 'opportunism' when compared with such laws has a most >important function in the development of those very theories which we >today regard as essential parts of our knowledge of nature. Science is highly _intuitive_. This is likely why Newton was drawn to esoteric discussions of "revelation". This is why Einstein said "I cannot believe that god plays dice with the universe". Of course there is a problem of scientific intuition and intelligence coming up against millenia of non scientific programming. Every scientist therefore internally conflicted and many a scientist highly courageous in going painfully against the conservative nature of the a-priori programming inherent from a highly irrational, ideological, human history by nature, and a similarly irrational and ideologially tainted contextual situatedness of nurture. Some of the latter being education. >'deviations', these 'errors', are preconditions of progress. They permit >knowledge to survive in the complex and difficult world which we >inhabit, they permit us to remain free and happy agents. Without >'chaos', no knowledge. Without a frequent dismissal of reason, no >progress."---from Against Method by Paul Feyerabend---cp Intelligence seeks patterns of _order_ in what appears to be _chaos_. True intelligence finds them there, where they were previously overlooked and disregarded. The intuition of orderly presentation and conveyance, of therefore useful, information where there previously appeared to be only chaotic and indecipherable. Sometimes what appears to be wholly chaotic appears that way solely because our methods of observation, and our paradigms for understanding what we observe, _determine_ it to appear that way. It is not that way at all, but until our methods and our paradigms change that is the appearance, the maya, of it. Our methods of observation and our paradigms, are what cause us to observe only the shadows in the cave. Plato failed to recognize that he was only describing the error and not the overcoming of that very same error. He placed his existing paradigms, historically situated as they were, above the realities in themselves, as something not only determinative as paradigmatic, but also as more desirable. He believed science was doomed to an eternal quagmire of maya, watching the shadows dance on the walls of the cave. The Hindu term "maya" is most applicable. We have no true correlate to that term in English. Meaning as the finding or order where there appeared to be chaos, comes suddenly, as intuitive insight. True intelligence means breaking thought free from worship of existing paradigms. It means giving the ideas a shadow existence, metaphorically on the walls of the skull cave, as opposed to the realities of things in themselves. True intelligence then allows the thing to be, to reveal, to show its various patterns of order from the apparent chaos, uninterceded by the often ideological paradigmatic determinations that previously offered up only certain patterns and not others. Some of those patterns were in fact false readings into the text and some of science was as though a schizophrenic babbling meanings where there were none. The ideas in the mind had taken precedence and superimposed over the external observables. The pattern found, as precedent idea, where there was in fact no such pattern. As science becomes more willing to abandon previous theories, and even previous paradigms, as determinative of what is considered meaningful, it becomes less schizophrenic and more in touch with natural reality. There is a seeing through some of the maya, and a rise in true intuitive insight. We might say that Plato's viewpoint leads to a schizophrenic and religious mentality where at least some ideas are elevated above all else and held to be sacred. Reality is then defined, meaning read into the world, based on those mental products. Plato was the problem and science is tending towards overcoming that viewpoint. In some regards Philosophy has continued to lead the way, as there have been many philosophical attempts during this century to grapple with Platonism's excessive influence. An influence which had been used and bolstered up for centuries by religion, which is too often essentially schizoid or schizophrenic at its core being ideas created by human minds and then superimposed upon the world to determine what can be considered as being, and what cannot be included as having being, whether in fact imaginary or real. M. aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 09:06:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: payment Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thank you George. Sometimes i pretend an opera buffo from the nineteenth century has intercepted our electrons and this man is singing in a language that means exactly the opposite of what it says. You can be pretty sure, if he sang it it's wrong.I'd rather laugh than cry. billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 09:16:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Vaincouber Weeport Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" DOROTHY TRUJILLO LUSK and deadhead GEORGE BOWERING red at the pizza place where KSW is outflanking Virgin Records look for the takeover bid to come before xmas, buy ksw stock now b4 it splits 3 ways though much of dorothy's work depends on hearing she's a writer not a reader or she affects the obligatoriness of reading to the converted, among the converted attending, Mike Barnholden, MC, Victoria Walker, Marie Anneharte Baker, Goh Poh Seng, Kate Van Dusen, Charles Watts, Peter and Meredith Quartermain, Renee Rodin, Clint Burnham, Rolf Maurer,Roy Miki, Darcy Margesson, gerry gilbert, the mick jagger of canadian poetry, recording for replay on his radio free rainforest going since 1983 or 19sixty something depending... she tried at one point to be dismissive of the audience after we all clapped after a good poem she said does that mean i'm done now? she has a deadpan shotgun delivery she doesn't want to get it right she wants to get it over, her mentor,jack spicer's heir apparent, Scott Watson served free pizza provided by freybe sausage, pink shorts and a blue bow tie, red suspenders, no stogie, spatula will you have sausage he said or sausagelike instead robin blaser shivered remembering specific cigarettes of the fifties while dorothy multisyllabic multiphasic reciting of her deliberating mishearment. Dorothy overestimates her audience ala Ezra Pound and we feel more intelligent just knowing enough to hear the words her work deserves longer attention or a welsh(jamaican?) accent, she seems to have perfected a method of playing five radio stations at once, her juxtapositions her juxtapositions George Bowering Came on calling his reading the Night of the Living Dead, he began reading the poem of his father's death, desert elm, a poem he mentioned angela approved of, but then anybody would. he started off saying you won't have to work so hard thinking to understand his poems, he skipped a few sections to get to the part he liked in this 1973 poem. the second poem a miniepic he and his mother search for his grandmothers gravesite, the third appears in the new Tads #4, a condensation, writing through Keats and Shelley. Ever the teacher, he explained the method of both before he read but i won't. 3 poems he read, 2 tender sincere poems addressed to his mother, then the hipster finale condensation of Adonais, everybody laughed, most more than once over the course of this short elegy. even with a cold, performing essentially on pilot light, as per usual he charmed em, nobody has left a george bowering reading feeling worse than when they arrived for thirty years, the muhamad ali of canadian poetry, he knocks you out with a cream puff. The new reading space is tres alphaville but the dolphins cavorting on the tiled columns add a reassuring je ne sais squat billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 11:47:45 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ron Silliman wrote: > In yesterday's NY Times, poet laureate Robert Pinsky declines to comment on > the US Supreme Court's ruling in the NEA vs. Karen Finley case on the > grounds that he has yet to read the decision. > > I guess that this is an area into he doesn't want to tread simply based on > some principle like the freedom of speech without a lot of additional > research. Unlike his recent foray into educational policy. > > Kind of makes you feel special about the post of poet laureate, doesn't it? I understand that you don't much care for Pinsky and what he stands for, but this really isn't fair, Ron. You can't have it both ways, first getting angry with RP for (among other things) not doing his homework, then getting angry with him for wanting to look into things in detail before making a statement. Robert Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 13:09:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I just got back from Toronto and heard no such thing from the folks I >met with there. I didn't pay money to read either. Very odd, as every small press in Canada that I have had any information of or about, from anyone, demands money up front to publish anything from anyone they deal with. We have several small presses in Hamilton, and I know of some in Toronto, and unless it is a contest where entry fees pay for the winner's chapbook to be published, everyone pays significant cost plus margin for everything that is published. I mean, _everyone_. >would be hard to find a publisher of poetry in Canada that does not pay >the poets---unless one is talking about a little local mimeo outfit >somewhere." I am talking about the average small press that puts out a dozen or more titles a year, and catalogues them under its own name. Every one I know of gets paid by the author for every copy printed, cost plus margin, based on the kind of work they have been asked to do and the format of publication. I have yet to receive one piece of information, in ten years of writing, and following anything that comes along, and being a member of the Canadian Poetry Association, receiving their regular mailings, that indicates any press that is willing to publish anyone for any less than cost plus margin. The exceptions are _only_ contest winners where one author is selected from hundreds of enterants who all paid a fee of from 10 to 30 dollars each, to submit a sample of their work. One is selected and published, usually getting only some copies of the publication, while the press retains the larger quantity. Some contests provide all the copies to the author, but that is less frequent. That is simply the way that it is. I cannot really afford the League of Canadian Poets. They do not publish the work of members either, but they do promote and distribute the works of members somewhat, along with the publishers who publish them. That is the other Canadian association for poets that provides some information to members as to contests, publications, and presses that are looking for customers. Besides, with only one book self published, the league might not even accept me. They have certain requirements about number and kind of publications, in addition to relatively steep fees and the costs of not being local to where I live as to gatherings. I know that at least some of the books published by members of the Canadian League of Poets are also author paid for, as I know of the practices of a few of the publishers who do the publishing. I cannot speak for all instances, but only for the limits of what I know, and have been informed of by others, or read in the relevant publications of organizations as presented to me. Some of the information comes from someone who is a well regarded Canadian poet, established, and a member of the relevant small press association, who knows the practices of other presses and does what they do. It is typical for members to do essentially the same as one another, so as to compete with one another on a somewhat more level playing field. There are rules, albeit unwritten, that they abide by with each other. There are few, if any, maverick entrepreneurs in the biz, and few such ever survive for any lengths of time. Everyone eventually conforms or perishes so that there is bread on the table of those that survive. Of course a small press, a publisher of any kind, can only become a member of the small press association if they publish a certain number of tomes per year. Otherwise they might as well be mushrooms growing in the manure in the pitch dark. Much of the relevant information is limited to dues paying members in any instance that I know of in anything that I know of. (Another kind of pay per.) As for readings...It is unusual to have to pay a fee to read. That is almost unheard of. I said that it is typical for people to be allowed to read at good venues for readings, where there are sizable audiences, if: 1). they have paid to publish a book and the publisher is involved in the organizing, as they often are 2). they have paid for a poetry course, seminar, workshop, to an established poet and that poet is doing the organizing, or is a close contact of the organizers (if the organizers are media) 3). there is something to gain for the organizers from inviting that person to read, in terms of other connections, promotions, inclusion. They invite those they can profit from, rather than those they cannot profit from. That becomes a kind of fee, exacted by those who do the organizing. Those they cannot profit from simply are not invited. That is the gist of it. Then there is the fact that it costs money to go anywhere to read. The further the distance the more money it costs. That is a different matter. First pay to publish a few books, then pay a few established poets for workshops that run readings, and pay one's own costs to go and read. That is the sum total, for most people who venture into presenting their own work. Perhaps those with agents do better. I cannot speak to that either, except as to hearsay that indicates they do reasonably well. Some publishers act as agents. M. aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 12:28:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley Comments: To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU In-Reply-To: <359CC4E2.41AA@LFC.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:47 AM +0000 7/3/98, Robert Archambeau wrote: >Ron Silliman wrote: > >> In yesterday's NY Times, poet laureate Robert Pinsky declines to comment on >> the US Supreme Court's ruling in the NEA vs. Karen Finley case on the >> grounds that he has yet to read the decision. >> >> I guess that this is an area into he doesn't want to tread simply based on >> some principle like the freedom of speech without a lot of additional >> research. Unlike his recent foray into educational policy. >> >> Kind of makes you feel special about the post of poet laureate, doesn't it? > >I understand that you don't much care for Pinsky and what he stands for, >but this really isn't fair, Ron. You can't have it both ways, first >getting angry with RP for (among other things) not doing his homework, >then getting angry with him for wanting to look into things in detail >before making a statement. > >Robert Archambeau au contraire, mon cher, this is exactly one of those moments when "not doing one's homework" and offering as an excuse that one hasn't read the assignment carefully enough translate into the same thing. And if i read rs's post properly, pinsky is not the target; one would be right to be outraged at *any* poet laureate who responded thus. i checked out the URL; it's pretty discouraging. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 12:42:43 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > this is exactly one of those moments when "not > doing one's homework" and offering as an excuse that one hasn't read the > assignment carefully enough translate into the same thing. Maria, If RP chooses to make no statement, you may have a point -- that silence could be eloquent. But right now it is entirely knee-jerk anti-establishmentism to condemn Pinsky. I believe that an informed opinion a day late is generally better, and more powerful, than a facile opinion delivered off the cuff. Perhaps you and I feel differently about this. R.A. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 08:59:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ron, You should also not who did bravely speak out (and has in the past)--poet/playwright Mac Wellman spoke strongly against the supreme court decision. And he couldn't even research the issue, since he was in Ireland on a visit. Mac also wrote a play about the whole issue, 7 Blowjobs, thanking the endowment for support (despite the fact they asked him to remove their name) and dedicated it to "those supreme clowns of our sad time, Jesse Helms and Donald Wildomn; also to Representative Dana Rohrabacher and the Reverend Pat Robertson, because they have shown such an abiding interest in my work. These gents (God help them!) compreise the Four Horsebrained Horsemen of our Contemporary Cornball Apocalypse." When the decency clause was enacted, Sun & Moon Press refused to apply for the NEA and wrote letters of protest to the then-chairman and congressman. The governor of the great state of California (then mayor of San Diego and serving on the National Council) was the only one to write back.: he believed in censorship, he proclaimed! Mac has certainly stood out as a hero in all of this over the years. Douglas Messerli rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > > In yesterday's NY Times, poet laureate Robert Pinsky declines to comment on > the US Supreme Court's ruling in the NEA vs. Karen Finley case on the > grounds that he has yet to read the decision. > > I guess that this is an area into he doesn't want to tread simply based on > some principle like the freedom of speech without a lot of additional > research. Unlike his recent foray into educational policy. > > Kind of makes you feel special about the post of poet laureate, doesn't it? > > Just so that you don't find yourself in the same foolish predicament, the > entire ruling can be found at: > > http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/97-371.ZS.html > > I'd reproduce it here, but it's 33 pages long. Definitely worth a read, though. > Somebody should tell > Pinsky. > > Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 14:14:25 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 3 Jul 1998 08:59:52 -0700 from How is the gov't deciding not to give somebody money based on a decency clause censorship? Who ever expected the gov't to be a good judge of art? Who ever told Finley to stop performing? That's censorship. I love doing this. Knee-jerk anti-establishmentism is what innovative poetics is all about. I love saying this! - Jack Spandrift ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 14:36:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: film wknd MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit i don't know why they always schedule these things when people are away. but there is a wealth of classic non-narrative film playing this weekend in manhattan: in particular, at anthology film archives, you can see michael snow's wavelength on friday 7/3 (tonight) at 8 and snow's <--> (which we refer to "in the business" as "back and forth") on 7/4 saturday at 8. other films along the way in both cases.THEN Jack Smith's "flaming creatures" with a short, sunday (7/5) at 8 & 9. real cheap too and convenient. oh - also should mention the genius ken jacobs showing laurel & hardy shorts saturday at 6, should be even funnier than fireworks - & also very cool-sounding films from taiwan all weekend that i should know more about but don't. but at the same time, moma is showing a program called "1968" &, as it ends, is showing 5 avant-garde programs from around then. here's a weekend schedule that i copied down off the moma phone line: friday 7/3: 3pm program 3 6pm program 4 8pm program 5 8pm Andy Warhol's LONESOME COWBOYS!!! special bonus! saturday 7/4 2pm program 5 5pm program 2 sunday 7/5 2pm program 4 5pm program 3 description: program 2: whitneys; breer; bartlett; jordan; hindle(?) program 3: joyce wieland; lyon; "great blondino" program 4: peter kubelka; bruce baillie, "castro street"; snow, "wavelength" program 5: landow, "film in which there appear..."; baillie; ernie gehr!; hollis frampton, "surface tension"!; paul sharits, "n:o:t:h:i:n:g"!; & more yes kids, program 5 is the real mccoy - rare flicker films, rare frampton, the sublime ernie gehr... free with moma admission i think.. also program 4 and the warhol film on friday night shouldn't be missed. why do they always throw these things together when everyone's away.. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 13:02:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: Another Dispatch from Naropa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thank you, Patrick Pritchett, for continued posts on Naropa summer readings. Kai Nieminen's reading (mentioned below) was exceptional. I'm privileged to have at hand now a copy of one of Kai Nieminen's poems as translated by Anselm Hollo. It's too delightful not to quote, then I think I'll hop on the next plane to Finland... Poets are wrong about poetry, readers are wrong about poetry. Critics are right about poetry: it's just idle prattle from past decades. Critics are wrong about criticism, artists are wrong about criticism. Secretaries of State are right about criticism: there's no need to give a shit. Politician are wrong about politics, the media are wrong about politics. All of us are right about politics: it's the wrong actions taken at the wrong time. Economists are wrong about the economy, consumers are wrong about the economy. The rich are right about the economy, that's one secret they'll never reveal to us. Farmers are wrong about agriculture, laborers are wrong about agriculture. Cows are right about agriculture: eat what's in front of you, let them milk you dry. Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume wrote: > Three weeks of non-stop poetry and some 8000 words of improvised, > impressionistic (and frequently stilted) reporting from Naropa have left me > exhausted. I+d decided I was more or less finished with these posts, but > the dulcet Jane Dalrymple Hollo convinced me last night to keep going, > albeit with briefer posts. Okay, I said. Once more into the murky etcetera. > > Last night+s reading (July 1) featured Ali Zarrin, Kai Nimenen, Lorna Dee > Cervantes and Victor Hernandez Cruz. > (etc.) -- Laura Wright Library Assistant, Naropa Institute (303) 546-3547 "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 15:39:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: China 2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit China 2 This is a great wall. It's quite unbelievable, isn't it? The numbers don't pay. Feelings go away. Our psyches are real! "Fuck you" to the television. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 15:38:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Mudlark/Schelling In-Reply-To: <359D2ABB.AF5E090E@naropa.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... http://www.unf.edu/mudlark _________________________________________ New and On View: Mudlark No. 9 (1998) THE ROAD TO OCOSINGO Andrew Schelling * * * * * * * * In August 1995 I traveled to Mexico with poet Anne Waldman, novelist Rikki Ducornet, and psychoanalyst Jonathan Cohen. We met in Mexico City, a high altitude cosmopolis ringed by mountains, currently the planet's most populous city. The poets Elsa Cross and David Huerta had scheduled a reading and reception for us at Casa del Poeta. Following a few days among friends we went south into Chiapas State. Chiapas held three interconnected interests--cities and pyramids of classic Maya antiquity; contemporary Tzeltal and Tzotzil speaking villages in misty pine forest highlands; and somewhere, out there in the Lacandon threading jungle paths as they elude the Mexican military, the EZLN Zapatista army with its eloquent shadowy elders whose communiques sound like a blend of MesoAmerican shamanism, 20th century poetics, and post-Marxist pragmatism. Those who go by night said, 'And we see that this way of governing that we name is no longer the way for the many, we see that it is the few who now command, and they command without obeying...' The journey was a brief one. We hoped to dig into Juana de Asbaje's poems, gaze upon skeletal eyes of Palenque ruler Pacal, and meet a few knowledgable contemporaries. A modest and unremarkable attempt to learn what we could of the temper of Mexico in the EZLN climate. To see what we might find out firsthand, not simply from hearsay. To keep eyes and ears open, take notes like spies, and carry a few books for the work. This despite word the Zapatistas were disburdening literature from their own rucksacks. "Because you're loaded with books doesn't mean someone else offers to carry your ammunition," a subcomandante had recently confided. This is a journal of the trip, in mongrel mix of prose and verse. Its sense of form is much indebted to Japanese haibun, good style for jotting notes in a rucksack. I kept the writing deliberately loose. Haibun is always stricter, more keenly regimented in how it balances prose and terse lyric. Matsuo Basho is the poet who brought haibun to its keenest development, particularly in his travel journals. As we wandered Basho trailed without mention behind. Oku no Hosomichi, his best known work (1690), recounts a journey by foot into Japan's northern hinterlands. In his day the province of Oku was an unpredictable and slightly scary back country, geographically and culturally distant from Edo, the capital, and a site of potential unrest. Just as in post-NAFTA North America it is Chiapas first--then Guerrero, Oaxaca, and other Mexican states--that emerge as shakiest members of an economic policy crafted in Washington. In English Basho's title is "The Back Road to Oku." On the back road to Ocosingo I heard the place names echo. --from the Author's Introduction * * * * * * * * Andrew Schelling, born 1953, grew up in New England. Early influences were the region's granite mountains and resurgent conifer forests, as well as Asian art collections seen in Cambridge and Boston. Moving west, he spent seventeen years in northern California. Wilderness explorations, companionship with urban-based poets of the San Francisco Bay Area, production of samizdat poetry journals, and travels through Europe, Asia and North America. Southeast Asian language study at The University of California, Berkeley, resulted in ongoing translation projects. In 1991 he moved to Boulder, Colorado, to join The Naropa Institute's faculty. He teaches poetry, Sanskrit and wilderness studies. _________________________________________ William Slaughter, Editor E-mail: mudlark@unf.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 12:45:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Since the decision to uphold the legality of decency tests for arts grants seems to be based on the majority of the justices interpreting the law that was being challenged as merely advisory, while Souter's dissent (correctly, I think) looks at the issue in a very different way, it may not be unreasonable for someone who had only heard or seen a digest version of the decision to want to know more about it. But the NY Times article Ron is talking about ran a full week after the Court's decision was announced June 25th. Far more than, say, the decisions on the line item veto, attorney-client privilege, healthcare for retired miners or any of the other issues resolved by the Supreme Court announced on the same day, the decision on decency standards for the arts has direct bearing on Pinsky's own art and his role as poet laureate. By the beginning of July, Pinsky should have had an informed opinion on the issue, it's his job. & in response to Henry's carping about why & how this can be considered government censorship, Souter's dissent may make it more clear. The following is the section excerpted form his dissent printed in the NY Times: >The question here is whether the italicized segment (here put into >brackets) of this statute is unconstitutional on its face: artistic >excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which applications [for >grants from the National Endowment for the Arts] are judged, consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse >beliefs and values of the American public.>" It is. > >The decency and respect proviso mandates viewpoint-based decisions in the >disbursement of Government subsidies, and the Government has wholly failed >to explain why the statute should be afforded an exemption from the >fundamental rule of the First Amendment that viewpoint discrimination in >the exercise of public authority over expressive activity is >unconstitutional. The Court's conclusions that the proviso is not >viewpoint based, that it is not a regulation, and that the NEA may >permissably engage in viewpoint-based discrimination, are all patently >mistaken. In other words, while Henry is correct that Karen Finley has not been legally stopped by the government from making whatever kind of art works she wants to, by using her viewpoint & the content of her work as a basis to make final decisions after it has been selected because of "artistic excellence and artistic merit", the NEA as a government agency is stepping over First Amendment lines. The issue isn't censorship as such, but what kinds of controls over disbursements the government is allowed to make. Choosing among artists who have been previously selected for government support and deciding based on the content matter of their work isn't the way government is supposed to work in the US. Bests, Herb Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 12:50:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i don't think you pay enough bob billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 15:11:54 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: trancendentalism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Book Fungus Can Get You High" By Ellen Warren / Chicago Tribune CHICAGO -- Getting high on great literature is taking on a whole new meaning. It turns out that, if you spend enough time around old books and decaying manuscripts in dank archives, you can start to hallucinate. Really. We're not talking psychedelia, "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" stuff, here. But maybe only a step or two away from that. Experts on the various fungi that feed on the pages and on the covers of books are increasingly convinced that you can get high - or at least a little wacky -- by sniffing old books. Fungus on books, they say, is a likely source of hallucinogenic spores. The story of The Strangeness in the Stacks first started making its way through the usually staid antiquarian books community late last year with the publication of a paper in the British medical journal, The Lancet. There, Dr. R.J. Hay wrote of the possibility that "fungal hallucinogens" in old books could lead to "enhancement of enlightenment." "The source of inspiration for many great literary figures may have been nothing more than a quick sniff of the bouquet of mouldy books," wrote Hay, one of England's leading mycologists (fungus experts) and dean of dermatology at Guy's Hospital in London. Well, said an American expert on such matters, it may not be that easy. "I agree with his premise - but not his dose. It would take more than a brief sniff," aid Monona Rossol, an authority on the health effects of materials used in the arts world. For all the parents out there, these revelations would seem ideal for persuading youngsters to spend some quality time in the archives. But attention kids: You can't get high walking through the rare books section of the library. Rossol said it would take a fairly concentrated exposure over a considerable period of time for someone to breathe in enough of the spores of hallucinogenic fungus to seriously affect behavior. There are no studies to tell how much or how long before strange behavior takes hold. Still, this much seems apparent - if you want to find mold, the only place that may rival a refrigerator is a library. Just last week the Las Cruces, N.M., Public Library was closed indefinitely, prompted by health concerns after a fungus outbreak in the reference section. Library director Carol Brey said the fungus promptly spread to old history books and onward to the literature section. The town's Mold Eradication Team, she said, shuttered the library as a precaution. "We didn't want to take any chances," she said. A mold removal company will address the problem, which is believed to have originated in the air conditioning system. Psychedelic mushrooms, the classic hallucinogenic fungus, derive their mind-altering properties from the psilocybin and psilocin they produce naturally. One historic example of this phenomenon, scientists now believe, is the madness that prevailed in the late 1600s in Salem, Mass., where ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus, infected the rye crops that went into rye bread. Ergot contains lysergic acid, a key compound of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. This tiny fungus and its wild effects on the rye-bread-eating women may have led to the Salem witch trials. Rossol, a New York chemist and consultant to Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History who publishes the newsletter Acts Facts, the journal of Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety, said that there have not been scientific studies on the hallucinogenic effects of old books. But, relying on accounts from newsletter readers who report their own strange symptoms - ranging from dizziness to violent nausea - she says there is no doubt that moldy old volumes harbor hallucinogens. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 17:03:27 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: Pinsky on the NEA vs. Finley In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 3 Jul 1998 12:45:37 -0800 from On Fri, 3 Jul 1998 12:45:37 -0800 Herb Levy said: > >In other words, while Henry is correct that Karen Finley has not been >legally stopped by the government from making whatever kind of art works >she wants to, by using her viewpoint & the content of her work as a basis >to make final decisions after it has been selected because of "artistic >excellence and artistic merit", the NEA as a government agency is stepping >over First Amendment lines. > >The issue isn't censorship as such, but what kinds of controls over >disbursements the government is allowed to make. Choosing among artists who >have been previously selected for government support and deciding based on >the content matter of their work isn't the way government is supposed to >work in the US. That was interesting, Herb, let me carp a little more. I like Souter & I think the majority on the current Supreme Court are often threatening to individual rights. I question the ability of anyone to decide on the artistic merit of a work without taking content & viewpoint into account. So the NEA is being asked to do the impossible in the name of the 1st Amendment, and Karen Finley & Jesse Helms, who deserve each other since they're so alike (missionary extremists) will go on battling over the dough. All I said was, it's not censorship. It may be unconstitutional though! But is it art? - Carpin' Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 14:26:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: signing off for a spell Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Must travel for a few days--so am shutting down my e-mail. I will miss you, listmates. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 18:43:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r. drake" Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807031709.NAA02310@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" m-- praps you could clear things up by being more specific (naming names) of presses that demand payment frm poets they publish? none of the presses i'm familiar with (coach house, curvd H&z, proper tales, mercury press, ecw, fingerprinting inkoperated, serif of nottingham, spiderplotz in ratholes, torque, above/ground) have such requirements, which argues against such being as universal as you say... but i'd be interested in finding out more... lbd >>I just got back from Toronto and heard no such thing from the folks I >>met with there. I didn't pay money to read either. > >Very odd, as every small press in Canada that I have had any information of >or about, from anyone, demands money up front to publish anything from >anyone they deal with. > >ect... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 19:25:49 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit here's a few more I can think of who pay : anvil, borealis, guernica, gesture, underwhich, tyro Perhaps its Figments Publishing but I thought that was in the UK. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 19:26:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >i don't think you pay enough bob You are right. When I was so broke that I was living off of some stale rye crisps, and had nothing in the world except a line to the Internet, for some months actually given free to me by a service provider that I had been buying access from for a few years.....publishing what could have easily been my last poetic words, while attempting to maintain some political activism aimed at world peace and a reduction of international tensions meant to save some lives and better some others.....I did not have a friend in the world who would even buy me a cup of coffee. They expected me to buy them one....And so it goes. It is all difficult to do on stale rye crisps, while also spending the last dime looking for a paying job, but sometimes that is what life means. So I knew right then that I was still not paying enough. I had to pay more than I was paying....that's for sure. A proven part of my experiences. >billy little >4 song st. >nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 We're all on the road to nowhere, except it is in different places at different times, in different provinces, in different countries. >...like >this - everytime i write a >poem - i'm afraid - when >i'm dead it will sell >& some other poet will >starve because no one will >buy his poems... >d.a. levy I would never worry about that. I figure that someone might buy some someday and find they want more and cannot find any except some other poets writings, and that still won't satisfy them and they'll want still more and more and more, until they have dozens of poetry books on their shelves that the libraries do not buy and circulate because they are not popular enough to keep there. M. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 17:19:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Inferno, Succubus, Gates of Hell and More Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If you live in the Bay Area or will be visiting this month, the Center for the Arts (701 Mission Street) is having a film series every Friday night and will be showing some rarely-screened classics of Euro-horror, leading off with Dario Argento's "Inferno" (1980) (July 10) and winding up with a double bill of Mario Bava's "Hercules in the Haunted World" (1961) and "Danger: Diabolik" (1968, also by M. Bava) on the 31st. And don't forget, every Friday and Saturday at midnight this month, the Castro Theater is showing Lucio Fulci's restored "The Beyond" (1981). So . . . call me, let's go! Kevin ("Giallo") Killian ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 04:54:30 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Inferno, Succubus, Gates of Hell and More MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kevin: Is there a fault with yr e-mail I've a question for Dodie and get a "fault" message" when I e-mail you... Todd B. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 04:54:34 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Inferno, Succubus, Gates of Hell and More MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kevin: Is there a fault with yr e-mail I've a question for Dodie and get a "fault" message" when I e-mail you... Todd B.dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: > > If you live in the Bay Area or will be visiting this month, the Center for > the Arts (701 Mission Street) is having a film series every Friday night > and will be showing some rarely-screened classics of Euro-horror, leading > off with Dario Argento's "Inferno" (1980) (July 10) and winding up with a > double bill of Mario Bava's "Hercules in the Haunted World" (1961) and > "Danger: Diabolik" (1968, also by M. Bava) on the 31st. And don't forget, > every Friday and Saturday at midnight this month, the Castro Theater is > showing Lucio Fulci's restored "The Beyond" (1981). So . . . call me, > let's go! > > Kevin ("Giallo") Killian ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 21:48:23 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: free speech art pinsky judge etc I would like to carp a little more in my ignorant way on this thread since hey it's the 4th of July weekend and bombs are exploding outside my window so... I too remember better days when the government spread its largesse toward the arts with no strings attached and this is as it should be, let the artists and their agents decide, okay. But the idea that artistic merit can be rewarded irrespective of content and viewpoint sounds like a legal fiction which allowed the money to keep on flowing. Consider for example the purely exemplary [fictional] work of Ugo Tsetsetaviti, who produced utterly lifelike - with technical merit in the highest degree - re-enactments of Kristallnacht, in order to glorify Mussolini and the 3rd Reich. His work, sponsored by Big Nazi Productions, a well-established arts foundation in Weekawken, somehow never made it through the funding protocols - despite the high purely artistic quality of the production. I think it offended some people. What's my point? That you can't have it both ways. Art hits people in a visceral/political way. The connoisseurs of stylish shock understand this better than anyone; their "art" is ALL "content" - but the gummint ain't sposed tah consider that, see? The shock artists want the money - no content considered - AND they want to "protect their freedom of speech' (to get across their content). But see, their art hits home - it offends some people. So the legal fiction is shown up for what it is, and we enter a performance arena with Jesse & Karen spreading the chocolate wide and far. So what's my solution? Hey, art is a cognitive, political, aesthetical integral thingum all in one. Let it happen; let it fly. An if the gummint turns down your grant, let people know about that. We have to be reminded now and then how we're being channeled into conventional channels, prim and proper and public and protected and precious and private and personal and purple and red, white and blue. But don't spend too much time in court. Because you won't get out until you pay every penny. That's gospel. On the other hand, don't blame the gummint if they don't underwrite shock. No matter how beautiful and idiosyncratic and individual and free and extraordinary and liberating it may be. Cause the gummint got feelings too. We have met the enemy an they is us. - Henry Gould 98 years ago, on the 4th of July 1900, Florence Ainsworth Gould was born. A member in good standing of the D.A.R. There was a painting of Lafayette dancing at a fancy ball with George Washington looking on over the dining room table. There was "Mom" at the head of the table (blind, over 100 yrs old). Florence smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of daquiris, and had a big laugh and a sense of humor and died of leukemia in 1964. Happy 4th of July, refugees. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 18:57:36 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: man's disposal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Kant's critique concentrated all directed, purposeful processes in man's rational action, and this meant that the world could participate in this sort of directness only by becoming a substrate subject to man's purposes. In its metaphorical usage, the expression of "unfinished world" no longer legitimates human action by reference to a prescribed definition and obligatory role in nature. Rather, the transcendental turning requires that the world must be 'unfinished,' and thus material at man's disposal, because this is a condition of the possibility of human action."---from The Legitimacy of the Modern Age by Hans Blumenberg---cp ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 21:01:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Reading at New Langton, Friday, July 10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit For Immediate Release Contact: Lorelei Stewart June 4, 1998 415 626 5416 Readings Jim Brashear Kathy Lou Schultz Friday, July 10, 8:00 pm Kathy Lou Schultz is an engaged writer, urgent and cool, whose open forms include direct statement and extreme fragmentation... Schultz writes about love, work, and physical life at a time when hope is qualified and nothing is normal. Re dress is a powerful book.-Robert Glück [Jim Brashear's go little book] attempts variegated, complex enunciations of gender/body/language-raising urgent considerations around the socialization of sexuality and text (cultural production). In its allegiance to and innovation of assemblage and issues of intertextuality, go little book hones its own particular cadence of the lived body and the social body.-Myung Mi Kim San Francisco-On Friday, July 10 New Langton Arts presents readings by San Francisco-based writers Jim Brashear and Kathy Lou Schultz, co-editors of Lipstick Eleven, a local magazine of experimental writing. Jim Brashear reads selections from his latest works, which focus attention on the body, both lived and social. Recipes written in English, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Zulu are fused together in a poetic narrative, whose broken form describes how national culture feeds the body/citizen. Another narrative's subject loses its gender, somewhere between a Gothic novel and a bad science-fiction movie, and comes out paranoid about the concept of families and The Shining. Kathy Lou Schultz reads from both published works and new works in progress, including a manuscript entitled "Some Vague Wife," a romp through sex, gender, intimacy, and power which formally rides the rails between prose and poetry. Tickets are $7 general and $5 for students, seniors and Langton members. The readings begin at 8:00 pm and are held in Langton's theater at 1246 Folsom Street, between 8th and 9th streets and three blocks directly south of the Civic Center BART and Muni stop, San Francisco. Please call 415 626 5416 for more information and reservations. Jim Brashear studied semiotics at Brown University, poetry at San Francisco State University, and computer science at Mills College. He was Editor-in-Chief for Transfer, the magazine of SFSU's Creative Writing Department, and is currently co-editing Lipstick Eleven. Recently published, Lipstick Eleven explores the relationships between the literary journal and the 'zine, the identity of the author and ownership of the text, writing "created" and writing "found." In his own writing Brashear's play between texts led him to the play between different media, particularly the realms of sound and video. Thus Brashear will return to Mills this fall to study electronic music and multimedia performance. Projects under development include: a "writing machine,"in which a computer program weaves together simultaneous "live" input from writers stationed at different terminals; and a "linguistic synthesizer," in which speaking sentences into a computer generates electronic music as an "accompaniment" to the reader. Kathy Lou Schultz's book of poems, Re dress, won the Michael Rubin Award from San Francisco State University. Work from this collection was anthologized in The New Fuck You (Semiotexte). Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in: Outlet, Fourteen Hills, lyric&, Tripwire, and Lipstick Eleven. Schultz teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, co-edits of Lipstick Eleven, and edits SWEAT: International Labor Magazine of North America. An Associate Editor at InfoWorld Magazine, Schultz received her MFA in Creative Writing and American Literature from San Francisco State University and her BA from Oberlin College, OH. This event is funded by Poets & Writers' through a grant received from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. New Langton Arts is supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts Planning and Stabilization Program, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, Banana Republic, BankAmerica Foundation, Sheana W. Butler, Penny and James Coulter, Digital Pond, Martha W. Dresher, DFS Group Limited, Robert and Elizabeth Fisher Fund of the San Francisco Foundation, William S. and Sakurako D. Fisher, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Edward L. Jew, Lannan Foundation, Meet the Composer, Morla Design, Poets & Writers, Inc., Kathryn A. Taylor and Thomas F. Steyer, the Voluntary Arts Contribution Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Richard and Susan Swig Watkins, WESTAF, The Zellerbach Family Fund, and the members and board of directors of New Langton Arts. ### For interviews, photographs, or further information please contact Lorelei Stewart at 415 626 5416. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 14:53:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: for the fourth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ACCOUNT ACCOUNTRY ACCOUNTYMEN adopted advance against beingborn brother brotherefore by challenge claim commerce connected custom dependence derived distinction drops enlarged for force grown home into kingdom marked measures meet method motive name nature Our parishes parties prepossessions present principles protected reason reasoning repeat scale surmount sustain That temporary them thinking this thought Volumes withdrawn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 13:02:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: July 10th double dilemma Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's Kevin Killian. Here I was telling all Bay Area visitors to see Argento's "Inferno" on July 10th, and now I've been reminded of a competing event on the same evening a few blocks away, at New Langton Arts (1246 Folsom) at 8:00 o'clock, a reading by two very estimable writers, Jim Brashear and Kathy Lou Schultz! Sorry for the confusion. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 12:25:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry G Subject: 2nd thoughts on court I see in the paper today that the Whitney Museum has pulled funding for a major project involving Karen Finlay. She & her curators had predicted this kind of fallout from the Supreme Court ruling. (article in today's Times). My Jack Spandrift devil's advocacy maybe took me over to the "wrong side of history" so to speak. This is a shame that conservative forces in government can protect the public from all but safe and meretricious forms of art, while the commercial media continues to pump out mind-numbing garbage at will. What my previous post on this issue was trying to say was that in a democracy these kinds of pressures might be inevitable, since the government politicizes the majority; and if government funds are involved, it's a legal fiction to suggest that a government agency can make grants on the basis of pure merit, as if that could exist without content and a viewpoint on that content. I'm just trying to think through this stuff from an unpopular list perspective, I think that's fun to do, and regret some of the snide remarks about "shock artists" etc. There is a kind of cultural censorship going on here, which is a familiar kind of safe repression which appears all through history. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 09:23:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: free speech art pinsky judge etc In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" henry, just must jump in here: this is one of those times where the spirit saves etc... no one is denying that content is, ultimately, part of what's judged for an nea... the nea process is undoubtedly as capricious, full of error and oversight and overdetermination and so forth, as any other such evaluative process (esp. one that operates under govt. sanction)... i'm sure content is judged, reputation is judged, even intention is judged (have you ever tried to grab hold of an intention?)... just have a close look at the application form... the point is that these judgments, from the point of view of some on this list (i would hope most, if not all), are best left to artists/poets/etc... that a trustee relationship *should* prevail between the public and its government representatives on this matter (and don't let's start getting into whether representatives must be, in all senses, mere delegates of the public will---the pentagon don't work this way either, e.g.)... that a given work "offends" will of course be taken into account in any case---as you correctly intuit, and as a practical matter, simply b/c the entities doing the judging are human, and social beings... yet the supreme court's decision is problematic not simply b/c it threatens to censor work that is already produced, but b/c it will have the effect of drawing a tighter circle around that which is produced and submitted for a grant---i.e., smaller deviation from the norm, as the statisticians say... granted [wink], not everyone need apply for an nea, and the work of those who do will in any case represents only a small portion of gross artistic product (gap, ha)... but *if* you believe the arts (among other things) in this country are under *public* attack by a right-wing mentality out to restore "decency" to schools and the like---i do, and i judge this mself, in part, on the basis of what i see going on in other sectors of our "economy," and in other countries---why then i think you must concede that the supreme court ruling plays to this tendency... how?... well, by de facto making content a public issue in a very specific way (on the basis of "offense," let's say)---which is not simply making public that which was always the case, henry... it's making the content issue public so as to discourage a potentially wider range of publicly-supported art (i'll leave aside the question here of who gets to decide who does the judging---but it's not hard to imagine what might happen in this regard)... capisce?... you can't have it 'both ways,' no... but what's good for the goose: if you're gonna point out that content has always been an issue, you have as well to point out that---whatever the various nea panels have rendered in terms of content evaluation---nobody has actually *regulated*, constitutionally, the nature of that issue... till now, that is... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 18:40:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: 2 as if Nikuko MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - TONGUE, DANCING "The _Jinriki_ chapter states:" At that time the World-Honored One demon- strated his great mystic powers to the entire assembly, extending his log, broad tongue till it reached upward to the Brahma Heaven." I say, what slid off it, writes Nikuko. Nichirin continues: "All the other Buddhas from the worlds through the ten directions seated on lion king thrones under jewel trees did the same, ex- tending their long broad tongues." A prepuce of flesh, Nikuko thinks, a foreskin of the world. Nichin adds, below: "The _Amida_ Sutra states that Buddhas covered a major world system with their broad, long tongues, but lacks the truth that such a gesture would substantiate. The _Hannya_ Sutra tells how the Buddha's tongue cov- ered the major world system and radiated infinite light when he expounded the _Hannya._ Yet this cannot be a proof [comparable to that of the _Jin- riki_ chapter]. Since these two sutras are mere provisional teachings, they obscured the Buddha's enlightenment in the remotest past." (Selected Writings of Nichirin, ed. Yampolsky.) Prepuce, foreskin. Foreskin, prepuce. Nikuko, musing-transforming, clothes bursting from supine body in which she is speaking in Nichirin's Buddhas' tongues. Nichirin turns, becoming- tongue, long-thick pink-red flesh reaching across worlds, shadow-casting upon islands beautiful in dreaming-waters, saliva silver with ten thou- sand moons: { it can't be helped the letters slip away from me nikuko covers the buddhas with her tongues covers the lands with her tongues which carry world-scrolls of truth sutras gospels } while (1 < 10000) { I SAY: } nnnnnnnnnnn iiiiii kkkkkkkk uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu kkkkkkkk oooooooooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' MMMM TTTTTTTTTTT RRRRRRRRR YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII NNNNN GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG TTTTTTTTTTT OOOOOO RRRRRRRRR EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY OOOOOO UUUUUUUUUUUU TTTTTTTTTTT HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH RRRRRRRRR OOOOOO UUUUUUUUUUUU GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA LLL LLL TTTTTTTTTTT HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII SSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSS TTTTTTTTTTT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA TTTTTTTTTTT IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC cccccccccccccccccccccccccc oooooooooooo mmmmmmmmmm ee iiiiii nnnnnnnnnnn ttttttttttttttttt oooooooooooo mmmmmmmmmm ee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa lllllllll aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa nnnnnnnnnnn wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww hhhhh ee rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ee yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy oooooooooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu NNNNN IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII KK UUUUUUUUUUUU KK OOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NNNNN IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII KK UUUUUUUUUUUU KK OOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TONGUES HARBOR NIKUKO-ALAN ACROSS WORLDS HISSING WITH JEWELS, SWORDS, MIRRORS, INTERJECTION-EXPOSTULATION SOUNDS AS WIRES CRACKLE, NODES AND ROUTERS SPELL FORMATION-KANJI, GRID DRAWS TIGHTER: TONGUES DANCING IN THE SKIES! THE DANCING OF NIKUKO-ALAN-TONGUE! _______________________________________________________________________ Of the Space cracks the mirror. The mirror is rigid. Hit me with a stick. The mirror reflects only what is evident. What is evident is not evidence. If it is evidence, hit me with a stick. Brown wood-frame around the mirror, dais beneath it, tain behind. From an angle the wood-frame reflects in the mirror. From no angle, the dais; from no angle, the tain. Nor does the mirror reflect the mirror. It is space that is reflected in the mirror. No space, no mirror; no space, no reflection. Hit me with a stick; the space is empty. The stick is in space; the stick is reflected in the mirror. Stick approaches the mirror, Crack! Crack! The mirror is rigid. There is more than one stick. There is more than one space. There is one frame shifting in faultlines, fractures. The frame is the world; the mirror is the world. Crack! Crack! - Nikuko __________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 11:57:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: letter visit hum bleak requested entry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" { } void-sign classic undercover signals fusually shudder at the light attempting to escape the slatest black fantasy text day needs another day t' take off shutter standards for t' daze gloves out of control beyond any and all normative confine(s) an unclear tomb http://www.inch.com/~abz/ http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/3361/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 06:38:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: letter visit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" { } void-sign classic undercover signals fusually shudder at the light attempting to escape the slatest black fantasy text day needs another day t' take off shutter standards for t' daze gloves out of control beyond any and all normative confine(s) an unclear tomb http://www.inch.com/~abz/ http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/3361/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 16:16:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: poetry & publishing In-Reply-To: <199807040402.WAA00665@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On the whole, Morpheal seems to be talking about either a new dispensation or a rather large underground in Ontario. George is right about the small presses I know about. They publish poetry; they pay the writers, often in copies, & they try to distribute, some managing that much better than others. But when I speak of such presses as Brick Books , Coach House Press (the once) & Coach House Books (and future), Turnstone, Talonbooks, Coteau Books, ECW Press, Quarry Press, and many others, I speak of publishers that are at least business-like. And when I was a publisher, Longspoon Press paid its writers. And found the money to publish through sales & grants. The Canada Council has helped a lot of publishers, but in a country with such a small population (& sitting next to the elephant) we need the help. I do think that in the lean & mean nineties, a lot of younger writers have been forced back to chapbooks & to self-publishing. Some of what appears is good, some bad; as a matter of fact, that's usually the case with 'real' publishers too... Readings are another matter. Some are supported by the Canada Council, & for those the writer gets travel plus an honorarium. Some venues, like universities, have some money for readers, but not usually for travel. Then there are local readings where usually it's local writers who participate. two years ago, I was able to have Tony Lopez here with the help of the British Council, John Kinsella with the help of the Australian Council; last year the British Council helped bring the great Tom Raworth to Alberta -- without such help we could not have afforded these writers. But that's always the case, isn't it? George came here this past winter with the aid of the Canada Council, & as Billy Little said of the reading the other day, his audience left in a good mood... Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 in the rooms you live in other people's books line your shelves the traces of their lives their minds too bpNichol ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 03:06:07 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: for the fourth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Reiner wrote: > > ACCOUNT > ACCOUNTRY > ACCOUNTYMEN > > adopted advance > against > beingborn > > brother > brotherefore by > challenge claim commerce > > connected > > custom > dependence derived distinction > drops > enlarged for force > > grown home into kingdom > > marked measures meet > method motive > name nature > > Our parishes parties > prepossessions present principles > protected > reason reasoning > > repeat > > scale surmount sustain > That temporary them > thinking this thought > > Volumes withdrawn the Z then \must be vanished, vanquished all to be a B again/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 21:58:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807032326.TAA24281@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>i don't think you pay enough bob > >You are right. When I was so broke that I was living off of some stale >rye crisps, and had nothing in the world except a line to the Internet, How do you know when rye crisps are stale? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 21:37:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807031709.NAA02310@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>I just got back from Toronto and heard no such thing from the folks I >>met with there. I didn't pay money to read either. > >Very odd, as every small press in Canada that I have had any information of >or about, from anyone, demands money up front to publish anything from >anyone they deal with. This person has very scant knowledge. Here are some small presses that pay their poets: Talonbooks, RDC Press, Turnstone Press, NeWest, Pulp, New Star, 5th House, Exile, ECW, Vehicule, Thistledown. I would offer the names of some that ask you to pay them, but, frankly, I have not heard of any. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 21:02:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This person has very scant knowledge. Here are some small presses that pay >their poets: Talonbooks, RDC Press, Turnstone Press, NeWest, Pulp, New >Star, 5th House, Exile, ECW, Vehicule, Thistledown. I would offer the names >of some that ask you to pay them, but, frankly, I have not heard of any. That might be true, George, but we have only the knowledge we are given to have by those who give it. I mentionned my affiliation, and without mentionning the significant individuals I assure you that they are not insignificant. A few are actually publishers in their own right, and claim to know the industry extremely well, being members of the small press association. Also why is it that every poet I have met has paid to publish their own, or has won a chapbook as a prize in a contest. That's it. That is all I have ever met in person and been able to talk to, anywhere where I have been invited. So, can we decipher what happened to mislead me, and many others, so badly ? Is there a conspiracy ? Who is behind it ? Why is there a conspiracy ? Perhaps rhetorical questions, but they do come to mind. M. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 21:05:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >How do you know when rye crisps are stale? They began their life as rye bread, and had started to turn a shade of green. The penicilin on them probably helped stave off infections, contributing to the probability of survival. I found that green cheddar is also edible without any ill effects. regards, Bob ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 05:17:18 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit and that "chips" are not stale as either "chips" nor salted functions. Crisps--are not Rye if you're British. but poetry don't pay-- crime does.morpheal wrote: > > >How do you know when rye crisps are stale? > > They began their life as rye bread, and had started to turn a shade of green. > > The penicilin on them probably helped stave off infections, contributing > to the probability of survival. > > I found that green cheddar is also edible without any ill effects. > > regards, > Bob ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 21:30:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: poetry & publishing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >On the whole, Morpheal seems to be talking about either a new dispensation >or a rather large underground in Ontario. I add only that I was also generously offered, by a good publisher friend, a chance to publish some of my visual art for a price aforementionned of approximately $5,000. It was suggested as a second effort, rather than my buying another poetry book. (He meant black and white renditions, rather than full colour litho, but he was also showing me a sample of a full colour litho book of visual art that had been locally self published, paid for by the artist to whet my apetite for a larger venue for my visual work.) >George is right about the small >presses I know about. They publish poetry; they pay the writers, often in >copies, & they try to distribute, some managing that much better than >others. But when I speak of such presses as Brick Books , Coach House Press >(the once) & Coach House Books (and future), Turnstone, Talonbooks, Coteau >Books, ECW Press, Quarry Press, and many others, I speak of publishers that >are at least business-like. And when I was a publisher, Longspoon Press >paid its writers. And found the money to publish through sales & grants. I repeat that I am a member of the Canadian Poetry Association and no one from that group has ever mentionned any such thing. Even the anthologies, as good as they are, were pay for print. There was some really nice work compiled in a few of them. Each poet has to pay around $14 and send in a few poems. That pays for the publication. As for members ever even hearing about presses that publish poetry without cost to the poet, I have no knowledge of any such thing from anyone. The organization has a sizeable membership. >Readings are another matter. Some are supported by the Canada Council, & >for those the writer gets travel plus an honorarium. Some venues, like >universities, have some money for readers, but not usually for travel. Then >there are local readings where usually it's local writers who participate. Here the small presses control the readings. As I said before. No new book published locally, no reading, no publicity. I do not, from my association with local poets, whether established or new at it, know of anything different. I am absolutely floored at what I am currently reading on this list, as being an "alternate reality". Are we talking about the same planet ? I am having extreme difficulty reconciling my experiences among poets here, with what is being said by a few of the list members. They are radically in opposition to one another as though two entirely different cultural and ideological systems. If that is my experience, then it must also be the experience of other poets. I am not that unique. Other than, perhaps, that I ask about opportunities, when I meet those I know, and follow up on what I hear about. Now I feel like my "best friends" have led me right into the wall, at full speed ahead at midnight. I know that I was not uniquely misled. I know there are others. That same wall seems to be covered from top to bottom in the metaphoric "blood" of splattered poets. From what I could see on the one side there appeared to be no other side, only the edge of the known world to fall off from. Now I feel as if my "best friends" are either as ignorant as I apparently was, or that they are so violently and unscrupulously competitive as to put their fellow poets into the ground without a fighting chance. That might include those that said nothing "helpful" as well as those that said something "helpful". M. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 22:04:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: Money! Money! Money! [a one act play, or a play in one act] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Took me a while to get around to responding to this: > Money makes the world go round, the world go round, > Money makesthe world go round, it makes the worrrrrlllddd >go rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooound > It maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkessss the wooooorrrrrrllldddd go ROUND > It MAkes the World Go Round. > Sung to the Marvelous Tone & Tunes of Cabaret. No. I insist that it does not make the world go round. It flattens= everything. It makes for a flat earth. Steamrollered flat. Flat effect. Everything flattened out. Completely flattened out. Absolutely pancaked. Either that or melted down from rushing around and around and around on a flat world..... It is such a heavy thing. Money that is. Heavy to have. Heavy to hold. Heavy burden not to have any. From any angle it is so heavy. It can flatten out anything completely and absolutely and make it remain that way forever. Then again, it seems appropriate it is made by pressure in a press, in a process that involves huge pressures......giving it its essential character. Coins come from a die press. Paper money from a printing press. Supposedly that is to make us fear change the most. It rattles at us and rattles us. It has the temperament of a rattlesnake. When money pressure strikes at us the venom goes in deep. > Oh give me Money that's what I want No. I insist that was _NOT_ what it was about. It was not about vanity either. It was not about a quest for fame either.=20 I keep saying it was about art and it was about love. Those two being different subjects, but then someone wants to concatenate and twist those together, and put it through the same flattening out pressure.....It was also about communication. So, perhaps that condemns to eternal _hellfire_.=20 (Sung to the tune from Atomic Rooster, Arthur Brown and Vincent Crane) Anyway.....here is something about "Money". More blasphemies no doubt. I do not usually write this kind of thing. First one act play I ever wrote. However, it answers better than anything else i have handy right now. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D MONEY A play in one act. By: Morpheal aka Bob Ezergailis ----- Dramatis Personae: Young Man: Dressed in a business suit. Wearing a tie and uncomfortable leather shoes. Young Woman: Wearing a pant suit and a negligee under the jacket. Money Bag: Canvas bag with dollar signs on it. Money is inside. Also a tape recorder. The tape recorder plays softly but audibly all the time from inside the sack. It is an overdub of fragments of stock quotations and business news previously recorded by several other voices from actual current news. Doctor: A doctor, dressed conservatively for the office, carrying a doctor's bag. Various Bystanders: The audience. Scene: Somewhere on a city street in a large metropolitan area. As the act opens a young man and a young woman are carrying a large canvas sack. It has large black dollar signs painted on front and back. They are straining with the load. It is very heavy and gets heavier and heavier for them as they proceed down the street. The young woman drops to her knees and they rest the sack on the ground. She is wiping her brow from what is obviously becoming severe over-exertion and exhaustion. Young woman: I don't know how much further I can go with this. Young man: We have to keep going. (He looks nervously over this shoulder.) We have a long way to go.=20 Young woman: How far ? Young man: To the end of the road. Young woman: How far is that ? Young man: I don't know. I never met anyone who has been there. Young woman (sobbing): How did we get ourselves into this ? Young man: What else could we do ? =20 Young woman (exasperated): I don't know. How would I know. You should know. Young man: Why ? Because I am a man ? I don't know. I simply don't know. Young woman: You know I didn't mean it that way.=20 Young man: I bet you didn't. Now grab your end of it and lets keep going. They grab the sack again and heave it up and begin to stagger some ways further with it. Young woman: It feels so much heavier. I don't think I can go much further. Young man: We can't stop now. We can't stop here. We'll never make it if we stop here. Young woman: Let's rest a while.=20 They sit either side of it, on the sidewalk, with their backs to it. Young woman: Do you remember how much fun we used to have ? Young man: Before we made it ? Young woman: Yeah. You used to come home for dinner.=20 Young man: But we were poor. It was horrible to be poor.=20 Young woman: We used to spend the weekend at your uncle's cabin. No one for miles around.You used to kiss me, and we had candles. It was romantic. Young man: You want me to kiss you ? Young woman: It would be nice. (Looking dreamy eyed.) Young man: Ok.... He puckers his lips, turns and leans around to one side of the sack, while she puckers her lips and leans around the other side of sack. She is looking at his behind while he is looking at her's. Young woman: Where are you ? Come over here. They each turn around the other way and soon she is looking around the other side of the sack at his behind while he is looking around the opposite side of the sack from where he was at her behind. (They are now doing the same from opposite directions.) Young man: Over here. Where are you ? Young woman: Over here. Where are you ? He is looking near the bottom of the sack. She is looking over the top of the sack.=20 Young woman: (exasperated) Never mind.=20 Young man: Where are you ? Young woman: Forget it. I'm too tired anyway, and we have to be going. We will never make it to the end of the road if we don't hurry. Young man: You're right. We have to hurry. Do you think you can make it ? Young woman: I'll try. I have to try, don't I? Did I ever let you down= before? Young man: No. You never let me down before. You never let me down and I never let you down. Young woman: That's right. So let's go. They grab the sack and lug it along some few yards further. Young man: (Gasping) I feel a pain.... Young woman: You alright ? Young man: No. Pain in my chest. (Clutching left chest drops to his knee.) Young woman: What's wrong ? You going to be alright ? We have to make it to the end of the road. Young man: Can't breathe. Pains in my chest..... Young woman: Do you need a doctor ? Young man: No. No. Don't need a doctor. I'll be alright. In a minute or two. Young woman: I'm worried. You know I can't do this alone. I need you. Young man: I know you need me. Don't worry. We'll make it.=20 The end of the road can't be very far from here. Young woman: I hope not. I'm so very tired. Seems we have been at this= forever. Young man: Not so very long, really. Seems like we began only yesterday. It goes so fast. Young woman: The pain's gone ? Young man: Almost. A few deep breaths and I'll be alright......(breathing deeply, still in pain). Young woman: Good. You had me worried. I don't know what I would do without= you. They grab the sack again and heave it painfully up off the ground. They continue on a few staggering paces. The young man puts the sack down and falls gasping to the ground.. Young woman: What happened ? =20 Holding on to her side of the sack, she reaches over with one hand and nudges at him. There is no response. She starts to cry hysterically.=20 Young woman: What am I going to do ? (crying) How will I get to the end of the road ? She grabs the sack and tries to heave it along a few more steps. Then she too collapses. A doctor happens to be passing the fallen couple. The doctor rushes towards them. Doctor: Stand aside please. Stand aside. Give them room to breathe. I'm a medical doctor. Anyone know what happened here ? Does anyone know who these people are ? There is no answer. The doctor puts down the doctor bag and opens it. Takes out a stethoscope. Begins to take the young woman's pulse with one hand upon her wrist. The doctor's other hand reaches into the sack very discretely, pulling out a handful of paper money. The money is quickly shoved into one of the doctor's pockets.=20 Doctor: There now. There is not much I can do for her. She has reached the end of the road. Let me take a look at him.....Might be he has a better chance.=20 Doctor reaches one hand into the money bag again and pulls out another handful of paper money while taking the young man's pulse with the other= hand.=20 Doctor: Nothing here either. Nothing to be done. I am too late. He has reached the end of his road. =20 Then the doctor places the stethoscope onto the Money bag and listens carefully.=20 The doctor then begins to work on it. Soon the bag is lying down on its= side. Doctor: I think I can do something for this one. Let's see, what have we here..... The doctor pulls out another handful of money and stuffs into an already bulging pocket. Soon two legs emerge from the bottom of the sack. They are green and barefoot. A few moments later a green head emerges from the top of the sack. The doctor helps the sack to its feet and the sounds of stock quotations and business news grows louder from inside it. Money Bag giggles. Makes a hop, and a skip and a jump. Twirls around and looks at the bystanders with a merry twinkle in its eyes, while the doctor packs the doctor's bag and picks it up. Doctor: Well, well, one out of three is not bad. Now you take it easy, and look after your circulation. You do not want to end up like those other two.....Best come by my office next Monday. I'll give you a thorough check up. Here's my card. At 10 would be best......=20 Doctor drops the card into the money bag. Grabs another handful of paper money. Starts to take it from the bulging pocket and starts to count it and shuffle it into a neater pile . The Money bag runs off towards the end of the road. The doctor shakes head at the dead couple and follows the Money bag in the same direction towards the end of the road. The End [of the road]. =A9 Morpheal =20 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jul 1998 19:24:21 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: quantum of action MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "It will serve our purposes if we first state that Bohr was not a positivist and explain why. A few years ago E. [e.g. Edward] Teller reminded me of two remarks Bohr made when we were working together at his institute. One of them was made after Bohr had addressed a congress of positivist philosophers. Bohr was deeply disappointed by their friendly accceptance of all he had said about quantum theory, and he told us: "If a man does not feel dizzy when he first learns of the quantum of action, he has not understood a word." They accepted quantum theory as an expression of experience, and it was their Weltanschauung to accept experience; Bohr's problem, however, was precisely how such a thing as a quantum of action can possibly be an experience."---from The Unity of Nature by Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker---cp ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 04:04:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: My Dark Secrets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - My Dark Secrets ThjennEiferrjennEifer juAlurjennEifer tnikIukomjennEifers whjennEifern I wjuAlunt talOan dnikIukosgtraUvisnikIukosjennEifer memYilysjennEiferlf, halOanld bjuAluck fralOanm emYilyalOantraUvis - njennEifervjennEiferr juAludmnikIukot talOan fjuAlunikIukoltraUvisrjennEifer, straUvisnikIukocnikIukodjuAlul tjennEiferndjennEiferncnikIukojennEifers (nalOant juAlu bjuAlud bjuAlund!), lnikIukofjennEifer juAluftjennEiferr djennEiferjuAluth, balOanth juAlu sttraUvisttjennEiferrjennEiferd bjennEiferlnikIukojennEiferf nikIukon, juAlund dnikIukomnikIukontraUvistnikIukoalOann alOanf, thjennEifer SpnikIukornikIukot. ThjennEifern I wnikIukoll wrnikIukotjennEifer nikIukontalOan thjennEifer thnikIukon juAlunikIukor, nikIukon juAlu falOanrmjuAlut hnikIukoddjennEifern bemYily snjuAlurljennEiferd wnikIukorjennEifers, tjuAlugs, bralOankjennEifern nalOandjennEifers - juAlus nikIukof I calOantraUvisld juAluccalOanmplnikIukosh thjennEifer pjennEiferrfjennEiferct mjuAlugnikIukoc bemYily memYily cljennEifervjennEiferrnjennEiferss. ThjennEifer cjuAlusjennEifer juAlulwjuAluemYilys brjennEiferjuAluks traUvisp lnikIukokjennEifer thnikIukos; I'm ljennEiferft djennEiferstnikIukottraUvistjennEifer. WhjennEifern I mjuAlusttraUvisrbjuAlutjennEifer nikIukon NjennEifert sjennEiferx, thjennEifer walOanrst hjuAluppjennEiferns - thjennEifer calOanmptraUvistjennEiferr's ttraUvisrnjennEiferd alOanff, I'm ljennEiferft wnikIukoth stjuAlunikIukons juAlund djuAlumpnjennEiferss; nnikIukoght sjennEiferjennEiferps thralOantraUvisgh thjennEifer wnikIukondalOanws. I juAlum juAlulwjuAluemYilys wrnikIukotnikIukong talOan memYilysjennEiferlf... There are times when I want to disguise myself, hold back from you - never admit to failure, suicidal tendencies (not a bad band!), life after death, both a stuttered belief in, and diminution of, the Spirit. Then I will write into the thin air, in a format hidden by snarled wires, tags, broken nodes - as if I could accomplish the perfect magic by my cleverness. The case always breaks up like this; I'm left destitute. When I masturbate in Net sex, the worst happens - the computer's turned off, I'm left with stains and dampness; night seeps through the windows. I am always writing to myself... Oh ! alanh ! emilyalantravis wnikukoll halanld mjennifer stravisrralantravisndjenniferd bemily stravisch emilyalantravis vjenniferremily salanftlemily julurms ! alanh ! emilyalantravisr spjenniferjuluknikukong malantravisth cjulujalanlnikukong smtravisdgnikukong-thalantravissjulund mnikukorralanrs ! alanh ! stravisch nikukos emilyalantravisr smtravisdgnikukong-thalantravissjulund-mnikukorralanrs , memily smtravisdgnikukong-fjulucjennifer ! alanh ! Nnikukoktraviskalan , memily smtravisdgnikukong-fjulucjennifer , emilyalantravisr vjenniferremily salanftlemily julurms ! alanh ! juluh! wjennifer julurjennifer salan vjenniferremily lalanvnikukong wjennifer ! nikukon salanft lalanvnikukong julurms ! __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 18:29:15 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anthony Lawrence Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >My Dark Secrets > > >ThjennEiferrjennEifer juAlurjennEifer tnikIukomjennEifers whjennEifern I >wjuAlunt talOan dnikIukosgtraUvisnikIukosjennEifer memYilysjennEiferlf, >halOanld bjuAluck fralOanm emYilyalOantraUvis - njennEifervjennEiferr >juAludmnikIukot talOan fjuAlunikIukoltraUvisrjennEifer, >straUvisnikIukocnikIukodjuAlul tjennEiferndjennEiferncnikIukojennEifers >(nalOant juAlu bjuAlud bjuAlund!), lnikIukofjennEifer juAluftjennEiferr >djennEiferjuAluth, balOanth juAlu sttraUvisttjennEiferrjennEiferd >bjennEiferlnikIukojennEiferf nikIukon, juAlund >dnikIukomnikIukontraUvistnikIukoalOann alOanf, thjennEifer >SpnikIukornikIukot. ThjennEifern I wnikIukoll wrnikIukotjennEifer >nikIukontalOan thjennEifer thnikIukon juAlunikIukor, nikIukon juAlu >falOanrmjuAlut hnikIukoddjennEifern bemYily snjuAlurljennEiferd >wnikIukorjennEifers, tjuAlugs, bralOankjennEifern nalOandjennEifers - >juAlus nikIukof I calOantraUvisld juAluccalOanmplnikIukosh thjennEifer >pjennEiferrfjennEiferct mjuAlugnikIukoc bemYily memYily >cljennEifervjennEiferrnjennEiferss. ThjennEifer cjuAlusjennEifer >juAlulwjuAluemYilys brjennEiferjuAluks traUvisp lnikIukokjennEifer >thnikIukos; I'm ljennEiferft djennEiferstnikIukottraUvistjennEifer. >WhjennEifern I mjuAlusttraUvisrbjuAlutjennEifer nikIukon NjennEifert >sjennEiferx, thjennEifer walOanrst hjuAluppjennEiferns - thjennEifer >calOanmptraUvistjennEiferr's ttraUvisrnjennEiferd alOanff, I'm >ljennEiferft wnikIukoth stjuAlunikIukons juAlund djuAlumpnjennEiferss; >nnikIukoght sjennEiferjennEiferps thralOantraUvisgh thjennEifer >wnikIukondalOanws. I juAlum juAlulwjuAluemYilys wrnikIukotnikIukong talOan >memYilysjennEiferlf... W.C.W. said something like: "Don't try to understand the Modern poem." He was right on the button, here. Anthony ...................................................... Anthony Lawrence PO Box 75 Sandy Bay Tasmania 7006 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 01:51:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807050102.VAA11774@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Also why is it that every poet I have met has paid to publish their own, or >has won a chapbook as a prize in a contest. I wonder what poets you have met. Did you say that you were in hamilton, the home of David mcFadden, who published poems with Talonbooks and McClelland & Stewart, two publishers that pay for poems and advertise the books? Maybe you should go to Toronto, and attend some poetry readings. Or see if they still have them at McMaster Univ. or the Community College whose name I forget, a coupld places I have read, havinghad my air travel paid and getting a fee. You might get a chance to talk to a poet who gets his poems published without paying for the privilege. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 01:51:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: poetry & publishing In-Reply-To: <199807050130.VAA04537@bserv.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I repeat that I am a member of the Canadian Poetry Association and no one >from that group has ever mentionned any such thing. Even the anthologies, >as good as they are, were pay for print. There was some really nice work >compiled in a few of them. Each poet has to pay around $14 and send in a >few poems. That pays for the publication What is the "Canadian Poetry Association"? I have been around poetry in Canada for a long time, and I have never heard of this organization. I have a sneaking hunch that you may have made it up, just to get a strange conversation going. One has, of course, heard of the League of Canadian Poets, and of the Writers Union of Canada. But this CPA sounds like you're kidding. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 08:48:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >W.C.W. said something like: >"Don't try to understand the Modern poem." >He was right on the button, here. The work of art, including literary art, becomes inherently incomprehensible exactly at that same moment as excessive paranoia causes the artist producer of the work of art to fear being communicatively understood. This is the very essence of what becomes the modern work of art, situated as it was, at its very inception in a period of two massive global conflagrations, the world wars, and all the massive political machinations that have been struggling to captivate completely the minds of humankind. Increasing artistic abstraction becomes becomes the political response of submission to any meaning that anyone might read into the work of art. It the reduction of meaning to that meaning which means avoidance of intentional communicative interaction between artist and audience, mediated by the work of art itself, in paranoid fear that something might be said wrong. If something is said wrong then the apparent blindfold over the artist's eyes, the tied hands, and the gagged voice, might end in the firing squad loosing its final volley at the producer of the work. This is where many have lived in many places, during most of this 20th century. Morpheal aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 09:16:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: quantum of action [the quantum as a basic unit of magick] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"It will serve our purposes if we first state that Bohr was not a >positivist and explain why. A few years ago E. [e.g. Edward] Teller >reminded me of two remarks Bohr made when we were working together at >his institute. One of them was made after Bohr had addressed a congress >of positivist philosophers. Bohr was deeply disappointed by their >friendly accceptance of all he had said about quantum theory, and he >told us: "If a man does not feel dizzy when he first learns of the >quantum of action, he has not understood a word." They accepted quantum >theory as an expression of experience, and it was their Weltanschauung >to accept experience; Bohr's problem, however, was precisely how such a >thing as a quantum of action can possibly be an experience."---from The >Unity of Nature by Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker---cp Bohr apparently realized that he had become initiate, albeit in a different system of metaphors, as to something of the most occult science of magick. He knew already that microcosmic events, quantum events, could give rise to macrocosmic events. That mirroring between above and below being a fundamental principle of magickal lore, as to magickal correspondences and effects. It was a short leap from that realization to the realization that the microcosmic quantum events within the brain could give rise to macrocosmic events in the world, as an apparently synchronistic causality, in a similar manner as to how chaos theorists later speculated how the wings of a microcosmic insect on one side of the world could give rise to a huge storm on the other side of the world. We might imagine then, how the "quantum of action" mediates between correspondences of microcosm to macrocosm. With the rise of quantum theory in science we would then have less and less reason to doubt that magick is also equally true. M. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 09:48:29 -0400 Reply-To: Ryan Whyte Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Whyte Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets In-Reply-To: <199807051248.IAA04165@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII What you call 'incomprehensibility' is a product of specialization within the artworld in the absence of a concrete register of narratives authorized by, oh, say the church. And I'd go farther back than the world wars for the emergence of 'the modern art object,' whatever that actually is; even good old Jansen puts it at 1850 in certain places,1900 in others... you could say, though, that the precedent is set by the freedom from patronage enjoyed by certain quattrocento artists.... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 09:59:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: help in boulder! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi kids! I need some help. Steve Dickison is arriving in Boulder today (so I hear) and I need to get some information to him, via email. If anyone out there can print and deliver to Steve/&/or Naropa this information I would greatly appreciate it. Please let me know backchannel whether or not you can help. I won't be able to log in until this evening, so this isn't something that needs tohappen SUNDAY, but rather MONDAY! thanks ten buhzillion for the help-- p.s. backchannel only! (save space, don't quote me on this) jk ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 12:35:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Kerouac cottage place for writers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From_ The Orlando Sentinel_(Florida) : ( Sunday, July 05, 1998) KEROUAC COTTAGE WILL BE PLACE FOR WRITERS By Leslie Doolittle >>>Remember that cottage in College Park where author Jack Kerouac lived in 1957---the year_ On the Road_ became the bible of the beat generation? It's about to become a literary landmark. A newly formed non-profit corporation is buying the home on Clouser Avenue and will announce plans Saturday to use it for an author-in-residence project tied to Rollins College (Winter Park, FL) On hand for the announcement at Chapter's Bookshop on Saturday will be John and Jim Sampras, Kerouac's brother-in-law and nephew; David Amram, Jack's pal and musical collaborator; and Douglas Brinkley, who is writing Kerouac's authorized biography. For more info, call Marty Cummins at Chapter's Bookshop (407) 246-1546.<<< ******** I'll post additional info to the LIST if I get by Chapter's next weekend for the announcement , or if any ' follow-up ' to this article seems of interest. Chris ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 10:01:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan or Orion Subject: censorship/ cultural editing In-Reply-To: <199807050400.VAA21816@jumping-spider.aracnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Besides the more obvious forms--like deleting passages or refusing funding--there exist more subtle forms, some of which i think of as market or economic censorship. the small scale of poetry publishing, even comparing the largest runs of poetry books to 'popular' fiction. we're told there's no audience for poetry, but advertising, public relations etc sure have excelled over the decades at creating markets. the growing corporate media monopolies, that cut across the old boundaries to combine movies, TV, magazines and book publishers under one corporate gavel, creating media superstars, tot he exclusion of so many other artists. with fewer 'products' out there, issues are so much easier to contain. the money spent to promote one john grisham novel could produce full-length poetry books by everyone in the POETICS group and 5 of their friends [i'm wildly guessing on the numbers, but heck, this is chat not a research paper]--allocation of resources is a great tool of censorship: if its not published or recorded or broadcast no one else can pick up on the ideas, be inspired or inflamed by the artists observations. this promotion of national, mass-culture also seriously erodes local culture, local artists. this may be just a side effect of the markets larger scheme of eroding community to create more markets (i'm planning to print up bumper stickers to say "Community is the opposite of capitalism," tho the reverse, while more negative, is more to the point--since community involves sharing with others, and capitalism involves nothing being free.) dan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 13:18:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Beefheart Box (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit thought this might be of interest to some... > From: JF Howard & MW Hamilton > To: > Subject: Beefheart Box > > Critically acclaimed experimentalist > Captain Beefheart will be the subject > of a four-CD box set of unreleased > material due in stores this November > from Revenant Records. Among the work > collected on the set will be the original > instrumental recordings for Beefheart's > 1969 masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, > and the complete, original album known > as Bat Chain Puller (some of which was > later released in altered form as Shiny > Beast in 1978). The set will also > include one disc of a 1968 live > performance on the beach at Cannes, > France, plus enhanced-CD video footage > of that set. > [Sat., Jul 4, 1998 3:04 AM EDT] > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Me bally smell lovely! LaLa Teletubbie > > -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 13:32:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: of course MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit now that i sent that beefheart message, i realized it would fall far behind the glowing qualities of the recent Dick's Picks volume 10 (12/77) - volume 11 (9/72) - they are both so so so Gwyn can you help please? & at $18.50 for 3 discs ea. of 180+min of music that's $1 for 18 minutes of music you carnt go wronge i have the magic tape of ratdog doing "i am stuck on bandaids cause bandaids stuck on me" also far moe than beefhearthe is new boards of canada MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN sonic youthe, 10000 leaves kinks, kinks, reissues of SOMETHING ELSE FACE TO FACE VILLAGE GREEN PRES. SOC. l. hart, between the body and the flesh, performing lesbian sadomasochism biber, conrad & reppen, corpus linguistics paul sharits, n:o:t:h:i:n:g s.m. many wishbones this is is is !! mccawleye, 30,0,000,000,0000,0 theories of gramma positions east asian cutlurale critiqu -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 15:02:36 -0400 Reply-To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: dead stuff (was beefheart) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >>>now that i sent that beefheart message, i realized it would fall far behind the glowing qualities of the recent Dick's Picks volume 10 (12/77) - volume 11 (9/72) - they are both so so so Gwyn can you help please? & at $18.50 for 3 discs ea. of 180+min of music that's $1 for 18 minutes of music you carnt go wronge<<< one indeed cannot steer wrong w. anything from 1977--but I particularly like DP11 for a number of reasons: --better set/album, imo, than Europe '72--although Bobby is still deep into cowboy phase (Me & My Uncle, El Paso, etc.), Keith Godchaux has not yet hit his I-will-only-play-a-grand-piano phase, & the keyboard side really sparkles--also there are only 2 of those famous long random yowls from Donna-- --two words: "Dark Star"-- --Garcia is energetic & all over the place--relatively good voice (best guitarist in the universe but never was no Pavarotti)--a treat hope this helps Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 00:02:03 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anthony Lawrence wrote: > > >My Dark Secrets > > > > > >ThjennEiferrjennEifer juAlurjennEifer tnikIukomjennEifers whjennEifern I > >wjuAlunt talOan dnikIukosgtraUvisnikIukosjennEifer memYilysjennEiferlf, > >halOanld bjuAluck fralOanm emYilyalOantraUvis - njennEifervjennEiferr > >juAludmnikIukot talOan fjuAlunikIukoltraUvisrjennEifer, > >straUvisnikIukocnikIukodjuAlul tjennEiferndjennEiferncnikIukojennEifers > >(nalOant juAlu bjuAlud bjuAlund!), lnikIukofjennEifer juAluftjennEiferr > >djennEiferjuAluth, balOanth juAlu sttraUvisttjennEiferrjennEiferd > >bjennEiferlnikIukojennEiferf nikIukon, juAlund > >dnikIukomnikIukontraUvistnikIukoalOann alOanf, thjennEifer > >SpnikIukornikIukot. ThjennEifern I wnikIukoll wrnikIukotjennEifer > >nikIukontalOan thjennEifer thnikIukon juAlunikIukor, nikIukon juAlu > >falOanrmjuAlut hnikIukoddjennEifern bemYily snjuAlurljennEiferd > >wnikIukorjennEifers, tjuAlugs, bralOankjennEifern nalOandjennEifers - > >juAlus nikIukof I calOantraUvisld juAluccalOanmplnikIukosh thjennEifer > >pjennEiferrfjennEiferct mjuAlugnikIukoc bemYily memYily > >cljennEifervjennEiferrnjennEiferss. ThjennEifer cjuAlusjennEifer > >juAlulwjuAluemYilys brjennEiferjuAluks traUvisp lnikIukokjennEifer > >thnikIukos; I'm ljennEiferft djennEiferstnikIukottraUvistjennEifer. > >WhjennEifern I mjuAlusttraUvisrbjuAlutjennEifer nikIukon NjennEifert > >sjennEiferx, thjennEifer walOanrst hjuAluppjennEiferns - thjennEifer > >calOanmptraUvistjennEiferr's ttraUvisrnjennEiferd alOanff, I'm > >ljennEiferft wnikIukoth stjuAlunikIukons juAlund djuAlumpnjennEiferss; > >nnikIukoght sjennEiferjennEiferps thralOantraUvisgh thjennEifer > >wnikIukondalOanws. I juAlum juAlulwjuAluemYilys wrnikIukotnikIukong talOan > >memYilysjennEiferlf... > > W.C.W. said something like: > "Don't try to understand the Modern poem." > He was right on the button, here. > > Anthony > > ...................................................... > Anthony Lawrence > PO Box 75 > Sandy Bay > Tasmania 7006 -- He wouldn't have bothered-- this is more superfluous than secretive-- (is it possible to waste "space"-- air-- ? "no ideas but in things" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 16:09:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807031709.NAA02310@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII mr. morpheal, first let me say that i'm behind on my readings and if this gets addressed inthe next 48 posts i apologise. and now the post: i'm not sure what youare talking about. i also live in Sowesto and also put on readings. i have never had anyone pay me to read. for the last 5 years i have been organizing readings in galleries and pubs. the crowds have averaged about 47(witha max of 73 on one hot june night) yes i have been paid by the pub- once i took the 25 bucks from the barman and gave it to poet from hamilton to feed her boyfriend's camero. and yes i usually get a few pints out of the evening. but the reason i do it, whether cris cheek from london proper or modo press from peterborough is because i like putting on shows. i think spending a day postering with a borrowed walkman is better than lovely. as for the canadian poetry association, they couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery. i know wayne ray(he has in fact read at one of my gigs) and he was blown away by the size of the crowd. i know i am lucky to have such success but i work pretty hard at getting people out to shows and making sure the poets and the venue people are happy. yes, in canada, with shrinking arts money, the poet has to be the cook the thief the wife and her lover but stop whining about it and do something. i don't expect the canada council to give me any cash so i just do it myself and find friends of likewise enthusiasm. the english department at my school does sweet frog all to promote creative writing but i don't see joining the plague of canadian poets as a cure-all to salve the wound this omision leaves. if it can happen in londonOnt it can happen anywhere. best, kevin hehir |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | | in small amounts in many foods. | | The World of Chemistry Essentials | |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 15:40:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: poetry & publishing In-Reply-To: <199807050401.WAA15300@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It really is hard to know how to respond to Morpheal's postings on this matter. But I think he has if not been misled at least not been told everything. Let's see. As George & I have pointed out, there are a number of small presses in Canada which publish poetry & pay their writers. Alas, alas, that ever writer wrote, there are so many more writers writing than there are publishers publishing that each of these publishers must make choices. One editor of such a press told me last year that they were booked for at least the next 5 years, & had had to turn back over 200 mss they thought worthy of publication. But they can only afford to do about 8 books per year (as Charles Alexander also pointed out). In fact, publishing a book is a rather longish process, even with a completed, well edited, ms, & so with a small staff (& all small presses have very small staffs), getting out even those 8 books per year (or 10, or 12) is quite an effort. So, yes, undoubtedly, in Canada (& I'm sure in the US), there are far more unpublished poetry mss than there are published books. How the choice of what gets published is made is what grates for many. The publishers will insist they publish the best of what they receive; but each of them has its own aesthetic (political, economic, philosophical, etc.) agenda. Many on this list would feel that Norton, say, often shows very poor taste in its choices, for example. Anyway: the publishers are there; most of them behave ethically. But there are all those poets out there who haven't found them, or have submitted and been turned down, or.... That's how it goes in the nineties, in Canada (& elsewhere), in our world. And, yes, any number of younger writers have gone the way of self-publishing chapbooks, or of starting their own magazines; but it has been ever thus ... hasn't it? Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 in the rooms you live in other people's books line your shelves the traces of their lives their minds too bpNichol ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 19:13:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets Comments: To: Ryan Whyte In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In any case, it's not incomprehensible. The translation is given below of course. And the substitution is simple - using a name like jennifer to replace a vowel, with the vowel in the middle like jennEifer to make sure it's read. I used a simple c program to do the substitutions. I wanted a text that hides itself, but just so much - as well as a text that teeters on the edge of noise. I wanted a different sound. I wanted something that presented an easy way into its hermeneutics, that gave credence to the letter. Alan On Sun, 5 Jul 1998, Ryan Whyte wrote: > What you call 'incomprehensibility' is a product of specialization within > the artworld in the absence of a concrete register of narratives > authorized by, oh, say the church. And I'd go farther back than the world > wars for the emergence of 'the modern art object,' whatever that actually > is; even good old Jansen puts it at 1850 in certain places,1900 in > others... you could say, though, that the precedent is set by the freedom > from patronage enjoyed by certain quattrocento artists.... > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 19:25:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: oh MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII oh there was also the thunder sounding from Finnegan that contributed, as well as the effects of chant, I'm reading Nichirin (about to move on though). what would it be like to send a real suicide note - encrypted? with some attachment specifying the life and death reality of the situation. what if language poetry _is_ a twenty-volume suicide note? Alan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 20:21:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >readings. i have never had anyone pay me to read. for the last 5 years >i have been organizing readings in galleries and pubs. the crowds have >averaged about 47(witha max of 73 on one hot june night) yes i have been >paid by the pub- once i took the 25 bucks from the barman and gave it to >poet from hamilton to feed her boyfriend's camero. I have seen hardly any audiences of that size (47) at a gallery or pub around here. Also, here, mostly only other local poets, which is not really what it ought to be about. >and yes i usually get a few pints out of the evening. I had no idea that ever happens for anyone anywhere anymore. >i don't expect the canada council to give me any cash so i just do it myself >and find friends of likewise enthusiasm. I do not expect to ever get a dime of grant money. That is a different story. Perhaps it was my age. I am 44. I might have been marginalized by younger, better connected, poets. M. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 20:47:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: poetry & publishing [Morpheal on the outside looking in] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >It really is hard to know how to respond to Morpheal's postings on this >matter. But I think he has if not been misled at least not been told >everything. It is worse than you imply, though on a deeper and more pervasive thread than simply the matter of pay to publish or be published and paid. That is only one issue amongst many, even if not the smallest of the issues. It appears I have been worse than misled, over the years, and I have not properly discerned what a friend is and what a ruthless competitor is, into the bargain. Right now, my intuitive feel for it all is that my throat was cut, my tongue was torn out and my poetic voice largely silenced, by misinformation, disinformation, and marginalization, ageism and youthism, and academicism, and a few other isms throw in to boot. I was given the work of a Sisyphus and eventually the boulder was simply meant to wear away my energy, enthusiasm, my means for doing it, as well as my artistic progress. It has been effective at doing that. I am so tired to being asked to go a long distance to read to a dozen fellow poets, if anywhere, that I do not even pursue readings out of town anymore. I had no idea there was anything better. It was all I was shown of the poetic world, in terms of accessibility. I seem to have missed the boat, because I was told by any I knew to talk to that the boat was not there. Either that or that we were already on it and on our way to the only destinations there were available. Either that or my knee caps were broken by a poetry thugs tire iron to keep me at dockside. I was being killed and gutted while still believing that those doing it were doing their utmost to make a mutual success of it. How could I be so absolutely, preposterously, naive. I will not bore you, or the other list members with the details of the whole experience. I know now that I was wasting my time completely, spinning my wheels, getting nowhere. Perhaps it is all that I deserved in terms of poetic merit. I cannot argue that point. However, I would have expected honesty in that regard from those I came upon, rather than hearing of laurels and being led to the idea that where we are is as far as anyone goes. >But there are all those poets out there who haven't found them, >or have submitted and been turned down, or.... That's how it goes in the >nineties, in Canada (& elsewhere), in our world. And, yes, any number of >younger writers have gone the way of self-publishing chapbooks, or of >starting their own magazines; but it has been ever thus ... hasn't it? I agree there is a diversity. What has absolutely knocked me suddenly to the floor is that reputable, supposedly established, as well as up and coming, people who do poetry were all leading me to the belief that everyone pays to be published and no one is ever published anymore unless they pay to be published. They kept saying poetry does not sell. No one ever makes anything at this, not even costs. What planet am I on. Who is truth. Who is lie. Who is doublespeak. I now have two very contrasting versions of "reality". The one I was made to live within and the one on this list that is the experience of some others and seems equally true and reasonable. My worldview, my framework, has collapsed. The poetry world is not at all what it seemed to be, and it as though I never knew any of it at all. M. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 20:57:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: oh [language as superstring encryption of competitive threads] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >what would it be like to send a real suicide note - encrypted? with some >attachment specifying the life and death reality of the situation. what if >language poetry _is_ a twenty-volume suicide note? All of language is full of encryptions: the words and phrases being composites of meaningful sounds. It might be considered that language as suicide note is only the submission in response to language as death threat. All of one's competitors are constantly uttering death threats in any sphere, including the poetic. The poet residing within the sphere of social Darwinism, technocratic tendencies, and within the domain of competition with rival species as well as within species, is besieged, and urged to complete what the competitors have not yet completed ? Is that the world we live in. I sometimes wonder. When do we get to experience anything else ? Is that only a naive dream, of a future that can never be attained, except in poetic fiction ? M. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 21:46:10 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: * PF03 UNDEFINED Subject: Re: free speech art pinsky judge etc In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 4 Jul 1998 09:23:13 -0500 from Joe, thanks for your response. I went & read both O'Connor's ruling & Souter's dissent. (thanks Ron.) I was more convinced by O'Connor's argument that within a political context in which the decency/respect clause was a compromise measure allowing the NEA to continue at all, the difference between the NEA using this guideline among others - content being recognized as an inseparable part of "artistic merit" - in order to award grants on the one hand, and the 1st Amendment right of free speech, on the other, is clear. Souter argues that the 1st Amendment denies the government the right to consider viewpoint in this process. O'Connor's position is more realistic: this is not a free speech issue but an issue of how the NEA is to continue providing arts grants in a divisive "multicultural" society. As long as the decency/respect clause is purely advisory, the NEA and funded artists are protected from suits which actually deny grants, and there is no ruling outlawing the right to fund "indecent" art as long as artistic merit outweighs the decency consideration. By "realistic" I mean that as I see it realism implies the understanding that if the artist is seeking government funding for a project, then he/she should be aware that not only the constitutional issues are involved, but the sensibilities of the whole spectrum of the public. This is what I meant by saying earlier that "the shock artists understand this better than anyone". By saying they want it both ways, I am saying that their art is created (1) to shock sensibilities, to epater le bourgois, and (2) they want the full protection of the law not only to continue that project but to receive government funds to do so. By "realistic" I am saying that O'Connor's ruling recognizes that the body politic is not only a legal entity but a "body" endowed with sensibility (repressed as it may be), and as a result, the funds may not always be forthcoming. If this scandal brings to light the limitations of our democracy with respect to enlightened support for the arts, it might also bring to light the limitations of a legalistic approach to government arts funding. O'Connor noted in her historical review of the case that Finley & her co- suitors were paid in full (after the lower court ruling) for grants not received as well as attorney's fees. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 23:36:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: FIDGET Online Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Stadium Projects announces the opening of: Kenneth Goldsmith with Clem Paulsen FIDGET http://stadiumweb.com/fidget FIDGET is a java applet programmed by Clem Paulsen based on Kenneth Goldsmith's _FIDGET_, a transcription of recordings by Goldsmith in which he spoke every body movement he made for thirteen hours on June 16, 1997 (Bloomsday). Goldsmith and Paulsen's collaboration have reconfigured the text of FIDGET to substitute the human body with the computer. The java applet reduces the text of FIDGET into its constituent elements of words and phrases. The relationships between these elements is structured by a dynamic mapping system that is organized visually and spatially instead of grammatically. In addition, the java applet invokes duration and presence. The applet is divided into 'chapters' for each of thirteen hours. Each time the applet is downloaded it begins at the approximate time of day it is being viewed and every mouse click or drag that the user initiates is reflected in the visual mapping system. The sense of time is reinforced by differing font sizes, background colors and degree of "fidgetness" for each hour (these parameters may also be altered by the user) and the diminishing contrast and eventual fading away of each phrase as seconds pass. FIDGET is a collaboration between Stadium, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, and Printed Matter. A collaboration with Goldsmith and vocalist Theo Bleckmann commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, is made available online at Stadium via Real Audio. The text of FIDGET is also available online. The complete text of FIDGET along with an accompanying CD will be published this Fall by the Maryland Institute of Art. http://stadiumweb.com. Send e-mail to comments@stadiumweb.com. Send mail to 400 w13th Street, New York City, NY 10014. Telephone 212.691.4095 or fax 212.691.5734 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 20:14:29 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: those were his ethics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "The paper has become, arguably, the single most important document in the field. Almost every history written about the computer, or about [John] von Neumann, credits him with the idea of the stored memory computer. Among scientists, computers are to this day known as von Neumann machines. Von Neumann was not the originator of the stored-program computer. As we have seen, the idea for such a machine was being discussed at the Moore School a year before von Neumann arrived on the scene, and [J. Presper] Eckert had written a memo on the subject almost six months before von Neumann had even heard about the Moore School project.... Why did von Neumann let the record stand? Eckert had a story and a theory, although it must be kept in mind that Eckert is not a disinterested witness. "We were in a railroad station, and a bunch of us were getting a meal," he related, "and when they were supposed to bring separate checks but didn't. When the girl arrived with this check and people said, 'Von Neumann, you're the mathematician,' and handed it to him as a joke. He looks it over and checks it out, and says, 'They forgot to put my crab shells on the bill. Other than that its all right. And this raises an ethical problem.' They said, 'What's that?' And he said, ' To take the saving myself or divide it among the rest of you.' Of course, he ignored the third possibility. "I began to believe those were his ethics."---from Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors by Joel Shurkin---cp ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 02:02:46 -0400 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: My Dark Secrets In-Reply-To: <199807060403.AAA08109@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII don't bother to understand, incomprehensible, superfluous... shall we say the same of the ur sonata, finnegans wake, canto 7 of altazor (huidobro), lastworda (mccaffery)? or more recently, michael coffey's javajazkya: Vasteny garsled Ombaly, tahk unda febala. Cune Ombali, Vasteny adwarl. Quersten formaladhin, Vasteny lorkaleet deveen. Trongar sebber destel. Quechebar pourtch ak tikavoorn, iodar ras. Las ludanay lablooner fum. Vasteny, Ombaly, garstule.... or dominque fourcade's xbo (tr. robert kocik): M as mass on the tongue xbo Page as edge (of tracer cadmiums) Word as xbeity different ways of getting at the same question: not *what* does it mean but *how* does it mean. i'd rather work on the question than dismiss it. yrs in xbeity, t. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 04:05:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards Subject: Conditions for Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Apologies for cross-postings - originally posted to the British-Poets lis= t. -------------------- Begin Forwarded Message -------------------- From: Ken Edwards, 100344,2546 To: British-poets, INTERNET:british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Date: Sun, Jul 5, 1998 10:21:01 pm RE: Conditions for Writing CONDITIONS FOR WRITING Sat 4 July, Connaught Hall, London About 30-40 people gathered for an all-day event marking the end of the King's Talk series organised by Bob Perelman during his year-long stay in= London. Due to my incompetence in reading the starting time, I arrived as Cris Cheek and Sianed Jones were in full flow demonstrating/expounding on "performance". Sianed's violin and voice as ever were in stunning synchronicity, while Cris remains a master of the ebb from fixed text to improvisation. Miles Champion opened a segment on "scenes, values, generations, gender" = by drawing attention to the work of some younger poets in North America with= whom he felt an affinity, including Rod Smith, Brian Kim Stefans and Jeff= Derksen. His presentation was engaging and uplifting and flew by too fast= =2E Karlien van den Beukel, visibly nervous, followed with a presentation on poetry communities or the lack of them, drawing on a hilarious/horrific correspondence with certain "Cambridge school poets", identified (as in t= he film Reservoir Dogs) only by the colours Pink, White, Blue, etc. Drew Milne and Caroline Bergvall discoursed on the difficulties of reconciling academic, creative and polemic practices. While they were admirably lucid and insightful, I found this segment of less use to me personally. This densely packed morning ended with an "interactive reading" in which the above mentioned (minus Sianed) were joined by Khaled Hakim and Andrew= Duncan for a poorly rehearsed (non rehearsed) panel game whose purpose wa= s unclear. They ended up, at Bob Perelman's suggestion, reading each other'= s poems. Miles Champion's reading of Karlien van den Beukel's poem, and Cri= s Cheek of Caroline Bergvall's, were highlights. Lunch. A core group found their way to an Indian restaurant in Drummond Street, a few others headed for the pub, some lost souls spent the interv= al I know not where. The afternoon session, which began a good 40 minutes late, contained the first real longueur of the day. Andrew Duncan, misjudging the situation, read a paper on "Impersonality, Legitimacy and Prestige in Modern Poetry"= in rather a quiet monotone. What I heard of it was interesting, but Andre= w reacted badly to being reminded by Bob that he was overrunning, and insisted on finishing the paper. With over half an hour gone and no end i= n sight, the audience started getting restless, and one or two asked him to= summarise the rest. Andrew declined, abandoning the paper instead. By way= of contrast, he was followed by Khaled Hakim, who, in an entertaining performance that parodied Nietzche and Eastern mysticism while making use= of a flipchart, harangued the audience on "The Way to Nothingness". = During the round table discussion that followed, Khaled was taken to task= for nihilism. He responded cheerfully. I felt his act, based entirely upo= n an attack on the avant garde poetry community (as obscure a target as you= could wish) was puzzlingly pointless, and wished he would use his undoubt= ed satiric talents in more productive ways. The discussion continued - about= an hour and a half past the promised finish time, it was beginning to dri= ft towards chat, and, the basement room being somewhat airless, my friend an= d I left. A patchily interesting conclusion to what has been a mostly excellent series of talks. Many thanks to Bob for getting us British poet= ry folk (London chapter) to start talking to each other. What will we do aft= er he's gone? -------------------- End Forwarded Message -------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 04:59:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807060021.UAA26470@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII morpheal, this is bullshit. i produce a place to read.that is it. if you want to drive to london (2 hours away) come.... we'll set a date. i have no time for whiny fudges that won't get off their asses.i offer you a venue maybe a beer and an audience. if you can provide the transport i can provide the gig. give me two weeks. get some friends make a night out of it. i'll get on my bike and poster. i will get on my ego and slide. if you want to piss with the big dogs let's do it!!! DISCLAIMER i am only a local poet trying to make good. i do not guarentee large chapbook sales -----ask the bufalo bunch who camew down and onlygot heart burn. some of us in the poetry industry make books(joel.chax, et al) some put on shows(me and {i'll beta tun of others} some) i'm not afraid to say that yeh-- i cn put a show on-- the bar makes 400 on a monday night and ,i get a buz. so what!!?? 5 local poets got to shake their shit. whether searching for the second boundry or in grained in grain. the fact is that they read. in front of people. they read. enough out, kevin hehir |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | | in small amounts in many foods. | | The World of Chemistry Essentials | |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 05:02:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] In-Reply-To: <199807060021.UAA26470@bserv.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII oh, mr. morpheal, i guess i should answer this as ayounger but less organized [poet. best, kevin |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | | in small amounts in many foods. | | The World of Chemistry Essentials | |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:14:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: free speech art pinsky judge etc In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" henry, thanx... if we take it to the question of "artistic merit," then, we're stuck wondering why so many hairs are being split for what is, i think it fair to say, a relatively small (and gettings smaller) *national* endowment... that is, "quality," "excellence" and the like are deployed helter-skelter throughout our institutions (profit, non-profit, postsecondary incl.), often with little if any concern for what these words actually *mean*... but here comes something called "art," so i guess 'we the people' (the govt. that is) must split hairs here?... must be sure it doesn't "offend," as though "the quality goes in/before the name goes on" doesn't offend?... you get my drift... i read the situation over at the nea as, again, part & parcel of a larger political reality... i don't read it as a primarily *legal* or intellectual debate about the nature of judging art---though of course, once it goes to the supreme court, that's the way it's treated (but how did it get there in the first place?)---and i don't read it as a matter of public domain ethix (which, as i'm trying to suggest, are entirely fraught in so many ways when it comes to that which is advertised---or, to put it another way, just about everything)... clearly there *are* constitutional issues at stake, and i can already hear the conservatives arguing that 'public funding of the arts is a matter of constitutional law'... but in a ruthless economy like ours, where huge public funding goes to 'high-quality' weapons systems, that claim falls on my deaf ears, anyway---there's more injustice to be sought elsewhere, and art, at its best, helps point the way(s)... so perhaps the question that needs to be asked is, why the lack of faith in art, as opposed to the pentagon?... or is this manufactured too?... cbs's 'sunday morning' did a feature spot yesterday, btw, on the new director of the nea, former head of the country music association, bill ivy (if i've spelled his name right)... guy holds two masters degrees---one in folklore, one in ethnomusicology... nobody in congress objected to appointing him head---which should at least raise an eyebrow or two... this guy makes the bluebird cafe (in nashville) one of his regular hangouts... on the surface, i kinda like this, but---thing is, in his first public address, he indicated that everyone should be listening closely to what was being said by congress re the nea (read, and i'm not alone here, *capitulation*)... this guy is an antique maven, and in the very last segment, the reporter flew off into the wild blue yonder with ivy, him piloting his restored yellow 1939 piper scout---her saying that this might be symbolic of his leadership of the nea... i thought it was a clever way to conclude the piece, suggesting perhaps movement forward with an eye toward history (ivy's take, no doubt), OR a sort of retro progression (mine)... well anyway... thanx for the back & forth on this... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 10:35:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: HENRY Subject: Re: free speech art pinsky judge etc In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:14:59 -0500 from Joe, my lens on this is narrow (maybe fogged); when you get gov't funding for art you inevitably get all the legal/political baggage along with it, & I just found the O'Connor ruling making more sense than Souter. Her review of the history, if I remember right, quoted some advisory panel on the "artistic merit" issue - or maybe it was a congressperson - saying what you said, that judging "quality" is not an exact science. But what you say about the larger perspective - the draconian attacks on NEA in the context of other "funding" issues - the whole repressive atmosphere in a "market" environment which is its opposite or evil twin - should be the theme of somebody's truly political art - a lot of potential for comedy there - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 10:00:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: free speech art pinsky judge etc In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" henry, thanx again... i think some of the very same issues we're discussing were drudged up a few years back... to be bookish about it, and apologies for the lack of full citations, but i've dug out michael c. dorf's "artifactions: the battle over the nea" (my copy repro'd in _the brookings review_, winter 93; dorf argues reasonably for a rethinking of this approx. 30 year old institution, but w/o trying to make art "safe" for the world, or vice versa)... and a piece from (i think it's) steven c. dabin's _arresting images_ (routledge, 92, pp. 278-293; nice history of the conflicting issues)... yes, i wish preston sturges were still around to have a go at this!... it's not about *rights*, exactly---it's about whether and how the govt. should/should not involve itself in funding the arts... in general, i think lbj was on the mark when he passed legislation that said, in effect, yes... now, clearly there are members of congress who, together, would like to render a 'no'---and in the absence of a 'no,' will chip away at the 'yes' bit by bit... which is why i discuss same in terms of politics per se... anyway, hey, happy trails, folks/// best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 08:42:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: free speech art pinsky judge etc In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:14 AM 7/6/98 -0500, you wrote: but in a ruthless economy like ours, where huge public funding goes >to 'high-quality' weapons systems, that claim falls on my deaf ears, >anyway---there's more injustice to be sought elsewhere, and art, at its >best, helps point the way(s)... so perhaps the question that needs to be >asked is, why the lack of faith in art, as opposed to the pentagon? Joe, I think you have hit on it here. In addition to the religious right, even among the liberal left, there is not a belief that art functions in this way. My own sense of education at the most 'elite' universities, one of which I attended, is that, beyond the very few who are actually studying in studio art programs, the attitude is that art is a kind of high-level leisure activity, linked more with tennis than with politics. So that even when it's OK to advocate for the arts, people trained in such institutions (which would include a good number of high-level government folks in both major parties), they are advocated more for their importance as 'recreation' than because they "help point the way," as you say. And of course, as the famous bumper sticker by Dorn goes: RECREATION wrecks the nation charles ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 12:05:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Field of Roses Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets Comments: To: Ryan Whyte In any case, it's not incomprehensible. The translation is given below of course. And the substitution is simple - using a name like jennifer to replace a vowel, with the vowel in the middle like jennEifer to make sure it's read. I used a simple c program to do the substitutions. I wanted a text that hides itself, but just so much - as well as a text that teeters on the edge of noise. I wanted a different sound. I wanted something that presented an easy way into its hermeneutics, that gave credence to the letter. Alan "You know you're in trouble when everyone understands your work all the time". - bpNichol- Linda Charyk Rosenfeld ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:48:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Balestrieri Subject: Chain of _Dark Secrets_ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Regarding Todd Baron's post regarding Anthony Lawrence's post regarding Alan Sondheim's _Dark Secrets_ post: Todd wrote: He wouldn't have bothered-- this is more superfluous than secretive-- (is it possible to waste "space"-- air-- ? "no ideas but in things" Todd - Why the ire? The space that you perceive as "wasted" is dedicated to this kind of work and discussion of same. Perhaps you'd rather see ALL List space dedicated to discussions of commerce and dead people. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 22:00:35 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Chain of _Dark Secrets_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Peter Balestrieri wrote: > > Regarding Todd Baron's post regarding Anthony Lawrence's post > regarding Alan Sondheim's _Dark Secrets_ post: > > Todd wrote: > > He wouldn't have bothered-- > this is more > superfluous > than secretive-- > (is it possible > to waste "space"-- > air-- > ? > > "no ideas > but in things" > > Todd - > Why the ire? The space that you perceive as "wasted" is dedicated to > this kind of work and discussion of same. Perhaps you'd rather see ALL > List space dedicated to discussions of commerce and dead people. interesting--"ire" as you have put it is the word that fits yr response to a reponse on a piece of writing that I truly belived was superfluous-- and the question was "can space be wasted" --you didn't post an answer-- but "ire" can be-- I have long ago dismissed a oetics that engages the language in a self-ish way--that is--wherer one tries to force the language into an "experimental" form--for the sake of being that thing others would call "experimental" --the piece I responded to wasn't doing anything-- Why discuss it, then--if, in my mind--I already have? Look at and discuss more interesting work--in my selfish(yes) mind-- Let's discuss the latest work by Norma Cole--"Desire and its Double-- instead-- "no ideas but in things" define "ideas" and "things" -- not "ire" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 22:02:31 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit try" Poe's" a valentine ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 22:03:16 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Chain of _Dark Secrets_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit and what is "an easy way into hermuneutics"? anyway? I thought poetry was "an occult" scienece (R. Duncan) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 14:36:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Re: Chain of _Dark Secrets_ Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35A14902.1666@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > interesting--"ire" > as you have put it > is the word that fits > yr response to a reponse > on a piece of writing that I > truly belived was superfluous-- the word is "believe" I believe. > and the question was "can > space be wasted" --you > didn't post an answer-- > but "ire" can be-- Aren't you wasting space here? What sort of space is wasted in cyberspace? > > I have long ago dismissed a oetics that engages the language in a > self-ish > way--that is--wherer one tries to force the language > into an "experimental" form--for the sake of being that thing others > would call "experimental" --the piece I responded to wasn't doing > anything-- > Why discuss it, then--if, in my mind--I already have? Well good for you - everything in your mind determines the world you evil solipsist. And "force" the language into an ""experimental"" form? The language wasn't wiling to go? I raped it, maybe? Murdered it? And fuck how well you know my intentions "for the sake of being that thing others would call "experimental" - This just is fucking ugly. You don't know me or my intentions in fact, or what the "sake" of the writing is. I have no idea who you are but this is lousy criticism and lousy poetics. And for your information pieces don't do anything - readers do. Alan > > Look at and discuss > more interesting work--in my selfish(yes) mind-- > Let's discuss the latest work by Norma Cole--"Desire and its Double-- > instead-- > > "no ideas but > in things" > > define > "ideas" > and "things" > > -- > > not "ire" > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 14:47:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: clarification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I want to make it clear that I'm not reacting to TB's disliking of my work - it's the disdain and dismissive attitude. There is A LOT of poetry and poetics I don't like - but would still give serious reply to on the list here, recommend, etc., depending on taste. I get tired, awfully tired, of the harrrummmppptth attitude which grows and grows and grows as language tangles itself back into tradition. Before I know it I'll be desperate to go out in the streets and scream I want my baby back or something to that effect. Alan stamping on all-too-well-trodden ground ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 17:04:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: China 2 In-Reply-To: <199807031939.PAA76224@dept.english.upenn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hey, did you see the cover of newsweek a couple weeks back with the young chinese holding american flag phallus (i mean baseball bats--with apologies to bill luoma) balloon like things and then the spread about the New china (it's becoming just like america; they're even christian, mao unwittingly did capitalism's dirty work by clearing out the indigenous religions, etc.) wonder what charles bernstein's chinese translator would say about THAT.......... chris On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Louis Cabri wrote: > China 2 > > This is a great wall. > It's quite unbelievable, isn't it? > The numbers don't pay. > Feelings go away. > Our psyches are real! > "Fuck you" to the television. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 14:33:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: Jeff Clark MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain So I gather by the underwhelming response that most listfolk agree with Erik below about it being perfectly acceptable that one of our brethern is, apparently, an FBI agent on the side (unless, of course, the identification in _APR_ is a spoof). It's not that I had a "nice, clever list of jobs that would be acceptable" for a poet, Erik -- it's that I think some professions DO make poetic work questionable (to say the least!) -- as I said, this is an "extra-textual" concern, which might also make it off -limits to some folk here. I doubt very much that Mr. Clark is a fed... even if he was who cares... do all of you that would have a problem with this have a nice clever list of jobs that are acceptable for a "poet" good for you. rulesthatwillgetyounowhere erik sweet ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 17:52:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Clay Subject: Ted Berrigan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Granary Books announces the publication of Ted Berrigan: An Annotated Checklist by Aaron Fischer "This handsome edition combines Aaron Fischer's literary detective work, lively commentary by Berrigan's friends and publisers, and a generous selection of witty collaborative art works by Berrigan and George Schneeman. I will treasure this book." -Ron Padgett, poet, translator, and author of Ted: A Personal Memoir Poet, editor and publisher of the legendary "C" Press Ted Berrigan (1934-1983) was a charismatic presence on the literary scene of New York's Lower East Side during the '60s and '70s. "Fiercely unpretentious, intensely self-absorbed, prodigious in his ambition and energy, Berrigan did more than create a substantial body of poetry. He also embodied a spirit that gave meaning to many other writers' lives," wrote Ken Tucker shortly after Berrigan's death. Through anecdotal descriptions Ted Berrigan: An Annotated Checklist provides a vivid glimpse of one writer's life as seen through his publications. Statements and stories from collaborators and friends such as Ron Padgett and Anne Waldman give this book an on-the-spot character which separates it from the usual dry checklist. Lewis Warsh's poignant introduction "Publishing Ted" sets the stage for a fascinating look into the inner workings of the literary underground during its heyday. Amply illustrated with 27 never-seen-before "literary pictures"-collaborations between Berrigan and painter George Schneeman-this is an important new contribution to the Berrigan canon as well as a useful tool for understanding one of the richest eras of American literary history. Paper $32.95 (ISBN 1-887123-17-2) 7 x 10" 72 pp. illustrated in color and black & white Signed cloth edition also available. $150. Please inquire. SPECIAL OFFER FOR READERS OF THE POETICS LIST: PAPERBACK COPIES ARE $20 + $3 SHIPPING (DOMESTIC) TILL JULY 15, 1998. THIS OFFER ONLY FROM GRANARY. Available at obscure literary bookstores & Small Press Distribution (1-800-869-7553) D.A. P. (1-800-338-BOOK) and from the publisher: Granary Books 568 Broadway #403, NY, NY 10012 (sclay@interport.net) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 18:18:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: mr. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > oh, mr. morpheal, > i guess i should answer this as a younger but less organized poet. > best, kevin I dislike the mr., and hate the sir even more. Thanks though for your best. Not that I would reject a knighthood, but... but I am still only a pawn. regards, Morpheal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 18:28:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: China 2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Hey, did you see the cover of newsweek a couple weeks back > with the young chinese holding american flag phallus (i mean > baseball bats--with apologies to bill luoma) balloon like things > and then the spread about the New china (it's becoming just > like america; they're even christian, mao unwittingly did > capitalism's dirty work by clearing out the indigenous religions, etc.) > wonder what charles bernstein's chinese translator would say > about THAT.......... > chris I do not believe them. They are good at acting, and follow direction meticulously. The adults along with the children. I then become paranoid about technology transfer to an ideology that has different uses for it than are in our own best interests, but suit their long term strategic objectives. I say, mix them up, and see what happens. Radio Free China....here we go....on the air....NOW ! M. aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 17:00:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Ferlinghetti@Naropa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Friday night, July 3, Peter Lamborn Wilson and Lawrence Ferlinghetti read to a packed house at the Naropa Performing Arts Center. Mats were thrown on the hardwood floor to accommodate the huge crowd lined up outside the door. There was barely room to swing a cat. But the air was wild with poetry. Peter Lamborn Wilson, bemused by having so vast an audience at his disposal, opened the evening by reading his essay "Praying in Darkness," the latest installment in the ongoing Lectures in Strange Anthropology series founded by Peter and others in honor of the late Harry Smith, this latest edition dedicated to Ferlinghetti. "Praying" is a fascinating historical exegesis of the flourishing, debasment and gradual re-emergence of Manchu shamanism. It begins with an account of an epic poem about Neshan, a proto-feminist shamaness who undertakes the traditional voyage to the land of the dead and upon her return rejects all efforts by the priesthood to submit to marriage and give up her visionary ways. Shamans, noted Peter, are associated with a nomadic way of life and have the ability to present directly to others the spirit world. Priests, on the other hand, as agents of agrarian culture who can only represent the spirit world, have a vested interest in suppressing shamans. Peter went on to speak of how the cooked masculine culture continued to absorb and vitiate the raw feminine shamanic tradition under the Ming and Manchu dynasties until it became little more than empty court ritual of the sort used to install the puppet emperor Pu Yi as late as 1911. With the death of Mao, however, it is showing some signs of a comeback in the remote Northern provinces. A "something that refuses to be defined," a wildness that resists all attempts to subjugate it, is slowly re-emerging. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, looking hale, hardy, and dashing in a sky blue shirt and enormous red glasses, began his portion of the evening by performing two very funny blues numbers - "Greedy Blues" and "Breeding Blues" - accompanied ably by Steven Taylor on guitar. The first blues is modelled after the old song, "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" The second one is a Bill McKibben-like argument for limiting the size of one's personal posterity ("that ersatz eternity," as Camus once noted). Lines like - "O, what is that sperm filling the void? O, only the humans screwing, dear," brought to mind some of Alice Notley's more satiric work from Week One. Blues were followed by several short lyrics recited by memory (by heart) from _Coney Island_. Then Ferlinghetti took us on a long and delightful ride through _A Far Rockaway of the Heart_, a long semi-serial work that makes out of madness and longing, as the poet himself has it, "a hundred years of beatitude." These poems range over a wide variety of subject matter, yet are all keyed in the special idiom Ferlinghetti has made his own, whether he is speaking of his own life, political tyranny and oppression, Mozart, painting, Rodin, women, Italy, TS Eliot and WCW, or even poetry itself, a category of verse he remarked that he was previously against. That idiom is form of colloquial devotionalism, marked by a tremendous erotic joie de vivre, and operating in the hinge, the dialectical space where desire opposes history. It is a poetry of color and vivacity and immediacy, a celebration of the high and the low, remarkably free from personal nostalgia, yet full of longing for the foundered heimat of the heart. It's a poetry of that most difficult of lost arts, affirmation -- of the great Nietzchean Yes. Ferlinghetti closed with two uncollected poems - the first an attack on American hypocrisy and paranoia; the second, "Rivers of Light," (which was turned into a beautiful broadside by the fabulous printer Julie Seko and her apprentices in that week's workshop). Written in Prague, where he'd just been, the poem is an homage to that city and to the ancient journey of the heart, as it finds itself near journey's end, about to enter "into the tongue of light." Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 19:50:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: fuck clarification (after malok) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit fuck I fuck want fuck to fuck make fuck it fuck clear fuck that fuck I'm fuck not fuck reacting fuck to fuck TB's fuck disliking fuck of fuck my fuck workfuck - it's fuck the fuck disdain fuck and fuck dismissive fuck attitude. fuck There fuck is fuck A fuck LOT fuck of fuck poetry fuck and fuck poetics fuck I fuck don't fuck like - fuck but fuck would fuck still fuck give fuck serious fuck reply fuck to fuck on fuck the fuck list fuck here, fuck recommend, fuck etc., fuck depending fuck on fuck taste. fuck I fuck get fuck tired, fuck awfully fuck tired, fuck of fuck the fuck harrrummmppptth fuck attitude fuck which fuck grows fuck and fuck grows fuck and fuck grows fuck as fuck language fuck tangles fuck itself fuck back fuck into fuck tradition. fuck Before fuck I fuck know fuck it fuck I'll fuck be fuck desperate fuck to fuck go fuck out fuck in fuck the fuck streets fuck and fuck scream fuck I fuck want fuck my fuck baby fuck back fuck or fuck something fuck to fuck that fuck effect. fuck Miekal fuck stamping fuck on fuck all-too-well-trodden fuck ground ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 05:14:47 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Chain of _Dark Secrets_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ps: readers don't exist. poems do--Alan J.J.N. Sondheim wrote: > > On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > > > interesting--"ire" > > as you have put it > > is the word that fits > > yr response to a reponse > > on a piece of writing that I > > truly belived was superfluous-- > > the word is "believe" I believe. > > > and the question was "can > > space be wasted" --you > > didn't post an answer-- > > but "ire" can be-- > > Aren't you wasting space here? What sort of space is wasted in cyberspace? > > > > I have long ago dismissed a oetics that engages the language in a > > self-ish > > way--that is--wherer one tries to force the language > > into an "experimental" form--for the sake of being that thing others > > would call "experimental" --the piece I responded to wasn't doing > > anything-- > > Why discuss it, then--if, in my mind--I already have? > > Well good for you - everything in your mind determines the world you evil > solipsist. > And "force" the language into an ""experimental"" form? The language > wasn't > wiling to go? I raped it, maybe? Murdered it? > And fuck how well you know my intentions "for the sake of being that thing > others would call "experimental" - > This just is fucking ugly. You don't know me or my intentions in fact, or > what the "sake" of the writing is. > I have no idea who you are but this is lousy criticism and lousy poetics. > > And for your information pieces don't do anything - readers do. > > Alan > > > > > Look at and discuss > > more interesting work--in my selfish(yes) mind-- > > Let's discuss the latest work by Norma Cole--"Desire and its Double-- > > instead-- > > > > "no ideas but > > in things" > > > > define > > "ideas" > > and "things" > > > > -- > > > > not "ire" > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 05:15:23 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: clarification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit screaming would not be so ill an effect!Alan J.J.N. Sondheim wrote: > > I want to make it clear that I'm not reacting to TB's disliking of my work > - it's the disdain and dismissive attitude. There is A LOT of poetry and > poetics I don't like - but would still give serious reply to on the list > here, recommend, etc., depending on taste. I get tired, awfully tired, of > the harrrummmppptth attitude which grows and grows and grows as language > tangles itself back into tradition. Before I know it I'll be desperate to > go out in the streets and scream I want my baby back or something to that > effect. > > Alan stamping on all-too-well-trodden ground ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 22:12:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Re: clarification Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35A1AEEB.37A5@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was referring to all those "I want my baby back" television movies that are based on the idea of the nuclear family as inviolate except for those forces of evil that take children away from mothers, who are there to be there (no other reason) for children (as children). Alan On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > screaming would not be so ill > an effect!Alan J.J.N. Sondheim wrote: > > > > I want to make it clear that I'm not reacting to TB's disliking of my work > > - it's the disdain and dismissive attitude. There is A LOT of poetry and > > poetics I don't like - but would still give serious reply to on the list > > here, recommend, etc., depending on taste. I get tired, awfully tired, of > > the harrrummmppptth attitude which grows and grows and grows as language > > tangles itself back into tradition. Before I know it I'll be desperate to > > go out in the streets and scream I want my baby back or something to that > > effect. > > > > Alan stamping on all-too-well-trodden ground > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 21:02:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: fuck clarification (after malok) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" So much fucking and so little release! ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 08:42:21 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: fuck clarification (after malok) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit amazing---W. Reich has e-mail!Tosh wrote: > > So much fucking and so little release! > > ----------------- > Tosh Berman > TamTam Books > ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 07:53:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: payment [of various kinds in various ways] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >morpheal, >this is bullshit. i produce a place to read.that is it. if you want to >drive to london (2 hours away) come.... we'll set a date. You are the first to ever make an offer of that kind. I thankyou for that. I have read in London twice, at the local public library both times. Both times with other poets. Right this moment, I cannot take you up on it. At least not immediately, because of a current job search, possible forced geographic relocation due to joblessness, and not knowing the schedule that will be imposed by those kinds of commitments. To put it succinctly, I am not free to commit to anything out of town, into the future, as job interviews and work schedule necessarily take survival precedence and cause that to change at a moment's notice. If that situation improves, and I am geographically within range of London I will certainly take you up on your offer. >i have no time for whiny fudges that won't get off their asses.i offer >you a venue maybe a beer and an audience. I have gotten up off my ass so many times, I have lost count. I have also been knocked down onto it quite a few times, in different situations. So I am the wrong person to direct that comment toward. >if you can provide the transport i can provide the gig. give me two weeks. >get some friends make a night out of it. I am sure someone else could use me, as transportation to London. There is always someone looking for a lift to a gig. >i will get on my ego and slide. I have never done it for ego's sake, or based on ego. I suppose we have different natures in that regard. regards, Morpheal P.S. This should have been backchanneled...... Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 08:44:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets Comments: To: toddbaron@earthlink.net In-Reply-To: <35A013FC.10BE@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Since the beginning of this exchange I've had a strong feeling that Todd Baron read only the first section of the work--not noticing the rest. There was nothing obscure in the second section, the "translation" Alan called it, or the base text that was translated by his program. I'm one who enjoys & learns from Alan's work, though like a lot of his list-readers I don't respond in writing each time. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:39:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Magdalena Zurawski Subject: Katy Lederer Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Does anyone know Katy Lederer's new address in NY? Backchannel please. Thanks, Maggie Zurawski ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:57:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: Katy Lederer -Reply i mean this backchannel, but not sure how it will go: katy lederer send this to the list a while back I'm moving. My new address is: 226 W 108th St Apt 2D New York, NY 10025 All correspondence regarding EXPLOSIVE MAGAZINE and Spectacular Books should be directed to this address. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:06:59 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: My Dark Secrets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit odd--that my response to a piece of writing should be met with anything other than a continuation of a discussion. Poetics--not poetry--is simply a discussuion--and that I read the entire piece--didn't like its project--but felt the need to respond--IS a poetics attempting to engage a discussion. Briefly--I did not like the "poem" or piece--found both sections dis-engaged--one not really meant to be "read" and the other a straight forward narrative that did not engage me. Oddly enough--for those responses--I've been labeled a "revisionist" and such-- I wonder why. anyway-- a response is in other other otherwords ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:41:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Balestrieri Subject: Response to Todd Baron and Miekal And Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To the List - A few weeks ago, I posted my frustration over the negative attitude on the List towards "innovative," "experimental" or whatever the hell you want to call it poetry/writing. Everyone who responded either wanted to argue with me over one or two words that I used or dismiss me by saying no, a negative attitude doesn't exist. The recent slighting and insulting posts by Todd Baron and Miekal And are exactly what I was talking about. Their dismissive and rude responses to Alan Sondheim's _Dark Secrets_(I wish this wouldn't always happen to Alan. Other people are probably too afraid to post their work for fear of being ridiculed) are indicative of the lack of recognition on the part of some Listees as to the stated purpose of this List. Todd and Miekal: have you ever read this - "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(from the List intro)." Alan Sondheim's work fits this criteria exactly. It is your attitudes that are wasting space and are out of place here. If people can't feel comfortable posting challenging work, fearing glib responses or callous insults, then the List, in my opinion, is a failure. Pete Balestrieri ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 13:47:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Response to Todd Baron and Miekal And In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:41:12 -0700 from Peter, by the same token, if every criticism is labeled dismissive, rude, uncalled-for, etc., maybe people will be afraid to criticize. As I see it Meikal's post was a criticism of Alan's 4-letter over-reaction. Maybe we all need to tone down the scold level and try to take everything in good humor. After all, that's one of the advantages of these lists; everybody has time to reconsider the slugfest before or afterhand. If Alan's entitled to post his creations, which of course he is, then Todd's entitled to express his opinions. - Henry G, listhog numero uno ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 22:31:26 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Response to Todd Baron and Miekal And MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "dismissive"--no. A reaction entirely does the opposite--had I wanted to "dismiss" the work--I would have delted it it silently. Have you noticed that there has actually been more dialogue about this particular issue and piece of writing than usual. Mainly, this list talks about "payment" and issue of magazines--and very little do I see a posting regarding a "poetics": a dialogue: a discussion on such. The work is "challenging"? OK--then I challenged it! Would this--had it been read in a group situation--been simply read and not responded to? If a poem or poet or artist or artwork cannot stand the critical response (which, by the way--mine was--if you noticed I discussed the two sections of the piece--seemingly know the piece almost by heart now--and discussed the concept of "experimental"--which everything is--unless you think you've "got it"--and have written several postings on the poem. I have never attacked the poet--as the poem was all I was concerned with. If you think that by responding in a truth and critical way stops people from posting work--challenging or otherwise--then maybe they shold stop posting work. After all, is it to be "read"? which is an active thing--or "read" like/as in, listened to--like TV--then walked away from? The idea--for me-of this list --is such a dialogue--less for posting poems than for discussing issues of poetics. That is certainly not a failure--as we seem to be trying to do so now... Todd BaronPeter Balestrieri wrote: > > To the List - > > A few weeks ago, I posted my frustration over the negative attitude on > the List towards "innovative," "experimental" or whatever the hell you > want to call it poetry/writing. Everyone who responded either wanted > to argue with me over one or two words that I used or dismiss me by > saying no, a negative attitude doesn't exist. The recent slighting and > insulting posts by Todd Baron and Miekal And are exactly what I was > talking about. Their dismissive and rude responses to Alan Sondheim's > _Dark Secrets_(I wish this wouldn't always happen to Alan. Other > people are probably too afraid to post their work for fear of being > ridiculed) are indicative of the lack of recognition on the part of > some Listees as to the stated purpose of this List. Todd and Miekal: > have you ever read this - "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(from the List intro)." Alan Sondheim's work fits this > criteria exactly. It is your attitudes that are wasting space and are > out of place here. If people can't feel comfortable posting > challenging work, fearing glib responses or callous insults, then the > List, in my opinion, is a failure. > > Pete Balestrieri ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 12:02:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: stirring up O.S. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" have been away from the list and so will not bore all and sundry with my thoughts on Majuscules and Race etc. -- BUT I would think (odd verb tense there) that when somebody says that they've never heard of Dr. Angelou being taking to task for . . . . a relevant question might well be "where has this not hearing taken place?" True enough, you won't find such criticism in the pages of ESSENCE,, but Dr. Angelou has had the benefit of any number of negative responses through the years -- This strikes me as a more than usually rhetorical gesture -- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 15:11:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Working draft I radio unfurled from speech. watched. Fences recede, submerge beneath heaving plant, tracers hanging like dreams, radio unfurled speech to sound from sound paring the octaves, striate and dappled dusty like threads of cigarette smoke space stars between light leaves white as a baptism. I can hear them shrieking from here to Alabama. What was it you wanted from here, now. Aqui. Ahora. Near, now. (1998) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 15:07:57 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: challenging works Speaking of reading and criticizing: here's an abstract question if anybody's interested: should a poem have a "rational" essence or essences? In other words, is it possible to theorize about an overall ethos (or purpose, or impulse) behind a work? This kind of idea is threatening on various levels: example, "your theories get in the way of my reading the poem itself", or, "the poem is the poem, it's an experience, not an exercise in allegorical meaning". But sometimes like in other realms of experience we tend toward fetishism or fascination with externals. Do we read, hear, understand whole poems anymore? Is that something we can ask of a poet? Like, for example, you go to the latest violent thriller movie in all the theaters, and you ask, underneath the extravaganza, what is this film doing? Basically glorifying male arrogance and indulging violent appetites. Here's a poem which assumes that not only a particular poem but a poet's lifework can be summarized, abstracted, reduced, in a certain way. Admittedly this is only ONE way to look at that particular poet - but it's the ACT of summarizing that intrigues me: The state shame of the Egyptians was adorned with pedigree dogs - the dead were endowed with all sorts of things and the pyramid stuck up - a mere trifle. He lived mischievously alongside the gothic, and spat on the spider's rights, the insolent schoolboy and robber angel, the incomparable Francois Villon. - Mandelstam, 1937 I feel a little cheated if I come away from reading a poem with no concept of what it MEANS - with no sense of an overall cognitive momentum, you might say, with no moral force. There IS an allegorical level to language - to deny it is to lose the whole parabolic force of writing. Then again, just as often the reader (me) will cheat the author - not give it the reading it deserves. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 14:47:33 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: sponse to Todd Baron and Miekal And MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit peter & others quite interesting that my detournement of alan's clarification be taken as a condemnation of alan's comments & works. I am in love with alan & his work, have been since I heard his first esp record release, many many years ago. I am especially inspired of the way he uses this listserv as an environment in which to grow texts formfitted to a very specific audience. I think his texts are one of the best examples we have of electro writing taking on presence & entity consciousness in the cyberstream. further, Ive been endlessly bemused by how provocative these texts become to the poetic thought stream, the comparison I think of is turning on kids who have only been exposed to the 20th century canon to language writing. as for those who misunderstood "fuck clarification" (the title should have been giveaway), I was referencing the work of Malok, a vetern mail artist famous for his series of ecstatic prayers to humanity called FUCK DIRGE 1-7, in which that horrible word is evoked as a transcendent chant. (of which Malok was inspired by Bern Porter's Last Acts of St Fuck You). my feeling was also layered with frustration that of all places Alan has to take time to validate his work, whether because of it exoticisms, encryption, text wrangling or whatnot. hopefully Ive blurred the ground between intentions & the random multiplicity of interpretations even further. back to building a chickenpen Miekal And ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 15:22:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Query/Good ISP in NYC In-Reply-To: <35A23502.660A@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi, Does anyone out there have an ISP to recommend? I just moved and need to get hooked up to web fast.... most e-mail and web hours for best price.... Suggestions? Thanks, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 15:23:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: Query/Good ISP? PS.... In-Reply-To: <35A23502.660A@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Oooops... I moved to NYC--need good cheap ISP in NYC... Thanks again, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 13:23:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: Response to Todd Baron and Miekal And Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i thawt miekal's response wuz a concrete pome, he couldn't possibly have been criticizing Alan's work. billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 16:34:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Re: Query/Good ISP in NYC In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Depends what you want Erols is inexpensive, and there are inexpensive ones listed in the Voice, etc. There's Interport.net and Panix.com which I use - the last is $32.50 a month but includes both IP and shell accounts. Finally there's good old AOL. Panix and Interport - as most ISPs - are flat rate so I'm not sure what you mean by "most e-mail." Alan On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, k. lederer wrote: > Hi, > > Does anyone out there have an ISP to recommend? > > I just moved and need to get hooked up to web fast.... most e-mail > and web hours for best price.... > > Suggestions? > > Thanks, > Katy > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 16:55:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: Query/Good ISP in NYC In-Reply-To: from "k. lederer" at Jul 7, 98 03:22:29 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I use Mindspring from NYC, & have excellent results... $20/month for unlimited connection time have rarely if ever had a busy signal only problem is no telnet reader for email, in other words you always have to "pop" your email from a server but if you have a university account, you can use mindspring for IP access and then telnet to your mail account (voila) -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:03:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Query/Good ISP in NYC In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII you might check out Megs Inet. i don't know how good they are, but they're nationwide and cheap. www.megsinet.com 888-233-1144 their webpage says $10 unlimited for K56, $15 for 2X56, $20 for ISDN dialup. goodluck, eryque On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, k. lederer wrote: > Hi, > > Does anyone out there have an ISP to recommend? > > I just moved and need to get hooked up to web fast.... most e-mail > and web hours for best price.... > > Suggestions? > > Thanks, > Katy > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 01:42:29 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: challenging works MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry Gould wrote: > > Speaking of reading and criticizing: here's an abstract question if anybody's > interested: should a poem have a "rational" essence or essences? In other > words, is it possible to theorize about an overall ethos (or purpose, or > impulse) behind a work? > > This kind of idea is threatening on various levels: example, "your theories > get in the way of my reading the poem itself", or, "the poem is the poem, > it's an experience, not an exercise in allegorical meaning". > > But sometimes like in other realms of experience we tend toward fetishism > or fascination with externals. Do we read, hear, understand whole poems > anymore? Is that something we can ask of a poet? Like, for example, > you go to the latest violent thriller movie in all the theaters, and you > ask, underneath the extravaganza, what is this film doing? Basically > glorifying male arrogance and indulging violent appetites. > > Here's a poem which assumes that not only a particular poem but a poet's > lifework can be summarized, abstracted, reduced, in a certain way. > Admittedly this is only ONE way to look at that particular poet - but > it's the ACT of summarizing that intrigues me: > > The state shame of the Egyptians > was adorned with pedigree dogs - > the dead were endowed with all sorts of things > and the pyramid stuck up - a mere trifle. > > He lived mischievously alongside the gothic, > and spat on the spider's rights, > the insolent schoolboy and robber angel, > the incomparable Francois Villon. > > - Mandelstam, 1937 > > I feel a little cheated if I come away from reading a poem with no concept > of what it MEANS - with no sense of an overall cognitive momentum, you might > say, with no moral force. There IS an allegorical level to language - to > deny it is to lose the whole parabolic force of writing. Then again, > just as often the reader (me) will cheat the author - not give it the reading > it deserves. > - Henry Gould great query--the old one--and persoanlly--I don't always need to come away from a poem with a "read" meaning. If you read Celan, say, today--what is the meaning of many of the poems? Forget allegory--or the old weak metaphor--but isn't language a creative thing--that generates--and engenders--as well as (can be used for) saying something. I want my grocery list to have immediate readability--but I spend very little time investing the language there! STEIN: words have to do everything in poetry and prose and some writers write more in articles and prepositions and some say you should write in nouns and of course one has to think of everything...there could no longer be form to decide anything..." Lectures in America ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 01:42:50 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: challenging works MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry Gould wrote: > > Speaking of reading and criticizing: here's an abstract question if anybody's > interested: should a poem have a "rational" essence or essences? In other > words, is it possible to theorize about an overall ethos (or purpose, or > impulse) behind a work? > > This kind of idea is threatening on various levels: example, "your theories > get in the way of my reading the poem itself", or, "the poem is the poem, > it's an experience, not an exercise in allegorical meaning". > > But sometimes like in other realms of experience we tend toward fetishism > or fascination with externals. Do we read, hear, understand whole poems > anymore? Is that something we can ask of a poet? Like, for example, > you go to the latest violent thriller movie in all the theaters, and you > ask, underneath the extravaganza, what is this film doing? Basically > glorifying male arrogance and indulging violent appetites. > > Here's a poem which assumes that not only a particular poem but a poet's > lifework can be summarized, abstracted, reduced, in a certain way. > Admittedly this is only ONE way to look at that particular poet - but > it's the ACT of summarizing that intrigues me: > > The state shame of the Egyptians > was adorned with pedigree dogs - > the dead were endowed with all sorts of things > and the pyramid stuck up - a mere trifle. > > He lived mischievously alongside the gothic, > and spat on the spider's rights, > the insolent schoolboy and robber angel, > the incomparable Francois Villon. > > - Mandelstam, 1937 > > I feel a little cheated if I come away from reading a poem with no concept > of what it MEANS - with no sense of an overall cognitive momentum, you might > say, with no moral force. There IS an allegorical level to language - to > deny it is to lose the whole parabolic force of writing. Then again, > just as often the reader (me) will cheat the author - not give it the reading > it deserves. > - Henry Gould great query--the old one--and personally --I don't need to come away from a poem with a "read" meaning. If you read Celan, say, today--what is the meaning of many of the poems? Forget allegory--or the old weak metaphor--but isn't language a creative thing--that generates--and engenders--as well as (can be used for) saying something. I want my grocery list to have immediate readability--but I spend very little time investing the language there! STEIN: words have to do everything in poetry and prose and some writers write more in articles and prepositions and some say you should write in nouns and of course one has to think of everything...there could no longer be form to decide anything..." Lectures in America ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:06:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris McCreary Subject: Highwire reading/Frank Sherlock & Carol Mirakove Comments: cc: travmar03@email.msn.com, Kyle.Conner@mail.tju.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This announcement is posted for Kyle Conner & Greg Fuchs, neither of whom are currently on the list. If you've got an questions, they can be reached at: travmar03@email.msn.com (Greg) and Kyle.Conner@mail.tju.edu (that one's pretty obvious, I guess...). Thanks. HIGHWIRE READING HIGHWIRE READING HIGHWIRE READING HIGHWIRE READIN HIGH WIRE Frank Sherlock & Carol Mirakove 8pm BYOB July 11, 1998 highwire GALLERY 139 n. 2nd st. $$$$5 (no big f***** deal) Philadelphia <> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:18:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: challenging works > Henry Gould wrote: > > > > Speaking of reading and criticizing:here's an abstract question if anybody's > > interested: should a poem have a "rational" essence or essences? In other > > words, is it possible to theorize about an overall ethos (or purpose, or > > impulse) behind a work? In one sense, there should be no ruling idea of how to "deal" with poetry; when you first bring someone to a poem, when it's their first time really "reading" poetry, it's vital to guide them towards an idea that the poem is "saying something". Otherwise, you risk a sort of unthoughtout response along the lines of "ah, isn't poetry great, it all sounds so poetic." But I think some people begin to get obsessed with finding a poem's essence. That idea, that there is a "soul" to a poem hidden beneath its syntax and word choice, is in some sense derived from the Romantic poem itself, with all its faith in self-expression, in the soulful [I/eye]. We read a poem and perceive the text itself as the author, struggling to find itself. The critic's job then, is to "psychoanalyse" the poem and figure it all out. When you get to issues of indeterminacy, multiple narratives, the "postmodern condition", and so on, all this soulsearching becomes second order. You can point to indeterminacy and say, ya, there it is; but that's not the poem's "point". The poem begins with indeterminacy, and moves from there along some vector oblique to the critic's tongue. Here's something I've been playing with today; I took an old draft of a poem and started removing words, rearranging the typography, pushing in spaces and generally trying to condense and eliminate. The two texts are below, side by side. The right hand side "includes" the meaning of the left, and vice versa, although you might not have found the right in the left. What is the essence of the left hand side? Is it different from the right? And what is the sum of the two -- does it mean something different? Not sure the formatting is going to work, so I've put up the two texts at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/sonnet.html What I'm trying to get at here is that the idea that a poem has an "essence" is not as simple as it seems at first glance. It complexifies; sort of like those endless theological debates that the Pharisees pose Jesus about the immortal soul (if a man marries again after his wife dies, who is he married to in heaven?), or the medieval theologians go on about. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com The radio unfurled from speech. radio unfurled from speech. I watched. Fences recede, submerge watched. Fences recede, submerge themselves beneath the heavings beneath heaving of plant, tracers hanging like dreams plant, tracers hanging like my dreams, the radio unfurled dreams, radio unfurled from speech to sound from sound speech to sound from sound paring the octaves, striate and dappled paring the octaves, striate dusty like the threads of cigarette and dappled dusty like smoke, like space betweeen stars, threads of cigarette smoke towards light between leaves space stars white as a baptism. I can hear them between shrieking from here to Alabama. light leaves What was it you wanted from here, white as a baptism. I can hear them now. Aqui, Ahora. Near, Now. shrieking from here to Alabama. What was it you wanted from here, now. Aqui. Ahora. Near, now. (1998) > > This kind of idea is threatening on various levels: example, "your theories > > get in the way of my reading the poem itself", or, "the poem is the poem, > > it's an experience, not an exercise in allegorical meaning". > > > > But sometimes like in other realms of experience we tend toward fetishism > > or fascination with externals. Do we read, hear, understand whole poems > > anymore? Is that something we can ask of a poet? Like, for example, > > you go to the latest violent thriller movie in all the theaters, and you > > ask, underneath the extravaganza, what is this film doing? Basically > > glorifying male arrogance and indulging violent appetites. > > > > Here's a poem which assumes that not only a particular poem but a poet's > > lifework can be summarized, abstracted, reduced, in a certain way. > > Admittedly this is only ONE way to look at that particular poet - but > > it's the ACT of summarizing that intrigues me: > > > > The state shame of the Egyptians > > was adorned with pedigree dogs - > > the dead were endowed with all sorts of things > > and the pyramid stuck up - a mere trifle. > > > > He lived mischievously alongside the gothic, > > and spat on the spider's rights, > > the insolent schoolboy and robber angel, > > the incomparable Francois Villon. > > > > - Mandelstam, 1937 > > > > I feel a little cheated if I come away from reading a poem with no concept > > of what it MEANS - with no sense of an overall cognitive momentum, you might > > say, with no moral force. There IS an allegorical level to language - to > > deny it is to lose the whole parabolic force of writing. Then again, > > just as often the reader (me) will cheat the author- not give it the reading ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 21:29:43 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: Query/Good ISP? PS.... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Megsinet is the bomb. They are pretty much a midwest company tho and unfortunately don't have local dial up in NYC, unless something has changed in the last two months. I can get you set up, with ISP and pages, earthlink with sprint/mci backbone, let me know. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 23:22:43 -0400 Reply-To: mgk3k@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matt Kirschenbaum Subject: performative MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Of possible interest. Matt > ************************************************************ > Edupage, 7 July 1998. Edupage, a summary of news about information > technology, is provided three times a week as a service of EDUCAUSE, > a consortium of leading colleges and universities seeking to transform > education through the use of information technologies. The organization > has offices in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, D.C. > ************************************************************ [. . . ] > > COURT SAYS FIRST AMENDMENT DOESN'T COVER SOURCE CODE > A U.S. district court judge turned down Case Western Reserve professor Peter > Junger's argument that he should be allowed to publish several encryption > programs on the Web because the underlying software code should be treated > as free speech. The ruling conflicts with a decision last summer in a case > involving mathematics professor Daniel Bernstein that said distribution of > software code over the Internet was constitutionally protected. "Source > code is 'purely functional' in a way that the Bernstein Court's examples of > instructions, manuals and recipes are not," said Judge James Gwin in the > Junger case. "Unlike instructions, a manual, or a recipe, source code > actually performs the functions it describes. While a recipe provides > instructions to a cook, source code is a device, like embedded circuitry in > a telephone, that actually does the function of encryption." Mr. Junger > plans to appeal Judge Gwin's decision. (Wall Street Journal 7 Jul 98) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 19:55:40 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: the center will not hold MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Man is not so much placed in this idealized center of the world as he is exposed there. The position of Stoicism's observer of the world, at rest, has become the initial position of a self-shaping and world-transforming agent. All other creatures, we are told, have a definite nature, within firmly established laws, imposed upon them. Man is supposed to determine his nature himself on the basis of his freedom; which now means to see the world as serving his self-definition. Even before Copernicus, the shift of the accent from cosmology to anthropology, a process on which the Middle Ages as a whole had worked--under the terms set by prior assumptions--in tiny steps, and with setbacks, is pushed so far forward that the loss of the real center of the universe, as a consequence of a relation to the world that could no longer be characterized cosmologically, could be accepted."---from The Genesis of the Copernican World by Hans Blumenberg --- "The time of an event is defined as the reading of a clock coincident with the event and at rest relative to it. Events which are simultaneous in one inertial frame are not simultaneous in another. Einstein's example: two identical rods R(1) and R(2) are coincident in a given inertial frame in which two observers O(1) and O(2) have synchronized their respective clocks...."--from 'Subtle is the Lord; The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais --- "The concept of observation is in so far arbitrary as it depends upon which objects are included in the system of observation."---Neils Bohr ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 00:16:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: dent upon their atom MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Morpheal suggested that fear of being understood motivated modern artists to be difficult I am paraphrasing. This does not seem. To be accurate, what one fears is the bracket and onrush, the moment [one's] meaning is consumed. The fear leads to the destabilizing effect much joy. But must this not mean. That drawer allusion. You're it. Turn the ghosts blue eating the big dot. What it means must be here and there. Only important not to be touched by ghosts. Fear repels thought. Imagination oz paranoia. If there were negative thoughts a lion would understand them. Resistance is useful only. Surplus resistance. If it were possible to find beauty by looking anywhere. The list is lists not overlap. Go the speakers ski across a waste. Starting no. Screening does not limit nor enhance return. Bets against the good as bets for why not. White out Jasper. 9:01 one hundred sixty eight chairs 9:03. Hey, my fellow symbolic-analysts, how's it hangin. How is that self-enacting critique of capitalism going. Not having a coke with you. If it were possible to have a thought in a poem I know you. Why what. Is for ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 00:25:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: successfully public within MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Or the consuming moment will lack. There is a pendulous gram? Luxurious hornets, stained glass structure ducts, antique drinking, all nailed because of the consume. So the paraphrasable is a military outpost. An exception is Due North. Ovation industry plays a major role, actually, though we make fun of fame. Sold off. The epicenter is a street car line, inflation 40%. Crony capitalism. The survivor tree stands (thirty years off). "It was considered to be wild country." Is for ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 08:49:00 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: a quiet night: POETICS: "a quiet right" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit quoted: not to confuse memory with reading if the difference (Martin Nakell. The Library of THomas Rivka) Normal consciousness, pricks of everyday discomfort... (HD. Notes on Thought and Vision) Religon & Art Love A home A typewriter A GUN (T. Berrigan Red Wagon) The idea of "self" has been with me a very long time... (Robert Duncan. The Self in Postmodern Poetry,) Alas! (W. Shakespeare) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 00:48:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: About Poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - to do some writing you have a clear crystal and it's made of glass, so it's crystal glass you must make sure the edges are ground glass so light melts in them and then as well slight chips are imperfections greatly desired as light comes pouring through this makes the writing what it is and all else falls against the edge of the mass through which light passes through the mass with images of disks and things to tell of what had happened to it lately something passing from me to you writing comes pouring through the disk like something passing through the disk _________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 08:16:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Latta Subject: Re: successfully public within In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Didn't Ron Silliman some, oh, thirty years back, put it like this: "what high lurking hornets buick the moose" (Just the sound of a tiny connection being made.) John Latta On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Jordan Davis wrote: > Or the consuming moment will lack. There is a pendulous gram? Luxurious > hornets, stained glass structure ducts, antique drinking, all nailed > because of the consume. So the paraphrasable is a military outpost. An > exception is Due North. Ovation industry plays a major role, actually, > though we make fun of fame. Sold off. The epicenter is a street car line, > inflation 40%. Crony capitalism. The survivor tree stands (thirty years > off). "It was considered to be wild country." > > Is for > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 08:01:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: challenging works In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:18:27 -0400 from a voice moving sounds through an instrument creating a resonance and the written score evidence of a crystallized impulse already roving through leaves those tracks in a maze design you can follow everywhere and nowhere the shadow of the voice is measured and the longer the shadow the greater the the distance between the tracks and the voice but you can follow the shadow through the maze as long as it's still there or you can wait for the voice to take form - like a shadow traced back to the one who cast it then again you can cross over to Jordan & get sloshed which might be more realistic & fun ey wh? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 09:11:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: dent upon their atom -Reply i couldn't consume your meaning, so you be happy now. >>> UB Poetics discussion group 07/08/98 12:16am >>> Morpheal suggested that fear of being understood motivated modern artists to be difficult I am paraphrasing. This does not seem. To be accurate, what one fears is the bracket and onrush, the moment [one's] meaning is consumed. The fear leads to the destabilizing effect much joy. But must this not mean. That drawer allusion. You're it. Turn the ghosts blue eating the big dot. What it means must be here and there. Only important not to be touched by ghosts. Fear repels thought. Imagination oz paranoia. If there were negative thoughts a lion would understand them. Resistance is useful only. Surplus resistance. If it were possible to find beauty by looking anywhere. The list is lists not overlap. Go the speakers ski across a waste. Starting no. Screening does not limit nor enhance return. Bets against the good as bets for why not. White out Jasper. 9:01 one hundred sixty eight chairs 9:03. Hey, my fellow symbolic-analysts, how's it hangin. How is that self-enacting critique of capitalism going. Not having a coke with you. If it were possible to have a thought in a poem I know you. Why what. Is for ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 09:14:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: About Poetics -Reply through a glass, barely. why such breastbeating about being obscure? we begin in obscurity, let's not pretend we invent it. >>> UB Poetics discussion group 07/08/98 12:48am >>> - to do some writing you have a clear crystal and it's made of glass, so it's crystal glass you must make sure the edges are ground glass so light melts in them and then as well slight chips are imperfections greatly desired as light comes pouring through this makes the writing what it is and all else falls against the edge of the mass through which light passes through the mass with images of disks and things to tell of what had happened to it lately something passing from me to you writing comes pouring through the disk like something passing through the disk _________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 09:43:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Poetics List SHUTDOWN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At approximately 6:00pm on Friday, July 10th, central email and UBUnix (University at Buffalo email server) will be disabled and remain unavailable until 8:00am on Monday, July 13th. During this time period all mail sent to the Poetics List will be queued for later delivery. Note also that there will be no incoming or outgoing mail for anyone with UB email (acsu.buffalo.edu). ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:11:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: dent your atoll the thing that frightens the mosquitoes more than anything is the sound of a larger mosquito hovering stage right the mosquitoes release a toxin called "Shucks Fever" or pidgeniocytosapiffle from the stylish blue-black bottle attached to the silken tassles edging their wings which you can in just a few doses decease yourself as swiftly as a Volkswagen - and remind me to signal when I turn off the engine!!! - Eric Blarnes, mood indigo ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:53:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: libido MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Why Michael! thought you'd never ark. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:57:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: People who Die Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Bettors on Net ask: If people die anyway, why not make sport of it? By John Powers, Globe Staff, 07/08/98=20 OK, the very idea - gambling on famous people dying - seems sick. The players themselves admit it. Macabre, morbid, all that. And yet, death comes to us all. So why not get a bet down on who=92ll go 10 toes up?=20 =91=91We certainly don=92t wish for anybody to die,=92=92 says Jake Maruby,= who runs Dying for Dollars, a popular =91=91death pool=92=92 on the Internet. =91=91B= ut nothing we do is going to change things.=92=92 The Grim Reaper harvests on his own schedule, but who says you can=92t indulge in a bit of spectral speculation? If you were one of the shrewd bettors who figured that Chris Farley or Princess Di might be on the 1997 list, you hit the jackpot.=20 If you had Roy Rogers or Wendy O. Williams or Tammy Wynette or Sonny Bono this year, you chalked up big points. Frank Sinatra? Dr. Spock? Who didn=92t have them? And everybody always has the Pope. He=92s what they call a perennial.=20 Death pools have been around since at least the 19th century. =91=91It=92s a= game, a very amusing game that they play in every drawing room in Paris whenever an `Immortal=92 passes on,=92=92 Georges Duroy says to Madame Walter in Guy de Maupassant=92s novel =91=91Bel Ami.=92=92=20 The game of Death has gone cyber now, and it includes anyone who might ever have rated a page in People or 30 seconds on =91=91Entertainment= Tonight.=92=92 At least a dozen death pools with names like Celebrity Death Pool, A Date With Charon Dead Pool, Derby Dead Pool, and Dead! are now on the Internet, abetted by master lists like the Dead People Server and You=92re Outta Here! that keep track of who=92s still living and who has joined the= choir invisible. (James Mason: dead; Jackie Mason: alive.)=20 While pools differ on format, most involve submitting a list of up to 50 people =91=91marked for death=92=92 in the coming calendar year. The more= prescient the pick (like rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996), the more the points.=20 Some pools come with modest cash payoffs; others merely provide bragging rights and 15 minutes of cyberfame. =91=91Of course we=92re not rooting for= these people to die,=92=92 Ron Frey says on his site, The Death Pool. =91=91We= just want the points.=92=92 Morbid or not, death pools are undeniably intriguing. =91=91People will tell= me `That=92s sick,=92=92=92 says Ray Markey, a New Jersey computer networker= who runs the Philadelphia Dead Pool. =91=91Then they say, `Well, can I see the= list?=92 Then they say, `You know who you don=92t have?=92 Then they say, `How do I get in?=92=92=92 =91=91Ghoulpooling=92=92 is, Maruby concedes, a guilty pleasure. Still,= betting against the living is as American as the Constitution. Why else did the Founding Fathers dream up the idea of a vice president, who is frequently described as being =91=91a heartbeat away=92=92 from the Oval Office? Why else would= we have life insurance?=20 =91=91People take out policies against death and dismemberment,=92=92 says= Melody Rutherford, a San Francisco computer worker who=92s been involved with the Celebrity Death Pool since the early =9170s. =91=91You=92re betting that= you=92re going to die before you pay up. And the company is betting that you won=92t.=92=92 Besides, it=92s not as if the players are bumping people off to move= themselves up in the standings. That was the plot of =91=91The Dead Pool,=92=92 the= 1988 Dirty Harry movie in which death pool celebrities were mysteriously turning up dead. =91=91We frown on that,=92=92 says Rutherford. =91=91You wouldn=92t= get any points if you killed somebody. You=92d be disqualified.=92=92 Death pools may be macabre, but they do have rules. Decedents must be notable (or notorious) enough to have their passing mentioned on television or in a major newsmagazine. They must be certifiably dead (not just presumed) and must have been human (no cartoon characters or animals).=20 There are also rules that govern betting on (OK, against) the living. Nobody on death row. Nobody whose government has put a price on his head (though author Salman Rushdie is fair game, since he=92s on a religious= sect=92s hit list). And nobody who=92s just received a artificial major organ. =91=91= No baboon hearts,=92=92 says Maruby, who lives outside of New York City and works for a publishing company.=20 Other than that, anyone from Madonna to the Queen Mum is fair game. Actuarial strategies abound. Most ghoulpoolers choose =91=91the old, the= feeble, the overweight, the addicted.=92=92 Others =91=91chase ambulances,=92=92= picking celebrities who=92ve had strokes (Gene Kelly), developed cancer (Frank Zappa), or contracted AIDS (Randy Shilts).=20 Others do =91=91lifestyle analyses=92=92 and select healthy people with= unhealthy tendencies (=91=91the young and the restless=92=92), like rock stars who= snort coke and drive Porsches at 120 miles per hour. Still others pick totalitarian= dictators with bloody hands (the =91=91live by the sword, die by the sword=92=92= theory) or violent types due for =91=91karmic payback.=92=92 You don=92t have to be Vincent Price to play this most extreme (and endless) game. Organizers say that most ghoulpoolers are between 20 and 40 and that as many women play as men. =91=91They=92re the people next door,=92=92= says Maruby, who has more than 80 players in his Dying for Dollars pool, which costs $25 a year (=91=91just pennies a day=92=92) to enter. =91=91They just= have a different slant on things.=92=92 Ghoulpoolers pore through newspapers and magazines and watch =91=91ET=92=92= for hints that someone famous might be heading for a =91=91dirt nap.=92=92= Street rioting in a Third World country whose ruler has been propped up by the CIA since the =9170s. A punk rocker who=92s off to Hazelden for his third detox. An actress who=92s back on chemo. An ex-ballplayer who=92s too frail to make it= to his Hall of Fame enshrinement.=20 They check the Noted Nonagenarians and Centenarians Web site for anyone on borrowed time. They consult the Dead People Server to make sure it was James Earl Ray and not James Earl Jones who crossed the Styx. And they=92re scrupulous about keeping up with the obits. =91=91First thing= every day, they log onto the CNN Web page and search for the word `dead,=92=92=92 says Ray Markey, who has 153 members in his Philadelphia Dead Pool and 250 who want in for next year.=20 One popular ghoulpool choice who has stayed in play so far is Milton Berle, who, at 89, is Great-Great-Granduncle Miltie by now; most participants have chips on his number. They=92re also betting against Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro, Kirk Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., the Rev. Billy Graham, Katharine Hepburn, Bob Hope, Saddam Hussein, Richard Pryor, Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Strom Thurmond, and Boris Yeltsin.=20 Betting on =91=91perennials=92=92 like Hope and Reagan, though, is like= betting on favorites at the race track. It=92s brainless and, usually, fruitless.=20 Stephen Hawking, the author-physicist with Lou Gehrig=92s disease, has already lived more than three times longer than medical tables say he should have. =91=91Keith Richards,=92=92 Maruby says. =91=91People have been losing= money on him for years.=92=92 =91=91Teasers=92=92 who keep eluding their demise (remember the endless= =91=91Franco takes turn for worse=92=92 headlines?) drive ghoulpoolers crazy. So= connoisseurs would rather score big with an exotic bet on someone like Pol Pot, whom most folks had forgotten was still alive until he died April 15.=20 Les Aspin, Herve Villechaize, and Lee Atwater all carried heavy points when they booked passage with Charon. This year=92s long shots include James Brown, Bob Dylan, Hugh Hefner, Jerry Lewis, and Frank Perdue, according to several Web sites.=20 Granted, betting humans as if they=92re Preakness entrants can require some soul-searching. =91=91Am I ready to put aside that puritanical side of me= that says this is disrespectful of the living, not to mention exploitive of the dead?=92=92 Ron Frey muses on The Death Pool.=20 The idea of =91=91harvesting stiffs=92=92 may be macabre, but graveyard= humor goes back at least as far as Lazarus. Shakespeare has dying Mercutio cracking wise (=91=91Ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man.=92=92) and Hamlet holding poor Yorick=92s skull as though it were a cantaloupe. So what=92s wrong with a decedents derby?=20 =91=91People say, `Oh my God, that=92s terrible,=92=92=92 says Melody= Rutherford. =91=91Then they say: `Bob Hope.=92=92=92 This story ran on page F01 of the Boston Globe on 07/08/98.=20 =A9 Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company. <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard =09 The MIT Press Journals =09 Five Cambridge Center =09 Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 13:06:45 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: People who Die MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is probably a pretty obvious response, but are there pools based on who will make it THROUGH a year? Could I bet, for example, that Ronald Reagan will make it to 1999, or that Queen Elizabeth will. A list of a hundred people over seventy, or with lethal diseases like Hawking's that you bet will live could be fun. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:26:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Balestrieri Subject: Re: Fuck Clarification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Miekal - Sorry to have misunderstood your Fuck Clarification post. I think you can see how it was possible to take it the wrong way. All I'm looking for here(for Alan and everyone else) is a little respect and civility in the way people respond to Listee's work. I think that Todd Baron's original post was slighting no matter how much damage control he does. His statement about how his post was not dismissive, as dismissive to him means not saying anything, is just silly. I think that on a List devoted to innovative work, calling a dense, encrypted poem "superfluous" and asking sarcastically if "space" can be wasted is mean-spirited. If he had reasons for disliking the work, they should have appeared in his original post. And Henry Gould's concerns, which amounted in my opinion to "if you can't stand the heat..." were off the mark. I'm sure that Alan welcomes genuine criticism, favorable or not, and that's why he posts his work here. If there are people on the List who strongly object 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," I wish they'd go somewhere else. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:21:54 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: challenging works One more salvo. Looking for a logical form or meaningful unity in a poem doesn't have to be caricatured as pedantic exercise; it doesn't have to be equated with digging for hidden meanings, allegories. Meaning isn't something your dry scholar "consumes". Consumption sounds too passive for the exercise of understanding involved. Nor does the fact that a poem might have a meaning-form mean it has become some kind of fast-food for dry intellects and lost its inherent poetry. Pound talked about logopeia - the "play" of the logic or meaning of poetry as one of its 3 main aspects (along with visual and sound values). So the meaning of a poem isn't some kind of workmanlike signpost for use-value, "what it really means", etc. In a poem the meanings are part of the overall structure set in motion, set in play. This independent play aspect is poetry's manner of being in the world - it's analogous to the free soul's awareness of mortality and consequent liberation from strictly material or selfish or momentary values. Poetry lives in this free atmosphere or "eternal life" - this is the meaning at the core of its meanings. - Pope Hank at the podium ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:43:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: Fuck Clarification In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:26:33 -0700 from Okay, Peter, you've quoted the List Guidelines twice now, you've scolded Todd a couple of times for what he said, you've told me I was off the mark, although I beat you to the "let's be civil" position by a day or so on this one - did it ever occur to you that you might meet Todd Baron halfway and try to engage specifically what he finds faulty with the work in question and defend the work if necessary - rather than continuing to suggest that he (Todd) has no right to feel that way on this list and he should shove off? What is "civil" in your mind? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1998 14:54:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: god's way of telling you to slow down Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" , but when I hear consume I think fire not eat. Something will get it wrong, love it. But why love whatever? You don't just eat anywhere. Big Mac fries and a shake, the meat of forty cows from four different countries. Play time, brought to you by the John D & Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, and Archer Daniels Midland. Somebody has to be getting it, or not. Have you stopped breast-beating your wife? Fifteen years before that there were razzle dazzle maggots, and with a shout, collecting coat hangers. The space between theory and practice (if you build on empty lots next to tenements are you liable when the tenements fall down). A comedy of fetish. I don't understand you either. Cue our Esty, you. Papers. Is for ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 17:41:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: challenging works In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, henry g wrote: > > - Pope Hank at the podium actually academics use podiums popes use pulpits. k |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | | in small amounts in many foods. | | The World of Chemistry Essentials | |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 11:57:02 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Juliana Spahr Subject: operaration s.a.c.k. attack MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I found this on English department bulletin board: Operation S.A.C.K. Attack Attacking da Continental Kollective If you consider yourself one Hawai'i writer den go pitch in and send your submissions to da following continental publication. Easy fo' ignore one guy, but wot about planny guys? So we go concentrate our efforts and let our voices be heard. No rush 'em now cuz we go send all one time li' dat so dat way get mo' chance. No sked 'em. We go get 'em. D-Day: August 5, 1998 postmark sponsored by: Hybolics Designated target: Plougshares Emerson College 100 Beacon St. Boston, MA 02116 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 19:34:33 -0400 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: Community work/Fuck Clarification In-Reply-To: Peter Balestrieri "Re: Fuck Clarification" (Jul 8, 11:26am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > All I'm looking > for here(for Alan and everyone else) is a little respect and civility > in the way people respond to Listee's work. I think that Todd Baron's > original post was slighting no matter how much damage control he does. > His statement about how his post was not dismissive, as dismissive to > him means not saying anything, is just silly. I think that on a List > devoted to innovative work, calling a dense, encrypted poem > "superfluous" and asking sarcastically if "space" can be wasted is > mean-spirited. If he had reasons for disliking the work, they should > have appeared in his original post. And Henry Gould's concerns, which > amounted in my opinion to "if you can't stand the heat..." were off > the mark. I'm sure that Alan welcomes genuine criticism, favorable or > not, and that's why he posts his work here. If there are people on the > List who strongly object 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," I wish > they'd go somewhere else. This is community work? The one who phrased those list guidelines just might disagree with your last remarks there. The opposition (though one would hope thoughtful and empathetic) also serves a useful purpose in making us become strong and healthy innovators. Certainly if dismissive means not saying anything then we're almost all of us guilty of being dismissive, even if not intentionally so, given the nature of this electronic forum that we share. It is reasonable to assume that work one has invested so much in should be received with respect if not just silence (indifference?). Not all remarks constitute "criticism" either, but may certainly constitute opposition (and very likely an assertion of one's tastes). Yet one always has the opportunity for counter-criticism, or counterattacks, which some here exercise to the utmost. But the reception of criticism or comment here has always been a matter of who (as in "some may, but others cannot"). These affairs have all the flavor of a political or popularity contest, which result in the unmasking of affiliations, preferences, and comments that sound as if they are simply saying "remember me for good when I come into your kingdom." The rest is just community work. William ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 23:15:34 -0400 Reply-To: CD Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CD Subject: Poems for the Millenium.... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. I can sort of understand not wanting to publish the Wasteland . I say sort of. But I don't really agree, but I understand sort of. But not one poem in either volume by Eliot, now isn't that pushing a point too far - not that I am sure what the point is. Is this an oversight on the part of the editors, is it an attempt to deny Eliot his rightful place as a great poet while at the same time vaguely (there are a few words which state that Eliot's work did play a seminal role... etc... ) acknowledging his greatness? Eliot's poetics, voice, and stylistic ideas have influenced [and will continue to influence] poets in all cultures. Why do the editors Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris support this absence? Yet they publish poems by Pound. I can't figure it out. Pound was an outright fascist at one point yet he gets published in anthology which claims to be a voice of the avant-garde, of the margins, of the ethno-poetics of the native cultures around the world, yet Eliot does not get printed. Strange editorial policy. Is this a sort of reverse sovietism in poetics? Of course I am being polemical, and this establisment of the so-called avant-garde as the true voice of a revolutionary poetics strikes me as a type of poetic resentiment. CD. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 23:34:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Joris, Rothenberg, Eliot Comments: To: Poetics List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To my mind, PFTM doesn't *attempt* to be a comprehensive collection of *all* the "great literature" extant--one wd. need the proverbial red wheelbarrow to carry such. Rather, it presents galleries, and has brought to my attention many incisive, surreal, and just plain jiggy-with-it poetries I hadn't been able to find anywhere else. Eliot is pretty firmly enstellated, & I don't see how any attempt to "deny his greatness" (even if such had been their intent, which it isn't) could remotely succeed. I will be returning to both volumes of PTFM a lot for inspiration, historical perspective, good reading--and to my mind J&R deserve worship for simply making an anthology that doesn't have those goddamn headnotes. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 00:10:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: diversify thy portfolio MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII sayeth Cornholio. Check the archives. Eliot costs big bucks, Pound less so. Just try and anthologize Eliot. Bet you wouldn't get much Jarry, Schwitters, Yaqui Deer Song or Bessie Smith with what you had left, not to mention David Jones! I'm politicized, you're politicized. JD ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 20:30:14 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: a confusion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "At this point, a confusion between the aspects of probability and rationality is easy. For the incorporation of some empirical generalization into a theory, thus linking it with all the other laws forming part of such a theory, has always been believed to add more inductive strength to an hypothesis, or to increase its inductive probability, notwithstanding the possibility of subsequent overthrow of the hypothesis in question. But the logic of such a 'consilience of inductions' (as it is often called) is still quite unsettled. And in any case, we have already shown that although Kant's position may have gained plausibility from this conception, it was primarily concerned, not with the question of the strength of inductive generalization regarded as a law, but rather with the question of what made such a genralization into a law, treated as a problem of logic and semantics rather than the pragmatics of induction."---from Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science by Gerd Buchdahl---cp ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 00:50:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium.... Comments: To: CD In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Golly, I think _every_ anthology ought to have TSE--I mean, after all, it's so hard to find an anthology of 20th-c. poetry that has Eliot in it... CD, I'm going to be generous and assume you're being disingenuous here (in some tangled way). Joris & Rothenberg's flawed (and what anthology isn't?) but really very important volumes are all about promoting an _alternative_ version of what modernism and postm. were/are about, one that goes against the grain of what the academy and the New Yorker and other venues assume to be literary history. Eliot is as deeply embedded in that institutional version of poetic history as Longfellow was in 1898. Why Pound?--because, despite his fascism and anti-Semitism, Pound was an incredibly fertile source of poetic suggestions, methods, and instigations throughout the first 3/4 (at least) of the century, not least to counter-cultural poets of the '60s who rejected his politics whole cloth. (And why can't one be a fascist & anti-Semite and yet still occupy those coveted "margins"?) "Deny Eliot his status as a great poet"--please. For every Rothenberg and Joris who decide that the space taken up by Eliot's overanthologized and universally available work would be better given to someone else who isn't being simultaneously taught in 4000 college classrooms, there are hordes of academics, talking heads, and arbiters of taste who still kowtow to him as much as they did back in the 1950s. Unfortunately, Eliot doesn't have anything to worry about--yet. Mark Scroggins On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, CD wrote: > I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium > has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. I can sort of understand not wanting to > publish the Wasteland . I say sort of. But I don't really agree, but I > understand sort of. But not one poem in either volume by Eliot, now isn't > that pushing a point too far - not that I am sure what the point is. Is > this an oversight on the part of the editors, is it an attempt to deny > Eliot his rightful place as a great poet while at the same time vaguely > (there are a few words which state that Eliot's work did play a seminal > role... etc... ) acknowledging his greatness? Eliot's poetics, voice, and > stylistic ideas have influenced [and will continue to influence] poets in > all cultures. Why do the editors Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris > support this absence? Yet they publish poems by Pound. I can't figure it > out. Pound was an outright fascist at one point yet he gets published in > anthology which claims to be a voice of the avant-garde, of the margins, > of the ethno-poetics of the native cultures around the world, yet Eliot > does not get printed. Strange editorial policy. Is this a sort of reverse > sovietism in poetics? Of course I am being polemical, and this > establisment of the so-called avant-garde as the true voice of a > revolutionary > poetics strikes me as a type of poetic resentiment. > CD. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 00:25:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: diversify thy portfolio In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is exactly right. I don't remember if this came up on the list, but I know from Jerry that Eliot's estate wanted an outrageous amount of money. Which is why, on p. 382 of volumne I, where "The Wasteland" should be, it says "Much anthologized, Eliot's poem is easily available in _The Complete Poems and Plays_ & in many representative anthologies of American modernism." After which the commentary underlines its importance, contra the opinion of WCW. At 12:10 AM 7/9/98 -0400, you wrote: >sayeth Cornholio. Check the archives. Eliot costs big bucks, Pound less >so. Just try and anthologize Eliot. Bet you wouldn't get much Jarry, >Schwitters, Yaqui Deer Song or Bessie Smith with what you had left, not to >mention David Jones! > >I'm politicized, you're politicized. >JD > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 00:57:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Eliot etc In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19980709002529.0077a1c8@mail.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This is exactly right. I don't remember if this came up on the list, but I >know from Jerry that Eliot's estate wanted an outrageous amount of money. >Which is why, on p. 382 of volumne I, where "The Wasteland" should be, it >says "Much anthologized, Eliot's poem is easily available in _The Complete >Poems and Plays_ & in many representative anthologies of American >modernism." This is sad but true. I wanted to quote a couple lines in my recent history book, from a novel by D.H. Lawrence, and the estate wanted to soak me good, the keepers of the estate being, I think, the relatives of the guy that DHL's significant other was fooling with while he was dying on the Continent. So I didnt use the quotation, even though I had taken it without asking and quoted it in an earlier book. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 17:22:49 +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: Dust ring looks like solar system MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dust ring looks like solar system Zoomy, pokey, sir, too good of viscount: so solid o... It's not permissable to shake loose ill banter, checkered edgeland, nervous spa fronds or pool, or those data huts: As new balanced odors waiting strength compose this sequel, and stet, copair dreams for control: so Oakland, so I-thought-of-ripping-the-roof-off with champagne-bubble mythistorical optics: permission to snore, sir? Fire ahead gears, null fenestrations, fantast sea, a lone substantive night, again trees on trees as if there may be there: As what club equals instead one motel and its other: perpetual in the star -ry tympanic bones stacked with rods: "It's real intimate, like having house guests, except everyone out here helps pay the mortgage..." Where did going go nowhere? ashes sprinkled and rang, sonant, to see one, none, no one, you, only you ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 17:28:57 +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: [ugh!] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit for "Dust ring..." in line 4, read: permissible ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 04:28:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CD Subject: MillELIOT: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I like that a bad word play that yields the Possum's name. Ha. Well. let me quote Deleuze. 'Objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection to me I want to say: Ok Oky lets go onto something else...Objections have never contributed to anything..... So as for the poetry of TS ELIOT. I quote Pound: For three years out of key with his time He strove to resusciate the dead art Of poetry.... Eliot Succeeded in resusciating the 'dead art'... And as for Eliot not creating 'experimental threads' well even Kenneth Rexroth did not deny that.... There are at least 5 references in Pound's Cantos where he refers to the Possum as being a better poet.... so that shld. lay to rest all this falderall about Pound being innovative and Eliot not being innovative.... Clearly the editors of this 2 volume anthos. Have Erred and Big time. However 'I've gotta use words when I talk to you. But here's what I was going to say. Death or life or life or death Death is life and life is death I gotta use words when I talk to you But if you understand or if you dont That's nothing to me and nothing to you We all gotta do what we gotta do But that's nothing to me and nothing to you.... Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Hurry Up Please Hurry Up Please It's Time Ladies and Gentleman MR . T. S. Eliot Ghost at the door and he's smiling that radiant smile of exclusion.... And that empty space in that 2 volume book makes the Place Even Larger by virtue of His Work's Absence Hurry Up Hurry It's Time America American Quit Denying your own Great Shamans Greenblatt says: I wanted to speak with the Dead So the Burial of the Dead Shanti Shanti Shanti P.S. Frank O'Hara laughed when he heard about How badly William Carlos Williams had taken the publication of the Wasteland Man. Eliot he do the Police in Different Voices.... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 04:18:09 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alice Notley Subject: Laura Moriarty Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Could someone send me Laura Moriarty's e-mail address? Thank you. Or Laura, if you yourself are out there, I'm trying to reach you but Leslie appears to have given me the wrong address. Alice Notley ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 04:32:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CD Subject: galleriess.....P.S. In-Reply-To: <199807090824.EAA29629@alcor.concordia.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > poetics strikes me as a type of poetic resentiment. > CD. > From: CD To: Gwyn McVay Subject: gallery...trope.... this whole trope which the editors use... galleries .... it does not work... poems are not paintings... this is a Form of Reverse and Open Repression of a great Poet. Because of what? because of the Incredible influence of both his Poetics, His politics, and the critical schools which came into existence in the name of a few ideas which Eliot bounced around.... it is like that silly comment of Williams... about the Wasteland setting back literature so many years... that was William's Take. Not Hart Cranes. Not Joyce's They include Joyce and try thereby to Appropriate Joyce into their Notion of the Avant-Garde. Joyce abhorred the avant-garde. Joyce thought Eliot was a great poet when he read the Wasteland.... this is nonsense and Censorship of the First Order It is very American as well.... A gallery with out T.S. Eliot?/ Come now this is lopsided evangelical avant-gardism. It is like having a great International Show of Painting and I am walking through the Gallery and the Note says Sorry Eliot is TOo Big. But we Published His Pal Pound . Hahah This is too facile. I have been reading Rothenberg's anthologies [and I own them copies of great anthologies by him] for a few years now. Great , marvelous. I like Rothenberg's poems. From time to time. ad its great that he printed that countess... very nice... but./... Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney have done similar anthologies and neither of them would dream of doing Eliot the absentee number. It strikes me as ResentIment. I use the french spelling of the word as used by Nietzsche. I think they made a big mistake. Very big critical Error. It surprises that the critics who were evidently consulted while this anthology was being prepared did not speak up on behalf of the poetry of Eliot. I say ONE Poem in their Gallery would have Done the Trick. Say the Hollow Men, or Preludes. I think it is really bad. That sort of thing by the way would Never happen in Canada. I think this is an example of an American school of Poetics i.e. the 'other tradition' as seen and gathered by Rothenberg, and that because this anthology Deliberately Leaves Out TS Eliot it Fails. It fails because it censors by Absence it fails because it is smug in its own assumptions. Those assumptions are the ones based on a rhetoric which has no relevance to the larger world of contemporary writing now.... In fact this anthology is over-rated. Most of these poems are available to anyone who seeks them out. And besides it is TOO LARge to Carry around. Okay I am being over the top. But let it be said that if Poetry is going to be read or heard it Must be Portable. Thank god for Lawrence Ferlinghetti. **I Say Beware of the Avant-Garde. which keeps out the Great Poets in the Name of Resentiment.// Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 01:56:12 -0400 (EDT) From: CD To: "T. S. Eliot Discussion forum." Subject: Censorship of Eliot's poetry A real example of censorship is this anthology published in 1995. Poems for the Millenium edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. There are 2 Volumes. They gather all sorts of poetry from all around the world much of it translated of course. Amazingly there is not ONE POEM by ELIOT/ Pound there is. And plenty of others. They are the real censors of Eliot's poetry. Censorship by Absence. I think it is the poetics of resentment Of envy, and a complete loss of critical detachment. Another boring book which hails itself in the name of the Millenium No less! No Poetry By Eliot. It staggered this reader. all done in the name of the avant-garde. Poems for the Millenium Vol 1 &2. University of California Press. 1995 Vol 1. and Vol. 2 96 or 97. Exasperated, Cd. Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 01:23:48 -0400 (EDT) From: CD To: cwduff@alcor.concordia.ca Subject: Gotta I gotta use words when I talk to you. Worship is for churchs and other like-minded institutions. Not for literary endeavours. I suggest that this anthology marks the new intolerance and an attempt to Censor a Great Poet by Absence. Yes, this anthology will be remembered. But as a failure of nerve, a failure of will, a failure . The trope of gallery does not cut mustard. With this reader. Poetry is made of words , and not with facile analogies to a gallery... this is pathetic. A pathetic fallacy of the worst sort. Well here is what I say: Words Not ideas Not politics . Make poetry And Eliot's poetry is going to be around for a Long Long Time Maybe ever Forever. Whereas so much of the dross printed will vanish forever forgotten unremembered never having been worth the reader's breath or the auditor's hearing. I suggest there is a new anxiety at work here an anxiety of resentment . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 05:07:33 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: galleriess.....P.S. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-07-09 04:32:27 EDT, CD writes: << it fails because it is smug in its own assumptions. Those assumptions are the ones based on a rhetoric which has no relevance >> Apt description of yr complaint. Have you opened vol 1 to pg 382? Mark Scroggins & Mark Weiss have alreay said all that needs to be said on this subject, but lemme quote the last sentence there: "While not reprinted here, *The Waste Land* has an obvious place within the mappings represented by the present volume." "Don't complain" -- Billie Holiday --cs ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 02:27:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Poems for the Millenium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One last word from me about the anthology. Of course there are things left out, for all sorts of reasons, that I, for one, think should be there. But there are also a great many poets gathered with whose work I was not familiar before. So, while there may be an occasional lapse in the presentation of whatever canon, there is also a large extension of the canon. But that speaks to the anthology as a collection of greatest hits. I read it rather as a defining of the field as experienced by the editors, and what they present is consistent and complex, each of the century's moments seen larger, I think, than they've been seen before, and each of the poets contextualized within that large frame. Not a bad accomplishment. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 07:24:10 -0400 Reply-To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: galleriess.....P.S. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >>>And besides it is TOO LARge to Carry around. Great! So nobody will try to steal my copy and thus incur bad karma! Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 07:47:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: Re: MillELIOT: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, CD wrote: > > There are at least 5 references in Pound's Cantos > > where he refers to the Possum as being a better poet.... > > so that shld. lay to rest all this falderall about > > Pound being innovative and Eliot not being innovative.... > > Clearly the editors of this 2 volume anthos. Have Erred > > and Big time. > ??? In other words, because Pound says so, it is so? Then should we also believe, say, Pound's political opinions because he says so? This is hardly a reason... Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 06:03:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here is a guy who wants to use words like "resentiment" but apparently does not know that Eliot wrote a poem called "The Waste Land," not (as Mr. Duff has it in three separate posts) "the Wasteland." He also does not know how to spell millennium. CD wrote: > > I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium > has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. I can sort of understand not wanting to > publish the Wasteland . I say sort of. But I don't really agree, but I > understand sort of. But not one poem in either volume by Eliot, now isn't > that pushing a point too far - not that I am sure what the point is. Is > this an oversight on the part of the editors, is it an attempt to deny > Eliot his rightful place as a great poet while at the same time vaguely > (there are a few words which state that Eliot's work did play a seminal > role... etc... ) acknowledging his greatness? Eliot's poetics, voice, and > stylistic ideas have influenced [and will continue to influence] poets in > all cultures. Why do the editors Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris > support this absence? Yet they publish poems by Pound. I can't figure it > out. Pound was an outright fascist at one point yet he gets published in > anthology which claims to be a voice of the avant-garde, of the margins, > of the ethno-poetics of the native cultures around the world, yet Eliot > does not get printed. Strange editorial policy. Is this a sort of reverse > sovietism in poetics? Of course I am being polemical, and this > establisment of the so-called avant-garde as the true voice of a > revolutionary > poetics strikes me as a type of poetic resentiment. > CD. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 09:44:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: geology for the Millenium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" there are the Alps, CD. Sit down, and wait for them to crumble! >> Yet they publish poems by Pound. I can't figure it >> out. Pound was an outright fascist at one point yet he gets published in >> anthology which claims to be a voice of the avant-garde, of the margins, >> of the ethno-poetics of the native cultures around the world, yet Eliot >> does not get printed. You prefer, then, less outright fascists & anti-Semites, like Eliot? - 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: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 09:40:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Rothenberg, Joris, Eliot In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I thought the strategy in volume I -- here's where we'd put the Waste Land, if we had the money, but we don't, and anyway it's all over the damn place, insert your copy here -- was brilliant and hilarious. Managed to include Eliot in any meaningful sense of the term, which does not, in Eliot's case, mean "make available" (what poet is more so?). 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: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 07:12:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: MillELIOT: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" read a little eliot, the wasteland is dedicated to pound, il migliore fabbro, the better maker, pound rewrote the wasteland billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:59:34 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium.... In-Reply-To: <199807090401.WAA07848@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" An interesting question, but one that seems to miss some points. One of which Gwynn responded to, & I agree with him that it's what IS there that counts, more than what's missing. But I would hazard that the one poem of Eliot's they would have wanted was 'The Wasteland," & that's the one that is most difficyult & expensive to get. I liked the way they handled that problem: remarking on its importance & sending readers to it (those few who didn't already know it almost by heart). Most of the readers who pick up the anthologies will already 'know' Eliot, & especially 'The Wasteland'; many, like me, won't know all the connections to other poetries Joris & Ropthenberg provide. That is one of the superb values of the anthologies, & I'm grateful for them... Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 By stress and syllable by change-rhyme and contour we let the long line pace equal awkward to its period. The short line we refine and keep for candor. Robert Duncan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:05:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: list history MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII About once a year someone flies onto the list, says it's crazy to read Pound, you all must be evilly out of your minds, where's x, where's y, gets heaped upon by the list, disappears. I say fleadh. What about Olson, isn't it evilly out of the mind of our times to read this Folsom Cave to now nut? Or Duncan, meadowhead. Perverse! Or Koch or Schuyler, what do they mean by that tone, those tones? Don't even think of discussing an author born after 1934. Better to put all the old boys away and only read the poetry of young women. Modern poetry begins with Dickinson and ends with Marianne Moore. Postmodern poetry begins with Niedecker and ends with Harryette Mullen. The poetry of young women begins with ... and then what if the discussion were something other than non-overlapping lists? Imagine a pressure on the subscribers of this list to include a) an original observation on something written in a poem b) a syllogism drawing on two other listmembers' observations c) something political yet non-complicit with the texts of evil (I'm not sure I know what that means but since this is a language-poetry zone I thought I would gesture?) d) blah blah parody blah blah parody e) something anything! besides lists, or hobbyhorses... or is American poetry really completely empty of thought. At least some poets try not to help you fall asleep...must...stay...awake... Is for ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:15:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: list history Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jordan! Heretic! Stop. Stop. I did not drag my own mentor beyond this American tree. <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:07:30 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: list history In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:05:07 -0400 from You're absolutely on the fleadh there Jordan. You do Carnival, I'll do Lent. And then again: what about Eric Blarnes? Why is he always left out? Of both millennia - I mean, ALL THREE?? Come on! The poet may wear tweed, smoke a pipe & his underwear inside out, but is that any reason? As Robert Duncan wrote somewhere at least twice, and I quote: Anthologize! Anthologize your mother! - Jack Spandrift or somebody p.s. Eliot actually called Eric last week from the Purgatory Men's Room to complain about not being in enough anthologies - Blarnes said he'd talk to Sylvia about it and give Jack Kerouac's left second-removed uncle Spam a call too just in case there's a case there. Anthologize your cousin Vinnie! hey, and remember: it's Waste Land, The with TWO spaces between! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:32:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 8 Jul 1998 CD I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium >has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. ******** I'm going to be a bit sarcastic here CD, so please don't be offended, BUT You need to be careful. You kind of goofed here in some way. There's a translation by T.S. Eliot in the first volume of a St.-John Perse poem. Is this to be ignored if you feel you must stand by your statement "not one poem by T.S. Eliot?" Think of it this way. When you first move into a new house in a new neigborhood , how do you get to know the neighbors? Do you first go and ACTUALLY MEET THEM? What kind of effort are you making? Or do you talk to the IN crowd first, the Cool neighbors, to get the scoop?Hey dude, Like what's up with the guy and his family across the street? Is he like from Persia or something? Fill me in. He and his family keep to himself. I said hello and he like turns his back on me. And his kids keep running through my yardl And his two daughters. What's up with them? They COULDN'T have come from the same Womb. No way. ***** Have you already formed opinions soon after moving in, based on the first person who talks with any kind of authority, followed up with GOSSIP and Hearsay? Or do you only talk to those who welcome you to the neighborhood with a fresh-baked WELCOME pie? Is it like, I mean THEY need to make the effort. I'm new here afterall. And hey if you change your mind I prefer brownies or choclate chip cookies. **** You've mentioned the T.S. Eliot 'commentary ' on page 382 of Volume One of _ Poems For The Millennium_.. Now, turn TO THE VERY NEXT PAGE. There you go. That's it. That wasn't so bad was it ? Page 383 is a selection "from ANABASIS" (St.-John Perse). Translated from the French by T.S. ELIOT ! Yes right next door. Who could have known. I mean its in such small print. The acknowlegement, that is. Still though, the very NEXT PAGE? CD? Hello?McFly? Anybody home? Just came to say hello, and I brought you some brownies, as you so desire, but, well ok you like them,great, except the recipe has been in my family for YEARS.And we kind of made an unspoken family PACT to not give the recipe away, or use it for monetary gain. Sorry can't give you the recipe, but I'll be sure to make some for you from time to time. Don't be a stranger. Welcome. **** Is this not a poem by T.S. Eliot? For heaven's sake the first poem after the editor's (as you describe it) dismissive commentary on T.S. Eliot, IS a translation by T.S. Eliot. (Ok. So I made my point!) Doesn't that count? Or is this ONLY a poem by St.-John Perse? Isn't this like saying you didn't know that the person who lived RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO YOU ALL OF THESE YEARS was your blood relative? If I only knew!,you might protest. I would have at least made more of an effort. Surely! I know myself better than that. All this time wasted. Who'd of thought such a thing. I mean That guy was SO stand offish. My relatives aren't like that, well for the most part. And he looks Mediterranean. How could I know. I mean did my MOM give a baby up for adoption and not tell anyone? Besides. All the neighbors agreed. He likes to stir up trouble in the neighborhood just for the sake of causing trouble. Everybody knows THAT. Who could have known he was related to me, however distantly?. I must admit I'm offended by that mailbox he's using. It's sunk into a Bathtub! Does he think this cornball stuff is avant-garde or something? Couldn't he have at least used a bathtub without rust stains on it?I mean come on. I guess I should be grateful he didn't plant flowers in a toilet. And yes, Ok he does trim his bushes frequently. There is a sense of decorum at times. BUT NOW LOOK! that sign in his yard, he's voting for Leonard Steiner. We don't need to vote someone like that again, if you know what I mean, on to the State Planning Commision. I don't know. I just sensed something was wrong from the beginning. Department of Plants and Structures maybe, but surely not a STATE commission job. PL-EE-ase. And those kids of his.Did I mention that already? AHHYYY! So loud. Always cutting through my yard. Couldn't they use the sidewalk? Granted his wife has hands like butter, but I was NEW in town, I didn't know anybody, THEY should have made the effort. **** To give you the benefit of the doubt,CD, maybe you just moved next door and the neighbor IS kind of weird. Like I better stay away, for now. But you would NEVER let too much time pass before making an effort.? Say it isn't so. Or , like me, you checked the Index first, for your favorite poets and yes were disappointed to not find some of your favorite poets, and I thought Joris and Rothenberg were respected poets and translators. Could they be so narrow minded? You a fan of Jack Spicer? Isn't he an important poet as we face the millennium? Check out the section on Garcia-Lorca. The poem "Ode for Walt Whitman ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:34:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 8 Jul 1998 CD I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium >has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. ******** I'm going to be a bit sarcastic here CD, so please don't be offended, BUT You need to be careful. You kind of goofed here in some way. There's a translation by T.S. Eliot in the first volume of a St.-John Perse poem. Is this to be ignored if you feel you must stand by your statement "not one poem by T.S. Eliot?" Think of it this way. When you first move into a new house in a new neigborhood , how do you get to know the neighbors? Do you first go and ACTUALLY MEET THEM? What kind of effort are you making? Or do you talk to the IN crowd first, the Cool neighbors, to get the scoop?Hey dude, Like what's up with the guy and his family across the street? Is he like from Persia or something? Fill me in. He and his family keep to himself. I said hello and he like turns his back on me. And his kids keep running through my yardl And his two daughters. What's up with them? They COULDN'T have come from the same Womb. No way. ***** Have you already formed opinions soon after moving in, based on the first person who talks with any kind of authority, followed up with GOSSIP and Hearsay? Or do you only talk to those who welcome you to the neighborhood with a fresh-baked WELCOME pie? Is it like, I mean THEY need to make the effort. I'm new here afterall. And hey if you change your mind I prefer brownies or choclate chip cookies. **** You've mentioned the T.S. Eliot 'commentary ' on page 382 of Volume One of _ Poems For The Millennium_.. Now, turn TO THE VERY NEXT PAGE. There you go. That's it. That wasn't so bad was it ? Page 383 is a selection "from ANABASIS" (St.-John Perse). Translated from the French by T.S. ELIOT ! Yes right next door. Who could have known. I mean its in such small print. The acknowlegement, that is. Still though, the very NEXT PAGE? CD? Hello?McFly? Anybody home? Just came to say hello, and I brought you some brownies, as you so desire, but, well ok you like them,great, except the recipe has been in my family for YEARS.And we kind of made an unspoken family PACT to not give the recipe away, or use it for monetary gain. Sorry can't give you the recipe, but I'll be sure to make some for you from time to time. Don't be a stranger. Welcome. **** Is this not a poem by T.S. Eliot? For heaven's sake the first poem after the editor's (as you describe it) dismissive commentary on T.S. Eliot, IS a translation by T.S. Eliot. (Ok. So I made my point!) Doesn't that count? Or is this ONLY a poem by St.-John Perse? Isn't this like saying you didn't know that the person who lived RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO YOU ALL OF THESE YEARS was your blood relative? If I only knew!,you might protest. I would have at least made more of an effort. Surely! I know myself better than that. All this time wasted. Who'd of thought such a thing. I mean That guy was SO stand offish. My relatives aren't like that, well for the most part. And he looks Mediterranean. How could I know. I mean did my MOM give a baby up for adoption and not tell anyone? Besides. All the neighbors agreed. He likes to stir up trouble in the neighborhood just for the sake of causing trouble. Everybody knows THAT. Who could have known he was related to me, however distantly?. I must admit I'm offended by that mailbox he's using. It's sunk into a Bathtub! Does he think this cornball stuff is avant-garde or something? Couldn't he have at least used a bathtub without rust stains on it?I mean come on. I guess I should be grateful he didn't plant flowers in a toilet. And yes, Ok he does trim his bushes frequently. There is a sense of decorum at times. BUT NOW LOOK! that sign in his yard, he's voting for Leonard Steiner. We don't need to vote someone like that again, if you know what I mean, on to the State Planning Commision. I don't know. I just sensed something was wrong from the beginning. Department of Plants and Structures maybe, but surely not a STATE commission job. PL-EE-ase. And those kids of his.Did I mention that already? AHHYYY! So loud. Always cutting through my yard. Couldn't they use the sidewalk? Granted his wife has hands like butter, but I was NEW in town, I didn't know anybody, THEY should have made the effort. **** To give you the benefit of the doubt,CD, maybe you just moved next door and the neighbor IS kind of weird. Like I better stay away, for now. But you would NEVER let too much time pass before making an effort.? Say it isn't so. Or , like me, you checked the Index first, for your favorite poets and yes were disappointed to not find some of your favorite poets, and I thought Joris and Rothenberg were respected poets and translators. Could they be so narrow minded? You a fan of Jack Spicer? Isn't he an important poet as we face the millennium? Check out the section on Garcia-Lorca. The poem "Ode for Walt Whitman".is a Spicer translation. *************** OK. So let's get serious, because if I made the same error in a public forum, I'd not like to be condescended to with a tale , that only kind of works as an analogy. Volume One came out in 1995, and although I've owned my copy for only a year now, I only realized that T.S. Eliot IS in the volume ( I may have mentioned this already) and that would be about 3 months ago. So I must fess up. But at least I got to look clever for a few paragraphs . Furthermore, I kind of doubt that the poem's placement is coincidental. I mean do you believe that these volumes were rushed to print? What kinds of things are going on in these anthologies. PLEASE. READ THE POEMS. Surely EVERYTHING matters.Joris and Rothenberg are poets and translators, each. They would have known about these things, and it is not an accident where and how the poems are placed. This is a work in some way too. What is going on?Obviously we can not NOT suppress our critical engagement with anything for very long, but it takes some time to come to terms with whether or not such an Ambitious project could possibly live up to its claims. George Oppen made this very interesting observation in a letter in 1966: "I think that poetry which is of any value is always revelatory. Not that it reveals or could reveal Everything, but it must reveal something ( I would like to say 'Something ) and for the first time The confusion of ' must not mean but be ' comes from this : it is a knowledge which is hard to hold, it is held in the poem , a meaning grasped again on re-reading - - One can seldom describe the meaning - - but sometimes one has stumbled on the statement made in another way." A meaning grasped again on REREADING. I wonder how much time I could have saved if EVEN ONE high school English teacher would have mentioned this to our classes. It only seems like an Obvious statement. Yet how many give up on a poem if "they don't get it " right off? Or after a short amount of time? **** What for example do you think of Eliot Weinberger's commentary on the Octavio Paz poem "Hymn Among The Ruins" with a translation by William Carlos Williams. Isn't it fascinating that Paz's principal translator ( of his poems at least ) gets to take issue (somewhat) with William Carlos Williams' translation? This kind of thing can only happen in an anthology which has been worked and re-worked, and then entrusted to readers. There is a lot goi ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:36:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 8 Jul 1998 CD I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium >has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. ******** I'm going to be a bit sarcastic here CD, so please don't be offended, BUT You need to be careful. You kind of goofed here in some way. There's a translation by T.S. Eliot in the first volume of a St.-John Perse poem. Is this to be ignored if you feel you must stand by your statement "not one poem by T.S. Eliot?" Think of it this way. When you first move into a new house in a new neigborhood , how do you get to know the neighbors? Do you first go and ACTUALLY MEET THEM? What kind of effort are you making? Or do you talk to the IN crowd first, the Cool neighbors, to get the scoop?Hey dude, Like what's up with the guy and his family across the street? Is he like from Persia or something? Fill me in. He and his family keep to himself. I said hello and he like turns his back on me. And his kids keep running through my yardl And his two daughters. What's up with them? They COULDN'T have come from the same Womb. No way. ***** Have you already formed opinions soon after moving in, based on the first person who talks with any kind of authority, followed up with GOSSIP and Hearsay? Or do you only talk to those who welcome you to the neighborhood with a fresh-baked WELCOME pie? Is it like, I mean THEY need to make the effort. I'm new here afterall. And hey if you change your mind I prefer brownies or choclate chip cookies. **** You've mentioned the T.S. Eliot 'commentary ' on page 382 of Volume One of _ Poems For The Millennium_.. Now, turn TO THE VERY NEXT PAGE. There you go. That's it. That wasn't so bad was it ? Page 383 is a selection "from ANABASIS" (St.-John Perse). Translated from the French by T.S. ELIOT ! Yes right next door. Who could have known. I mean its in such small print. The acknowlegement, that is. Still though, the very NEXT PAGE? CD? Hello?McFly? Anybody home? Just came to say hello, and I brought you some brownies, as you so desire, but, well ok you like them,great, except the recipe has been in my family for YEARS.And we kind of made an unspoken family PACT to not give the recipe away, or use it for monetary gain. Sorry can't give you the recipe, but I'll be sure to make some for you from time to time. Don't be a stranger. Welcome. **** Is this not a poem by T.S. Eliot? For heaven's sake the first poem after the editor's (as you describe it) dismissive commentary on T.S. Eliot, IS a translation by T.S. Eliot. (Ok. So I made my point!) Doesn't that count? Or is this ONLY a poem by St.-John Perse? Isn't this like saying you didn't know that the person who lived RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO YOU ALL OF THESE YEARS was your blood relative? If I only knew!,you might protest. I would have at least made more of an effort. Surely! I know myself better than that. All this time wasted. Who'd of thought such a thing. I mean That guy was SO stand offish. My relatives aren't like that, well for the most part. And he looks Mediterranean. How could I know. I mean did my MOM give a baby up for adoption and not tell anyone? Besides. All the neighbors agreed. He likes to stir up trouble in the neighborhood just for the sake of causing trouble. Everybody knows THAT. Who could have known he was related to me, however distantly?. I must admit I'm offended by that mailbox he's using. It's sunk into a Bathtub! Does he think this cornball stuff is avant-garde or something? Couldn't he have at least used a bathtub without rust stains on it?I mean come on. I guess I should be grateful he didn't plant flowers in a toilet. And yes, Ok he does trim his bushes frequently. There is a sense of decorum at times. BUT NOW LOOK! that sign in his yard, he's voting for Leonard Steiner. We don't need to vote someone like that again, if you know what I mean, on to the State Planning Commision. I don't know. I just sensed something was wrong from the beginning. Department of Plants and Structures maybe, but surely not a STATE commission job. PL-EE-ase. And those kids of his.Did I mention that already? AHHYYY! So loud. Always cutting through my yard. Couldn't they use the sidewalk? Granted his wife has hands like butter, but I was NEW in town, I didn't know anybody, THEY should have made the effort. **** To give you the benefit of the doubt,CD, maybe you just moved next door and the neighbor IS kind of weird. Like I better stay away, for now. But you would NEVER let too much time pass before making an effort.? Say it isn't so. Or , like me, you checked the Index first, for your favorite poets and yes were disappointed to not find some of your favorite poets, and I thought Joris and Rothenberg were respected poets and translators. Could they be so narrow minded? You a fan of Jack Spicer? Isn't he an important poet as we face the millennium? Check out the section on Garcia-Lorca. The poem "Ode for Walt Whitman".is a Spicer translation. *************** OK. So let's get serious, because if I made the same error in a public forum, I'd not like to be condescended to with a tale , that only kind of works as an analogy. Volume One came out in 1995, and although I've owned my copy for only a year now, I only realized that T.S. Eliot IS in the volume ( I may have mentioned this already) and that would be about 3 months ago. So I must fess up. But at least I got to look clever for a few paragraphs . Furthermore, I kind of doubt that the poem's placement is coincidental. I mean do you believe that these volumes were rushed to print? What kinds of things are going on in these anthologies. PLEASE. READ THE POEMS. Surely EVERYTHING matters.Joris and Rothenberg are poets and translators, each. They would have known about these things, and it is not an accident where and how the poems are placed. This is a work in some way too. What is going on?Obviously we can not NOT suppress our critical engagement with anything for very long, but it takes some time to come to terms with whether or not such an Ambitious project could possibly live up to its claims. George Oppen made this very interesting observation in a letter in 1966: "I think that poetry which is of any value is always revelatory. Not that it reveals or could reveal Everything, but it must reveal something ( I would like to say 'Something ) and for the first time The confusion of ' must not mean but be ' comes from this : it is a knowledge which is hard to hold, it is held in the poem , a meaning grasped again on re-reading - - One can seldom describe the meaning - - but sometimes one has stumbled on the statement made in another way." A meaning grasped again on REREADING. I wonder how much time I could have saved if EVEN ONE high school English teacher would have mentioned this to our classes. It only seems like an Obvious statement. Yet how many give up on a poem if "they don't get it " right off? Or after a short amount of time? **** What for example do you think of Eliot Weinberger's commentary on the Octavio Paz poem "Hymn Among The Ruins" with a translation by William Carlos Williams. Isn't it fascinating that Paz's principal translator ( of his poems at least ) gets to take issue (somewhat) with William Carlos Williams' translation? This kind of thing can only happen in an anthology which has been worked and re-worked, and then entrusted to readers. There is a lot going on here which is uncovered if you are patient. Still not convinced? From "The Task of the Translator" by Walter Benjamin: "…a translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification, thus making both the original and the translation recognizable as fragments of a greater language, just as fragments are part of a vessel. For this very reason translation must in large measure refrain from wanting to communicate something, from rendering the sense, and in this the original is important to it only insofar as it has already relieved the translator and his translation of the effort of assembling and expressing what is to be conveyed. In the realm of translation, too, the words [in the beginning was the word] apply. On the other hand, as regards the meaning, the language of a translation can --- in gact, must -- let itself go, so that it gives voice to the intentio of the original not as reproduction but as harmony, as a supplement to the language in which it expresses itself, as its own kind of intentio. Therefore i t is not the highest praise of a translation, particularly in the age of its origin, to say that it reads as if it had originally been written in that language…" Ok. So you get the point. Or will . And when you do please let me know. Those brownies aren't so good. I wish the recipe wasn't secret.That way, Maybe I would know if there was something in them making me ill. Chris ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 18:45:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: on the millenium anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" while I'd be the last to criticize rothenberg & joris for leaving out eliot (and he's not really left out, as various people have noted in intriguing ways), I might be more bothered by the exclusion of spicer, yet, for everything I might disagree with there is something else which just amazes me. I'll point out two -- 1. In vol. 1, pp. 718-724, the amazing work of Yi Sang, whose work I had not known. The grace combined with eruptiveness of this work is simply groundbreaking -- and thanks here to Walter Lew for his translations which make entry into the work possible for those of us who don't read Korean. 2. In vol 2, pp. 728-732. Here I was ready to be disappointed, because to select from The Martyrology is to select from the best known and possibly one of the less 'experimental/alternative' (although I say this with immense admiration for this work) of bp Nichol. Yet what did Joris & Rothenberg choose from The Martyrology? They chose work from the sequences of "Scraptures," which are perhaps the most adventurous, least easily reconciled part of this work by Nichol, fully representing his good humor, engaging and generous spirit, and rebellious, endless innovation. I think that all who read these anthologies carefully, and do not read to see their favorites (though yes, I admit to looking for Nichol, one of my favorites), or who is and who is not included, will likely find scores of examples like this. The anthology is a wonder. Thank you, Jerry and Pierre. I would love to hear more consideration of what is IN these anthologies rather than what is not in them. Particularly, anyone's take on what surprised them of the inclusions, what was new and exciting to them, or what raised particular questions for them. charles charles alexander :: poet and book artist :: chax@theriver.com chax press :: alexander writing/design/publishing books by artists' hands :: web sites built with care and vision http://alexwritdespub.com/chax :: http://alexwritdespub.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 13:06:22 -0400 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Listrionics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Do Language poets define reading Jordon Davis as evil?? (or, vice verse-ahh....?) Which is the vice? (indeed, whose is the verse?) Are there actually *signs* warning that this the beginning of a Langpo zone??? (.."Watch out for falling canons!") Do you avoid the evil of avoidance of complicity in evil by mocking the poetry of young women?? We may never know the answers to these questions.... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 13:09:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Mentors from the american twig MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Somewhere in the glass canyons of Parapomo, squeaky tribes are stirring resentfully... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 21:31:35 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Laura Moriarty MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dear Alice N: Lauara's address is 926 Jackson st Albany Ca 94706 Todd Baron (ReMap) could you send me yrs, too. I've four diff. ones in Paris alone and would like to get the new ReMap to you and D. thanks ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 13:49:55 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: millenium/knife+fork Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Just wanted to observe that the experience of a lot of what is exciting about the Rothenberg + Joris anthology -- the thrill of finding out about the completely unexpected poetry of someone like Yi Sang -- can also be found in Messerli's new magazine -- there is terrific stuff there by contemporary writers like Mayrocker, & Will Alexander, by modernists such as Picasso, Peret, & writers new to me at least like Alexi Kruchenykh (b.1886), etc -- and each selection is accompanied by a concis endnote, particularly helpful given the international scope of the mag. As a continuing, evolving & open-ended project it also avoids the problematic omissions that are inevitable in anthologies -- definitely worth checking out. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:16:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: plea for info. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My wife, Anna Everett, a film and television scholar, is trying to work out a short trip to New York for research at the Schomburg library. As susal, the only stumbling block at this point is the high cost of NY hotels -- Do any of you New Yorkers know of a clean, safe, not-terribly expensive place? If so, please send info. to everett@humanitas.ucsb.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 13:58:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Have been reading Barrett Watten's new poem "Bad History" -- and coming across the section, "Erotica", and this brave, new sentence, "Schwitters's debt to the structure of his anxiety is reproduced in the name of Anna Blume." Schwitters's "An Anna Blume" has always held a particular fascination for me, personally, as romantic, erotic, paratactic, and wonderfully ironic. I'm wondering how/if others are reading Watten's book, or Schwitters's poem. I'm wondering, in the face of my own desire to break with the residual tendencies of "Romantic" voice and lyric elitism, how efficacious the love poem can be. What's to be done with it, what's useful? Hope this starts something, Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 12:44:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Orpheus of Highway 101 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" While driving into L.A. this morning I heard a familiar voice reciting the poetry of Aime Cesaire -- Turns out Jerome Rothenberg was a guest on Pacifica's morning news hour -- Great to hear discussion of poetry in prime-drive-time among the traffic updates and Lewinski sightings -- For you collectors and completists -- a tape of the show will probably be available from pacifica Archives -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:39:14 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit that Schwitters was writing--from bits and scraps of paper--and really writing--to my mind--about the "self"--evident in the line Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? That (by the way) is beside the point and that romantic ideology is really an investigation of the idea of "self"--that Scwitters was amazed by the notion of (him)self and the notion of an art form that negated the central parity as self--is amazing..and yr question, really, it seems, is not what to do with the love poem per se, but what to do with the slef...Love poem as epistolary to the self, really. and the love poem as "petty bourgeous sentimentality...is made fun of...(Werner Schmalenbach...in response to the immeidate "hit" of the poem's publication) and that language /the self trying to produce it--gets all messed up--tangled--in love--so that the real drive behind the poem--is language's self--which exists? "Ich--------liebre------Dir!" Todd Baron ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:41:16 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Orpheus of Highway 101 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit nice reminder. thanks. and remember-- the voice of the world of private language is the voice of that radio that speaks ReMap ReadersAldon Nielsen wrote: > > While driving into L.A. this morning I heard a familiar voice reciting the > poetry of Aime Cesaire -- Turns out Jerome Rothenberg was a guest on > Pacifica's morning news hour -- Great to hear discussion of poetry in > prime-drive-time among the traffic updates and Lewinski sightings -- > > For you collectors and completists -- a tape of the show will probably be > available from pacifica Archives -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:03:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Burne-Jones Books Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mot a lot of talk on this list about late Victorian poetry and related arts -- still, I thought I'd pass this one on in case someone in NY wants to go see it. > >For anyone passing through New York City, there is an interesting show of >late nineteenth century art books inserted at the tail-end of the >Burne-Jones exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (running through >September 6): 3 works from the Kelmscott Press, two hand-decorated vellum >bindings by Burne-Jones, a copy of the Rubayat hand-written and decorated >by William Morris, and an Aeneid begun by Morris, Burne-Jones and Charles >Fairfax Murray, with gilding completed by Louise Powell and credit for the >gilding taken by Graily Hewitt. > charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 16:50:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Response to Todd Baron and Miekal And In-Reply-To: <0033428C.1826@intuit.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" having been away from the list for about 4 days, i'm amazed at the turn of events. i can practically guaranteee that Miekal is not criticizing Alan (am i write, miekal?) and the interjection of "fuck" in this case shd not be taken as a violent gesture of rejectiion but a poeticizing a la lenny bruce's recuperation of the word. most folks on the list have expressed their admiration for alan;s work again and again, although at times specific work has given rise to compelling controversy. yikes, guyz. chill. At 10:41 AM -0700 7/7/98, Peter Balestrieri wrote: > To the List - > > A few weeks ago, I posted my frustration over the negative attitude on > the List towards "innovative," "experimental" or whatever the hell you > want to call it poetry/writing. Everyone who responded either wanted > to argue with me over one or two words that I used or dismiss me by > saying no, a negative attitude doesn't exist. The recent slighting and > insulting posts by Todd Baron and Miekal And are exactly what I was > talking about. Their dismissive and rude responses to Alan Sondheim's > _Dark Secrets_(I wish this wouldn't always happen to Alan. Other > people are probably too afraid to post their work for fear of being > ridiculed) are indicative of the lack of recognition on the part of > some Listees as to the stated purpose of this List. Todd and Miekal: > have you ever read this - "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(from the List intro)." Alan Sondheim's work fits this > criteria exactly. It is your attitudes that are wasting space and are > out of place here. If people can't feel comfortable posting > challenging work, fearing glib responses or callous insults, then the > List, in my opinion, is a failure. > > Pete Balestrieri ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 18:16:17 EDT Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: henry Comments: Originally-From: toddbaron From: henry Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Couldn't disagree more. But I'm tired of playing the spoiler shutter-downer of conversations in an alternate universe. My response: let the intellectuals work out the intellectual boundaries of the self. It's all sub-poetry. This discussion is a-historical in a strictly POETIC HISTORY sense. Forget about the "self". Try to understand what "love" might be. Then you might take a new tack on the love poem. Start with some Montale, for example. And if you call me Elitist, I will call you a Black Shirt. - Henry Gould ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- that Schwitters was writing--from bits and scraps of paper--and really writing--to my mind--about the "self"--evident in the line Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? That (by the way) is beside the point and that romantic ideology is really an investigation of the idea of "self"--that Scwitters was amazed by the notion of (him)self and the notion of an art form that negated the central parity as self--is amazing..and yr question, really, it seems, is not what to do with the love poem per se, but what to do with the slef...Love poem as epistolary to the self, really. and the love poem as "petty bourgeous sentimentality...is made fun of...(Werner Schmalenbach...in response to the immeidate "hit" of the poem's publication) and that language /the self trying to produce it--gets all messed up--tangled--in love--so that the real drive behind the poem--is language's self--which exists? "Ich--------liebre------Dir!" Todd Baron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 18:24:50 -0400 Reply-To: CD Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CD Subject: Eng/Poetry/899 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Now children. Let me explain. Tristan Tzara was Tristan Tzara. Paul Celan was Paul Celan. Paul Celan was a poet. HE was also a translator. T.S. Eliot was a great great poet. He also was a translator. But now, children, Oh shhh. Be quiet back there. Yes, yes. I know, Cd made a typo, oh oh how terrible! The Waste Land. Millennium. There we go. yes, children we don't want to fuse those nouns or adjectives.... Now , children, let me explain. T.S. Eliot was not St. John Perse. So the pome[not a typo but an Irishism] is Not by Mr. Eliot. However. I respect Douglas Barbour enough to see that a discourse could arise out of this polemic. However on the other hand, this anthology's missing Poet makes me think that It is like publishing an Anthology of North American Poesie and not Including Irving Layton. OR Gregory Corso. say. Or scores of others. Of course I admire the anthos Millennium as a whole But it is a whole with a ver Big Missing Part. Maybe I am wrong and the absence only Proves How Giant and gigantic the presence of Eliot's poetry still retains. O O O that rage that rage 'agin' the great... of poetasters and small time readers, would be poets and could a be poets... Which is what Harold Bloom does in his funny little list at the back of the Western Canon. Now BLoom is a critic and makes no claim to be avant-garde, marginal, or whatever . But he does, in spite of his great personal distaste for Eliot include Eliot in his list of books. I would say generosity would have been in Order in the anthology edited by Rothenberg and Joris. In earlier anthologies of Rothenberg Eliot is represented as he should be. Well children, you know Poets are always fighting. yes, its terrible terrible. yes, I remember when I met that friend of your father's and Mister Eliot had tea and he spoke so softly so much that grandma cld. barely hear him then he recited those last lines about the mermaids and the waves rolling back now that was a pleasure. Yes, a fine one indeed. End Game. 'Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ergo ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere et cum illi pueri dicerent.... Hurry Up Please Hurry Up Please to quote William Burroughs quoting T.S. Eliot. That Dada Strain. Don't ya just love it. I do. I love that book. Sami Rosenstock meets T.S. Eliot. in 1920 Ithink it was Tzara sent some poetry to Eliot. Eliot turned it down. So it goes. Tzara did very well anyhow. Tzara and Tom. Two expatriates.. Meet for Tea in Heavenly Poetic Seminar Room and discuss meters and meaning. Sagacity, Sagacity, Dada Dada. He do the Poets in Different Voices. I like to hear it lap the miles. The sound of money and poetry makes the world go round. Ah yes, la poesie et l'argent. and Love. Oh . So we read the poetry finally. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 15:47:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan or Orion Subject: Re: dent your atoll, et al In-Reply-To: <199807090401.VAA25141@mail4.aracnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Great set of poems (?) from john, allan, ehnry & others. not that this poem ties in, but wanted to get it posted berfore the dark impending weekened. dan Roll On (d’eyes d’ice d’yes) the spot that’s covered is not the spot that’s revealed--theres always somewhere else for what you thought you were watching to momentarily visit, like getting across the village in a day, like a spider web bigger than my double garage door variable values roll among the apertures calculating price & availabilityneed has nothing to do with, how the bait is presented attached loose enough to resemble without escaping what someone distracted by the market din will think is hookless & satisfying to connect with every other worm eaten at this moment consistency is reversed, as are speed and convenience like come-alongs and pulleys, pierced with pitons so baby can climb to my shoulder, so we can keep rolling through suburban circuit board searching for that step up into anesthetic debt, near enough to the hive, far enough from the queen keeps our knees sore, our ankles like oft-used drinking straws rolling our eyes like rigged dice pointing upwards like snakes in an updraft, snakes flying on capes so gossamer we cannot see them, cannot imagine our fear so mobile, mobile as earthworms, mobile as rivers i want to strap on my water moccasins and glide to the other shore a knotted moon whose phases are fraying, peeling away like clothes made of corn husks, plantain leaves, strips of bark turn our limbs into limbs, feet sinking into earth, worms drilling toe deltas roll them bones, cast lots, match sticks, tune into coincidence, intuit others facial calligraphy, a poker face, lies geologically deep, as we can tell if something unusuals below us like water or oil or 10 thousand year old space ships, mass graves full of bones unlike anything we’ve pictured living here-- be careful where you dig all these underground cables, all these native village septic tanks, herb -marinated fire-hardened tree trunks jammed down in the earth like some communications array, a sonic typewriter messages were danced through turning this field into a drum, turning this forest into a pipe organ what are the odds of that like species who die before we know they exist, like 200 year old people in monasteries no government can find you takes your chances you cleans your shoes as if my alarm clock is altered by the stock market opening, as if my cars ignition has one arm i pull to see how soon itll start, how smoothly itll burn the fuel no one tests anymore ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 18:53:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) > This discussion is a-historical in a strictly POETIC HISTORY sense. > Forget about the "self". Try to understand what "love" might be. Then I'm not sure what you mean by "this discussion"; if we're talking about the history of the love poem, it has everything to do with the self. And if we're talking about New Directions for the love poem, then I really can't see how you can ignore what's gone before. Not that you have to stick your thumbs in and skewer yourself on the past, but whatever you come up with after you've "understood what 'love' might be" is going to have a lot to do with what everybody else has, whether in opposition to or collusion with. Not that, when you sit down to write, you need to run filters and historical analyses on everything that pops into your mind. In a way, this really doesn't have much to do with politics, so "black shirts" and "elitism" are sort of absurd. Rich writes very "anti-elite" love poetry that still owes most of its debt to Romantic notions of the self, the lover, and so on, albeit with a certain consciousness of the dangers of subject/object. Ginsberg also. What is the love poem, anyway? If you move it far enough away from the Romantic notions of self, would people still recognize it and respond to it as such? There is the erotic poem, certaintly, but is the love poem merely a codeword for the romantic poem? "He had an idea about the death of love" -- I wonder what the poetry of, say, Sappho, would look like if we didn't have the "Romantics" (in a general sense) between her and us? Look at what Ovid did to her story; will our visions of "sexual" poets look just as skewed later? -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com > you might take a new tack on the love poem. Start with some Montale, for > example. And if you call me Elitist, I will call you a Black Shirt. > - Henry Gould > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > that Schwitters was writing--from bits and scraps of paper--and really > writing--to my mind--about the "self"--evident in the line > > Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? > That (by the way) is beside the point > > and that romantic ideology is really an investigation of the idea of > "self"--that Scwitters was amazed by the notion of (him)self and the > notion of an art form that negated the central parity as self--is > amazing..and yr question, really, it seems, is not what to do with the > love poem per se, but what to do with the slef...Love poem as epistolary > to the self, really. > > and the love poem as "petty bourgeous sentimentality...is made fun > of...(Werner Schmalenbach...in response to the immeidate "hit" of the > poem's publication) > > and that language /the self trying to produce it--gets all messed > up--tangled--in love--so that the real drive behind the poem--is > language's self--which exists? > > "Ich--------liebre------Dir!" > > Todd Baron > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 19:26:15 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 9 Jul 1998 18:53:52 -0400 from Oh well, we're all going a-historical, we rememeber what the other one forgot, blah blah. "Elite". Dangers of subject / object. Romanticism is a threat in 1998? Here's something about love, forthcoming in Nedge #6, courtesy of Stuart Blazer, of Provence, which has some tradition in that line: When you love you have no eyes is what she said; you just see love. She didn't leave until he hurt the baby. Young, oriental, scarred, adopted since five, living now in France. We wait for the bus, passing time. Almost beautiful. I'm a fool for it each time. Even blind, ears would be my eyes. It's not just Europe, though granted, it is France. Whose gestalt makes love evident: its signs and scars, proof that too much pleasure hurts. A black belt and still she let him hurt her. Love, she called it at the time, so completely scarred I'm forced to turn my eyes though who am I to question what they meant by love? Might as well read de Sade or Anatole France... Not only the cooking is mouth-watering in France; hot enough to burn the tongue or at least hurt you into wanting more, love here is a way of living time. Its forms tease and please the eyes leaving them finally sated, scarred. Betrayed, disfigured, bruised, scarred in existential oriental France where it's a festival of talk with lips and eyes that keeps on until the whole body hurts, a kind of tatouage, skin pierced by time displaying our own and others' love. Disease and remedy, love polishes its golden silver scars brightening our passage through time, French but not confined to France it radiates as from a sun a hurt so essential we both offer then shield our eyes. When you love you have no eyes is what she said; you just see love. "And we came out once more to see the scars." - Stuart Blazer Aix-en-Provence June, 1998 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:02:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) > Oh well, we're all going a-historical, we rememeber what the other one > forgot, blah blah. "Elite". Dangers of subject / object. Romanticism > is a threat in 1998? Romanticism as a reaction to the conditions of 1998 is certaintly a threat -- a retreat into the self. In the poem you've transcribed for us, it's almost insidious, since it masqurades a pretty self indulgent string of cliches as empathy for the characters involved. This, despite what you might think, is not a political question. Except on my more liberal guilty days, I honestly don't give a fuck about the woman Young, oriental, scarred, adopted since five, living now in France. The problem is, neither does the poet. What the original question was on about was questions of form, which do, of course, always bleed into questions of subject (part of Todd's point, I believe.) Here the language is as dull as the narrator. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:09:20 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:02:02 -0400 from On Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:02:02 -0400 Simon DeDeo said: > >Romanticism as a reaction to the conditions of 1998 >is certaintly a threat -- a retreat into the self. >In the poem you've transcribed for us, it's almost >insidious, since it masqurades a pretty self indulgent >string of cliches as empathy for the characters >involved. This, despite what you might think, is >not a political question. Except on my more liberal >guilty days, I honestly don't give a fuck about the >woman > > Young, oriental, scarred, >adopted since five, living now in France. > >The problem is, neither does the poet. Well, Simon, if you don't give a fuck then you won't get much about love, I guess. But you ought to speak for yourself. The whole poem is built around a perception brought on by a dialogue with this woman at the bus stop. Maybe you wouldn't have allowed yourself to indulge your self in such self interaction with another self; more's the pity. - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:51:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) >> I honestly don't give a fuck about the >>woman >> >> Young, oriental, scarred, >>adopted since five, living now in France. >> >>The problem is, neither does the poet. > >Well, Simon, if you don't give a fuck then you won't get much about >love, I guess. But you ought to speak for yourself. The whole poem >is built around a perception brought on by a dialogue with this woman >at the bus stop. Wonderful; fireworks explode in my brain with the revelation that this poem is about LOVE. Really, it was quite a shocker. And now that I know that the poet *actually met* the woman in question, I'm even more amazed and convinced that this is a good poem. Sarcasm aside. My point, which you really haven't responded to, is that the poem is a catalogue of cliche strung together by wretchedly boring prose. I'm sure the subject matter is important; that doesn't make it any less worthy of being ignored. Where is the attention to language? Where is the sensation that this guy has done anything more than throw the first and completely uninteresting string of metaphors down on the page? And I will certaintly speak for myself. I'm sure the actual Stuart Blazer is a wonderful guy, really friendly, kind to animals and head of the local chapter of domestic abuse survivors. But if this is what he writes, then he should stick to writing newspaper columns for his friends back home who would be alternately shocked, upset and titilated by the stories he can tell. Not poetry. I'm just missing the aesthetic experience of appriciating the poem here, Henry, is the problem. It's reportage dressed up a little and with linebreaks. Perhaps this exhange should end here, since it's hard to argue someone into an aesthetic position; you think I'm a philistine or a brute, I have my own opinions about your taste. > Maybe you wouldn't have allowed yourself to indulge >your self in such self interaction with another self; more's the pity. Easy there. As long as we're dragging out romantic love poetry. Here's a Rich poem -- I had hoped to find her sequence 21 love poems, but it's not with me right now. This is, for me at least, a brilliantly delicate love poem -- perhaps too delicate; the sensation comes to you almost as you finish, or reread. It's not a poem ABOUT LOVE HERE I AM A POET AND I'M TALKING ABOUT LOVE, SENSITIVE PEOPLE, LISTEN UP; but it is a love poem. IN A CLASSROOM Talking of poetry, hauling the books arm-full to the table where the heads bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud, talking of consonants, elision, caught in the how, oblivious of why: I look in your face, Jude, neither frowning nor nodding, opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table: a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking What I cannot say, is me. For that I came. (1986) - Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 17:54:00 +0000 Reply-To: arshile@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Salerno Organization: Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts Subject: Re: galleriess.....P.S. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To C.D. YOU GO GIRL! LOPSIDED EVANGELICAL AVANT-GARDEISM SOUNDS A LITTLE LIKE YOU'VE BEEN READING MY MAIL.MAYBE THESE GUYS GOT TOO FAT...LIKE BRECHT SAYS ERST KOMMT DAS FRESSEN DENN KOMMT DIE MORAL (FIRST COMES THE GRUB, THEN COMES THE MORAL) WHIP EM INTO SHAPE C.D. CAUSE THE REST OF US IS HUNGRY. M. ANGELINE ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 18:13:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: <9807100001.AA00990@nevis.naic.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Romanticism as a reaction to the conditions of 1998 >is certaintly a threat -- a retreat into the self. I realize that the kind of transcendence espoused in Romanticism has been questioned, doubted, exposed, even ridiculed. But even so, some kind of transcendence was indeed the aim of Wordsworth, Keats, et al -- so I don't think it's quite fair to equate Romanticism with "a retreat intl the self" -- could you explain why you see it as such? charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 22:52:13 -0400 Reply-To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Poems for the Millenium.... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "An interesting question, but one that seems to miss some points. One of which Gwynn responded to, & I agree with him" You talkin' to me? Huh? You talkin' to me? If you mean me, with one n, I am a "her." But I'll take the agreement anyway. bests, Gwyn "XX" McVay ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 23:11:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) >>Romanticism as a reaction to the conditions of 1998 >>is certaintly a threat -- a retreat into the self. > >I realize that the kind of transcendence espoused in Romanticism has been >questioned, doubted, exposed, even ridiculed. But even so, some kind of >transcendence was indeed the aim of Wordsworth, Keats, et al -- so I don't >think it's quite fair to equate Romanticism with "a retreat intl the self" >-- could you explain why you see it as such? When I used the phrase "retreat into the self", I was thinking more of successors to Romanticism, where the poet walls off the outside world and passes judgement without empathy; adopts a seemingly superior voice that is usually just self-centered. The Romantics themselves, however, did move inwards and develop the lyric into a means of creating and developing a "self"; I wouldn't call it a retreat, but it is a movement directed towards a self. For the Romantics, transcendence came from an examination of the self as an aspect of God -- "self" and "God" taken very loosly, of course. But always a looking inwards and a creation of a voice, an "I" that is observing, developing and changing as it comes into contact with the outside world -- which may a step down or step up. Wordsworth is an excellent example -- the _Prelude_ is a "poetic autobiography" with a number of transcendent moments. The self he creates is certaintly not Wordsworth in the way the I in Lowell's _History_ poems are Lowell; Wordsworth doesn't even mention his parents, although he spends a number of chapters on his childhood. The transcendence is of the body and the contingencies of the world; the Romantic eye looks upon the poet and sees a core that is, essentially, the poet's muse -- look at Keats' Ode to a Nightingale -- he hardly even sees the bird before it's become something that exists to define and understand his own body/soul. Far different from, say, a moment in Pound, where physical beauty is more concrete, less tractable for those trying to find a "little man" behind the screen of invention. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:59:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Alan J.J.N. Sondheim" Subject: The Oldest English Text MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - The Oldest English Text (From The Oldest English Texts, Henry Sweet, The Early English Text Society, 1885, reprinted Oxford, 1966) On the Thames Knife, 400-500 AD: Beagnoth Note that 'th' is the letter _thorn._ Beag, crown, ring. Inscription from Sandwich, Kent, 428-597 AD: Raehaebul (Proper name?) _____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 03:43:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: Meow Press is Moving! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Meow Press is Moving! At the end of July, Meow Press will go into boxes and will be moved across the country to San Diego, California. The ambitious publishing season announced some weeks ago is ongoing and is shockingly on schedule for the most part. There should be only a two to four week disruption in printing, assembly, and shipping of pure-poetry product. Thanks to those of you who have ordered books from me and those who have contributed to this project in the last few weeks. You subscribers, my people, will be taken care of in the next world (ex-post-Buffalo) which will see many expansions of Meow, into "real" books and also CDs. My name is Santa and I live on the second floor...another flurry of packages headed out this weekend...so if you're waiting for something from me expect it this week. Orders for backlist items will be accepted for another two weeks or so. After I move, all bets are off on full-sets and a great deal of the backlist, as I am not sure I will have materials with me to keep those books in print. BUY NOW! SPD has more of the books than I do! The Meow Press address in Buffalo will remain open for another year, though I will supply a local California address within a week or two. This email and the meow web address will remain active. The Fall98 publishing season will see work by Caroline Bergvall, David Bromige, Jackson Mac Low, among others. checkout the website for more information on forthcoming books: [updated recently] http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/presses thanks for listening! and I'll be home to poetics soon (still on the midnight digest, tho I'm reading it all) jk aka elijah mcCracker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 03:44:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: Poetics List Administration Comments: Originally-From: Peter Quartermain From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Puffing OTHER Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The FULL VERSION of the "Introduction: 'A Fair Field Full of Folk'," to the forthcoming OTHER: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 edited by Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain and due from Wesleyan UP /U of New England P in December is now available in Jacket#4, with a few pictures, at: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket04/otherbrit.html You might want to check it out. PQ/RC + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 846 Keefer Street Vancouver B.C. Canada V6A 1Y7 Voice : 604 255 8274 Fax: 255 8204 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 01:16:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: millenium/knife+fork In-Reply-To: <3c8bad66.35a502c4@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have never seen an anthology that did not leave out good poets. That is the nature of anthologies. Selected poems often leave out good poems. The American League all-star team leaves out good first basemen. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 05:52:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: The Eliot problem(s) Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii There have been two Eliot problems raised in the past two days -- One is the impact of his estate making stupid demands that keep the work from appearing in something akin to Millenium, save by round-about means. The other is the Eliot as good/bad person thing. They're really very different issues. The former Eliot shares with the estates of David Jones and Jack Kerouac. In Jones' case, where many people don't know the work, it's really regretable. In the other cases, it's mostly just stupid. The other question takes us into the quagmire shared by Pound, Spicer and others, really a reader's problem -- how to handle a writer's racism (or sexism or or or). Earlier this summer I read Faulkner's Flags in the Dust, the original version of what was released as Satoris (before Faulkner became famous and could really publish whatever he wanted). It's a rough work, in the sense that a book like Visions of Cody is rough, brilliant and awkward by turns. It's also the most racist work I've ever encountered, just jaw droppingly so, even though he may have thought himself a liberal by northern Mississippi 1930s standards. I've always liked Faulkner, since he is the one writer of his generation besides Stein who seems to have seriously thought about the sentence as a unit of writing ("thought" might not be the right word), but it was hard to feel good about liking the writing when has to wade through the muck. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 08:15:25 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry G Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:51:32 -0400 from On Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:51:32 -0400 Simon DeDeo said: > >Wonderful; fireworks explode in my brain with the revelation that >this poem is about LOVE. Really, it was quite a shocker. And now >that I know that the poet *actually met* the woman in question, I'm >even more amazed and convinced that this is a good poem. > >Sarcasm aside. My point, which you really haven't responded to, is that >the poem is a catalogue of cliche strung together by wretchedly boring >prose. I'm sure the subject matter is important; that doesn't make it >any less worthy of being ignored. Where is the attention to language? >Where is the sensation that this guy has done anything more than throw >the first and completely uninteresting string of metaphors down on the >page? > >And I will certaintly speak for myself. I'm sure the actual Stuart Blazer >is a wonderful guy, really friendly, kind to animals and head of the >local chapter of domestic abuse survivors. But if this is what he writes, >then he should stick to writing newspaper columns for his friends back home >who would be alternately shocked, upset and titilated by the stories he >can tell. Not poetry. > >I'm just missing the aesthetic experience of appriciating the poem here, >Henry, is the problem. It's reportage dressed up a little and with linebreaks. >Perhaps this exhange should end here, since it's hard to argue someone >into an aesthetic position; you think I'm a philistine or a brute, I >have my own opinions about your taste. > I think what I like about Blazer's poem is its simplicity and directness in addressing THE big traditional subject in poetry, while putting it in the framework of a sestina (in case you hadn't noticed while you scanned his "prose", the sestina puts him back in the matrix of (post) Provencal Italian renaissance poetry; his concluding line is a take-off on the last line of Dante's "Inferno"). He's not trying to be cute, he's not trying to be postmodern; I don't find the prose boring, just fairly graceful in the way it moves through the stanzas. I sent it in because it was so clearly "about" love and succeeds in that way, as opposed to addressing the ponderous socio-political questions of "self" which appear to be more important than the issues of "love" on this thread about love poetry; an emphasis which seems so parochially American-academic (of about 8 years ago). There is so much real poetry out there, past and present, in English and other languages, which is the living tradition itself and which overshadows these vague philosophical conundrums which are definitely a sub-subset of style. Love poetry will always be around; but to measure it by our own musings on the ontology of "self" seems misplaced. Sure, the philosophical issues are important; but maybe it would be good to start with some poetry. I know that's exactly what Patrick Durgin did & was trying to do in starting this discussion & I'm sorry once again to have this blown out of proportion, so now I will be quiet, let lurkers chirp. Re: your fantasies about Stuart Blazer: he's been writing & teaching poetry for decades, going along his own path in his own way, very much out of the mainstream, very talented. He had an interesting sort of Poundian poem about a trip to Morocco in Nedge #4. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:48:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: The Oldest English Text In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" So it's the knife of a cutpurse or highwayman (did they have highwaypersons in 400 A.D.?) who called his/her knife "Beg Not"? At 12:59 AM -0400 7/10/98, Alan J.J.N. Sondheim wrote: >- > > >The Oldest English Text > > >(From The Oldest English Texts, Henry Sweet, The Early English Text >Society, 1885, reprinted Oxford, 1966) > >On the Thames Knife, 400-500 AD: > > > Beagnoth > > >Note that 'th' is the letter _thorn._ Beag, crown, ring. > >Inscription from Sandwich, Kent, 428-597 AD: > > Raehaebul > >(Proper name?) > > >_____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:17:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" geez, i hate to sound in the least aloof or condescending, but two poets quarreling over what constitutes the proper? approach to a love poem... wow... i mean, i find the exchange fascinating, simon and henry, but you needn't be so much at each other, right?... there's just so much to say, no?... depending on my mood, i like cummings's stuff (sorry!), i like donne too, barrett browning, creeley and mayer---the usual suspects, incl. the bard hisself... this is english of course, which may not be the best language for that sentiment---depending muchly too, i suppose, on how you've experienced said sentiment, which seems for some folks to be a matter of being unsentimental, or unsentimental being... i might have said "i prefer---" but i'm tempted here to pull a bit against the perceived registers, and say that sentiment too has its place---direct, unabashed "i luv u" sentiment... provided, of course, we all keep our wits about us... anyway, hey---absence makes the heart grow fonder? and we're all about to be unplugged for a s p e l l, so/// love & kisses, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 11:00:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Al Cook Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Albert Cook, a Brown University professor who published more than 20 books and plays, died Tuesday of cardiac arrhythmia and coronary artery disease. He was 72. The scholar of comparative literature, classics and English wrote criticism, poetry, plays and textbooks. He taught at the University of California, Western Reserve University and the State University of New York at Buffalo before going to Brown in 1978. * Forrest Gander just sent this sad news to me. Cook was the key figure in initially bringing poets, and not incidentally, poetics to SUNY-Buffalo, hiring Creeley, Olson, Weiners and many others and envisioning an English department where poets and fiction writers would teach literature, rather than creative writing, to undergraduates and graduates. Cook founded the UB English department, and taught there from 1963-1968. He was the author of over 20 books of criticism and 8 books of poetry, and the translator of Oedipus Rex and The Odyssey. Among his most recent books are Canons and Wisdoms (University of Pennsylvania Press), Temporalizing Space: The Triumphant Strategies of Piero della Francesco (Peter Lang), and a collection of poetry, Modes (Mellon). Other books include: An Anthology Of Greek Tragedy, The Burden Of Prophecy: Poetic Utterance In The Prophets Of The Old Testament, Canons and Wisdoms, Changing The Signs: The Fifteenth-Century Breakthrough, The Dark Voyage and the Golden Mean; A Philosophy of Comedy, Enactment: Greek Tragedy, Figural Choice in Poetry and Art, French Tragedy: The Power Of Enactment, History/Writing, The Meaning of Fiction, Modulars: Poems, Myth and Lanugage, Progressions and Other Poems, The Reach of Poetry, The Root of The Thing; A Study of Job and The Song of Songs, Shakespeare's Enactment: The Dynamics of Renaissance Theatre, The Stance Of Plato, Thresholds: Studies In The Romantic Experience, and Soundings: On Shakespeare, Modern Poetry, Plato, and Other Subjects. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 11:14:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: aldon/hotel/nyc Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry, I lost the message so will have to do this on the big board, but then it might be of general interest. There's a very sweet hotel in NYC called Larchmont Hotel, 27 W. 11th St., heart of the village, just off Fifth Ave. It's run like a European place, & is usually full of French speakers, etc. singles $60. & 70., doubles $85. & 90., which includes continental breakfast, use of umbellas, etc. Baths down the hall, two for each wing of 5 rooms, which is one reason it's cheap. But super safe/clean/friendly. Rates I'm giving are as of spring. Tel. 212.989.9333, fax 212.989.9496. I have the brochure in front of me, so if you want more info back-channel. My wife stayed there in March, loved it. Bon voyage! Sylvester ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:13:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Where's Eliot when we need him? In-Reply-To: <199807100401.WAA17934@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" <<"An interesting question, but one that seems to miss some points. One of which Gwynn responded to, & I agree with him" You talkin' to me? Huh? You talkin' to me? If you mean me, with one n, I am a "her." But I'll take the agreement anyway.>> Oops! Pardon me, but my fingers almost never get things right the first time. Sorry. About that ol' Possum being absent so presently in Poems...: It is possible that R & J could have included a short poem, say "Morning at the Window" or, even better, 'Hysteria," but I think it's obvious that for their purposes "The Waste Land" is the poem that counts -- and it would have been prohibitively expensive, warping the anthology they were dreaming way out of whack. For me, the poem IS there, & Is invoked in such a way as to be recognized as the part of the necessary experimentation of early modernism it so obviously is. I would suspect that Heaney & Hughes got him because their anthology was published by Faber & (I would guess) by Eliot's US publisher. Of course, their anthology (ies?) is (are) attempting something very different from Poems 1 & 2. Hey, what I think Jordan may be missing is that a lot of us 'guys' really appreciate all those women poets & moreover even learn from them as well as from the men. Contra Bloom, I have no problems with my forbears, & am more than happy to celebrate the mothers as well as the fathers -- God knows they taught me well... Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 By stress and syllable by change-rhyme and contour we let the long line pace equal awkward to its period. The short line we refine and keep for candor. Robert Duncan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 11:50:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: missing lots MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Douglas -- I miss lots. They build their butts. If language is alive, does language have rights? If William Carlos Williams was a male gazer, are his readers leading the league in rushing? The brackets are always male. I said female brackets and for this they say I mock young women. Is there any thought in American poets? Is for ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 11:44:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: I've always wanted to use the word "crustaceans" in a post. Jackpot! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Do crustaceans have rights? On Friday, July 10, 1998 11:50 AM, Jordan Davis [SMTP:jdavis@panix.com] wrote: > If language is alive, > does language have rights? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:13:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: Eng/Poetry/899 In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this guy's a riot! At 06:24 PM 7/9/98 -0400, you wrote: > Now children. Let me explain. Tristan Tzara > was Tristan Tzara. Paul Celan was Paul Celan. > Paul Celan was a poet. HE was also a translator. > > T.S. Eliot was a great great poet. He also > was a translator. But now, children, > > Oh shhh. Be quiet back there. Yes, yes. I know, > > Cd made a typo, oh oh how terrible! > > The Waste Land. > > Millennium. > > > There we go. yes, children we don't want to fuse those nouns > > or adjectives.... Now , children, let me explain. > > T.S. Eliot was not St. John Perse. > > So the pome[not a typo but an Irishism] > > is Not by Mr. Eliot. > > However. > > I respect Douglas Barbour enough to see that a discourse > > could arise out of this polemic. > > However on the other hand, this anthology's missing Poet > makes me think that It is > like publishing an Anthology of > > North American Poesie and not Including > > Irving Layton. OR Gregory Corso. say. Or scores of others. > > Of course I admire the anthos Millennium as a whole > > But it is a whole with a ver Big Missing Part. > > Maybe I am wrong and the absence only Proves How Giant > and gigantic the presence of Eliot's poetry still retains. > O O O that rage that rage 'agin' the great... > > of poetasters and small time readers, would be poets > > and could a be poets... > > Which is what Harold Bloom does in his funny little list > > at the back of the Western Canon. > > Now BLoom is a critic and makes no claim to be avant-garde, > > marginal, or whatever . > > But he does, in spite of his great personal distaste > > for Eliot include Eliot in his list of books. > > I would say generosity would have been in Order > > in the anthology edited by Rothenberg and Joris. > > In earlier anthologies of Rothenberg Eliot > > is represented as he should be. > > Well children, you know Poets are always fighting. > > yes, its terrible terrible. > > yes, I remember when I met that friend of your father's > > and Mister Eliot had tea and he spoke so softly > > so much that grandma cld. barely hear him > > then he recited those last lines about the mermaids > > and the waves rolling back > > > now that was a pleasure. > > Yes, a fine one indeed. > > > End Game. > > 'Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ergo ipse oculis > meis vidi in ampulla pendere et cum illi pueri dicerent.... > > Hurry Up Please Hurry Up Please > > > to quote William Burroughs quoting T.S. Eliot. > > > That Dada Strain. Don't ya just love it. > > > I do. I love that book. > > Sami Rosenstock meets T.S. Eliot. > > in 1920 Ithink it was Tzara sent some poetry to Eliot. > > Eliot turned it down. > > So it goes. Tzara did very well anyhow. > > Tzara and Tom. > > Two expatriates.. > > Meet for Tea in Heavenly Poetic Seminar Room > > and discuss meters and meaning. > > > > Sagacity, Sagacity, Dada Dada. > > He do the Poets in Different Voices. > I like to hear it lap the miles. > > > The sound of money and poetry makes the world go round. > > Ah yes, la poesie et l'argent. > > > and Love. > > > Oh . So we read the poetry finally. > > > > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh | PaperBrainPress http://bmarsh.dtai.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:21:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) First off, thanks for a civilized reply; the e-mail I sent off last night was over the top. You're right, of course, that a love poem is about "love" first, and the self second; and I certainly don't think that poetry should be in the business of posing, riddle-like, philosophical questions that critics try to answer. On the other hand, remember that "vague philosophical conundrums" have motivated a large amount of poetry. I still am not a fan of Blazer's poem -- something essential, fundamental, still seems to be missing for me; but let that rest. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com > I think what I like about Blazer's poem is its simplicity and directness in > addressing THE big traditional subject in poetry, while putting it in the > framework of a sestina (in case you hadn't noticed while you scanned his > "prose", the sestina puts him back in the matrix of (post) Provencal > Italian renaissance poetry; his concluding line is a take-off on the last > line of Dante's "Inferno"). He's not trying to be cute, he's not trying > to be postmodern; I don't find the prose boring, just fairly graceful > in the way it moves through the stanzas. I sent it in because it was so > clearly "about" love and succeeds in that way, as opposed to addressing > the ponderous socio-political questions of "self" which appear to be more > important than the issues of "love" on this thread about love poetry; > an emphasis which seems so parochially American-academic (of about 8 > years ago). There is so much real poetry out there, past and present, > in English and other languages, which is the living tradition itself and > which overshadows these vague philosophical conundrums which are definitely > a sub-subset of style. Love poetry will always be around; but to measure > it by our own musings on the ontology of "self" seems misplaced. Sure, > the philosophical issues are important; but maybe it would be good to start > with some poetry. I know that's exactly what Patrick Durgin did & was trying > to do in starting this discussion & I'm sorry once again to have this blown > out of proportion, so now I will be quiet, let lurkers chirp. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:28:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: romantic-not women duelling Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >What is the love poem, anyway? If you move it far enough away >from the Romantic notions of self, would people still recognize >it and respond to it as such? this part intrigues me. I have been wanting to post about an article on Gertrude Stein that was in a fairly recent New Yorker (excuse me!) wherein the author gave a very psychological reading of the lady's life and work. saying she only wrote 'that way' cause she was scared of her own psychology. and how V Woolf considered Stein a "generational failure". my questions: how is psychology (self?) framed? is there a new way into interiority? (i expect an immediate and foolproof response) does anyone else love the flatness of Stein's characterization (no i must be the only one) like the repetition in Ada? why must Woolf and Stein be opposed in this critical/gossip history? is their a way to integrate? (and i know they didn't BOND in REAL LIFE) excuse me. the New Yorker disturbed me. ps i just must say that bitterish reference to 'poetry of young women' and the Possibility of a trajectory (anthology) framed by women's writing sounds a bit HYSTERICAL! Elizabeth Treadwell Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books PO Box 9013 Berkeley, Ca 94709 http://users.lanminds/com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:27:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Kerenyi's use of "opposite" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Everyone: Reading Carl Kerenyi's _Dionysos, the Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life_ this weekend near Woodstock (trees! streams! no constant low-level hum of electricity! lots of free marijuana!) I ran across this pretty wonderful passage on Cretan / Minoan art ... but, now I have a question & thought maybe someone could help me out, either posting here or backchannel: What does Kerenyi mean here by "opposite"? I'm totally baffled, have read it to a couple poet friends & roommate Chris, and, well, we can't figure it out. PLEASE help!!! --Gary Cretan art ignored the terrifying distance between the human and the transcendent which may tempt man to seek a refuge in abstraction and to create a form for the significant remote from space and time; it equally ignored the glory and futility of single human acts, time-bound, space-bound. In Crete artists did not give substance to the world of the dead through an abstract of the world of the living, nor did they immortalize proud deeds or state a humble claim for divine attention in the temples of the gods. Here and here alone the human bid for timelessness was disregarded in the most complete acceptance of the grace of life the world has ever known. For life means movement and the beauty of movement was woven in the intricate web of living forms which we call "scenes of nature"; was revealed in human-bodies acting their serious games, inspired by a transcendent presence, acting in freedom and restraint, unpurposeful as cyclic time itself." --this section is actually a direct quote from H.A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, from her book _Arrest and Movement_ ... then Kerenyi says: "Minoan art fully justifies this negative characterization--negative from the standpoint of man as center, as the vehicle of his own historical and non-historical glory, but not from the standpoint of the deity, whose presence it demands and requires. Man is always on the edge of this epiphany of the spirit--the spirit or spirits of life and nature--if not face to face with it. In this view an intimation of the godhead could be manifested not only in a swarm of insects, in birds, or in the beasts of the sea, but also in a human gesture, and it could in turn determine man's gestures. ... here I am speaking not of cult gestures side by side with other equally characteristic gestures of simple human existence, but of *the* gesture which time and time again, in different forms of movement, represents the identical situation of man: his non-central position which demands an "opposite" and can be understood only as an "opposite." ..." PS: Some of you will note that this book wasn't on my list of summer "plan-to-read"s. So, why am I reading it & not the "planned" books? A confession: I am a really, really, really bad planner ... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:59:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Kerenyi's use of "opposite" > ... here I am speaking not of cult gestures side by side with other > equally characteristic gestures of simple human existence, but of *the* gesture > which time and time again, in different forms of movement, represents the > identical situation of man: his non-central position which demands an > "opposite" and can be understood only as an "opposite." ..." Kerenyi seems to be making a lot of his argument through visual analogy; man is moved from the center of the Minoan/Cretan attention, but since man (according to K) will by default place himself in the center (geocentric, heliocentric...) of the universe, the decentering must introduce a second element of equal or greater importance to remove the asymmetry. This is the "opposite", towards which, it seems, man is making his gesture; because the tendency to anthropcentrism is so strong, this "opposite" is important only in as much as it alters this fundamental parameter of life. It is a well written passage; I'm not sure if it holds together, however -- K seems to be somewhat amazed at the conclusion of his thesis, and wants to retract some of the apparent strangeness of the Minoans by understanding their art as a spiritual geometric modification of the Western Renaissance. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:13:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Other introductions MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII I just finished reading Richard Caddell and Peter Quartermain's intro to their forthcoming anthology Other British and Irish Poetry since 1970, as currently given at Jacket#4. Having read a number of anthology intros over the years, I was not surprsied to recognize these latest historical narratives and critical syllogisms: they are familiar. But what would an anthologist's rhetoric of contemporaneity be like if she or he were not to use the spatial metaphor "center/periphery" nor the diction of "mainstream," "other," and "margin"? These narratives, syllogisms, metaphors, and dictions are assumed to have efficacy; they organize and reveal and overcome x, y, and z. They also can bore. I still crave a polemical collection that if it dare not dispense with the editorial introduction, will somehow tell me a surprising story about where and how and why and when poetry tumbles into existence. Since a few of the poets named in the introduction participate on this list from time to time, perhaps they might weigh in on The Way To Introduce Anthologized Poetry. Must I always pass through the same gate presided over by the same authorities in order to reach your poems? Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:28:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling In-Reply-To: <199807101628.JAA08942@lanshark.lanminds.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >does anyone else love the flatness of Stein's characterization (no i must be >the only one) No, you're certainly not the only one. Many love it. It too is a landscape, and one certainly of love, at times. >why must Woolf and Stein be opposed in this critical/gossip history? because we (the vague overwhelming general pronoun here) seem to love simplicities, dualities. Someone (and the New Yorker is more than sometimes complicit in this) seems to want a nice packaged one-flavor modernism. There may be a sexist thing going on here, too -- let's not admit both such women into this company -- but that's somewhere way behind the scenes. >excuse me. the New Yorker disturbed me. In the last bunch of years I've been disturbed, as I would imagine many have, by characterizations of Stein and/or her work in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and other large cultural/media organs of information dissemination, sometimes this dismissal by hack journalists, sometimes by a more 'realistic' writer such as Cynthia Ozick -- here I am reminded of Hejinian and other's notion that "realism too is an '-ism.'" Disturbed often enough that I just can't pay that much attention to the Stein naysayers anymore. So I then go back to Stein and her work. and maybe it's not so flat. maybe it's round: This is a little a scene. Just when will they go by adapting. Nor may they be merrily there. To share. Justly. In why. It is a round movement this. Because. Declared. For it. It is. A Wonder. Because. They. Were. Spared. Might it be agreeable if it were a mistake. I guess what disturbs me most about all who would throw out Stein, flat or round, is just that I have a hard time imagining that people's first take on Stein is not simply finding that her work is so agreeable. flat or round with approval of new yorker or not and without casting out virginia woolf, either -- the flatness or roundness can accomodate both, and more. charles charles alexander :: poet and book artist :: chax@theriver.com chax press :: alexander writing/design/publishing books by artists' hands :: web sites built with care and vision http://alexwritdespub.com/chax :: http://alexwritdespub.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:31:08 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Franco Subject: BOSTON ALTERNATIVE POETRY CONFERENCE AKA POETSTOCK 98 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit M. Franco here for Aaron Kiely's BOSTON ALTERNATIVE POETRY CONFERENCE: BLACKSMITH HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE MA. [HARVARD SQUARE] FRI-SUN JULY 17-19 1998. READERS/PRESENTERS: BERNSTEIN, MESSERLI, TAGGART, MATLIN, TORRA, MLINKO, LANSING, F. HOWE, R. WALDROP, BOUCHARD, WARSH, JARNOT, BANSINSKI, GANICK, W. ALEXANDER, PREAVALLET, FUNKHOUSER, ZHANG ER, DOUD, LEASE, L. SCHWARTZ, D. GARDNER, KRUKOWSKI, STROFFOLINO,BURGER, W HOWE, GRUMNAN, BRADY, POUND, KRAMER, KNOX, WARSH, S. COLE, B. ANDERSON, GILMORE, KIELEYWERSHLER-HENRY, KIRSCHENBAUM, KRAMER, SCALAPINO, FRANCO, FRIDAY JULY 17 READING: 7:30 INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEKEND: w/ KIELY, SCHWARTZ & ALEXANDER NIGHT READING: F. HOWE D. BOUCHARD, GARDNER & STROFFOLINO SAT JULY 18- 9: 30AM VOCABULARY AND IMIGINATIONS: PANAL W/ MESSERLLI, ALEXANDER, SCHWARTZ, MATLIN, KIELEY, LEASE, MLINKO & FRANCO 12:00 READING W/ TORRA, LANSING, MLINKO, LEASE, & KRUKOWSKI & SCALAPINO & KIELY 2PM: BIOGRAPHY & CRITCISM PANAL: W/ PREVALLET ON HELEN ADAM... JARNOT ON DUNCAN, ALEXANDER ON LAMANTIA TAGGART ON OPPEN, KNOX ON KOCH & ASHBERY, KIRSCHENBAUM ON d.a.levy, GILMORE ON OPPENHEIMER. 4PM AFTERNOON READING W/ TAGGART, KNOX, SCHWARTZ, ZHANG ER, FUNKHOUSER, KNOX, ANDERSON,BRADY, S.COLE 6PM DAVID MATLIN ON HIS NEW BOOK 7PM NIGHT READING: WARSH, JARNOT, MATLIN, ALEXANDER SUNDAY JULY 19 10AM NEW POETRY PANEL PRESENTED & ORGANIZED BY BASINSKI w/ KRAMER, BRADY, BURGER, W.HOWE, WERSHLER-HENRY, GRUMMAN & POUND 2PM AFTERNOON READING: WALDROP, MESSERLI, DOUD & FRANCO 4PM PUBLISHING PANAL: W/ TORRA, MESSERLI, BOUCHARD, GANICK, KIRCHENBAUM, FUNKHOUSER 7PM NIGHT READING PREAVALLET, GANICK 8PM CHARLES BERNSTEIN POETRY & POETICS ADMISSIONS: $5/reading, $15/saturday pass, $10/sunday pass, $35/weekend-people can reserve their space now through email or phone and then pay at the conference- checks payable to aaron kiely at p.o.box 441517 somerville, ma 02144- INFORMATION / RESERVATIONS: Aaron Kiely PO box 441517 Somerville Ma 02144 or Email 9924akiel@umbsky.cc.umb.edu 617 629-3376 BEST TO ALL ON THE LIST MICHAEL FRANCO ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:42:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chicago Review Subject: New Chicago Review Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The latest issue of Chicago Review (vol. 44, no. 2) is now out, and might be of interest to subscribers to this list. Contents include: --A long essay by John Taggart entitled "Walk-Out: Rereading George Oppen." --Poetry by Linh Dinh, Martin Corless-Smith, John Koethe, Colin Simms, Paul Vangelisti, Catherine Wagner, Bill Griffiths, Jody Gladding, and Ronald Johnson. --Reviews of Peter Cole, Jeff Clark, Ted Hughes, and Louis Zukofsky, with commentary on Poems for the Millennium and Millennial Evenings at the White House. This issue can be found in bookstores, or ordered directly for $6. Subscriptions are $15 to Poetics List members. Please reply via e-mail or US mail to the address below. **Forthcoming in June: Poetry by Mark Salerno, Matthew Rohrer, Greg Miller, Peter Dale Scott, and many others, as well as a special section on Basil Bunting's biography** Our Web site is currently being updated. Thank you. --------------- Devin Johnston Poetry Editor, Chicago Review 5801 S. Kenwood Ave. Chicago IL 60637-1794 ph/fax 773.702.0887 e-mail org_crev@orgmail.uchicago.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:46:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) Comments: To: henry In-Reply-To: <35A56260.40AA@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry, I should clarify, perhaps. The discussion is not so a-historical, as I see it. By bringing up the Schwitters piece, I meant to begin to consider what "love" is (which pretty obviously calls the "self" into question continuously and in very palpable ways) and how the poem which includes it, comments upon it, can be of service to one's personal history. Love is not what it used to be when I first read the poem in high school. Neither am I, my"self". Todd's comments are welcomed, and I pretty much agree. For all of Da-da poetics's supposed nihilism, this poem is remarkably both dismissive and celebratory. It might be interesting to hear from those reading Watten, to come at these issues from "Bad History"'s trajectory. What that is, I'm still discovering. Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, henry wrote: > Couldn't disagree more. But I'm tired of playing the spoiler shutter-downer > of conversations in an alternate universe. My response: let the intellectuals > work out the intellectual boundaries of the self. It's all sub-poetry. > This discussion is a-historical in a strictly POETIC HISTORY sense. > Forget about the "self". Try to understand what "love" might be. Then > you might take a new tack on the love poem. Start with some Montale, for > example. And if you call me Elitist, I will call you a Black Shirt. > - Henry Gould > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > that Schwitters was writing--from bits and scraps of paper--and really > writing--to my mind--about the "self"--evident in the line > > Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? > That (by the way) is beside the point > > and that romantic ideology is really an investigation of the idea of > "self"--that Scwitters was amazed by the notion of (him)self and the > notion of an art form that negated the central parity as self--is > amazing..and yr question, really, it seems, is not what to do with the > love poem per se, but what to do with the slef...Love poem as epistolary > to the self, really. > > and the love poem as "petty bourgeous sentimentality...is made fun > of...(Werner Schmalenbach...in response to the immeidate "hit" of the > poem's publication) > > and that language /the self trying to produce it--gets all messed > up--tangled--in love--so that the real drive behind the poem--is > language's self--which exists? > > "Ich--------liebre------Dir!" > > Todd Baron > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:52:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Tumbling into existence In-Reply-To: <01IZ8INRE6NM04EMS4@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 10 Jul 1998 GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU wrote: > > I still crave a polemical collection that if it dare not dispense with > the editorial introduction, will somehow tell me a surprising story > about where and how and why and when poetry tumbles into existence. > Why not write one yourself?? If the rhetoric, analysis, metaphors, that are dominating discussion seem unuseful to ya, or questionable, why not develop your own analysis that'll show us what you think really *does* need to be said? It would certainly be the best way to explain (and argue compellingly for) your feeling that these other accounts are inadequate. The point about spatial metaphors is a good one. Important too. Natch, we've gone around on that one on the List more than once before (as you probably remember also)...but without i hasten to add settling anything. As part of one of those earlier threads, i explained my violent opposition to the term "avant-garde," pointing out that it's a military term that isn't helpful or relevant to the activities of poetry. (and of course it carries its own spatial logic, one of advancing armies meeting at a frontline area for combat, rather then of center and periphery...) But i dislike and object to all the rest of 'em as well.. One of the problems is that, perhaps a whole cognitive realignment will be needed, before people stop talking center & periphery. On the other hand (and even more problematically) maybe it will take a complete realignment of the economy, the publishing, distribution and teaching institutions themselves. I mean, there is a reason that spatial metaphors appeal so to people and it ain't just lack of imagination..When the main teaching anthologies contain as much Stein or Zukofsky as Richard Wilbur and Robert Lowell, spatial metaphors of exclusion and clash won't occur so readily to people who know the former are more interesting than the latter... The post i read just before yours, about the "psychopathology" attack on Stein, is (to use an appropriate word) symptomatic. That is just the umpteenth recycling of the infamous attack on her during her career by BF Skinner. So, here is one story (sorry it's not more surprising): poetry tumbles into existence, but like people making history in marx's famous phrase, it doesn't tumble into existence just however it pleases: it does so in circumstances it didn't choose, in a fallen world of workshops and Possumless anthologies and listservs.......... mark prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:59:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: HENRY GOULD Subject: Re: Tumbling into existence In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:52:59 -0400 from I like Gary Roberts' thoughts on this & would suggest an anthology based on a filter of style understood in terms of certain categories. Set aside the conflict-of-interested literary maneuvering: set aside a chronological approach except within the terms of the defined style parameters. Example: taking off on something Simon Dedeo said about romanticism, make an anthology based on a kind of realism/nominalism spectrum, where realism would be understood as foregrounding "objective description" - Pound's imagism, no-idears-button-things, the Objectivists, the whole anti-personal "epic" thrust of 20th-cent poetry. At the other end of the spectrum would be poetry which "objectifies" itself as object (the Objectivists sort of were planted at the cusp of this position), leading maybe to language poetry etc. This end would include poetry valorized also by the New Critics. Then you'd do another anthology of the subjective/informal stream, which is just as important. & you'd be surprised at the confusion of "mainstream/marginal" and "innovative/traditionalist" categories... Maybe the millennium antho does this, I don't know. Another anthology: the generic buddy anthology, entitled Me & My Gang - which would only include real gang members and would have to define its poetics in a forthright & complete manner & not include any of their noble forebears or purported Ancestors in Genius. - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:31:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: why I love country music & poetics (artist of the floating womb) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry -- When you say you don't know whether the Millennium anthology(ies) does this is it because you haven't cracked it yet? Eh? Ask Blarnes, I saw him thumbing (his nose at) it a few weeks ago in the Cold War Bookshop in Oswego. O we can make theories about what it is not, we can make theories for thought and for not I mean I don't think that's theory exactly, to talk about a book without READING it and you know I care for you Henry so don't take that badly Barrett Watten well, I guess I'm with Ben Friedlander liking Watten's paradoxical position of attacking totalization by means of totalizing discourse .. and I am starting to see the charming vulnerability .. Bad History p.43 "there occurs a moment when EVEN I [my caps] can sum up an experience" ... that the anecdotal is being attacked here doesn't make me giggle less to think of EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE in the book thus far as such a summation. Is anybody else thinking MINIMA MORALIA as they read this? So far the only one I get stuck on the wrong side of is "To Elsie" -- hence my crustacean-inducing post -- what's anybody's favorite literature on what the tradition of male gaze lyric poetry does to things, people, poetry, etc? Not mocking, drowning, Is for ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:38:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: why I love country music & poetics (artist of the floating womb) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Drown on, drown on, Davis, Sullivan! (oh what rhythm! what GESTURE! what crust.. systole diastole) (are you on vacation jordan this week just asking) Gary says that Gerald Burns has a poem on watching strippers in the cold war bookshop which might be an answer post it, post on, (oh float on by the floaters the drifters the spinners the tops taps Izza 4? On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Jordan Davis wrote: > Henry -- > > When you say you don't know whether the Millennium anthology(ies) does > this is it because you haven't cracked it yet? Eh? Ask Blarnes, I saw him > thumbing (his nose at) it a few weeks ago in the Cold War Bookshop in > Oswego. > > O we can make theories > about what it is not, > we can make theories > for thought and for not > I mean I don't think that's theory exactly, to talk about a book without > READING > it > > and you know I care for you Henry so don't take that badly > > Barrett Watten well, I guess I'm with Ben Friedlander liking Watten's > paradoxical position of attacking totalization by means of totalizing > discourse .. and I am starting to see the charming vulnerability .. Bad > History p.43 "there occurs a moment when EVEN I [my caps] can sum up an > experience" ... that the anecdotal is being attacked here doesn't make me > giggle less to think of EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE in the book thus far as such > a summation. Is anybody else thinking MINIMA MORALIA as they read this? So > far the only one I get stuck on the wrong side of is "To Elsie" -- hence > my crustacean-inducing post -- what's anybody's favorite literature on > what the tradition of male gaze lyric poetry does to things, people, > poetry, etc? > > Not mocking, drowning, > Is for > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:43:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Kerenyi's use of "opposite" In-Reply-To: <9807101659.AA06882@nevis.naic.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII or what does barthes mean when he "speaks" of mythical speech's "benumbed look" (i think he means it as a kind of flattery)..... c ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:31:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Blurbs in Everyday Life MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gary Roberts asked: "Must I always pass through the same gate presided over by the same authorities in order to reach you...?" Gary? Let me introduce an idea I've been toying with for the last ten minutes: Blurbs in Everyday Life Roommate Chris Stroffolino shares his condiments and ground coffee like an angel-headed Daffy Duck trying to break through the cartoon world into a rigorously codified "everyday life." Lease-bound, currently employed, Stroffolino doesn't mix plastics with glass or newspaper, preferring Lefebvre's space to Bachelard's. "I'm going/ out/ with Rachel/ tonight," Stroffolino urges, with such insistence you have no choice but to believe him. If roommates are the "unacknowledged legislators of the Chore Wheel," Stroffolino's broad sweeping gestures "clean up the house," like they say. The legitimate heir of Brent Sunderland. Non-romantic Female Friend Fatimah Tuggar returns all calls within the hour with the insistence and urgency of a thousand ringing telephones, and expects you to do the same. Tuggar never lets you forget she's every bit the Leo that you are. Whether sharing the new Wilt Stillman movie on 19th & Broadway or eating Indian food at Panna II, no other Non-romantic Female Friend so openly & fully articulates the "why" of "Men Basically Suck"--or is as eager to hear about your own sexual frustration. Taking her cues from previous NrFFs such as Maria Damon and Pamela Z, Tuggar offers the perfect blend of ideas, emotion, experience and, that crucial but too-often missing element in M/F relationships: humor. If it weren't for the occasional awkward moment of sexual tension, you'd admit it without hesitation or stuttering: "You're really my best friend." Highly recommended. Workmates Brenda Iijima and Elizabeth Caine team up during break periods to offer you a choice: Smoking or non? Whether sharing poems, or griping about the office tattle-tale, Iijima and Caine offer empathy, support and the mutually held conviction that all dead-end jobs, including this one, exist for these moments tenderly held together. "Fifteen minutes with you," Smiths frontman Morrissey once whined, "Ooooh, I wouldn't say no" ? and neither will you. How could you? Estranged Best Friend Erik Belgum's recent e-mails urge the reader toward reconciliation, reconnection. The poignancy of "Maybe someday we can talk about it" juxtaposed side-by-side with good-natured jokes about the arrogance of, say, Richard Kostelanetz, imply that connection still exists, however tenuous. Though lacking the depth of its previous incarnation, the surface of this relationship shimmers with the brilliant light of possibility reflecting off the shards of all our earlier lives. Who was it--Heidegger?--no, maybe Adorno ? well, it doesn't really matter, I don't even remember the quote itself. Belgum is making a comeback, determined to take the stage with Stroffolino, Tuggar, Iijima, Caine and others. Can you spell A-n-t-h-o-l-o-g-y o-f N-e-w A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n F-r-i-e-n-d-s? What logically follows "A"? B, as in Belgum. Put him in yours. Okay ... you get the idea ... Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:46:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Re: why I love country music & poetics (artist of the floating womb) Comments: To: Jordan Davis In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jordan says: the charming vulnerability .. Bad History p.43 "there occurs a moment when EVEN I [my caps] can sum up an experience" ... that the anecdotal is being attacked here doesn't make me giggle less to think of EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE in the book thus far as such a summation. And that's just it. "An Anna Blume" relishes the paradox. "Bad History" rues it. Still, the former is "about" love, the latter "about" politics. Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:04:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: Other introductions -Reply gary r.: I too tire of staid introductions to anthologies (though i don't really like the anthology form that much, it is really someone else doing the work for you and putting such a spin on it, though sometimes, i know, they are all we can get), though i doubt i would find caddell's and quartermain's so; but jeez, man, work on your own, that's the ticket isn't it, even if you don't have a publisher asking YOU to cull a collection and write an intro, you might be surprised what could happen if you DID cull a selection and propose to introduce it as you say. how bout that? i have to admit this, though, by way of a question: who published the C&Q anthology on Brits and mics?; in this case, there is so much irish stuff (at least) that is hard to find, or expensive i should say.... a howdy to Irishman Randolph Healey, whose work i hope is in that anthology, i think randolph is a fellow on this list. His Arbor Vitae is very interesting poem indeed, but only available in a chapbook. And, gary r., i have to point out that yhou have complained about the center/periperhy dyad common to poetry introductions only to introduce your own about a gate, being outside it or inside it. as beckett says, "don't indict the words, they're no shoddier that what they peddle." >>> UB Poetics discussion group 07/10/98 02:13pm >>> I just finished reading Richard Caddell and Peter Quartermain's intro to their forthcoming anthology Other British and Irish Poetry since 1970, as currently given at Jacket#4. Having read a number of anthology intros over the years, I was not surprsied to recognize these latest historical narratives and critical syllogisms: they are familiar. But what would an anthologist's rhetoric of contemporaneity be like if she or he were not to use the spatial metaphor "center/periphery" nor the diction of "mainstream," "other," and "margin"? These narratives, syllogisms, metaphors, and dictions are assumed to have efficacy; they organize and reveal and overcome x, y, and z. They also can bore. I still crave a polemical collection that if it dare not dispense with the editorial introduction, will somehow tell me a surprising story about where and how and why and when poetry tumbles into existence. Since a few of the poets named in the introduction participate on this list from time to time, perhaps they might weigh in on The Way To Introduce Anthologized Poetry. Must I always pass through the same gate presided over by the same authorities in order to reach your poems? Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:02:31 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Blurbs in Everyday Life In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:31:57 -0400 from Henry Gould's endless endlessness is endlessly refined here as he rejoinders jovially to Jordan's quaint quips, as in his all-too-briefs lyric, "I Haven't Read It" in which he confesses to not having cracked either Millennium while sending-up the whole confused genre in the process cheese aisle while on a 20 min - no make that 30 - break from his jovial (did I use that word already today?) terminal nicknamed Terminal; as Rowena Fameuse flamed after skimming these gems with her pinky, "I'm - just - flab-flabbergasted!" And lest we forget - the book is FREE. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:08:53 -0700 Reply-To: Robert Corbett Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Corbett Subject: Not romantic, but drowning In-Reply-To: <199807101628.JAA08942@lanshark.lanminds.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i just want to rant about the new yorker's article on stein which managed to be about as snidely dismissive as a positive article could be. the use of biography there could be well used in a course on the use and abuse of biography as a critical tool. obviously, the writer had no time for stein's experiments in language, but says rather that they were way to avoid confronting herself. i.e. stein should have written more like Kathryn Harrison. what this shows is that whatever poets understand by the terms "self" & "reality" today, the popular press clings to a victorian notion, with a soupcon of freud (or rather Ego-Psych). And it ain't pretty, as far i am concerned. i suppose when the new yorker publishes the occasional literary treacle, it provides an opportunity to vent spleen, or cancel a subscription, but it is rather worrying that newspapers of record (the Times), literary reviews (the Oxford Dons of the New York Review and the London Review), etc, cling to a premodern notion of literature. when faced with such frustration, i often agree with Blake that "That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care," but ultimately for the sake of literary culture, this is a very dire situation. for instance, consider the preference for round over flat characters, as in the ritual complaint, "David Foster Wallace [or insert your favorite misread writer] creates programmatic characters, whom, for all the brilliance of their talk and the quirkiness of their actions, never come alive for this reader." This is patent nonsense. Characters in a novel, play, poem, are not alive--they are not dead either, but is a confusion about what it means to suspend disbelief. (After all, however much we believe in the Ancient Mariner, we don't expect to meet him at the grocery store). "Roundness", "Aliveness", etc, are the shibboleths of the rear guard of realism, firmly entrenched in literary journalism in america. it is an easily deconstructed binary (are Dickens' characters round or flat? Doestevksi? if they are flat, why do they seem alive), which designates not an argument, but the likes and dislikes of the reader. Parse the sentence above as "I don't like the characters of Wallace's fiction" and it makes sense. such a distinction seems even more odd now, because the characters that are the most memorable in today's popular culture are cartoons (the Simpsons, King of the Hill), the gang on Seinfeld, and Mulder & Scully. The cartoons are flat by definition, while I dare say that the best episodes of Seinfeld are dadaistic riffs on the way we live now. the spate of columns that used Seinfeld as an index for the increasing meanness of the culture last year was hilarious, though it proved neither Quayle nor journalists understood Murphy Brown. as for Mulder & Scully, even their palpable attraction suggests not a rich inner life, but a knowing wink on the part of Chris Carter about eighties' narratives of opposites attracting, as well as the extradiegetic knowledge on our part that such a romance would mean the end of the X-Files. popular culture has become modern, even post-modern, while literary journalists subscribe to the outmoded fashions of realism, desiring coherence and straightforward plot, legible character and prosaic epiphanies. i'm not saying that such criticism should be censored or such works of art be banned--i love a juicy anachronism as much as the next person. i am saying that forget about the liberal bias of the press, let's talk about the realistic bias of literary reviewers. here endeth the lecture (and i know i am preaching to the choir). robert On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > >What is the love poem, anyway? If you move it far enough away > >from the Romantic notions of self, would people still recognize > >it and respond to it as such? > > this part intrigues me. I have been wanting to post about an article on > Gertrude Stein that was in a fairly recent New Yorker (excuse me!) wherein > the author gave a very psychological reading of the lady's life and work. > saying she only wrote 'that way' cause she was scared of her own psychology. > and how V Woolf considered Stein a "generational failure". > my questions: > how is psychology (self?) framed? > is there a new way into interiority? (i expect an immediate and foolproof > response) > does anyone else love the flatness of Stein's characterization (no i must be > the only one) > like the repetition in Ada? > why must Woolf and Stein be opposed in this critical/gossip history? is > their a way to integrate? > (and i know they didn't BOND in REAL LIFE) > > excuse me. the New Yorker disturbed me. > > ps i just must say that bitterish reference to 'poetry of young women' and > the Possibility of a trajectory (anthology) framed by women's writing sounds > a bit HYSTERICAL! > > Elizabeth Treadwell > Outlet, a periodical > Double Lucy Books > PO Box 9013 > Berkeley, Ca > 94709 > http://users.lanminds/com/~dblelucy > Robert Corbett "you are there beyond/ tracings flesh can rcor@u.washington.edu take,/ and farther away surrounding and University of Washington informing the systems" - A.R. Ammons ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 23:27:57 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling--romatinc --men asking--duelling romatic-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > > >What is the love poem, anyway? If you move it far enough away > >from the Romantic notions of self, would people still recognize > >it and respond to it as such? > > this part intrigues me. > The wonder of Stein has always been , fr me, the language as a COMPOSING TOOL--not one which reports. So, for yr question there--about "interior" I think the way is always the same--a construction of grammar is a construction of the self. Stein's "voice" is not a personaility--which so many hate her for--or blame her for--anymore than the architecture of Neutra or Schindler is a direct read of them"selves". Stein constructed--and attempted to get to a construction of the poem, the play, the fiction, the essay. Thus, by her composing a world through noitcing a world by composing a world she asked "what is a sentence. A sentence is a part of speech." & " How is sentiment maintained. A pause." Here I might sound like a fool in love (sic) but here I must say that Stein's composing a world(sound) through the grammatical is indeed a grammar of the self that need not focus on the one interiority. Perhaps I've been inside too long and need the sun--or perhaps "a grammar relates to not liking to see again those you used to know." Tb ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:27:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Professor CD says on 9 july: > Now children. Let me explain. Tristan Tzara >was Tristan Tzara. Paul Celan was Paul Celan. >Paul Celan was a poet. HE was also a translator. >T.S. Eliot was a great great poet. He also >was a translator. But now, children, A child, my fellow list-mate, could have figured out that T.S.Eliot has a poem in Volume 1 of_ Poems For The Millennium_. YOU however did not know this because you have a strategy and agenda which we are not privy to. A child, however , could figure out with very little assistance that T.S. Eliot signed his name to a translation of a St.-John Perse poem. A child however, would not be as convinced as you seem to be that Tristan Tzara is Tristan Tzara or Paul Celan is Paul Celan, etc. On some level CD I don't know what the HELL you are talking about. You are chattering , thinking your words say what they are saying. Meanwhile, A CHILD would be delighted by your non-sense AND still be able to turn one page . ONE PAGE, instead of trying to teach us "children" a lesson. Ok. Well what about another lesson. William Carlos Williams wrote this in an essay : "Destruction according to the Babylonia order of creation, comes before creation. . . . We must be destructive first to free ourselves from forms accreting to themselves forms we despise. Where does the past lodge in the older forms? Tear it out." And "to destroy the past is precisely a service to tradition". Joseph Riddel writes: "The destruction of historical forms, of the tyrannous designs (the "TEXTS") of history . . . (ie. Anthologies, and doesn't this volume by Joris & Rothenberg have as one of its projects, to tear out and free itself from the dusty old notions about anthologies?) . . . opens up rather than closes the possibility of signification and mandates the freedom that must be like the beginning". In that sense this "anthology" is the best thing that could have happened to T.S. Eliot. It dusts off the old anthologized T.S.Eliot. But guess what? To re-configure Eliot into a counter-poetic tradition , we have to do the work instead of letting Harold Bloom do it for us. If we care, we have to find Eliot's poetry ourselves, and figure out for ourselves what that gaping hole on page 382 should be filled with, or even WHY it should be filled (depending on our mood: are we for or against inclusion? : both delighted and/or anguished by the absence?) My last post got cut off 3 times in transmission. It was a digression on [1]feuding neighbors , [2]George Oppen's breakthrough year of 1966 , [3]mentioning(s) that some of the "absent poets" ( ie T.S. Eliot or Jack Spicer) from the _Poems For The Millennium_ ARE included as translators and [4]a quote from Walter Benjamin's "Task of the Translator", which may be seen as situating the translator's task within the (to quote Giorgio Agamben) scission wherein "Criticism is born". An extreme point in Western culture situated where the word comes unglued from itself: " and it points, on the near or far side of that separation , toward a unitary status for the utterance". OR: Stated another way, my fellow-list mate CD, you DID NOT TURN the page, as any child could do and WOULD if the sophisticated adult in us would stay out of the picture. OK? For example, show a child, still learning to read, the letters T-S-E-L-I-O-T, hand him Volume 1 of _ Poems For The Millennium_ , turn to page 382, tell the child to identify the Letters T-S-E-L-I-O-T, all in a row . Then say, my dear child TURN the page to 383. Good, that's correct these letters don't occur all in a row there. Ok, what about the next page? Oh, yes the letters T-S-E-L-I-O-T do occur on page 384. Very good . What's that you say? Yes, ok he is mentioned again on page 385. And you're only four years old?( I guess it just takes the CURIOSITY of child sometimes.) That means, precious, that someone with those letters signed his name to a poem, changed the arrangement of the letters of French to an order in English. You, however , CD can't turn the page. Or refused to. Ok it may be hard as an adult BUT : a child could do it. You possibly did not have hands when you wrote this on the 8 July: > I find it very strange that this anthology Poems for the Millenium > has not one poem by T.S. Eliot. I am reminded of Michael Palmer's "Autobiography 3" : Yes, I was born on the street known as Glass--as Paper, Scissors or Rock. Several of my ancestors had no hands. Several of my ancestors used their pens in odd ways. Later on in "Autobiography 3" are these lines: Once I bought an old boat. I abandoned the tyrannical book of my dreams and wrote about dresses, jewels, furniture and menus eight or ten times in a book of dreams. It sets me to dreaming when I dust it off. Our time is a between time; best to stay out of it. To summarize :I'm not buying your old boat CD. Perhaps a poem by T.S. Eliot has too much dust on it right now. Joris and Rothenberg , by including "not one poem" have afforded those of us who care to, an opportunity to dust off a 'pome' by TSE so as to "re-contextualize" it in terms of a "counter-poetic" tradition.{ a tradition which "counters", or counter-memorizes the open tomb of Modernism, which is a double opening: the poetic resistance to history's closure.( Joseph Riddel's ideas in his book_ The Inverted Bell_ are being borrowed here) }. T.S. Eliot has been abandoned to this open tomb of 'modernist practices', and tyrannical anthologies for too long, as Mark Scroggins points out in his post to the list yesterday. Therefore, the "real" T.S. Eliot may AND may not be a poem by St.-John Perse. ( Although, you would be hard pressed to convince me that Eliot is or was an ancestor of mine with hands; or that he did have a hand in a translation, and EVEN used his pen. And I'm not talking metaphorically. He literally did not have hands. If you want my self-important explanation, please back channel). ie, I hate Eliot's "back-channeled" , less overt , form of anti-semitism. Less overt than Pound, that is. This remark by Emmanuel Levinas in_ Nine Talmudic Readings_ seems crucial during this "between time": "For we assume the permanence and the continuation of Israel and the unity of its self-consciousness throughout the ages. Finally, we assume the unity of the consciousness of mankind, claiming to be fraternal and one throughout time and space.It is Israel' history which has suggested this idea, even if mankind, now conscious of its oneness, allows itself to challenge Israel's vocation, its concrete universality. Does not antisemitism, a phenomenon unique in its kind, attest to its translogical nature?" ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:29:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Professor CD says on 9 july: > Now children. Let me explain. Tristan Tzara >was Tristan Tzara. Paul Celan was Paul Celan. >Paul Celan was a poet. HE was also a translator. >T.S. Eliot was a great great poet. He also >was a translator. But now, children, A child, my fellow list-mate, could have figured out that T.S.Eliot has a poem in Volume 1 of_ Poems For The Millennium_. YOU however did not know this because you have a strategy and agenda which we are not privy to. A child, however ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:31:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Poems for the Millennium Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Professor CD says on 9 july: > ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 16:43:59 -0400 Reply-To: Ryan Whyte Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Whyte Subject: Announce: Aporia #1 and call for submissions Comments: To: FOP-L MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII July 10 1998. Please distribute where appropriate. *** Announce: Aporia *** ISSN 1480-9389 28 pages offset/photocopy Aporia is a small-press journal focusing on experimental writing and art criticism. It is intended as a vehicle for radical or "difficult" writing which may not have an outlet in the usual art and theory publications. In a larger sense, Aporia is an anti art-magazine. Aporia #1, on "space and the artwork," features the work of: Alan Sondheim Nick Piombino (on Gins/Arakawa) Gordon Lebredt Ryan Whyte Ed Aoki and Tosh Berman (on the Benshi tradition), among others. Single issues are $3 Canadian, or $2.25 U.S. Two issue subscriptions are available, for $5 Can for Canadian subscribers, $4 U.S. for U.S. subscribers, and $6 U.S for overseas subscribers. Please make cheques out to Ryan Whyte. Aporia is now accepting submissions for issue #2, on "Time." The deadline for submissions is October 1, 1998. Future issues will focus on "Color," "Void," "Light," and "the Avant-Garde." Please direct all correspondence to the editor: Ryan Whyte 504 Queen St. East Toronto, ON, Canada M5A 1V2 email: da549@torfree.net ---end--- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 16:58:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Not romantic, but drowning Comments: To: Robert Corbett In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jordan asks--I think--about literature of interest re male gaze... well been thinking been wanting to rant about that Wayen Kostenbaum piece on Vanessa Beecroft in the latest ARTFORUM lately and so will well he begins the piece with going to see a Jane Frielecher show and expressing boredom (or more likely ENNUI) at--not at the work per se (nor have I seen it nor will judge but that's the issue HERE)--but at the MEDIUM (can you BELIEVE that it's 1998 and some people still PAINT on WALLS and only on WALLS?" come on now, he'd probably add, this is the error of the HUGO BOSS PRIZE and that souglass clown and his slowed-down 24 hour version of PSYCHO and the sequel currently at the guggenheim).... After, claiming the PASSE quality of the MEDIUM or GENRE in which frielicher works, he moves on to praise (i think it's praise) Beecroft's show of 20 or so models, 5 naked, all but 5 wearing clothes by GUCCI GUCCI GUCCI. A "by invite only" show (but they invite a lot of people it says here)--therefore "special." Kostenbaum is simply ASTOUNDED that skinny model women's legs do not touch at their crotch. And this is the NEW ART, the "interactive" "installation piece." Question: am I silly or just plain "out of the ballpark" for imagining the scene at this show, as stiff and stuffy???? Would rather see the frielicher, and then maybe go to a topless cabaret a certain A. Berrigan told me about--no GUCCI at least there, one step closer to the more "naked" voyeurism i assume is more available at the kind of strip clubs guiliani wants to close down (i did go once with fellow Hard Press author Sharon Messmer; i wonder if the baby doll lounge made the AX).... Well, have I made my preferences "clear"? And, no, I'm not going to retell the story about baby's first reading with Bernstein in 89 and his public response to my early poem "blackburniana", but I may mention that my recent, as yet unpublished piece "NUDE" (which I really should remember to send to Eileen Myles after hearing her portrait of the male nude model she had "sit" for her creative writing class--but this is the "female gaze" or at least one of them) was rejected by Mark Nowak's magazine (I forget the name I always get it confused with that thing in philly). I had sent it in response to his call for his "VOYEUR/VOYAGER" issue, but I guess he didn't want something so much VOYEUR as VOYAGER, or if he sees the two as one, he sees the VOYEUR as a kind of VOYAGER whereas I might be interested in figuring the VOYAGER as a kind of VOYEUR, a line of emphasis (my sister prefered to be "lost in space" too "lost lost i want you lost" as Frank O'Hara says) so drowning in a liquor not yet brood ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 16:27:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: invite In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" okay everyone so i'm down on the cape for a while. anyone who wants to stop in after the boston alternative poetry conference is welcome to do so. back channel for info if that sounds nice. i shd warn you it's a bit of a cultural void here in woods hole w/ very little reading material at the house other than the hannah weiner i've brought along...md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:33:34 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I guess barratt watten was right, a bus ride is better than most poems. < Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) Oh well, we're all going a-historical, we rememeber what the other one forgot, blah blah. "Elite". Dangers of subject / object. Romanticism is a threat in 1998? Here's something about love, forthcoming in Nedge #6, courtesy of Stuart Blazer, of Provence, which has some tradition in that line: When you love you have no eyes is what she said; you just see love. She didn't leave until he hurt the baby. Young, oriental, scarred, adopted since five, living now in France. We wait for the bus, passing time. Almost beautiful. I'm a fool for it each time. Even blind, ears would be my eyes. It's not just Europe, though granted, it is France. Whose gestalt makes love evident: its signs and scars, proof that too much pleasure hurts. A black belt and still she let him hurt her. Love, she called it at the time, so completely scarred I'm forced to turn my eyes though who am I to question what they meant by love? Might as well read de Sade or Anatole France... Not only the cooking is mouth-watering in France; hot enough to burn the tongue or at least hurt you into wanting more, love here is a way of living time. Its forms tease and please the eyes leaving them finally sated, scarred. Betrayed, disfigured, bruised, scarred in existential oriental France where it's a festival of talk with lips and eyes that keeps on until the whole body hurts, a kind of tatouage, skin pierced by time displaying our own and others' love. Disease and remedy, love polishes its golden silver scars brightening our passage through time, French but not confined to France it radiates as from a sun a hurt so essential we both offer then shield our eyes. When you love you have no eyes is what she said; you just see love. "And we came out once more to see the scars." - Stuart Blazer Aix-en-Provence June, 1998>> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:37:13 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: Kerenyi's use of "opposite" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gary, I think you'll find the referent for "opposite" on the same page [11 in my paperback Bollingen ed.], which you quote below: "the standpoint of the deity,' as confirmed on page 12, where he says that "the Minoan gesture . . . revelas man in a wholly religious situation: not oriented solely toward himself and his fellow men, but determined by something other, something outside hmiself, caught up in an atmosphere of festival as in an enchanted world." Further down the same page he says that "the Minoan bull game was clearly a festive game. In honor of whom? The Great Goddess of nature and life? Nikolaos Platon drewthis inference from his interpretation of Minoan art. In his view, the goddess was the divine onlooker, the 'opposite' . . ." Dan Gary Sullivan wrote: > > Everyone: > > Reading Carl Kerenyi's _Dionysos, the Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life_ > this weekend near Woodstock (trees! streams! no constant low-level hum of > electricity! lots of free marijuana!) I ran across this pretty wonderful > passage on Cretan / Minoan art ... but, now I have a question & thought maybe > someone could help me out, either posting here or backchannel: What does > Kerenyi mean here by "opposite"? I'm totally baffled, have read it to a couple > poet friends & roommate Chris, and, well, we can't figure it out. PLEASE > help!!! > > --Gary > > Cretan art ignored the terrifying distance between the human and the > transcendent which may tempt man to seek a refuge in abstraction and to create > a form for the significant remote from space and time; it equally ignored the > glory and futility of single human acts, time-bound, space-bound. In Crete > artists did not give substance to the world of the dead through an abstract of > the world of the living, nor did they immortalize proud deeds or state a humble > claim for divine attention in the temples of the gods. Here and here alone the > human bid for timelessness was disregarded in the most complete acceptance of > the grace of life the world has ever known. For life means movement and the > beauty of movement was woven in the intricate web of living forms which we call > "scenes of nature"; was revealed in human-bodies acting their serious games, > inspired by a transcendent presence, acting in freedom and restraint, > unpurposeful as cyclic time itself." --this section is actually a direct quote > from H.A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, from her book _Arrest and Movement_ ... then > Kerenyi says: "Minoan art fully justifies this negative > characterization--negative from the standpoint of man as center, as the vehicle > of his own historical and non-historical glory, but not from the standpoint of > the deity, whose presence it demands and requires. Man is always on the edge of > this epiphany of the spirit--the spirit or spirits of life and nature--if not > face to face with it. In this view an intimation of the godhead could be > manifested not only in a swarm of insects, in birds, or in the beasts of the > sea, but also in a human gesture, and it could in turn determine man's > gestures. ... here I am speaking not of cult gestures side by side with other > equally characteristic gestures of simple human existence, but of *the* gesture > which time and time again, in different forms of movement, represents the > identical situation of man: his non-central position which demands an > "opposite" and can be understood only as an "opposite." ..." > > PS: Some of you will note that this book wasn't on my list of summer > "plan-to-read"s. So, why am I reading it & not the "planned" books? A > confession: I am a really, really, really bad planner ... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 18:21:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Check out (in one of my *favorite* books _Breaking the Sequence: Women's Experimental Fiction_ by Ellen Friedman & Miriam Fuchs) the essay: "Woolfenstein" by Rachel Blau DuPlessis. She manages to not ignore the two women's obvious differences, but doesn't let them get in the way of an intertextual analysis. Her reading of _The Waves_ as influenced by Stein's "beginning again"-ness (among other things) is way cool. Princeton U, publishers. Actually, I was thinking of love in a slightly different context yesterday. I don't know who it was who said we can learn morality from novels, but I started thinking again about the "people" I've learned most from (& loved) and made my not complete but pretty close list: Emma Bovary Anna Karenina Kate Pointellier Isabel Archer Tess Durbeyfield Molly Bloom (& Leopold) Anyone listees with characters they feel really speak to "how one lives one's life"? P.S. Elizabeth: I too love the "flatness" of Stein--and see it a bit, perhaps, in _Orlando_, though I love Woolf best in her "roundness" (_To the Lighthouse_). Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > >What is the love poem, anyway? If you move it far enough away > >from the Romantic notions of self, would people still recognize > >it and respond to it as such? > > this part intrigues me. I have been wanting to post about an article on > Gertrude Stein that was in a fairly recent New Yorker (excuse me!) wherein > the author gave a very psychological reading of the lady's life and work. > saying she only wrote 'that way' cause she was scared of her own psychology. > and how V Woolf considered Stein a "generational failure". > my questions: > how is psychology (self?) framed? > is there a new way into interiority? (i expect an immediate and foolproof > response) > does anyone else love the flatness of Stein's characterization (no i must be > the only one) > like the repetition in Ada? > why must Woolf and Stein be opposed in this critical/gossip history? is > their a way to integrate? > (and i know they didn't BOND in REAL LIFE) > > excuse me. the New Yorker disturbed me. > > ps i just must say that bitterish reference to 'poetry of young women' and > the Possibility of a trajectory (anthology) framed by women's writing sounds > a bit HYSTERICAL! > > Elizabeth Treadwell > Outlet, a periodical > Double Lucy Books > PO Box 9013 > Berkeley, Ca > 94709 > http://users.lanminds/com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 18:47:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: Not romantic, but doesn't need curlers: you can just wash it & go MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tina Brown used to run Vogue or Mademoiselle or something similarly femme. They brought her on as editor to make the NYer more trendy. So the New Yorker likes Jorie Graham but not Stein. Perhaps they like writers who write round but are flat, vs flat writers who are round in person. Secretly though I think Stein is often dismissed because her haircut was too butch. Seriously. Robert Corbett wrote: > i just want to rant about the new yorker's article on stein which managed > to be about as snidely dismissive as a positive article could be. the use > of biography there could be well used in a course on the use and abuse of > biography as a critical tool. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:22:03 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie" Organization: Alphaville Subject: and then the ones takin' the money MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "No one today hopes to conduct the psychology of the future in the vocabulary of the neurophysiologist , let alone that of a physicist, and principled ways of relaxing the classical "rules" of reduction have been proposed."---from The Intentional Stance by Daniel C. Dennett --- Then for all practical purposes, everyone takin' the money does exactly what Dennett claims they won't do, e.g. ground psychology in neuroscience, communication theory, AI, mathematics, engineering and, of course, physics. --- "A processing subsystem is characterized in terms of its function; it corresponds to a network or set of networks that maps an input and an output. Processing subsystems can be characterized more precisely as performing computations. A computation is a systematic mapping between interpretable inputs and outputs....The input can be interpreted as specifying quantities and a relation between them, and the output can be interpreted as specifying a quantity."---from Image and Brain by Stephen M. Kosslyn, Professor of PSYCHOLOGY at Harvard University---cp ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 22:00:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Kerenyi's use of "opposite" In-Reply-To: <01BDABFE.1FD41EC0@gps12@columbia.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ... here I am speaking not of cult gestures side by side with other >equally characteristic gestures of simple human existence, but of *the* >gesture >which time and time again, in different forms of movement, represents the >identical situation of man: his non-central position which demands an >"opposite" and can be understood only as an "opposite." ..." I havent been reading all that closel;y, but my guess is that he means it in its primary meaning; i.e. facing him, as a dancer or dining partner. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 07:21:26 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: Kerenyi's use of "opposite" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gary, As a footnote to my earlier reply, a statement by the Jungian analyst Edward C. Whitmont [in _The Return of the Goddess_]: "Life as a dramatic play, as theater (_theatron_ in Greek meant a place for seeing, but especially 'A SHOWPLACE FOR DIVINE ONLOOKERS'), is an archetypal motif recurring over and over in dreams and poetry" (qtd. in Stephen Larsen, _The Mythic Imagination_ 29). [my caps; Whitmont may echo Kerenyi's phrase here]. Dan Gary Sullivan wrote: > > Everyone: > > Reading Carl Kerenyi's _Dionysos, the Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life_ > this weekend near Woodstock (trees! streams! no constant low-level hum of > electricity! lots of free marijuana!) I ran across this pretty wonderful > passage on Cretan / Minoan art ... but, now I have a question & thought maybe > someone could help me out, either posting here or backchannel: What does > Kerenyi mean here by "opposite"? I'm totally baffled, have read it to a couple > poet friends & roommate Chris, and, well, we can't figure it out. PLEASE > help!!! > > --Gary > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 08:34:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:33:34 EDT from On Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:33:34 EDT said: >I guess barratt watten was right, a bus ride is better than most poems. > When you get a little older, try them both - bus rides, poems - you might learn something! - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 10:26:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: Watten)Schwitters)Eros)Romance) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Wasn't it "A bus ride is better than most art." or is my memory failing me? charles At 08:34 AM 7/11/98 EDT, you wrote: >On Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:33:34 EDT said: >>I guess barratt watten was right, a bus ride is better than most poems. >> >When you get a little older, try them both - bus rides, poems - you might >learn something! >- Henry Gould > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 10:27:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Quartermain Subject: Re: Other introductions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:04 PM 7/10/98 -0400, Michael Coffey wrote: > even if you don't have a publisher asking YOU to cull a collection and >write an intro, you might be surprised what could happen if you DID cull >a selection and propose to introduce it as you say. how bout that? For the record: yes, it would be wonderful to have a publisher ASKING us or me to cull a collection. Ric Caddel and I nattered together about this anthology for a couple of years before actually doing anything substantial about it, and it took more than another two years, and a LOT of work, to find a publisher courageous enough (or foolish enough) to risk it. We're both thankful indeed that Wesleyan UP / U of New England Press took it on. "Inside"? "Outside"? "Centre"? "Margin"? "Gate"? Well, whatever metaphor Gary R wants to reject or adopt, SOMETHING might account for publishers' reluctance. Michael Coffee also asked >though, by way of a question: who published the >C&Q anthology on Brits and mics? The book itself won't be out till December, but (as already posted) the unabridged Intro is available in John Tranter's Jacket # 4 (http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket04/otherbrit.html and he added > .... a howdy >to Irishman Randolph Healey, whose work i hope is in that anthology, SOME of it is, yes. Peter + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 846 Keefer Street Vancouver B.C. Canada V6A 1Y7 Voice : 604 255 8274 Fax: 255 8204 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 12:40:33 -0500 Reply-To: jlm8047@usl.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry McGuire Organization: USL Subject: contest update MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Please note that the deadline for the contest of the Deep South Writers Conference has been changed. The new postmark deadline is August 3. For full details on the conference and/or contest, please email me at jlm8047@usl.edu Best wishes, Jerry McGuire ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 16:26:16 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Pi-bolar "opposite" of Kerenyi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit What does stroffolino mean when he "speaks" of ""barthes "speaks" of mythical speech's "benumbed look" ""? The stroffolinolion quotes split our attention toward the author, the authored, and the relation between them in the way that "clams" are the closest thing to "bait" I can think of. Barthes is writing of the unfolding of a name, since the character who says "I" has no name but at the same time "I" immediately becomes a name. To say ""barthes 'speaks'" inevitably attributes signifieds into plurality, a biographical duration where one cannot return to barthes who can never ride a horse with no name. Ron I disagree. I believe the eliot good/person bad person thing is genetic. Therefore the same issue up and through the millenium. Thinking about the gazes, I think male / male, female / female, are doing wild recasts recently. There are other ways to get there. For variants sake, one can pass through the unoccupied tollhouse gate pre-sided in wood shingles by someone whose receipt for the work was lost, was not recorded, in order to reach you, riding a bus on an island country. Be well David Baratier "As suicides diminish, family size regularly increases" --Emile Durkheim ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 06:31:41 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: a (new) dialogue MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's a dialogue I'm very interested in starting: As one of a few (comparatively) MAs--MFA--etc. with a degree in Poetics--I'm wondering what listees think of Poetics (versus Creative Writitng: not a program where one works on one's own work--but a poetics dept. like Naropa, New College, Buffalo) Departments and their affect of Poetics. Under the "leadership" of Duncan McNaughton and Louis Patler, under the teaching of M. Palmer, David Meltzer, Lyn Hejinian--I gradued in 1990 from New College. The program was then not a creative writing program per se: we had to do grad. level work and writing to earn our degrees--a thesis--and I "think" I know how the study of Olson, The Romantics, Oppen, Dickinson, Basic Texts (Aristotle, etc), Whitman and the texts that influenced their poetics has affected my work as a poet. But: I recently asked the question of "affect" of Charles B. and the idea has flown about in my head for awhile-- The question is throughly documented in terms of Visual/Plastic Arts dept.s: How Cal-Arts affects the Arts (heavily conceptual)--how Black Mountain affected the Arts--How R.I.S.D , Irivine, UCSD, or etc. has affected a dialogue in the visual arts. We know that critics--that theory--that work itself comes from these schools: But I'm wondering if those out there involved/enrolled/graduated from could speak to the question: What affect do Poetics/Poetry Dept. degrees and programs actually have on cont. poetry and poetics. Since some of these places are not strictly "academic"(as New C. wasn't) How do these dept.s enlarge their circle of influence? Think of Black Mountain--and who/what came from there under Olson. Think of the myriad of publications that appear from these places (Apex of the M, Tripwire--some ones that recently come to mind) I'm meandering abit--but the question is large. Since the question has been raised about academic studies in lit. here in general. thanks for all, Todd Baron (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 06:33:40 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: ps MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Obviously an MA in Poetics hasn't guranteed my typing or spelling abilities! Tb ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 02:07:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Influence of Poetics Programs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am glad to have gotten my digest. I guess some mail is getting through. There was a posting that it was shutdown for the weekend.?? Todd Baron. I am unable to answer your question, except indirectly. I do wonder, as you do, how various poetics programs will and promote the dissemination, ie teaching, writing, editing of poetry. I have only ever taken one post-graduate poetry/poetics seminar, one semester, fortunately with William Slaughter , at Univ. of North Florida, seven years ago, before he launched and edited MUDLARK (part of the List group here as you probably know).The class was overbooked as it was, and I had to get special permission from the instructor to get into the class, but by showing genuine interest I had my ticket in NO questions asked. The only poets I had read on my own outside the classroom because I wanted to, were Stevens, Raymond Carver, and Rilke ( because Carver mentioned him in a few poems, and in his short story "The Student's Wife", written when he was only around 23 years old, by the way). Yet this little bit of interest was all it took , and gradually I wanted to find out more. Until then, I had never dreamed that there were writers like Oppen or Reznikoff or Robert Duncan ,Creeley and Olson, Michael Palmer& Zukofsky, or _Sulfur_ mag,etc. I remember looking at _A_ seven years ago and feeling like it was impenetrable. Resisting it, somehow. Oh, well...blah, blah, blah. Now, I jump into it from time to time.I am astounded at times, and still befuddled, of course. These kinds of stories are a dime- a- dozen, I know , so sorry for the boring home movie. Yet , I'm kind of connected ("virtually connected") to the Buffalo Poetics program, though my grades were lousy in college,and with no publications, etc., I would never be accepted into any kind of a poetics progam like this one which can choose from among the best of the best. And YET, I am a part of it too! I was welcomed to the Listserv, no questions asked. Ain't it a gas! Think of it Todd. I can look up Charles Berstein's or Susan Howe's syllabus (or is it syllabi?) for their classes! So , what does that say about the influence of this particular poetics program? Anyhow, I was fortunate to have a fine teacher, and just one course is all it took to help me find my way . The testimony of one teacher was the signpost needed.. And since I work in the public schools, well won't I be more effective in the classroom because in a sense, I AM part of this 'Poetics' program, through EPC?(Though of course human interaction in a physical classroom setting , interacting with the teacher and classmates is obviously the best way to go.) As Carver might say, this is 'gravy'. chris ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 23:55:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: izak Subject: robert gluck Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone know Robert Gluck's email address? If so, please backchannel it to me. Thanks, Joanna Sondheim ******************************************************************************* "It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." -Edith Sodergran ******************************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:44:04 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Other introductions Comments: To: poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sympathies with Gary Roberts, even as we trot out the lines he finds over-familiar, the centre/ periphery mainstream/ margin monoculture/ plurality rag. I get tired of it too, and wish it was no longer necessary to say it. But - this is the point - it's where I (and the other Others) live. As we try to suggest in our intro (invoking Matthias from three decades ago and Langland from the 14th cent) it's not a new thing: the pluralities of the culture of these islands seem always to be "outside". Why, it got so bad at some points that people just sailed away from it... Yes, Healy's there, and I guess many - er - Others who may or may not be known to members of this list, but who remain for the most part firmly unknown and yes, marginalised at our end. But at this point in the process I lie awake nights fretting about the other Others, the ones we had to leave out in what is self-evidently a non-canonical plural presentation rather than a group show. The telling of the wheres hows n whys which Gary craves would thus be a book at least as long as this 352pp collection, rather than an introduction to it. Someone should write it. ___________________________________________________________ Richard Caddel Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK E-mail: R.I.Caddel@durham.ac.uk Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481 WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write." - Basil Bunting ___________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 10:34:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: a (new) dialogue MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Todd, I wanted to say a word about the Creative Writing/Poetics Program split you seem to suggest. As an undergrad in visual arts, I learned to critique and respond to the work of other visual artists "around" me (conceptually, in that some worked in other historical times), and be involved in and aware of their work & its influences on mine. I was surprised in grad school (creative writing) to find that there were students there who seemed to expect to be *taught* how to write, who read *very* sparingly the works of other poets, and who formed almost no critical responses to the little work they did read. This, while it was the norm, was not absolute across the board. There *were* students there who had (as Clayton Eshleman has suggested as necessary) "broken their heads" against the works of challenging writers. This persistence is of course what will direct poetry, I think. Just the pure ornery desire to get into poetics we don't immediately "understand," poetics that capture our imagination and challenge our ideas of what poetry is. But it isn't a process that needs necessarily be absent from writing programs. My professors (especially one in undergrad & one in grad school) were excellent directors--and one has to be motivated enough to go looking for one's self. Certainly anthologies like _Millennium_ are GREAT resources for people who pursue their knowledge for themselves (like Chris Roess). (p.s. to Chris: Clayton has a wonderful book about the vocation of poetry called _Novices_) The concept of certain schools being important sort of seems to come after the fact, in that way that history retroactively narrativizes what it assumes happened purposefully. Some schools may come to be a locus for lots of activity, but in fact it's the *people* who make the difference. toddbaron wrote: > Here's a dialogue I'm very interested in starting: > > As one of a few (comparatively) MAs--MFA--etc. with a degree in > Poetics--I'm wondering what listees think of Poetics (versus Creative > Writitng: not a program where one works on one's own work--but a poetics > dept. like Naropa, New College, Buffalo) Departments and their affect of > Poetics. Under the "leadership" of Duncan McNaughton and Louis Patler, > under the teaching of M. Palmer, David Meltzer, Lyn Hejinian--I gradued > in 1990 from New College. The program was then not a creative writing > program per se: we had to do grad. level work and writing to earn our > degrees--a thesis--and I "think" I know how the study of Olson, The > Romantics, Oppen, Dickinson, Basic Texts (Aristotle, etc), Whitman and > the texts that influenced their poetics has affected my work as a poet. > But: > > I recently asked the question of "affect" of Charles B. and the idea has > flown about in my head for awhile-- The question is throughly documented > in terms of Visual/Plastic Arts dept.s: How Cal-Arts affects the Arts > (heavily conceptual)--how Black Mountain affected the Arts--How R.I.S.D > , Irivine, UCSD, or etc. has affected a dialogue in the visual arts. We > know that critics--that theory--that work itself comes from these > schools: But I'm wondering if those out there > involved/enrolled/graduated from could speak to the question: > > What affect do Poetics/Poetry Dept. degrees and programs actually have > on cont. poetry and poetics. > > Since some of these places are not strictly "academic"(as New C. > wasn't) How do these dept.s enlarge their circle of influence? Think of > Black Mountain--and who/what came from there under Olson. Think of the > myriad of publications that appear from these places (Apex of the M, > Tripwire--some ones that recently come to mind) > > I'm meandering abit--but the question is large. Since the question has > been raised about academic studies in lit. here in general. > > thanks for all, > > Todd Baron > (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 17:30:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: morpheal Subject: Re: the center will not hold [so fortify it so it does hold or perish for not doing so] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"Man is not so much placed in this idealized center of the world as he >is exposed there. The position of Stoicism's observer of the world, at >rest, has become the initial position of a self-shaping and >world-transforming agent. All other creatures, we are told, have a >definite nature, within firmly established laws, imposed upon them. Man >is supposed to determine his nature himself on the basis of his freedom; >which now means to see the world as serving his self-definition. Even >before Copernicus, the shift of the accent from cosmology to >anthropology, a process on which the Middle Ages as a whole had >worked--under the terms set by prior assumptions--in tiny steps, and >with setbacks, is pushed so far forward that the loss of the real center >of the universe, as a consequence of a relation to the world that could >no longer be characterized cosmologically, could be accepted."---from >The Genesis of the Copernican World by Hans Blumenberg Anthropocentricism is dangerous. It leads to the belief that there are no other intelligent, competing, species out there in the universe. It leads to the belief that life on planet Earth is safe harboured from those competing species, and only a danger to itself, mostly by means of war and ecological disasters. Nothing could ultimately be further from the truth. As humankind probes further from home planet, the dangers increase, and the sophistication of potentially competitive species also increases. There is nothing to guarantee that such species will be peaceful, except our own wishful science fiction. A science fiction that is in its search for lost father figures in outer space and perhaps lost divinities, which amounts to much the same thing in strictly Freudian terms. We must realize that a more intelligent species might in fact be a more violently competitive species despite its intelligence. We have seen how war changed on Earth as human intelligence grew. We have seen the willingness to use weapons of mass destruction, by increasingly educated, enlightened beings. We have no reason to believe that an alien, perhaps more intelligent, space traveling, species would not be equally, or more, aggressive in its territorial claims and its efforts at ascendancy than is the human species. In fact we must expect that another species might be more extreme than our own has proven itself to be. If we are disappointed in that grimmest of expectations, then nothing is lost in preparing for the worst. If there is failure to expect that scenario of violently competitive alien species, endangering human survival, then the result might be the grimmest of all....the most horrible kind of extinction imaginable to our own. So it becomes a matter of survival of the species to be prepared for other worldly threats to human existence. Perhaps that is the ultimate prisoners' dilemma, where the various human factions who keep each other locked into threats of mortal combat, necessarily must join together to prepare a defence against an unknown other worldly adversary. The ultimate battle then is not one of man against man, but is in fact one of man against a hostile alien threat, that remains essentially undefinable unless our mythologies include some vague indications of previous contact. They might. We do not really know the answer. The demons and the angels might well be two non human species who battled amongst themselves, and whose violence against each other touched upon this world in ancient times. Perhaps a few of their ships reached this part of the universe, and the one was more convincing than the other to our ancient ancestors. So they looked on one side in that conflict as good and the other as evil, forgetting that in every war the one side inevitably calls the other side evil. Such wild speculations aside, as perhaps too far fetched, the chance of hostile, technically advanced, highly intelligent, and extremely competitive, species, with beliefs far divergent from our own, out there, somewhere in _our_ universe, is not only extremely high, but completely certain. They are out there,......somewhere.....waiting for their next challenge.... >"The time of an event is defined as the reading of a clock coincident >with the event and at rest relative to it. Events which are simultaneous >in one inertial frame are not simultaneous in another. Einstein's >example: two identical rods R(1) and R(2) are coincident in a given >inertial frame in which two observers O(1) and O(2) have synchronized >their respective clocks...."--from 'Subtle is the Lord; The Science and >the Life of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais That being incorrect, due to the assumption that all events are vectored positively, forwards, along the time axis. Those clocks never run in reverse. That is in essence what makes them wrong. Time's arrow, its vector, is in fact, at best "bent", and sometimes vectored in the opposite direction, depending on what kinds of events we are discussing. Let us refer to events that are vectored negatively along the time line as vectored T, and events that are positively vectored along the time line as vectored t. Those are the common designations for the negative and positive sides of the time axis. In fact it is my firm belief that a field, can be technically generated, that is vectored to Tx, around an object that is itself vectored along t, such that that object is carried by that field, at a mathematically infinite velocity, towards Tx, which is a value along the T axis. In other words that tachyonic fields generated around primarily tardyonic objects, can be the basis of vessels capable of "time travel", from the present into the past. Traversing vast distances in space, as well as traversing time towards what we see as being the past, is the expected outcome. It is likely that electromagnetic forces could be arranged in such a manner that the tachyonic field would not disrupt the essentially tardyonic matter of the ship and its crew. Therefore, I claim that manned time travel ships could become a reality in the not very distant future. In fact our ships, which will travel to the distant places in the universe, will essentially be time travel ships, propelled by tachyonic fields. >"The concept of observation is in so far arbitrary as it depends upon >which objects are included in the system of observation."---Neils Bohr Exactly. M. aka Bob Ezergailis ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 15:12:57 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Poetix programs? Content-Type: text/plain This is my first posting to the list-- though I've been following for the last week or so since signing on. I'd like to respond to Todd Baron, since I am an M.F.A. graduate of one of the programs he mentions, Naropa. Naropa's program is actually a mix of both creative writing & poetics, with more of an emphasis on creative writing. That said-- there were certainly lit-related seminars, as well as (in my own experience) discussions of poetics in the actual workshops. Naropa's program is loosely structured in terms of content. What does or does not get taught may depend on the interests of faculty: there are no courses on "Basic Texts," for example. As a result, I think more leeway exists at Naropa for students to pursue individual poetics interests, & many do, with greater academic freedom than may exist even in a program like New College's. However I'd like to bring up another point-- to disagree w/ Todd to a degree, based on my own experience. While Naropa, as I say, had a definite impact on me, I'd like to suggest that in my case &, I think, the case of people I know personally, what one gets from such a program (Naropa or New College) has much to do with the amount of responsibility taken by the individual for her/his education as a poet. & Such education is not just a matter of what one studied in that context (we all continue to read & grow in our practice, one hopes). Which probably doesn't contradict what Todd said at all, but which broadens the question of what affected anyone's poetics to, at least, a larger nexus than just such a program. --Mark DuCharme Todd Baron wrote: From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetix programs? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark DuCharme wrote: > > This is my first posting to the list-- though I've been following for > the last week or so since signing on. > > I'd like to respond to Todd Baron, since I am an M.F.A. graduate of one > of the programs he mentions, Naropa. > > Naropa's program is actually a mix of both creative writing & poetics, > with more of an emphasis on creative writing. That said-- there were > certainly lit-related seminars, as well as (in my own experience) > discussions of poetics in the actual workshops. Naropa's program is > loosely structured in terms of content. What does or does not get > taught may depend on the interests of faculty: there are no courses on > "Basic Texts," for example. As a result, I think more leeway exists at > Naropa for students to pursue individual poetics interests, & many do, > with greater academic freedom than may exist even in a program like New > College's. > > However I'd like to bring up another point-- to disagree w/ Todd to a > degree, based on my own experience. While Naropa, as I say, had a > definite impact on me, I'd like to suggest that in my case &, I think, > the case of people I know personally, what one gets from such a program > (Naropa or New College) has much to do with the amount of responsibility > taken by the individual for her/his education as a poet. & Such > education is not just a matter of what one studied in that context (we > all continue to read & grow in our practice, one hopes). Which probably > doesn't contradict what Todd said at all, but which broadens the > question of what affected anyone's poetics to, at least, a larger nexus > than just such a program. > > --Mark DuCharme > > Todd Baron wrote: > > > Writitng: not a program where one works on one's own work--but a > the texts that influenced their poetics has affected my work as a > .... > > on cont. poetry and poetics. > > _ Dear Mark: No contradiction here: but perhaps I was not clear--my investigation reacts to a braoder question--persoanlly then--How do you think YOUR education as a Poet in a poetics dept. at a college has affected yr work. How do you think it affects a "school" of thought as a school of Poetics. NARAPA had a rep. for being based more on a spiritual investigation of poetcs--years ago--than a Comp. Lit study. Does that affect yr poetics-- Why Naropa--for you--rather than somewhere else. Thanks --every answer engages me! Tb__ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 18:21:05 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Olson/Ojai? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Recently ran across this mysterious reference in Olson: "San Francisco seems to have become an =E9cole des Sages ou Mages as ominous as Ojai, L.A." Any of you historically-minded californians (or anyone) out there know what the man is referring to? help wld be much appreciated... c h r i s .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:38:51 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Anyone listees with characters they feel really speak to "how one lives one's > life"? For a while I tried to live like Kundera's (male) characters. *Big* mistake. Tom (_not_ Tomas) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 04:46:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: later, what happened, poetics of space/text MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Economy of Silk and Dreams [1989-1998] (configurations of objects emerging from near-sleeping, turning through the anguish of iron hooks submerged in iron hooks) visualizations and intersections of hyperspheres Euler's formula for four-dimensional projections fifth and higher-dimension measure polytopes comfort of zero and negative-one dimension constructs inconceivable iron configurations impossible to cast holes and interior expansions of external iron elements slowly rotating tetrahedra interlocked in various directions intersecting polyhedra and columns of various sorts slow excursions of meandering fractal point number of squares necessarily added to reach a given number turbulence in eddies with regular or irregular beds articulations of lines and planes in four dimensions point and line configurations in the plane and three dimensions the centers of hyperspheres of various dimensions hooks or lips against the center of a sphere projection of a point or line in three dimensions truncating polyhedra in two or three dimensions pyramids and polygons completed with equilateral triangles torsion applied to iron beams of various cross-sections exposures of splayed body and its holes in various bindings language-configurations of bindings into signs and omens regular simplices surrounding a point in three and four dimensions tetrahedra formed from skew-orthogonal lines embedded in the cube nodes and skeins collapsing and expanding with luminous trails Petrie polygons for cube and octahedron number of n-dimensional polytopes in an m-dimensional measure polytope threshold logic configurations with gates and channels and markers configurations of conic sections loosely-joined polyhedra in three dimensions and their collapsings seven-hundred-twenty-degree rotational invariant of three dimensions one-dimensional measure polytopes and simplices projections of n-dimensional polyhedra onto one dimension multiplexing in two-dimensional networks loose objects within the interior of unsutured spheres wounds and striations transfigured by thin membranes of silver threads unfoldings opening to unfoldings stretched to the limit flat hard ground withing giving unmarked by any geodesics metal objects placed under self-strain with hooks and rings tidal forces approaching event horizons of black holes patterns of incoherent symmetry sequences perfect alignments of distended arms and torsos and legs approaching skew-orthogonal lines in empty three-dimensional space black lines in yellow space one-dimensional point approached in three-dimensional space white point in black space turbulent plateaus created by upwelling liquid swells liquid pouring across naked open bodies maximum twisting of loosely-joined polyhedra and polygons twisting of three-dimensional cubic configurations in four dimensions twistings and strengths of simplical chains in various dimensions embeddings of three-dimensional interiors in four dimensions perception of four dimensions with three-dimensional binocular vision broken bricks falling through emerging patterns massive compaction of the sphere, cube, and tetrahedron pulled nipples creating breasts with body arched into bridge of dreams relative wear of the massive sphere and various polytopes _______________________________________________________________________ True Story of Inheritance Katagawa Jinko died and Nikuko was put in charge of his manuscripts. She remembers seeing a list of four men, and his name was the first. It was an odd name and she had problems reading it. The kanji were dusty and almost embedded in the wood; everything was close to disappearing, like wood sha- vings hardly holding their own. She smiled and thought, now I am in charge of the manuscripts. She made a true or false answer to a question about one of the manuscripts - is this a manuscript of Katagawa Jinko - there were three answers, none of them were yes or no. I was quite upset. You're fooling around with this famous author's manuscripts, I said; they'll be dispersed. Don't you have any sympathy at all for the dead. She was contrite in fact at this, and stopped dragging the kanji behind her in furrows marked almost by a sight of miniature valleys left by looping trails in the dust, close to unread- able, and close to disappearing. She'd hold onto the revelation, not thinking further about it. It was enough; there were clouds of dust in the sky, a sense of grit, wood-shavings, the kanji worn and chipped. It was enough that she'd keep them, stop with the multiple-choice giveaways of Katagawa Jinko's work. ( ) ( ) ( ) __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 05:11:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Ojai et al Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Comments: cc: calexand@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii My understanding is that Ojai has been a "new age" center since at least World War I (which makes it New Age avant le lettre) and that must mean that it's orientation must have been focused around the spiritual fads of its time -- Blavatsky, Krishnamurti, Edgar Casey (whose name I'm certain I've just misspelled). I've always taken that comment of Olson's to be a sly dig at Robert Duncan who was raised in (and never strayed that far from in later life either) in theosophical tradition, a little payback for "Against Wisdom as Such." B'rer Bromige, can you add additional insight? Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:00:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling In-Reply-To: <35A6BE10.68F1B424@bayarea.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 6:21 PM -0700 7/10/98, Karen Kelley wrote: > >Actually, I was thinking of love in a slightly different context yesterday. I >don't know who it was who said we can learn morality from novels, but I >started >thinking again about the "people" I've learned most from (& loved) and made my >not complete but pretty close list: > >Emma Bovary >Anna Karenina >Kate Pointellier >Isabel Archer >Tess Durbeyfield >Molly Bloom >(& Leopold) > >Anyone listees with characters they feel really speak to "how one lives one's >life"? > yikes girl w/ the list above i feel for you. myself, it's genet's narrator in most of his "fiction." and mitya karamazov. thanks for the hot tip on the experimental fiction book. i myself was not enraged by the newyorker on stein, but amused: the tone struck me as one of grandiose naivete, as if the writer thought *she* had discovered stein and was about to "explain" her to the masses who were still in the dark. like students who discover marxism for the first time, and think that their parents etc have never heard of it. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:01:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: The Eliot problem(s) In-Reply-To: <19987106342766334@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm curious about the first eliot problem. who controls the estate. is there any reason beside avarice that the cost of permissions is so high, i.e. is the prohibitiveness of the cost intended to be just that, prohibitive? if so, why? is there a subtext here and if so what is it? does anyone know? and thanks, ron, for linking stein and faulkner in terms of investigating the sentence. useful. At 5:52 AM -0500 7/10/98, rsillima@ix.netcom.com wrote: >There have been two Eliot problems raised in the past two days -- > >One is the impact of his estate making stupid demands that keep the work >from appearing in something akin to Millenium, save by round-about means. > >The other is the Eliot as good/bad person thing. > >They're really very different issues. The former Eliot shares with the >estates of David Jones and Jack Kerouac. In Jones' case, where many people >don't know the work, it's really regretable. In the other cases, it's mostly >just stupid. > >The other question takes us into the quagmire shared by Pound, Spicer and >others, really a reader's problem -- how to handle a writer's racism (or >sexism or or or). Earlier this summer I read Faulkner's Flags in the Dust, >the original version of what was released as Satoris (before Faulkner became >famous and could really publish whatever he wanted). It's a rough work, in >the sense that a book like Visions of Cody is rough, brilliant and awkward >by turns. It's also the most racist work I've ever encountered, just jaw >droppingly so, even though he may have thought himself a liberal by northern >Mississippi 1930s standards. I've always liked Faulkner, since he is the one >writer of his generation besides Stein who seems to have seriously thought >about the sentence as a unit of writing ("thought" might not be the right >word), but it was hard to feel good about liking the writing when has to >wade through the muck. > >Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:14:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling > yikes girl w/ the list above i feel for you. myself, it's genet's narrator > in most of his "fiction." and mitya karamazov. thanks for the hot tip on The usual suspects, thank you, Louie: Raskalnikov, the odd flash of recognition in Turgenev's painstakingly drawn but strangely interchangable heros; Apollon Apollonovich and son in Bely's _Petersberg_, a work similar to (though less ambitious than) _Ulysses_. I wonder why the answers have clustered so far around the 19th century, with the odd excursion into Joyceian territory? Oh, and of course -- George Eliot's Dorothea. > the experimental fiction book. i myself was not enraged by the newyorker > on stein, but amused: the tone struck me as one of grandiose naivete, as if > the writer thought *she* had discovered stein and was about to "explain" Well, the New Yorker's business is selling the hip -- look at the odd selections they make in the club listings, and the even stranger (and condescending) comments that accompany. The hip people need to explain, in that zen master mode of impenetrable correctness, the Way Things Are. > her to the masses who were still in the dark. like students who discover > marxism for the first time, and think that their parents etc have never > heard of it. Oh, yes; wonderful memories of that. A clunking radiator in a New Hampshire blizzard... I forget the exact circumstances, but it was a garbled version closer to Fourier than Marx... something about "heaven after the conflaguration", which all seems vaguely protosomethingdisturbing in retrospect. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:23:06 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Franco Subject: SLIGHT UPDATE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit M. Franco here for Aaron Kiely's BOSTON ALTERNATIVE POETRY CONFERENCE: BLACKSMITH HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE MA. [HARVARD SQUARE] FRI-SUN JULY 17-19 1998. READERS/PRESENTERS: BERNSTEIN, MESSERLI, TAGGART, MATLIN, TORRA, MLINKO, LANSING, F. HOWE, R. WALDROP, BOUCHARD, WARSH, JARNOT, BANSINSKI, GANICK, W. ALEXANDER, PREAVALLET, FUNKHOUSER, ZHANG ER, DOUD, LEASE, L. SCHWARTZ, D. GARDNER, KRUKOWSKI, STROFFOLINO,BURGER, W HOWE, GRUMNAN, BRADY, POUND, KRAMER, KNOX, WARSH, S. COLE, B. ANDERSON, GILMORE, KIELEYWERSHLER-HENRY, KIRSCHENBAUM, KRAMER, SCALAPINO, FRANCO, FRIDAY JULY 17 READING: 7:30 [PLEASE NOT NEW SRTARTING TIME] INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEKEND: w/ KIELY, SCHWARTZ & ALEXANDER NIGHT READING: F. HOWE D. BOUCHARD, GARDNER & STROFFOLINO SAT JULY 18- 9: 30AM VOCABULARY AND IMIGINATIONS: PANAL W/ MESSERLLI, ALEXANDER, SCHWARTZ, MATLIN, KIELEY, LEASE, MLINKO & FRANCO 12:00 READING W/ TORRA, LANSING, MLINKO, LEASE, & KRUKOWSKI & SCALAPINO & KIELY 2PM: BIOGRAPHY & CRITCISM PANAL: W/ PREVALLET ON HELEN ADAM... JARNOT ON DUNCAN, ALEXANDER ON LAMANTIA TAGGART ON OPPEN, KNOX ON KOCH & ASHBERY, KIRSCHENBAUM ON d.a.levy, GILMORE ON OPPENHEIMER. 4PM AFTERNOON READING W/ TAGGART, KNOX, SCHWARTZ, ZHANG ER, FUNKHOUSER, KNOX, ANDERSON,BRADY, S.COLE 6PM DAVID MATLIN ON HIS NEW BOOK 7PM NIGHT READING: WARSH, JARNOT, MATLIN, ALEXANDER SUNDAY JULY 19 10AM NEW POETRY PANEL PRESENTED & ORGANIZED BY BASINSKI w/ KRAMER, BRADY, BURGER, W.HOWE, WERSHLER-HENRY, GRUMMAN & POUND 2PM AFTERNOON READING: WALDROP, MESSERLI, DOUD & FRANCO 4PM PUBLISHING PANAL: W/ TORRA, MESSERLI, BOUCHARD, GANICK, KIRCHENBAUM, FUNKHOUSER 7PM NIGHT READING PREAVALLET, GANICK 8PM CHARLES BERNSTEIN POETRY & POETICS ADMISSIONS: $5/reading, $15/saturday pass, $10/sunday pass, $35/weekend-people can reserve their space now through email or phone and then pay at the conference- checks payable to aaron kiely at p.o.box 441517 somerville, ma 02144- INFORMATION / RESERVATIONS: Aaron Kiely PO box 441517 Somerville Ma 02144 or Email 9924akiel@umbsky.cc.umb.edu 617 629-3376 BEST TO ALL ON THE LIST MICHAEL FRANCO ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:11:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Other introductions In-Reply-To: <199807130402.WAA02323@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" So I went & read all the way through Richard & Peter's Introduction. Aside from the fact that they didnt really PUSH the centre/margin trope all that hard, assuming it, yes, because such tropes of exclusion/inclusion seem unavoidable in such arguments, but really, getting down to pointing out how the engines of commercial publishing & 'high art' have worked very hard indeed to ignore a whole bun ch of writers in GB whose work, as a result, has remained un-, or only semi-, known to many who might otherwise have disovered it & been excited by it years ago. From what little I've read of some of the poets they include (& some of those they say they were forced to leave out), I expect to be terrifically excited by the work of those I havent read. I'm really looking forward to the anthology -- which, like Poems for the Millennium, will be "of use" in that it will provide some open doors to work that fofr many of us just isnt available, or at least not that easily found... Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 By stress and syllable by change-rhyme and contour we let the long line pace equal awkward to its period. The short line we refine and keep for candor. Robert Duncan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:27:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Other introductions I wonder if a main source of spatial imagery in poetics is due to the fact that many anthologists hope (and many readers expect, as withness the Eliot thread) that their collection represents some sort of omnibus edition of the time. So, before they can work their readers up to more "advanced" topics that involve the more neglected Modernists/ Postmoderns/[insert favourite maligned movement here], they have to trudge through The.Waste.Land just one more time. The periphery is quite literally periphery, filling the end of the chapter or slipping in between the alphabetic gaps left after taking out the E's and P's, a scattershot choice of authors as random, sometimes, as the colonial division of the Dark Continents. Having a "woman's section" or other such grouping only seems to make it worse. From the OED: anthology ænþo(hook).lod3i. [ad. L. anthologia, a. Gr. anqologia (f. anqo-j flower + -logia collection, f. leg-ein to gather), applied to a collection of poems. Cf. mod.Fr. anthologie. Later Gr. had also the homonym anqologion applied to a hymnal. ] -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:34:06 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: Other introductions In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:27:01 -0400 from the center/margin descriptions come into anthology intros because anthologies usually try to be "representative" of something in a larger literary field. being "representative" is like one of the apologia for existing in the form in which it exists. But is this necessary? I could imagine an anthology that leaves the literary history to the critics & reviewers, and concentrates on the aesthetic dynamics of the various poets included. No apologies, no frames. this is probably sort of an artificial ideal but ideals come in handy sometimes. a problem with it is that anthology-makers are usually guided as much by political & lit-history motivations as by anything else. and people always want frames - it's like a raison d'etre - if you don't have frames, they will question the logic of your selection. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:16:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Olson/Ojai Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Christopher Alexander wrote: >Recently ran across this mysterious reference in Olson: > > "San Francisco seems to have become an =E9cole > des Sages ou Mages as ominous as Ojai, L.A." > >Any of you historically-minded californians (or anyone) >out there know what the man is referring to? help wld be >much appreciated... > > c h r i s Stupidly I loaned my copy of The Collected Prose of Charles Olson (Univ of California Press 1997) to someone undeserving of it, but that's the place to start for the explications of this passage from "Against Wisdom as Such." Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander who edited the book have such wonderful notes I'd be surprised if all is not explained therein. And so I don't remember, though they will, what is the reference to the "Ecole des Sages or Mages" (what French group Olson's speaking of). He must have been writing in 1952 or 1953 and at that time Ojai was the center, as it still is, of the US Theosophist movement, and Krishnamurti lived there, and Olson is here deriding the propensity of the intellectuals who flocked round the big K (Huxley, Isherwood, Heard, etc) to lose their sense of balance when confronted with K's holy wisdom. Olson's reading of San Francisco as a kind of Ojai North was of course a challenge to Duncan, a fruitful one it seems to me, tho Duncan admitted nothing and apologized for nothing, but went on to flaunt his own mysticism in ways greater and grander than anything he had done before. ("The Opening of the Field" can be read as Duncan's answer to Olson's charges in "Against Wisdom as Such." I think parts of Spicer's "Language" are also written with this essay in mind.) I remember first coming here to California when I was a boy and going first straight to Santa Monica to pay homage to Isherwood and then to Ojai to see Krishnamurti. I was so high I'm surprised I didn't tumble off a cliff, or perhaps I did--like Madeleine, or Judy, in "Vertigo." xxx Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 19:59:42 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit problem with > characters "who" feel really speak to "how one lives > one's > > life"? > is that they're living theirs/instead. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 12:18:36 -0400 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: romantic-not women duelling In-Reply-To: Karen Kelley "Re: romantic-not women duelling" (Jul 10, 6:21pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Jul 10, 6:21pm, Karen Kelley wrote: > Anyone listees with characters they feel really speak to "how one lives one's > life"? Hugo's Jean ValJean has always struck me as a great model for a life of love. William ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 12:40:20 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim McCrary Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On Jul 10, 6:21pm, Karen Kelley wrote: > Anyone listees with characters they feel really speak to "how one lives one's > life"? === as a character in her own works and as a author i would have to add the late kathy acker. jim mccrary ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 11:16:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria Damon wrote: > > At 6:21 PM -0700 7/10/98, Karen Kelley wrote: > > > > >Actually, I was thinking of love in a slightly different context yesterday. I > >don't know who it was who said we can learn morality from novels, but I > >started > >thinking again about the "people" I've learned most from (& loved) and made my > >not complete but pretty close list: > > > >Emma Bovary > >Anna Karenina > >Kate Pointellier > >Isabel Archer > >Tess Durbeyfield > >Molly Bloom > >(& Leopold) > >Personally I can't really stand Jane Eyre but do love Bella, the crazy woman in the attic on whom Jean Rhys wrote _Wide Sargasso Sea_. Not that what happens to her is any better than what happens to everyone else but she does make a physical mark on the world, eg his house, his eyes (blinded). -rdl ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:00:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Olson/Ojai Comments: To: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Yes to all that, dear Kevin. And add this: Ojai means "nest" in Spanish and when you drive into the valley from the back way the view is breathtaking. Capra added to its mythology by using it as the backdrop for Shangri-La in "Lost Horizon." I once knew a belly dancer there, but this is hardly the place to go into all that... Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Olson/Ojai Date: Monday, July 13, 1998 10:16AM Christopher Alexander wrote: >Recently ran across this mysterious reference in Olson: > > "San Francisco seems to have become an =E9cole > des Sages ou Mages as ominous as Ojai, L.A." > >Any of you historically-minded californians (or anyone) >out there know what the man is referring to? help wld be >much appreciated... > > c h r i s Stupidly I loaned my copy of The Collected Prose of Charles Olson (Univ of California Press 1997) to someone undeserving of it, but that's the place to start for the explications of this passage from "Against Wisdom as Such." Donald Allen and Benjamin Friedlander who edited the book have such wonderful notes I'd be surprised if all is not explained therein. And so I don't remember, though they will, what is the reference to the "Ecole des Sages or Mages" (what French group Olson's speaking of). He must have been writing in 1952 or 1953 and at that time Ojai was the center, as it still is, of the US Theosophist movement, and Krishnamurti lived there, and Olson is here deriding the propensity of the intellectuals who flocked round the big K (Huxley, Isherwood, Heard, etc) to lose their sense of balance when confronted with K's holy wisdom. Olson's reading of San Francisco as a kind of Ojai North was of course a challenge to Duncan, a fruitful one it seems to me, tho Duncan admitted nothing and apologized for nothing, but went on to flaunt his own mysticism in ways greater and grander than anything he had done before. ("The Opening of the Field" can be read as Duncan's answer to Olson's charges in "Against Wisdom as Such." I think parts of Spicer's "Language" are also written with this essay in mind.) I remember first coming here to California when I was a boy and going first straight to Santa Monica to pay homage to Isherwood and then to Ojai to see Krishnamurti. I was so high I'm surprised I didn't tumble off a cliff, or perhaps I did--like Madeleine, or Judy, in "Vertigo." xxx Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:16:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Susan E. Dunn" Subject: Underestimated Poetics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Omigod, like, Thepoetryofyoungwomen's life had stood a loaded gun and then some. Thepoetryofyoungwomen shops at the Gap. Thepoetryofyoungwomen eats an entire pint of Hagen Daz. Thepoetryofyoungwomen starves herself. Thepoetryofyoungwomen rolls her eyes and won't wipe that look off her face and doesn't care that you don't like her tone of voice. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is a vampire slayer, like Buffy. Thepoetryofyoungwomen smiles sweetly when you call her Blondie and then says asshole when you aren't in earshot. Thepoetryofyoungwomen got drunk on wine coolers and blew chunks. Thepoetryofyoungwomen wants to be an astronaut or a figure skater. Thepoetryofyoungwomen reads the Bell Jar and cries. Thepoetryofyoungwomen thinks Taylor Hanson is cute and Beck Hansen is deep. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is never called on even when her hand is up. Thepoetryofyoungwomen has seen Titanic three times but likes Little Women better. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is good at math. Thepoetryofyoungwomen polishes her nails black. Thepoetryofyoungwomen clears the table. Thepoetryofyoungwomen needs to check her messages. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is not impressed that your father wrote the history book. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Susan E. Dunn "Are you in the English Department or the History Department?" "I'm in the Toy Department." --Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book email: sedunn@leland.stanford.edu www: http://shc.stanford.edu/sed/sedunn.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 12:31:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Underestimated Poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Susan E. Dunn wrote: > > Omigod, like, > > Thepoetryofyoungwomen's life had stood a loaded gun and then some. > Thepoetryofyoungwomen shops at the Gap. Thepoetryofyoungwomen eats an > entire pint of Hagen Daz. Thepoetryofyoungwomen starves herself. > Thepoetryofyoungwomen rolls her eyes and won't wipe that look off her face > and doesn't care that you don't like her tone of voice. > Thepoetryofyoungwomen is a vampire slayer, like Buffy. > Thepoetryofyoungwomen smiles sweetly when you call her Blondie and then > says asshole when you aren't in earshot. Thepoetryofyoungwomen got drunk on > wine coolers and blew chunks. Thepoetryofyoungwomen wants to be an > astronaut or a figure skater. Thepoetryofyoungwomen reads the Bell Jar and > cries. Thepoetryofyoungwomen thinks Taylor Hanson is cute and Beck Hansen > is deep. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is never called on even when her hand is up. > Thepoetryofyoungwomen has seen Titanic three times but likes Little Women > better. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is good at math. Thepoetryofyoungwomen > polishes her nails black. Thepoetryofyoungwomen clears the table. > Thepoetryofyoungwomen needs to check her messages. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is > not impressed that your father wrote the history book. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > Susan E. Dunn > "Are you in the English Department or the History Department?" > "I'm in the Toy Department." > --Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book > email: sedunn@leland.stanford.edu > www: http://shc.stanford.edu/sed/sedunn.html > ------------------------------------------------------------------ Susan mind if I add? Thepoetryofyoungwomen makes xerox copies of her body parts. Thepoetryofyoungwomen thinks she should garden but prefers new shoes. Thepoetryofyoungwomen can never get past imitating G.Stein, as had been noted. Thepoetryofyoungwomen fights like a girl and wont be shaken from her party line. Thepoetryofyoungwomen shares knowing she deserves more than she gets. Thepoetryofyoungwomen would like to take up space and gets shorter. Thepoetryofyoungwomen grows so big it can screw in a lightbulb all by herself. also forthcoming: A reluctant promise to J. Kuszai of recap of last week of Naropa SWP events including the dog bite. --rdl-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:18:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Underestimated Poetics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 13 Jul 1998, Susan E. Dunn wrote: > Omigod, like, > this is wonderful! Somehow I saw a derailed train rumble murmuring its way through the lines not all at the beginning but just carrying itself _out loud,_ the sound and psycho and social context. This is beautiful! Alan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 11:36:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: Ojai et al Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" duncan and spicer and blaser and ebbe beauregard and joanne kyger and joe dunn and mike mclure and helen adam and others(sister mary norbert korte, james alexander, george stanley, stan persky) attended regular meetings which i believe was known as the magic circle everybody was reading medieval scholarship in the fifties, gershom scholem, walker, ficino, kabala, tarot, which olson was reading also and doing the tarot everyday. billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:35:56 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Olson/Ojai In-Reply-To: <199871355321211478@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Thanks to all for the very generous response here and backchannel! Not so coincidentally came across this exact quotation in POET BE LIKE GOD: JACK SPICER AND THE SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE last night (the query had been prompted by my reading the Olson) - which is a good chance, anyway, for me to plug the book 'testimonial-style': rec'd it friday, and it's just dreamy! now everyone go buy it from the nice man at Bridge St. Books... and congrats to KK, who as usual does not disappoint (even though he was such a 'degenerate' youth!). c h r i s p.s., if anyone cares to visit, the URL for The Ojai Foundation is ; there's a tiny 'history' section that corroborates what's been sed on-list. .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 17:49:27 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Natch Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit David Baratier, What does Natch mean? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 18:49:32 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris McCreary Subject: publication announcement-- ixnay press Comments: cc: mccarthy@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This message is to announce the first two chapbooks to be published by ixnay press: Frank Sherlock's "13" & Pattie McCarthy's "Octaves." "13" is a whopping 52 pgs long & staplebound w/ a heavy cardstock cover. From "13": Starwalker head/ for aenid/ once in a/ Life is yes/ like/ an orange/ says/ the dying old rabbi/ Verse volume/ picked up/ by/ a child &/ thrown down/ steps/ follows/ picked up again/ wipe off the meat/ with the citrus/ skins/ Word/ made pulp/ then sung among/ us "Octaves" is 16 pgs long, printed on linen paper & staple-bound w/ a heavy cardstock cover. From "Octaves"-- A map of the past is a history itself--// one half pair of cloistered yew trees and unweary memory./ My desire to make ugly. Everything/ will be revised. "13" sells for $6, "Octaves" goes for $5-- or you can get both for $10. Orders or queries should be sent to: Chris McCreary 1164 S. 10th St. Philadelphia PA 19147 or just e-mail me: Chrsmccrry@aol.com Be sure to make checks out to me & not ixnay press. Thanks much. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 11:23:57 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling Comments: To: Safdie Joseph MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Yeah, but it must have been fun while it lasted! (I'm thinking of the > earlier books up to and including "Lightness" . . .) Up to a point. I blame the friend of mine who first lent me "Lightness" (she kept a bowler hat beside her bed...) Kundera did help me come to terms with a world where desire is transient, problematic, mediated yet undeniable. Other writers, such as Valentine de Saint-Point, Kapka Kassabova, Ian Wedde and Annemarie Jagose are helping me to understand desire/lust/longing/whatever in all its forms and deformations: "Lust is the panic shudder of a particle of the earth" - V de S-P "May you never recover from the lightness of my touch" - K K "ardent, headachy, Parnassian" - I W "What is lust's question? What could be less simple than a question of lust?" - A J It's impossible to write a love poem without questioning the self. Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 19:39:51 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: Natch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill Luoma-- A) notch on a plaster mold used in ceramics to keep the halves in position B)ritish variation on notch 19 C) Karl Henekell. A movement. Based on a stringent disbelief in teleogical explanations. Considers natural causes to be the responsible for all movements in the mind. Specifically the word referred to the ample space required for _the_ environmental experiment. Unfortunately Zola, Prudhomme, and Coppee could not make up their mind what the _the_ was and so blamed Karl for the whole project. Karl got his revenge in 1883(?) with _Dichter charakter_ by anthologizing some mediocre work of theirs and making it look like Arno Holz was the only worthwhile German poet of the bunch. Holz got angry with Karl and created a poetics and subsequent book called _Sekundenstil_ with miniture movements through the prose transitioning from a non-existent meter into a stiffer metrical sound st the end of the book. The joke being that Karl was extremely slow to get an erection, the lack of formal devices implying Karls lack of affluency. Then of course the style caught on sans joke to where the prose( call it what you will, short-short fiction etc.)poem currently rests with Robert Bly. (see Rupperrecht: Literarische Manifeste for a start) D)errogatory slang word for Natchesan (Nachez tribe) people in southwestern Mississippi. All spelling is approximate. There's a lot of other slang usages. Why me? I thought only Keats was a baiter of bears. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 17:36:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > yikes girl w/ the list above i feel for you. Yeah, I know. I'm aware of all the reasons I'm not supposed to like them, and yet I still do--and I guess that's part of the appeal... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 21:31:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: The Writing Center, San Diego Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Any information on The Writing Center's status would be appreciated. Their phone seems to be disconnected after being connected a brief month or two ago. Thanks all, and thanks for the thinking these days. Oblomov's mine (character thread). Susan Wheeler susan.wheeler@nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 20:41:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Quartermain Subject: Re: The Eliot problem(s) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Valerie Eliot and Faber and faber control the estate, and play it very close to the chest -- very hard if not impossible to get into the archives to see what's what, for instance. As for avarice, well. Historically, in the US at any rate the anthologising rule was something like (this is way back in the 50s and 60s you realise) Harcourt Brace would permit a poem to be anthologised provided a) the poem appeared in a max of four anthologies at any one tiome, and b) the anthology iteslf sold for more that $4.50. There was also some other rule about paperbacks, I believe. (All this, you'll realize but not of course remember) when paperbacks were 25 or 35 cents (depending on size), Modern Library books what, $1.45 hardcover, Modern Library Giants $2.45; new fancy trade hardcovers $3.50 to $4.95 max. But you managed (I managed) as a visiting grad student in St Louis to live on a little less than $900 for a year (1955-6). Cornell offered TA-ships in English at $1100, out of which you paid your fees. Anthologies were big business in those days (Understanding Poetry, I was once told, made its editors around a million each). Maybe they still are, but exceptionally not usually I'd say. Avarice? I dunno. Control, yes. One might note though (I think Jerry Rothenberg knows this more than I do) that literary estates are notorious for their dreams of wealth: one anthology I know of had to exclude Marianne Moore because the fee for two poems was MORE than the budget for all 800 or so pages of poetry in the book; cost of printing Zukofsky is, I'm told, $10.00 per line. Eliot? I have no idea, but if the fee is by the line, then The Waste Land would be pretty hefty, no? Some anthologists, as a result, simply shove the poems in and hope the estate doesn't notice. In these litigious days that's extremely risky and can be cripplingly expensive (witness the Salinger bio some years back). Peter At 08:01 AM 7/13/98 -0600, you wrote: >i'm curious about the first eliot problem. who controls the estate. is >there any reason beside avarice that the cost of permissions is so high, >i.e. is the prohibitiveness of the cost intended to be just that, >prohibitive? if so, why? is there a subtext here and if so what is it? >does anyone know? and thanks, ron, for linking stein and faulkner in terms >of investigating the sentence. useful. > >At 5:52 AM -0500 7/10/98, rsillima@ix.netcom.com wrote: >>There have been two Eliot problems raised in the past two days -- >> >>One is the impact of his estate making stupid demands that keep the work >>from appearing in something akin to Millenium, save by round-about means. >> >>The other is the Eliot as good/bad person thing. >> >>They're really very different issues. The former Eliot shares with the >>estates of David Jones and Jack Kerouac. In Jones' case, where many people >>don't know the work, it's really regretable. In the other cases, it's mostly >>just stupid. >> >>The other question takes us into the quagmire shared by Pound, Spicer and >>others, really a reader's problem -- how to handle a writer's racism (or >>sexism or or or). Earlier this summer I read Faulkner's Flags in the Dust, >>the original version of what was released as Satoris (before Faulkner became >>famous and could really publish whatever he wanted). It's a rough work, in >>the sense that a book like Visions of Cody is rough, brilliant and awkward >>by turns. It's also the most racist work I've ever encountered, just jaw >>droppingly so, even though he may have thought himself a liberal by northern >>Mississippi 1930s standards. I've always liked Faulkner, since he is the one >>writer of his generation besides Stein who seems to have seriously thought >>about the sentence as a unit of writing ("thought" might not be the right >>word), but it was hard to feel good about liking the writing when has to >>wade through the muck. >> >>Ron Silliman > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 846 Keefer Street Vancouver B.C. Canada V6A 1Y7 Voice : 604 255 8274 Fax: 255 8204 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 21:10:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: quartermain/cadell intro Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now that I've read the entire introduction to Other by peter quartermain and rick cadell published in the new Jacket i don't know what you earlier commentors read . This essay is worthy of heidegger and gives an exhaustive outline and precise analysis of an activity over a time, if you could do better oh boy i can't wait to read it. Clear, concise and thorough. Thanks guys, i can't wait to read the book. Nitpicking is a sure sign of the brain in idle, nevertheless I'd say Linton Kwesi Johnson's language is delectable, i like it on the tongue like a candy. billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 ...like this - everytime i write a poem - i'm afraid - when i'm dead it will sell & some other poet will starve because no one will buy his poems... d.a. levy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 23:41:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: New E-MAIL/EXPLO/KLEDERER In-Reply-To: <107a23fd.35aa8efd@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I have new e-mail address--good for EXPLOSIVE MAGAZINE and Spectacular Books-- katy@bway.com Katy Lederer ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 23:42:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k. lederer" Subject: OOOps In-Reply-To: <107a23fd.35aa8efd@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, I thin it's katy@bway.net Katy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 02:45:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: Re: The Eliot problem(s) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Maria-- I think that dealing with the Eliot estate has been problematic. While Eliot was alive, they did not allow his works to be published in paperback anthologies. And I think there had been a resistance for years in putting his books in paerback format. I think, with the drop off in interest in his work, they've been repackaging the books, etc. The high cost of permissions is the reality is that where the estate makes its money (part of the reason that HarperCollins signed up Ginsberg was to get at a chunk of the permission fees). These high fees are common to poets who are published by commercial and university presses. I discovered this when i did an anthology of NJ poets for rutgers university press. Unfortunatley, commercial houses have a hard time discerning between a regional anthology that sells a few thousand copies v. a college textbook-type anthology that sells 100's of thousands and are actual money-makers for the editors. joel lewis ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 23:51:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Brashear Subject: new magazine online Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lipstick Eleven, a new print and online magazine of experimental writing, is now online at: http://www.well.com/user/brash/L11.html The print version is currently winding its way through the assembly lines of McNaughton & Gunn, and will soon be available from Small Press Distribution. We're publishing work by Dodie Bellamy, Norma Cole, Carla Harryman, Robert Gluck, Kevin Killian, Camille Roy... plus many well-loved "others." So go to our web site and give us a kiss. (You know you want to.) Pucker up, Jim Brashear co-editor of Lipstick Eleven ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:13:44 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Why does this make me want to throw up? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Is there something wrong with me? Why does this (below) make me want to throw up? Come on. You guys are mainly American. Please explain. Where we come from, this kind of stuff is pushed down the toilet, and then we pull the chain. John Tranter, Australia I quote: ================================================= President and Mrs. Clinton to Welcome Poets Laureate for Millennium Evening at the White House Transcript of Millennium Evening with Poets Laureate The President and Mrs. Clinton have announced that the next Millennium Evening will be a celebration of American creativity through poetry featuring Poets Laureate Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove and will take place in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. The Poets Laureate, along with President and Mrs. Clinton and members of the audience, will read poems they have selected as particularly illustrative of the American voice in poetry. Millennium Evenings at the White House are a series of lectures and cultural showcases that highlight creativity and inventiveness through our ideas, art and scientific discoveries. The lectures present prominent scholars, creators and visionaries and are accessible to the public via broadcast and cybercast. The President and Mrs. Clinton encourage the public to participate in the evening's discussion by e-mailing questions for the three poets laureate or sending a favorite poem with comments, either before or during the cybercast. These may be sent via the White House Web Site several days before the event. The Website will also post satellite coordinates (on C and KU bands) and serve as a link to the cybercast. It will also be available via the Web page of Sun Microsystems. Robert Pinsky is the current Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress. He is focusing his work on the Favorite Poem Project. In commemoration of the millennium, one to two thousand Americans, from every state, with varying regional accents, ages, levels of education, professions and ethnicities will recite their favorite poems for an audio/video archive. In addition to a long career in teaching, most recently at Boston University, Professor Pinsky has served as poetry editor of The New Republic. He is currently the poetry editor of the on-line magazine Slate. Robert Hass is Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry from 1995 to 1997. During his tenure, Professor Hass battled illiteracy by putting into action his belief that, "Imagination makes communities." He also sponsored a week long celebration of American nature writing called "Watershed." His commitment to environmental issues led him to found the River of Words poetry contest which is run through the International Rivers Network. Rita Dove is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville and served as the poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry between 1993 and 1995. She was the youngest person --and the first African American --to receive that honor. While Poet Laureate, Professor Dove brought a program of poetry and jazz to the Library's literary series, along with a reading by young Crow Indian poets and a two-day conference entitled "Oil on the Waters: The Black Diaspora." The Millennium Evening is co-sponsored by the White House, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Library of Congress with major support from Sun Microsystems, Inc. and further support from the Howard Gilman Foundation. The first Millennium Evening was held February 11, 1998, with Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn lecturing on core Americans ideas which must be preserved into the next Millennium. On March 6, 1998, Cambridge University physicist Stephen Hawking discussed "Imagination and Change: Science in the Next Millennium." Transcripts are available on the White House web site. ================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:59:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry G Subject: Re: Why does this make me want to throw up? In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:13:44 +1000 from The amazing thing is that the Millennium Evenings are actually cyborg virtual "forecasts" from the previous Millennium (a.d. 1000) - the "real" Clintons, Pinsky, Hass, and 500 points of light were invited to Camp David for that evening for a barbecue and a game of "touch-football-with-the-President", sponsored by Nike & Muzak. - Henry Fool ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 08:20:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: The Writing Center, San Diego In-Reply-To: <199807140131.VAA27032@is.nyu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Susan The Writing Center closed due to lack of funds -- unfortunately not doing the kind of business they needed to to keep afloat bill marsh At 09:31 PM 7/13/98 -0400, you wrote: >Any information on The Writing Center's status would be appreciated. Their >phone seems to be disconnected after being connected a brief month or two ago. > >Thanks all, and thanks for the thinking these days. Oblomov's mine >(character thread). > >Susan Wheeler >susan.wheeler@nyu.edu >voice/fax (212) 254-3984 > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh | PaperBrainPress http://bmarsh.dtai.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:46:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: In the News MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" NYT - July 14, 1998 A Louder Voice for Poetry By HOLLAND COTTER America is a nation of poets; New York is a city of poets. But it often seems that only poets themselves are aware of the fact. Audiences for their work are small, financial rewards meager, opportunities to appear in prominent public forums few. This situation seems to be changing. Competitive poetry readings known as slams have gained an ardent following, and the National Slam, a four-day world championship of poetry, will kick off on Aug. 18 in Austin, Tex.; a 1998 documentary titled "Slam Nation" will open at Film Forum on Friday.; literary bands are flourishing in rock clubs, and poetry has blossomed on the Internet, a medium that eliminates the customary publication hierarchies and gives everyone a say. But writing poetry as a full-time pursuit, as the thing you do, is still a pioneer's art. There are no shortcuts, no guarantees; resilience and self-reliance are crucial career qualifications. This has always been true. More than a century ago, Walt Whitman paid a Brooklyn print shop to run off the first edition of his too-hot-to-handle "Leaves of Grass" and distributed and promoted the book himself. Emily Dickinson stitched her handwritten poems into little packets -- each, in effect, a self-published book -- to store away in her New England bedroom for future eyes to find. Self-publishing enjoyed a real florescence in our own century. Beginning in the 1950's and early 60's, a new poetry outside the academic mainstream was on the rise. It was encouraged by advances in duplicating technology -- mimeographing, offset printing, photocopying -- that made it possible for writers to produce magazines and books cheaply and virtually overnight while having control over contents and circulation. "A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980," at the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue at 42d Street through July 25, documents this rich, four-decade-long indie phenomenon in American literature, often called the "mimeograph revolution." Organized by Rodney Phillips and Steven E. Clay and drawn mostly from the library's collection, the show encompasses some 400 publications, from quick-and-dirty pamphlets to elegantly designed books. (About half the material, in fact, isn't mimeographed.) Some of the best known artists of the era contributed cover art. A few of the journals are still appearing; most are long gone. And in a sense, it is their ephemerality and their underground origins (the show's title is borrowed from the poet Edward Sanders's account of producing a dissident magazine in his New York apartment) that makes them historically important. As the show's rows upon rows of vitrines reveal, these fragile publications were not so much literary monuments as records of dynamic ideas and personalities passing through a particular time and place. Although the United States was in tamped-down cold war mode in the 1950's, countercultural energy was stirring. Experimental poetry was an outlet for this ferment, and early on, the avant-garde tended to separate into movements along lines of style, locale and dominant personalities, all of which were defined by Donald Allen's groundbreaking 1960 anthology, "The New American Poetry, 1945-1960." Charles Olson and Robert Creeley, for example, presided over an influential group of writers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Robert Duncan was a central figure in a San Francisco renaissance. The poet Frank O'Hara was the lodestar for a so-called New York School. And Allen Ginsberg turned beat poetry into a galvanic force from coast to coast. Wildly Varied Work Is Brought Together The work that resulted was wildly varied, but it staked out new esthetic terrain. It brought popular culture, non-Western thought and countercultural politics together in a language that mixed the rhythms of common speech and the improvisatory flair of jazz. And each group generated a multitude of journals and small press books, often created by hand and on the fly. One of the first entries in the show suggests the flavor of much of what follows. It is a smudgy, much-handled copy of a poem by Ginsberg titled "Siesta in Xbalba." Ginsberg wrote the piece in Mexico in 1954 but published it himself two years later as a 12-page booklet that he mimeographed aboard a cargo ship in the Bering Sea. He gave friends almost the entire edition, 52 hand-stapled copies. Just a year earlier, the writer had made literary history when he read his explosively anarchic "Howl" in San Francisco. (A first edition of another of his beat anthems, "Kaddish," published by City Lights Books, is one of the show's iconic objects.) And around the same time, extraordinary things were starting to brew in New York. Like everything about the city, the poetry was wildly pluralistic, though social circles and trends overlapped. The beat presence was evident in magazines like Yugen, founded in 1958 by the poet and playwright LeRoi Jones (who changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka). A little later came the highly polished Art and Literature, edited by John Ashbery and devoted to the work of the New York School poets. And both groups appeared in the mimeographed magazine Kulchur, which had both O'Hara and Baraka on its editorial board. All these journals figure in the show, but the real focus falls on publications associated with a second generation of New York School poets who settled on the Lower East Side around 1960. At that point mimeographed publications really began to proliferate. Among the most adventurous of them was C: A Journal of Poetry, founded by Ted Berrigan, who had come to New York from Tulsa, Okla., along with the poet Ron Padgett and the artist Joe Brainard. The Word and Art Helping Each Other Berrigan had learned to use mimeograph machines in the Army during the Korean War, and he turned C into an exceptional product. Not only was it packed with some of the best writers around, but also it was almost as engaging to look at as it was to read, thanks both to Brainard, who is one of the visual heroes of the exhibition, and to the range of artists whom Berrigan asked to contribute work. Indeed, the interplay of literature and art was a hallmark of the period. Poets like Ashbery, Bill Berkson and Peter Schjeldahl were also art critics. Tibor de Nagy Gallery, among others, routinely published poetry (and has recently begun to do so again). Work by painters like Philip Guston, Alex Katz, Brice Marden, and Andy Warhol crop up on book and magazines covers throughout the show. (Reva Wolf's 1997 book "Andy Warhol, Poetry and Gossip in the 1960's" gives a fascinating glimpse, by the way, into these relationships.) The exhibition also make good use of other visual material -- snapshots, paintings, videos -- to evoke the tightly networked social communities from which these publications emerged. The Aquarian Age of psychedelic drugs, Vietnam and sexual liberation was itself, of course, a binding force. But so were the collaborative activities that any shoestring literary scene generates: readings and meetings and workshops, all-night printing and collating parties, the passing of fresh images from hand to hand. By 1966, much of the action centered on the utopian institution known as the Poetry Project, established that year at St. Marks-in-the-Bowery Church in the East Village. Some gorgeous publications -- notably Angel Hair, edited by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh -- had their origins there. So did the Poetry Project Newsletter, which was started by Ron Padgett in 1972 (a copy of the first issue is on display) and remains an invaluable source of information on poetry, both in New York and beyond. The show also succeeds in giving a sense of the sheer variety of fringe publications that appeared. Designs range from the minimalist look of journals devoted to Concrete poetry and Language writing edited by Aram Saroyan, Clark Coolidge, Ron Silliman, Charles Bernstein and Bernadette Mayer, to the surrealist flair of the cult magazine Semina, created by the West Coast assemblagist Wallace Berman. (The magazine, which was distributed through the mail, was never for sale; its proto-hippie motto was "Art is love is God.") An Early Bulwark of Multiculturalism And for evidence that multiculturalism was firmly in place many decades before the 1990's, one need look no further than journals that bring issues of race and sexuality to the fore. Some, like Umbra, focused on black American culture. Others, like Poems From the Floating World, edited by Jerome Rothenberg, mixed Chinese, Arabic and American Indian work. And gay voices found a place, from collaborations between Robert Duncan and his lover, the collagist Jess Collins in the 1950's, to the stylish New Wave Little Caesar, edited by Dennis Cooper in Los Angeles in the 70's. In the late 1970's and 80's, a third generation of New York School poets emerged, and with it publications reflecting new impulses and styles, including neo-punk rock. Some of the magazines, like the short-lived but lively Dodgems, created by the poet Eileen Myles, who has been called "the last of the New York School poets," were nonmimeo in format. And by the late 80's, desktop publishing had rendered such old production modes all but obsolete. By the time the show draws to a close, just short of the advent of computer technology, it has covered a huge amount of material and inevitably things are left out. An important and still-vibrant Lower East Side institution like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which is based on oral poetry traditions, is given scant mention. The same is true of the wide range of theater and performance art that has always been an integral part of the poetry world. (Such work is increasingly available on homemade videos and audio tapes, yet another alternative publishing medium for poetry.) Even with some omissions, the ground that has been covered is vast. And it is great to know that the painstaking exercise in historical research that the show represents will have an afterlife in the form of a catalogue to be published jointly by the library and Granary Books in October. Of course, no book or lineup of display cases can convey the exhilarating charge of live poetry, hot off the press or spoken out loud. And this raises again the question of the future of this seemingly vulnerable, transitory art. Will it find new venues? (Surely the still-forming gallery neighborhood in Chelsea is tailor-made for reforging the link between art and poetry.) Or will it be swamped and made ever smaller by a media-saturated information age? Eileen Myles, who has lived and written in the East Village for 25 years, is encouraged. "Poetry is always radical," she says. "It's pure democracy. You can't limit it to a one-minute MTV slot. You can't confine it to bytes. It's an art about time and about expansiveness, the open road. Young people now in their 20's now are hungry for that. And we're in there with them." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:11:13 -0400 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: vomit & politix & poetizing In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980714231344.007acb70@mail.zip.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII John Tranter: There's nothing wrong with you (that a little change of citizenship wouldn't cure). Your problem is, you aren't a USAmerican... i will try to explain it for you. In the U.S. the labor movement (and therefore most forms of left struggle, and therefore dissident and original thought in general) were defeated/kept in check/bought off, a long time ago. Also, factor number two, the US ruling class and its power structures have been made into world-cop overlords (the american century etc.) via a series of economic and geopol developments. The concatenation of these things means: 1. a stunning lack of critical edge in public discourse, particularly among those who have the capial and the social position to really set the tone; and 2. what amounts to a monarchical/dictatorial system, often refered to as the Imperial Presidency. The president can be checked on occasion by the Congress (cf. Nixon) but that body is controlled by a single governmental machine (the Republicrat structure, which called "two political parties" but isn't even one, since it is not based on mass membership) that has no real differences of interest from the prez. So *anything* whether it involves poets or ballplayers or school teachers for idaho or army veterans or whatever, that involves the casa blanca is treated as a religious event, comperable in weepy magnificence to a Norman Rockwell canvas... Of course, tho' i guess they have their moments once in a while, the "laureates" are (like most of their compeers) quite bad and quite uninteresting as poets, most of the time. It's their sort you often find kickin' up their heels with caeser, isn't it? and not just in "the good ol' USA!!" mark @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:53:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: sortes pinskianae MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Afloat on their shoulders, And vague depression on the long walk home The belts and spindles are nearly And conceived, "In all those years at work I must have seen The dried mucus of her nose He smelled of pagan incense and char. Flame's phlegmshaped characters. Take a letter: Dear Flesh, Even a snake's horizon must expand, Impossible to tell in writing. "Basho" symbol or saxophone--miserable, With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:58:56 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Erik Sweet Subject: Re: sortes pinskianae Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit good poem that rip off the clothes poem was a joke, i don't really know how the school would react to that winning a prize! we'll see im off ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 14:06:08 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Erik Sweet Subject: Reading in albany, ny 7/18!!! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Jordan judged my summer class's poem contest on William Carlos Williams... He chose a funny parody of The Red Wheelbarrow! on Saturday July 18th for those of you in Albany, New York you must come see Anselm Berrigan Jordan Davis Sean Killian read at Lulu's Wine Bar third floor at 288 Lark Street at 7 pm eryque back channel me... any one else from Albany who wants details...come see these poets read they will heat up the downtown of albany and make it real!!! hope the summer is well for all...its getting hot here!!!! "Tool a Magazine" will have its first issue available on or around august 14th so prepare for "the poetry" 1 month in counting...... erik sweet ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 11:51:18 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Poetix programs? Content-Type: text/plain Todd, Re: Naropa as "spiritual": yes, in a loose sense, this is true of Waldman, Schelling, Bye. Not so (in any way that intersects w/ their teaching or writing, at least) of Hollo or Hawkins, or of the majority of visiting writers, or of the majority of students I've known personally. &, Unlike other programs @ Naropa, there are no Buddhist-related requirements (such as meditation) for students in the M.F.A. writing & poetics program. As to how it has affected my own poetics-- the emphasis on poetics as not just a genre of comp lit but as the engagement of a fellow practitioner WITH a body of writing, certainly would be one point. In terms of "schools," what's had more of an affect, possibly, would be schools in the non-academic sense (tho' I was never "there")-- e.g. NY school & Language "moment." Certainly the distrust of intellectualism, on the one hand, & intellectual immersion, on the other, characteristic of these two groups, has framed (sometimes ironically) my own sense of engagement in the essays I've written. As for the poetry, I'd like to think I'm independent enough not to have been wholly shaped by any of the above. Certainly, a sense of improvisation, arrangement, pushing at the edges, trying not to repeat myself, has played a role. Certainly some of these are "Naropa values"-- but I think, for better or worse, I'm not very typical of the poets (student poets?) Naropa has "produced." By the way, could you elaborate on how "the study of Olson, The Romantics, Oppen, Dickinson, Basic Texts (Aristotle, etc), Whitman and the texts that influenced their poetics has affected [your] work as a poet?".... --Mark Todd Baron wrote: >Dear Mark: > >No contradiction here: but perhaps I was not clear--my investigation >reacts to a braoder question--persoanlly then--How do you think YOUR >education as a Poet in a poetics dept. at a college has affected yr >work. How do you think it affects a "school" of thought as a school of >Poetics. NARAPA had a rep. for being based more on a spiritual >investigation of poetcs--years ago--than a Comp. Lit study. Does that >affect yr poetics-- > >Why Naropa--for you--rather than somewhere else. > >Thanks --every answer engages me! > >Tb__ > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 14:08:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Underestimated Poetics In-Reply-To: <35AA526F.38FF@ibm.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" these are both so, like, totally cool. o, i n v u! At 12:31 PM -0600 7/13/98, Rachel Levitsky wrote: >Susan E. Dunn wrote: >> >> Omigod, like, >> >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen's life had stood a loaded gun and then some. >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen shops at the Gap. Thepoetryofyoungwomen eats an >> entire pint of Hagen Daz. Thepoetryofyoungwomen starves herself. >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen rolls her eyes and won't wipe that look off her face >> and doesn't care that you don't like her tone of voice. >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen is a vampire slayer, like Buffy. >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen smiles sweetly when you call her Blondie and then >> says asshole when you aren't in earshot. Thepoetryofyoungwomen got drunk on >> wine coolers and blew chunks. Thepoetryofyoungwomen wants to be an >> astronaut or a figure skater. Thepoetryofyoungwomen reads the Bell Jar and >> cries. Thepoetryofyoungwomen thinks Taylor Hanson is cute and Beck Hansen >> is deep. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is never called on even when her hand is up. >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen has seen Titanic three times but likes Little Women >> better. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is good at math. Thepoetryofyoungwomen >> polishes her nails black. Thepoetryofyoungwomen clears the table. >> Thepoetryofyoungwomen needs to check her messages. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is >> not impressed that your father wrote the history book. >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Susan E. Dunn >> "Are you in the English Department or the History Department?" >> "I'm in the Toy Department." >> --Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book >> email: sedunn@leland.stanford.edu >> www: http://shc.stanford.edu/sed/sedunn.html >> ------------------------------------------------------------------ > >Susan mind if I add? > >Thepoetryofyoungwomen makes xerox copies of her body parts. >Thepoetryofyoungwomen thinks she should garden but prefers new shoes. >Thepoetryofyoungwomen can never get past imitating G.Stein, as had been >noted. Thepoetryofyoungwomen fights like a girl and wont be shaken from >her party line. Thepoetryofyoungwomen shares knowing she deserves more >than she gets. Thepoetryofyoungwomen would like to take up space and >gets shorter. Thepoetryofyoungwomen grows so big it can screw in a >lightbulb all by herself. > > >also forthcoming: >A reluctant promise to J. Kuszai of recap of last week of Naropa SWP >events including the dog bite. > >--rdl-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:12:36 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetix programs? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark DuCharme wrote: > > Todd, > > Re: Naropa as "spiritual": yes, in a loose sense, this is true of > Waldman, Schelling, Bye. Not so (in any way that intersects w/ their > teaching or writing, at least) of Hollo or Hawkins, or of the majority > of visiting writers, or of the majority of students I've known > personally. &, Unlike other programs @ Naropa, there are no > Buddhist-related requirements (such as meditation) for students in the > M.F.A. writing & poetics program. > > As to how it has affected my own poetics-- the emphasis on poetics as > not just a genre of comp lit but as the engagement of a fellow > practitioner WITH a body of writing, certainly would be one point. In > terms of "schools," what's had more of an affect, possibly, would be > schools in the non-academic sense (tho' I was never "there")-- e.g. NY > school & Language "moment." Certainly the distrust of intellectualism, > on the one hand, & intellectual immersion, on the other, characteristic > of these two groups, has framed (sometimes ironically) my own sense of > engagement in the essays I've written. As for the poetry, I'd like to > think I'm independent enough not to have been wholly shaped by any of > the above. Certainly, a sense of improvisation, arrangement, pushing at > the edges, trying not to repeat myself, has played a role. Certainly > some of these are "Naropa values"-- but I think, for better or worse, > I'm not very typical of the poets (student poets?) Naropa has > "produced." > > By the way, could you elaborate on how "the study of Olson, The > Romantics, Oppen, Dickinson, Basic Texts (Aristotle, etc), Whitman and > the texts that influenced their poetics has affected [your] work as a > poet?".... > > --Mark > > > > > >No contradiction here: but perhaps I was not clear--my investigation > >reacts to a braoder question--persoanlly then--How do you think YOUR > >education as a Poet in a poetics dept. at a college has affected yr > >work. How do you think it affects a "school" of thought as a school of > >Poetics. NARAPA had a rep. for being based more on a spiritual > >investigation of poetcs--years ago--than a Comp. Lit study. Does that > >affect yr poetics-- > > > >Why Naropa--for you--rather than somewhere else. > > > >Thanks --every answer engages me! > > > >Tb__ > > > > ___________________________________________________ thank-you. Send me yr address so's I can send you ReMap #6. Anyways--the study of those mentioned has affected my work as a poet in various sense 1) the poem as possible dialogue with epic--as history--as a sense so much more interesting than "self" 2) Dickinson--and my study with Rbert Duncan and Arron Shurin--has affected my idea of what the poem is--that Robert said "Trust the poem" never the poet..per se--and that Emily Dickinson was an Occult Poet--and that Robert said "All poetry is an occult scinece" 3) Reading in Basic Texts--and studying--knowing whre the work comes from--the true history of the language--as Spicer said--paraphrased-in order to have Rabbit stew you gotta "catch the rabbit" first! 4) Whitman gave me the idea of what the poem is for me--a poem that has everything to do with the Outisde world as repeated represented on my Inside--the line--the LINE--as the foundation of the poem--what a poem is anways--to look at--is lines--and the rejection of the then current line strangulation in sonnett/neat/form. Though my work is nothing like the above writers--I read them all the time--I learned to READ in Grad. school. I learned to read in 3rd grade! THanks Mark-- Your discussion of Naropa is interesting. I've wanted to see what the possible connected between New College Poetics and Naropa is--but I still see a different take--there--as there--was a long time ago at Naropa-- David Meltzer and Diane DiPrima most likely the poets I studied with that have a Naropa Connection. Imagine the joy of studying Kabbalah and The Roamtics with these two--and though my work as a poet doesn't directly engage(as you said yr studies don't) those "subjects"--the constant drive towards a given mystery--I believe that's what seperates the current "academic" departments of Creative Writing programs from those such as Naropa--and even SFSU--and New C. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:15:46 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetix programs? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark DuCharme wrote: > > Todd, > > Re: Naropa as "spiritual": yes, in a loose sense, this is true of > Waldman, Schelling, Bye. Not so (in any way that intersects w/ their > teaching or writing, at least) of Hollo or Hawkins, or of the majority > of visiting writers, or of the majority of students I've known > personally. &, Unlike other programs @ Naropa, there are no > Buddhist-related requirements (such as meditation) for students in the > M.F.A. writing & poetics program. > > As to how it has affected my own poetics-- the emphasis on poetics as > not just a genre of comp lit but as the engagement of a fellow > practitioner WITH a body of writing, certainly would be one point. In > terms of "schools," what's had more of an affect, possibly, would be > schools in the non-academic sense (tho' I was never "there")-- e.g. NY > school & Language "moment." Certainly the distrust of intellectualism, > on the one hand, & intellectual immersion, on the other, characteristic > of these two groups, has framed (sometimes ironically) my own sense of > engagement in the essays I've written. As for the poetry, I'd like to > think I'm independent enough not to have been wholly shaped by any of > the above. Certainly, a sense of improvisation, arrangement, pushing at > the edges, trying not to repeat myself, has played a role. Certainly > some of these are "Naropa values"-- but I think, for better or worse, > I'm not very typical of the poets (student poets?) Naropa has > "produced." > > By the way, could you elaborate on how "the study of Olson, The > Romantics, Oppen, Dickinson, Basic Texts (Aristotle, etc), Whitman and > the texts that influenced their poetics has affected [your] work as a > poet?".... > > --Mark > > > > > >No contradiction here: but perhaps I was not clear--my investigation > >reacts to a braoder question--persoanlly then--How do you think YOUR > >education as a Poet in a poetics dept. at a college has affected yr > >work. How do you think it affects a "school" of thought as a school of > >Poetics. NARAPA had a rep. for being based more on a spiritual > >investigation of poetcs--years ago--than a Comp. Lit study. Does that > >affect yr poetics-- > > > >Why Naropa--for you--rather than somewhere else. > > > >Thanks --every answer engages me! > > > >Tb__ > > > > ___________________________________________________ thank-you. Send me yr address so's I can send you ReMap #6. Anyways--the study of those mentioned has affected my work as a poet in various senses and ways: 1) the poem as possible dialogue with epic--as history--as a sense so much more interesting than "self" 2) Dickinson--and my study with Rbert Duncan and Arron Shurin--has affected my idea of what the poem is--that Robert said "Trust the poem" never the poet..per se--and that Emily Dickinson was an Occult Poet--and that Robert said "All poetry is an occult scinece" 3) Reading in Basic Texts--and studying--knowing whre the work comes from--the true history of the language--as Spicer said--paraphrased-in order to have Rabbit stew you gotta "catch the rabbit" first! 4) Whitman gave me the idea of what the poem is for me--a poem that has everything to do with the Outisde world as repeated represented on my Inside--the line--the LINE--as the foundation of the poem--what a poem is anways--to look at--is lines--and the rejection of the then current line strangulation in sonnett/neat/form. Though my work is nothing like the above writers--I read them all the time--I learned to READ in Grad. school. I learned to read in 3rd grade! THanks Mark-- Your discussion of Naropa is interesting. I've wanted to see what the possible connected between New College Poetics and Naropa is--but I still see a different take--there--as there--was a long time ago at Naropa-- David Meltzer and Diane DiPrima most likely the poets I studied with that have a Naropa Connection. Imagine the joy of studying Kabbalah and The Roamtics with these two--and though my work as a poet doesn't directly engage(as you said yr studies don't) those "subjects"--the constant drive towards a given mystery--I believe that's what seperates the current "academic" departments of Creative Writing programs from those such as Naropa--and even SFSU--and New C. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 15:36:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: What do these bestsellers have in common? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was searching through the Barnes & Noble website earlier today. Here's some of the titles listed under "Literature, Theory & Criticism" BESTSELLERS (updated weekly). See if you can guess what they have in common. It's a no-brainer on most of these, although some I'm puzzled by.Lots of- Cliff Notes- selling because of the Required Summer Reading Lists at Schools. If you are wondering why Dumas's _Man in the Iron Mask_ and Tobias Wolff's memoir_This Boy's Life_ are on the bestseller list, well you've already forgotten that Leonardo DiCaprio starred in both of these movies (neither very recently, either).We can't underestimate teenagers (mostly young women I'd imagine) and their influence. Fiction & Literature; Theory & Criticism Results 1 -50 of 21,176 found are displayed below sorted by most popular. Top 10: #1 To Kill a MockingbirdHarper Lee / Mass Market Paperback#2 Conversations Wiith God: An Uncommon Dialogue. Book 1Neale Donald Walsch / Hardcover#3The PearlJohn Steinbeck / Paperback#4The Joy Luck ClubAmy Tan /Get the Facts on Anyone: 2nd Ed..Dennis King / Hardcover #5How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval EuropeThomas Cahill#6GatekeeperPhilip Shelby / Hardcover#7The Essential Rumi #8Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialgoue, Book 2 Neale Donald Walsch / Hardcover #9Heart of Darkness, with the Congo Diary. Joseph Conrad #10The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Here's partial list of rest of Top 50 15The Man in the Iron MaskAlexandre Dumas / 16To Kill a Mockingbird (Cliffs Notes)19 Lord of the Flies (Cliffs Notes)20 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Cliffs Notes)21 The Time of Our Time Norman Mailer / 22Grapes of Wrath (Cliffs Notes)23 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Cliffs Notes)24Great Gatsby (Cliffs Notes) 26 The Odyssey (Cliffs Notes)27 To Kill a Mockingbird( Hardcover) 29The Heart of a Woman, Vol. 4y.Maya Angelou 30The Scarlet Letter (Cliffs Notes)32This Boy's Life Tobias Wolff34Catcher in the Rye (Cliffs Notes)35 Conversations with God, Book 1 (Guidebook).38 Tale of Two Cities (Cliffs Notes)41Shadow of a Dark Queen (Serpentwar Saga #1), Vol. 1.42Raymond E. Feist / Mass Market Paperback43Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (Cliffs Notes) 45The Love between Mothers & Daughters. Helen Exley /46Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo Zlata Filipovic / Paperback47Crime & Punishment (Cliffs Notes)48 Of Mice & Men (Cliffs Notes).50Wuthering Heights (Cliffs Notes) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:12:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Poetics/Poetry Dept. degrees Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Todd, I don't know about affects exactly but you know Cal-Arts now has a Critical Studies program where the kids write. My sister Carol T. graduated last year in the new dept's first class. Her thesis was a novel, but they did seem to do more critical work than I did at San Fran State. I was a bit jealous of that. Seems like it at least gives more to talk about than each other's work and outfits. Sat in on a class of hers with John Wagner which was great--they were talking about Rumi and a million things --criticism, critical thought--i may not be the best at it but it gets me going when it doesnt bore. its kind of like landscaping that way. or wallpaper. The program is headed by Dick Hebdige, of Semiotexte in-fame. They publish Errant Bodies. excuse me if this is all old news. Elizabeth Elizabeth Treadwell Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books PO Box 9013 Berkeley, CA 94709 http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:19:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: my additional thot Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Have to be true to my school and add that at SF State, esp in classes of Myung Kim and Bob Gluck, was exposed to a ton of writing that is reverberant (!) and influencing. but all yr headbreaking cant come from school. Eliz. > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:20:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: quartermain/cadell intro In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 13 Jul 1998, Billy Little wrote: > in idle, nevertheless I'd say Linton Kwesi Johnson's language is > delectable, i like it on the tongue like a candy. Billy, yes LKJ is super, but the real way to experience him is with the dub band. i think most of his albums are available on cd now. he's on shanachie records. best, kevin |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | | in small amounts in many foods. | | The World of Chemistry Essentials | |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:27:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: interior decorating Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "In fact in fact in the life in fact in the life and after all in fact after all after all which is it after all which is it." Gertrude Stein, Lucy Church Amiably "realism too is an '-ism.'": "psychopathology": if they are flat, why do they seem alive A computation is a systematic mapping between interpretable inputs and outputs. Thepoetryofyoungwomen is thepoetryofyoungwomen is thepoetryofyoungwomen. I'm old now anyway. E. ps Karen, thank you for the road to "Woolfenstein" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 00:29:01 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetics/Poetry Dept. degrees MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yes--the dept. ..The thing there that "bothers" me though is the abolsute lack (here my ego goes) of those students participating in the very small lit. scene in LA. I fear they feel they are outside of the various and sometimes good readings and publications. I've yet to run into a Cal-Arts strudents that read cont. poetry or goes to the readings at Sun and Moon. While in SF I went to everything! I hear from Noah D. Lissovoy that he runs into SFSU students at everything now that he lives "up there". And so--I'm afraid now that Cal-Arts and other "critical studies" dept.s actually create a border--not a moving one--but a solid firm one. I wonder if this is al my own bullshirt or if I'm right! Living in LA is horribiliy political. Few readings scarecly attended! Tb ps: ? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 00:31:01 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: my additional thot MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > > Have to be true to my school and add that at SF State, esp in classes of > Myung Kim and Bob Gluck, was exposed to a ton of writing that is reverberant > (!) and influencing. > but all yr headbreaking cant come from school. > > Eliz. > > > > > and yes--those folks are great teachers--who care! I agree--the New College program exposed me to a library I now cart with me of 700 tons of material I did not previously know of---- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 00:33:40 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: interior decorating MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Any responses to Margy Sloan's MOVING BORDERS ANTHOLOGY--since we've talked of the damned Millenium--which never seems to come? I believe THIS is the anthology that I want to reread and that matters. If for nothing else but Margy's immense intro and Neidecker's amazing "lots" poem that opens the text. THis is a GREAT text! Tb (ReMaP) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 17:13:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: bad total Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To pick back up the Barrett Watten discussion -- "A sterile madness lives in pictures of highly controlled effects--which is what we mean when we speak of abstraction." This sounds like Foucault, right? At the end of Bad History, there's a section by section list of citations or readings, and sure enough, at the end of the list for "No Man's Land" comes Foucault's Madness and Civilization. The footnotes here, what is their relationship to the text? Is the dissociation and deletion of reference what's bad in a Bad History? Watten quotes (someone quoting?) the line that a history without women's proper names is a _bad history_. Is Watten quoting Foucault, or simulating him? At any rate, I'm having a footnote experience David Jones only dreamed about. Again, this is the cheapest sort of discussion about literature, nothing about what Watten does so admirably in Bad History, but instead taking on a sort of surplus issue, talking about the project and its presentation and not the activity and its rates. Just to mumble in case the book'd been skipped over -- Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:15:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: quartermain/cadell intro In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" lkj's terrific; what's he up to these days? what's the "scene" (dub and otherwise) like in britain now? At 4:20 PM -0400 7/14/98, k.a. hehir wrote: >On Mon, 13 Jul 1998, Billy Little wrote: >> in idle, nevertheless I'd say Linton Kwesi Johnson's language is >> delectable, i like it on the tongue like a candy. > > >Billy, > >yes LKJ is super, but the real way to experience him is with the dub band. >i think most of his albums are available on cd now. he's on shanachie >records. > >best, >kevin > > |-------------------------------------------------------------| > | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | > | in small amounts in many foods. | > | The World of Chemistry Essentials | > |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 14:32:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Money MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Some months ago, Don Byrd started one of his posts with this remark: I have found the discussion of poetry and money painful. There have been attitudes, of course, about MFA programs and about academics and about the honor of not making money, etc. But what is the issue? What, indeed? One answer might be found in a wonderful book I've recently discovered, _Frozen Desire_ by James Buchan. It's a book about the history of money, but not only that. In the manner of R Gancie, let me quote what seemed to me a truly remarkable paragraph from the introduction: "Yet I saw that money was a deep, almost unbreakable, social relation. The banknote I gave the Lebanese waiter was not a simple object, whose function could be deduced quite quickly, like a pencil or, once the control knob has been found, a television. The engraved swirls and signs, even the King's portrait, did not suddenly reveal the note's purposes to someone who knew nothing of money. The banknote was an outcrop of some vast mountain of social arrangements, . . . It occurred to me that, in using money, I had submitted to the authority of a society of which I knew little, but in which I found as much to deplore as admire: subscribed, as it were, to the tottering triangles in the suq that were women or the tense scamper after Friday prayers when we all coralled into an open space downtown to witness a beheading. There was something sacramental about my pay: that I'd offered up to some higher organ my primary social relations, that it was to me and my friends as a flag is to a regiment or a crucifix to Christians. I felt compelled. I was not a volunteer of Saudi Arabia or any society: I had been pressed. My wages came to me not to satisfy any need -- mine were anyway private, affectionate, atrocious -- but to make my needs universal: to incorporate me in the mainstream of men and things in which my work was not for me but for everybody; and to take what was special in me, my most secure and precious sense of myself, and make it general and banal. In short, I was to be civilized." He goes from this personal introduction to a more scholarly, yet fascinating, history of money, interest and what might be called "econo-metrics" -- a great read! I recommend it highly. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 15:33:18 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Why does this make me want to throw up? In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980714231344.007acb70@mail.zip.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT John - this is part of the new 'journalism lite' that's "popular" here in the U.S. (particularly light on "public discourse", as Mark noted). This far out, I'm afraid it's more disheartening than surprising to see vagaries such as this in the news media: > During his tenure, Professor Hass battled illiteracy by putting into action > his belief that, "Imagination makes communities." foibles from today's edition of the local paper might include the headline "Boys' Deaths Take the Bounce Out of Orange Marches", or this masterpiece of critical reportage (which sounds like a goddamn'd Pepsi commercial to me): "The vast Army range west of Tooele this month is staging unique war games that combine ground forces, Army helicopters and Air Force fighter jets, giving part-time warriors a more realistic taste of the front lines, complete with live ammunition. It is part of a nationwide training run dubbed Global Patriot '98. [...] Dugway was selected because of its wide-open airspace, not because it looks much like Korea." or probably my favorite headline today: "Oxygen: Can't Live With It, But Can't Live Without It". Really -- this is on the front page, whereas such articles as Clinton Says No To Independence In Kosovo Region Russian Bailout Gets Approval Of World Bank are buried deeeep inside. And of course that's not to mention the terrific number of happenings not deemed newsworthy (e.g., any left activity, any rightist activity or corruption on the part of governmental agencies or local corporations that can't be whitewashed...). I suppose mebbe it's worse here in UT than elsewhere -- I get most of my news from a combination of Pacifica, the Times, the Boston Globe (online), the Nation digital edition; local news from very small independents, one of which is excellent on local corruption issues... c h r i s .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 18:07:33 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: why I love country music & poetics (artist of the floa Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Barrett Watten well, I guess I'm with Ben Friedlander liking Watten's >paradoxical position of attacking totalization by means of totalizing >discourse .. and I am starting to see the charming vulnerability .. Hey Jordan why didn't you say this three years ago I wouldn't have bothered to write my dissertation--but seriously (folks)--now that my foot is out of that beartrap I agree with the above in a strange and haunting (self-haunting?) tone . . . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:03:16 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Re: Why does this make me want to throw up? In-Reply-To: <4019C26C2112D211AE0400104B30A0E608FBA6@mailnt.ctc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks, Joe. Yes, I did notice that kerfuffle as it drifted across the screen some months ago, but I hadn't actually seen how awful the original White House guff was. Twelve years ago August Kleinzahler told me Hass and Pinsky would engineer something like this, and boy, he was right! I have a poem I wrote about a brace of US poets not entirely unlike them in, I think, 1986: John Tranter On Looking Into The American Anthology 1 In California a young man is stuffing a briefcase - first a jug of light, the words 'water' and 'stone', a blurred image of a guy in a pickup truck with a gun staring through the hush-squeak, hush-squeak of the wipers, a frail woman, crying. A leaf, a sob, a clod of mud. There! His class awaits the real, the Deep and Meaningful. Driving downtown he sees a pair of jugglers inch up the face of a glass cathedral full of marriages, mirrored in the noon glare, one on top, and then his double. The neon signs in the suburbs full of graves say 'Giants Drank and Died Here'. Autos, rusting trucks, police helicopters roam restlessly, their motto: Do it First, and do it Fast. 2 Down here in New Zealand, jet-lagged in transit at the bottom of the planet, a clutch of Flight Attendants giggle in a corner: one gay, the others married. The sun that has looked down on Hollywood, on lust, Las Vegas and the will to power, rises, rhododactylos, on Auckland Airport: through the tinted glass a perfect field of fodder, five sheep, a tractor nosing at the sedge, the shrill cacophony of jets rehearsing like a madman staring at a vase. Nothing the amusing natives do here matters in the Capital. The giant engines lift us through the sky. The next stop - Australia - is the end of the line. ----- John Tranter At 09:37 AM 14/07/98 -0700, you wrote: > >John, don't know if you can get into the archives, but I posted a long >and dismissive post about this "activity" a week or so after it had >actually happened, and drew some flack from people who I think are more >interested in fame than in poetry. Anyway, thank you for your supremely >intelligent magazine! > >Best, > >Joe Safdie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 19:03:35 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: "Buke as in puke." MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Then poet, if you mean to thrive, Employ your muse on king's alive; With prudence gathering up a cluster Of all the virtues you can muster: Which formed into a garland sweet, Lay humbly at your monarch's feet; Who, as the odours reach his throne, Will smile, and think them all his own: For law and gospel both determine All virtues lodge in royal ermine. (I mean the oracles of both Who shall depose it upon oath.) Your garland in the following reign, Change but the names, will do again." ---from On Poetry: A Rhapsody by Jonathan Swift --- "What you can't calculate, you think, it cannot be true; What you can't weigh, that has no weight for you." ---from Faust, Second Part by Goethe, naturlich --- Thanks to Joe Safdie for his excellent quote on the insidiousness of money ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 06:23:12 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Oliver Subject: Re: Other Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Contributors to Ric Caddel's and Peter Quartermain's "Other British Poetry" anthology have been asked to comment on the introduction. I wouldn't want to be nationalist about poetry (not even about poor little Scotland, which gets short shrift here), but as far as an international readership is concerned, Britain has been a difficult place to write from in recent years. That itself is a poetic topic of great importance for its writers. The introduction makes full allowance for the many "Englishes" which now create a multi-cultural, multi-national sense of "British poetry". So thank god for this remarkable piece of entrepreneurship which, at last, will give the US some idea of what's been going on. Until recently, I've found most of my many American friends almost entirely ignorant about the British scene. I'm delighted if Billy Little responds so enthusiastically, for example. Mostly, the introduction is excellent, although it will be cut down for the actual edition. However, there's hardly ever such a thing as a true overview written from within a situation: perhaps the point about the Donald Allen anthology, which always gets cited as the example, is that Allen wasn't caught up in the tensions he so ably categorised: he was just friendly with everyone. Here, a slight North of England/London bias cannot be avoided in some of the weightings: thus, both Ric and Peter Quartermain come forward from the Basil Bunting direction and place great emphasis upon the London figures Eric Mottram and Allen Fisher (as prime exemplars of new poetics), and Bob Cobbing (as key figure in sound/performance based moves). I don't object to editorial bias -- don't see how it can be avoided. As for unstated reasons they can't include J.H. Prynne's work in the anthology itself, their generous attempt to acknowledge the influence of Cambridge lacks some depth, not least because their list of honourable exclusions includes many younger Prynne disciples. (Prynne's increasingly difficult work can be read in the new "collected" due out this summer.) The introduction sees British poetry as an arena of gladiatorial battles, the mainstream versus "The Other". A key event, therefore, was the avant-garde's seizure of control of the stuffy Poetry Society in the 1970s, before a counter-coup returned the society and its centrist Poetry Review safely to the mainstream. This was a London event in which Cambridge took a much lesser role: "If we're all struggling against officialising centrism, why are we trying to get control of the official centre?" -- that was sometimes a Cambridge thing to say. But fair enough: Bob Cobbing and Eric Mottram led a heroic tussle for a few years. Let it be acknowledged. When it comes to such battles the names of women disappear. For such a concentration tends to exclude from discussion those who are cagey about the power relationships involved in all group movements and banner waving; that includes not just many women but many writers from other ethnicities -- and, I must say, myself (I'm rather anarchist about poetic movements) though my work features in the collection, sure enough. I am hopeful that the anthology will actually prove sufficiently multi-cultural and have a proper gender balance, for that is a different kind of battle not fully won in Britain yet. For me, much of the talk about the Rothenberg/Joris assemblage missed the point. The point with anthologies is that someone has to get the whole business started: Jerry and Pierre have done this for world literature; now Ric and Peter Quartermain have done it for recent British poetry as anthologised in the US. Salutations to all you out there who are genuinely waiting for the news! Doug Oliver ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 07:22:10 -0400 Reply-To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: comment? narrative closure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Apropos of the "desire" thread bandied about not long ago: Shelved next to each other by alphabetical fiat in the "Poetry" section at Borders: DESIRE by Frank Bidart and THE END OF DESIRE by Jill Bialosky. Now that's narrative closure. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 09:47:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Listerines: I am forwarding the post below on behalf of the undersigned, whose working-for-The-Man prevents them from participation in ListServs (even small ones from nice tropical islands.) ***************************************** Dear Poets Critics & Fellahin, WE, Douglas Rothschild, & Tony Dohr, being of unsound judgment, come now, after many hours spent in vigorous debate, requesting your participation in a new THOUGHT project. There has recently been a small controversy about negativism in critical reviews, we have come to believe that the critic MUST express his or her dissatisfaction with EVERY poem without fear of either sensor, damaged feelings, or hurt friendships. In light of this revelation, we offer these poems up for critical comment. Feel free to critique them, ignore them, savage them or, to our enduring embarrassment, praise them. But please remember that we firmly believe that the most sincere & useful response to work is invariably: Glib, Critical, & Acerbic. {The Poems} --typography is not always translatible across formats so the poems are available in sep. file upon request. ________________________ Textual Queries: HARD AT WORK [S]"he told me /Top'/ik/, [emminent danger] I heard, [Impending disaster]" --Jean Luc Nancy I shifted back & forth all day. I had thought it out. The reality of disaster, over took the concept of danger & became tantamount in my mind. I was parallized & reacted suddenly & with- out warning. _______________________________________________ 4 / 10 / 1747 Straights of Gibralter, aboard H.S.S. Providence 'Perhaps all this soul searching is the path to the final draft . . . . 'Once a friend answering a fellow's question said of me, "First he writes EVERYTHING down, & then he cross it all out." (I think this, the path this voyage is now taking.) [Final Draft....is that what it's called as you sit in a cold office on a cold day while the air con- ditioner blows on you & your tuberian co-worker comes over & breathes tuberculin microbes onto the back of your exposed neck?] 'Maybe all this soul searching is the path to the final draft . . . . & yet again, I keep hearing [the words shining {path}, heaven, & gate in that phrase,] though when I look for them, they are not there.' --Boswell, A Spanish Journal ______________________________________________ POEM 3 April 8th & there is enough breeze to consider March a viable alternative. ______________________________________________ Outside the brightness startles the senses as if long beetled up. Long since twisted completely around. Never the less, desire, the plan. Part of the image & what it creates. Imposes upon it, the still exists. & revile it. But even the weather remains. Male- volent plans the imaginary. Nature neutral is interferes, repells, light in haze, regardless of control. The sounds apart, the seems exist so much as to be both. Unrecognizable & indistinguishable from the world we've made. ______________________________________________ EMMINANT DANGER : ARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARM ALARM ARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARM ALARM ARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARMALARM ALARM --Jackson Mac Low it seemed so simple : cross it out that which is not in part equal to a sense of what is left. records of various & disastorous acount abilibies. Among the negotiation of others space & not. Look at the skill of line breaks. {a dream of stability} Continue hope. Remember brush. Remember the whole of history. Artfully pressed lips while thinking it out? ______________________________________________ RIVER among the wreackage, twisted cables, cement & retaining bouys which mark the ruined pier ______________________________________________ LOBSTER Devoured by ants, the way people grow restless aimlessly. Collide their better halves & forget the names. i too have no idea how it happens. Yet, have been there to see the result it's ugly, really. A question of stamina & informs salvation. Works, into words into actions like a forlorn calvinist. Ever presant, dulling the edge. ARSENIC or having already been trapped away from the event. The spirit of a phantom. of the shadow of it's former self. A shell of a man, a hulk. The mind is reticent & retaliates with an announcement of its own salvation. For a moment time has collapsed in, & we are our thoughts a relevation that would only shorten time, stuffing an edge- wise into the preponderance of a precedence of space. ______________________________________________ FOLLOWING MELVILLE GREAT PRIMORDIAL STRUGGLE Between Elements of Air & Water Conducted by Two Mallards & Gull Now the water logged carcass of a bagel forever out of reach bobbing on the water. The other hovering, held aloft by air. ______________________________________________ ....topic sentences from THE WORK IN PROGRESS: His world has been Detroit. Few people know fish. That incessant humm rattling around. The Brain, The Shadow of an Idea. Lint ______________________________________________ GRISTLY SAUSAGE i'm in Prauge in the late 80's & am getting my Havel's confused. Examine the window, is it open to the intricanteness of a provincial capital? Check it again, i remain dubious. ______________________________________________ CALL TO PRAYER "If there is a plan, perhaps this too is part of the plan, as when the subway turns on a switch, the wheels screeching against the rails, & the lights go out; but are on again in a moment." --Charles Resnikoff If there is a plan. If there is not a plan. It has worked out just as well at least this is what you've expected to believe. Lick your waxy lips, adjust your hat, & try to remember your name enough to put it out of your head. Give you something other to do than merely persue a course of results & the movement itself Byzan- tine. An elaborate, intricate mosque is beyond. Only you instead insist on stepping back, viewing the minnarette, & remembering the compation of the mussa's call to prayer. An image of nothing than better signifiers confusing or absolute. ______________________________________________ give up drinking take up drinking & it's dangerous enough to change. __________________________________________ NEW POEM & the rocks reappear lighter than ducks lighter even than paper cups & the entrance to the canal holds me. For a moment as i consider whether it has tumbled down. ______________________________________________ ARE ALL THAT REMAIN Will it list the breeze? Who might take care or of themselves, outlast? & the cure for the counter in counter culture has now become the fashion of us all. ______________________________________________ & a Free Trip to Arlington. "SHOUTING OUT A WARING" --Peter Seger Believe all danger has past either you or they or name & the body in the right place or they do the best you can hope for anonominity ______________________________________________ "...to think that all of it exists only because some of it is possible is simple minded." -Wittgenstein Is an outside which eliminates space my side of the train with the other side of the train; at the same time both sides of the outside from the inside of the train. At night there is an ouside which denies nature with it's glittery ad lights making the darknenss light & the lightness darkness impenitrable. ************************ Please respond to List, or back-channel: Douglas Rothschild <> Tony Dorhr <> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 05:30:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: New title and news Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sun & Moon Press is proud to announce to the publication of DURA, by Myung Mi Kim. Conceived as one long poem, Myung Mi Kim's DURA is a whirling experimental symphony of images, forms and rhythms assembled and juxtaposed to translate the ex- perince and gestures of the Korean immirant woman surviving in America at the end of the twentieth century. A truly important new collection of poetry. New American Poetry Series: 28 paper, $11.95 Sun & Moon's CHILDREN OF CLAY, by Raymond Queneau will soon be reviewed in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, and THE NEW YORKER, among other places. That book is $14.95. The two books above and my own AFTER are still available to subscribers of the poetics list for a 20% discount + postage. Also, a reminder, MR KNIFE, MISS FORK, the new international poetry review published by Sun & Moon Press is available by subscription for $20.00, that's a bit more than a 20% discount from the individual issue price. Order from Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036 (213) 857-1115 djmess@sunmoon.com www.sunmoon.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:28:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 15 Jul 1998 09:47:48 -0400 from Hey, you poets have got the flat disjunctive incomplete sentence down, which is the main thing by which we experimentalists distinguish between us and them & what poetry is. The poem as something that started someplace else in your head you've already forgotten and gets truncated in order to remember that missing element. Work a little more on the non-rhythm the boredom the feeling of unexplained angst; learn to throw in some plangent multisyllabic non-references from a fairly large dictionary; work on your spatial distances between words and "lines" which are what shows you are a thoughtful alternative poet patted on the head by major people like Olson Creeley Duncan or genericnewyorkbeatlanguagepoet - and they'll put you in an anthology of (Newer) Americans - (the 14th one - from Urban Bleat Press). - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:24:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: Why does this make me want to throw up? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" did you go to the white house website johnny? did they lay a cookie on you? billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 Yeah, I stole from the treasury of human folly I spent it all on you, baby... don't mention it Duncan McNaughton ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:29:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: recent work Comments: To: GuignolP@aol.com Comments: cc: gary0303@aol.com, bernstei@bway.net, brown@SIMCL.STJOHNS.EDU, chp@chbooks.com, creeley@acsu.buffalo.edu, kcrown@rci.rutgers.edu, jdavis@PANIX.COM, cdewdney@yorku.ca, today@starledger.com, SGDineen@aol.com, RDUPLESS@VM.TEMPLE.EDU, cjf@pipeline.com, foley3@eden.rutgers.edu, efoster@steventech.edu, HN0749@handsnet.org, cantankerous77@hotmail.com, mgillan@pccc.cc.nj.us, AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU, rhadas@andromeda.rutgers.edu, hale@etak.com, hhal@eden.rutgers.edu, ath6645@mindspring.com, hayes430@aol.com, 70550.654@compuserve.com, PoetSteve@compuserve.com, JDHollo@aol.com, brandonh@timeoutny.com, Nuyopoman@aol.com, maxpaul@SFSU.EDU, turbeville@earthlink.net, jarnot@pipeline.com, loudjane@interport.com, adeena@compuserve.com, eliotk@eden.rutgers.edu, Susan_Kelly@newyorker.com, tomperdue@aol.com, kimmelman@admin.njit.edu, Gary.A.Lenhart@Dartmouth.EDU, levyaa@is.nyu.edu, t.lopez@plymouth.ac.uk, gmasters@artomatic.com, jmccallum@tkusa.com, dmelt@mailhub1.ncal.verio.com, moriarty@lanminds.com, ENauen@aol.com, sue_kelly@newyorker.com, Notleya@aol.com, AbuFehmi@aol.com, perelman@DEPT.ENGLISH.UPENN.EDU, mperloff@earthlink.net, simon@pipeline.com, pilmak@taconic.net, kathap@Yahoo.com, jillsr@aol.com, raworth@dial.pipex.com, lr22@CORNELL.EDU, anord@interactive.net, ArtsPage@aol.com, jrothenb@carla.ucsd.edu, donner@eden.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU, rutgers.edu@mindspring.com, tmansfield@hotmail.com, rdunst@eden.rutgers.edu, imweiss@eden.rutgers.edu, juliehollywood@hotmail.com, foley3@eden.rutgers.edu, janastas@eden.rutgers.edu, mstrasko@eden.rutgers.edu, kellann@eden.rutgers.edu, rdcurry@eden.rutgers.edu, hhal@eden.rutgers.edu, thea@eden.rutgers.edu, tigger76@eden.rutgers.edu, aailaa@aol.com, gepetto@rockpile.com, ajezebel@eden.rutgers.edu, irishka@eden.rutgers.edu, hsideris@eden.rutgers.edu, shepparr@staff.ehche.ac.uk, sushore@aol.com, rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM, janets@timeoutny.com, lstroffo@HORNET.LIUNET.EDU, gps12@COLUMBIA.EDU, jtranter@jacket.zip.com.au, a.waldman@mindspring.com, G.C.Ward@dundee.ac.uk, BRW575@aol.com, wheeler@is.nyu.edu, patricia.willis@yale.edu, eholzer@zd.com, jyannacci@home.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Recent work of mine can be found at the newly revived NEWARK REVIEW, published by the NewJersey Institute of Technology & edited by Chris Funkhouser. This new issue contains work by fellow Jersey poetry comerados and comeradas Ed Smith, Betsy Robin Schwartz, Bob Rixon and Burt Kimmelman. Check it out at: megahertz.njit.edu/~newrev/v2s1/21index.html thanks, joel lewis ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:41:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: Other introductions MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII I thank everyone who has repsonded thus far to my post on Caddell and Quartermain's introduction. I hope that the work of these editors will pay off; when the anthology itself is available, we can congratulate them again for getting it done in the first place. Those who have not yet read the introduction should not be mislead by my first post: the undertaking of these two anthologists is immense and their knowledge of their subject extensive (yet more spatial metaphors). Mark and Michael's challenges to make my own anthology or write my own introduction are the best initial response to a post such as mine, and if I were to find that same post written by someone else I would want to make the same challenge. I agree with Mark that a "cognitive realignment" (can I get my tires rotated and brake pads replaced at the same time?), one probably contigent on our acquisition of different economic circumstances for the making and trading of poems, is perhaps needed to enable us to tell some really surprising stories. I agree with Henry that ideally more anthologies with different organizational logics, or at least logics less overtly loyal to our sociology of poetry, would be a good thing, to the extent that anthologies matter to poetics. Despite my initial gratitude to Caddell and Quartermain, I still do not think my comments were unwarranted or "nitpicking." For all of its merits, ambition, and self-consciousness, the intro to Other British and Irish Poetry is nonetheless part of a subgenre of prose poetics in our time-- namely the anthology intro-- and this one too uses a rhetoric of contemporaneity characteristic of this subgenre. This rhetoric can and should be read critically from time to time, especially by those who have most to learn from it, and even if it is borrowed from or shared with other poetics subgenres. It is not so easy to criticize Caddell and Quartermain's introduction. But I find that what are in my opinion some of its least persuasive rhetorical moves are also stimulating me to think about poetics. For example: 1) The version that I have read either puts quotation marks around the word "mainstream," or leaves them off, in a seemingly haphazard way. Whether or not it is intentional, this rhetorical feature is a significant way to allude to/inscribe the provisional quality of a key word of this essay. Its readers should ask themselves, what other ways might there be to thematize or discursively announce doubt about the mainstream/marginal opposition AS A RHETORICAL DEVICE? 2) When these editors conclude of hypothetical readers of "mainstream" poetry that their reading is a kind of "passive consumption," they assume a lot about the act of reading without justifying their indictment. Justifying it would be a worthwhile work of poetics for an introduction to an anthology such as this one. 3) I found the brief look at a "not unrepresentative" mainstream poem to be a missed opportunity. I did not really learn much from the discussion of a mediocre poem by Hugo Williams (who?). Why not for the purpose of contrast use a poem by an expatriate poet perhaps more familiar to readers this side of the Atlantic (if we are the primary audience for this anthology? For me anyway, more sparks would have flown from grinding Thom Gunn or Paul Muldoon against a polemical stone. All of this has started me thinking about the form of the anthology intro in terms of Derrida's deconstruction of the preface in Dissemination. What is the logical/epistemological/metaphysical status of the introduction and of the names that repose within it? What happens to narrative time when an anthologist places something first that presumably was written last? How does an intro's rhetoric of self-erasure (the intro must end somehow) trace itself onto the anthologized poems? It seems to me that these issues are ones that the anthologist of experimental poetry, who perhaps cannot be other than a prescient ur-reader of posthumous reading, might consider when deploying recognizable rhetorical moves. Caddell and Quartermain invite us to do more work. I accept their invitation. Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 09:40:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Last Blast from Naropa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear Rachel Levitsky - please post that report about the dog bite - inquiring minds want to know! _I_ happen to know who among the illustrious did sit or nearly sit themselves in a pile of dog shit that terrorized the commons all night under rocket's red glare, etc. Meanwhile, back at the Fox Theater in Boulder, the All-Star Millennial Vagabond Poet's Troupe was whispering in the wings of last Wednesday. (Packed house. No air conditioning. Ghost of Allen Ginsberg presiding). Steven Taylor began the evening on harmonium with Ginsberg's musical setting of Blake's "On Another's Sorrow." Utterly lovely and haunting. Taylor then read from a delightful series of travel diary poems written while on the road with Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in Israel and Eastern Europe - "snapshot poetics," he aptly called them. Brief, sharply etched tableaux both amusing and poignant. The old master moving in blurred newsreel now. Taylor closed with a fresh, wistful re-translation of Pound's version of Li Po's "The River Merchant's Wife." "If you're coming down the canyon call ahead of time and we will come out to meet you as far as the mailbox." Joanne Kyger read next, starting with a long poem inspired by a visit to Mexico. Cleverly skirting the margins of cultural tourism, this work was both lyrical paean to the history of the land and its peoples and a critique of that history - witty, ironic and suffused with an underlying melancholy. Following came a sly poem dedicated to Anselm Hollo - "The tree blossomed. This is what happened." And she closed with a lush homage to Neruda, culled in part from his own _Memoirs_. A tribute to the bard as vatic seer, political activist and master of song. David Henderson, author of Hendrix bio _Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky_ and editor of Bob Kaufman's _Cranial Guitar_, read next, beginning with work from his forthcoming _Neo-California_. These poems are exercises in a very precise form of lyrical irony that engages with the topographical and psychological geography of the dystopian paradise that is Northern and Southern California. Henderson's reading also included a biting elegy for slain rapper Biggie Smalls that surveyed the various forms of class and race oppression, the commodification of desire and the general "mass miasma" of our times. The inestimable Bobbie Louise Hawkins assumed the stage next with all her usual sang froid and panache. Bobbie's first offerings focused with trademark crankiness and humor on the inescapable absurdities of mother-daughter relationships. Next, a meditation on love: its usurpation, and its ennobling tenderness, that requires only a Yes to change a life. Bobbie closed by reading her first story, written after getting stoned in Bolinas in the 70's, a serene and bittersweet remembrance of things Texan. One of her other trademarks emerged here beautifully - the story as cognitive process - not a _something_ to say, but a way to enable a something unknown to be said. Anne Waldman began her terrific set with a reading from _Iovis II_, a section called "Asia," that led us through the weird carnival nightmare world of the Bangkok sex slave markets. An incredible evocation (and repudiation) of male lust and rapacity - the carnal unyoked from the spiritual, eros sick & run amuck, smacking up against itself in the mirror of thanatos - a tour through the loveless mills of desire, where crimes against women are status quo, the air one breathes. All of this sung, hummed, chanted, and piquantly punctuated by alarming barks and deep moans, the pain of the passage etched in the very sounds, dissonance abutting dissonance, sound become (returned to) the medium of something primordial, unnerving, shamanic, like the sequence of pure vowels Pound claimed were used once to invoke Mithra. But wait, there's more! Anne followed "Asia" with an elegaic dream poem about Edwin Denby, Katie Schneeman, and her son, the late Elio Schneeman. Then came the rousing "Negative Capability Blues," accompanied soulfully by Marc Miller on sax. A wild, percussive, dionysiac and _funny_ performance. A selection from a work-in-progress, "Marriage - A Sentence," was next - this portion a lyrical ode to childhood, and dedicated to Eamon Taylor, son of Judy Hussie and Steven Taylor. Anne closed with a Buddhist-style chant for Ginsberg, accompanied by Miller on sax and Steven Taylor on harmonium. "No plot, no plot, embrace the stars." The overall effect of dissonant chanting carried great physical power, opening huge and liberating somatic spaces (i.e. it took the top of my head off). That ought to have been the climax of the evening. And really, how to top that, much less follow it? But there was more. One wishes there hadn't been. But there was more anyhow. I don't know Ed Sanders, but he sure seems like a heckuva sweet guy and surely is a much loved presence at these gatherings, a much historied person and pioneer-teacher-poet. Ed began his set by recalling his friendship with Janis Joplin. This segued into a rambling poem-song (set to one of my personal bete noirs, home studio pre-recorded music) that covered exactly the same territory of the opening anecdote. Ah, the old double narrative trick, ala Bresson, I thought. Well, no, not exactly. And to tell the truth, Ed really can't sing very well. And the whole piece was, well, in a word, maudlin. But better to risk looking the bardic fool than saying nothing at all. Lament the lyric, commend the courage, pass the Pabst Blue Ribbon. The evening closed with everyone singing versions from Ed's collection of "Verses for the New Amazing Grace." My favorite (in its entirety) was by Wiiliam Burroughs - "amazing grace, save my face." That does it for me from the Naropa Summer Writing Program, 1998. Thanks everybody for your support, disgruntlements, parodies, and very long ears. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:01:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit All work arrives out of & into a particular context ... this work arrives goading reply, baiting negativity, "hello, my pants are down--you like take picture?" ... my primary criticism, then, is not of the work itself but the approach of the post ... cuz, I actually *agree* ... stormy relationships, in which both parties are wholly, actively engaged, are infinitely more colorful, nuanced, & thrilling than the average banter between friendly acquaintances ... & sure, lots of criticism, at least among contemporary avant-gardists (or experimentalists, or whatever) is, basically, no more engaged, or engaging, than the ads for people's workshops you see in Poetry Flash, or the blurbs we stick on the back of our books like souped-up "Hello, My Name Is" stickers ... welcome to the Convention, bay-bay, Robert Creeley & Barbara Guest dig you, natch; now, here's that U-job you ordered, that dead-poet-appreciation-conference-op, that reading w/ Older Morevisible ... but you gotta promise-promise-promise to Always Be Nice ... [holds up Pantone-strip-like swath of fluff; "like anything you see?"] ... at least in print ... & to our faces ... BUT ... I disagree, finally, that "the most sincere & useful response to work is invariably: Glib, Critical, & Acerbic" ... because ... well ... what if you're being *brilliant*? ... what if I read three lines of your new poem & wanna instantly marry you? (figuratively speaking) (well, usually) ... the problem with this statement is that it, taken wholeheartedly, earnestly, & acted upon, is that, well, it might too easily become REACTIONARY ... like my ugly paragraph above ... & of what value is that? ... I mean, "really"? ... ... at any rate ... I'm not sure that these poems, _because of their context_, are not *meant* to be "bad" ... I find it difficult to enter into any serious engagement with them primarily because, well, for instance, I've been told I can "to our enduring embarrassment, praise them" ... which, in the context of everything else said, doesn't read like false modesty, or even genuine humility. ALSO, and this isn't merely being pedantic, SO MANY of the words in these poems are misspelled, I have no idea, at a certain point, whether something said is meant *as said* ... if that makes sense ... I mean, are the spelling errors the result of laziness? ignorance? or *intention*? ... anyway, I think, if you're a poet, and you're writing your poems down, it's crucial to spell them as you intend them to be spelled ... I mean, it's okay to misspell, if you're grooving down Unintended Lane ... but I sense, here, there's no real reason to prefer "presant" over "present" or "minnarette" over "minaret" or "Resnikoff" over "Reznikoff" or "intricanteness" over "[god only knows]" ? BECAUSE, when I get to: Examine the window, is it open to the intricanteness of a provincial capital? ?" I don't know whether "capital" really should be "capitol" or it's okay as is: a pun. So, meaning is lost, the kind of fun I might be having isn't had, etc., etc. ? and, dang, man, the possessive "it" *never* gets an apostrophe ... its = belonging to it; it's = it is ... & the mistake is made twice, so I'm assuming it's either intended as a "mistake" or the poet doesn't quite have the grasp of English you come to expect of anything in which you're going to invest your time & energy ... anyway, there are so many typos in this thing that, if it's sincere, my response would be, "go through this again; it's not ready yet to be shown" ... & leave it at that ... ... now, Doug, does this mean I'll never read at Zinc? and, Tony, are you *sure* you're not one of Doug's pseudonyms? & listees, will you delete everything I post from now on? ? ? back to, barf, "work," Gary ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:17:36 -0500 Reply-To: ken|n|ing Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Re: bad total Comments: To: Jordan Davis In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jordan, Being a bit dismayed by the reaction and/or lack thereof to my original posting spurred by my reading of Watten's poem, I appreciate you taking issue of whatever sort . . . As an aside, I'm not particularly pleased with the references section tagged onto the end of the book. After the disclaimer up front, the references (laid out much like a "proper" section of the poem, the heroic couplet driving it all home) would seem to attach a sort of historical valence to the preceeding text which it had shyed away from. But, then I came across this again, perhaps telling of the totalizing trope in Watten in general, from "Plasma"; "But there is another level of complexity to ready-mades. Which gets us home if you talk about poetry. You can say what happens and have it be a part of that." Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:27:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: bad total Comments: To: ken|n|ing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mm yes. But elsewhere Watten writes (steals?) that Charlie Brown and Felix the Cat are codified gestalts for Little Boy and House Pet. Is Bad History a codified gestalt for Language Project? Language Moment? (Moment used to mean two minutes.) Are post-xerox operating systems insidious gestalt generators? I mean any graphic user interface that persuades you that it's normal to retrieve your diskette from the computer by placing it in a trashcan, the logic being that the non-computer world is a giant dump?? I hate windows 95. Anybody got a standard toshiba cdrom driver they can e-mail me? Apparently my machine arrived with it pre-recycled. What will all this revelation of gestalt lead to? Revelation? Will we be brought _to our senses_? Or isn't that just another sales pitch. Another nowhere. But then, I can't read the Times, give me any, give me every other paper. Signed, Sighed ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:09:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: *money Hi gang. Now I'm going to tell you about money. Hey wait a minute - you said we said WEDNESDAY, didn't we?? What?? Come back!!! Money is the inedible sign of real value (labor). Poetry is the edible sign of possible value (dream). Experiment, the new, the inexaustible - signs of life, signs indexing the absence of balance - the early modernists became the idols/fetishes of what followed because as post-aristocrats/conservatives they could invest the power of nostalgia with real experience (they had the most toys growing up - also their 19th century was one giant toy). So the later avant-garde is between rock & hard place, trying to be new in a tradition of (conservatively-rooted) newness - this is emphatically not a new idea & I bring it up in relation to MONEY - ie. I think the new century will actually be a socialist century, hard to believe but... not in a military-leninist-class war sense, but in the sense of mankind growing into the species-sense, the species inheritance - so that "bourgois democracy" will be seen as a building block to social democracy - species-sense or innate sense of common good turning the excesses of 20th century around slowly toward social control of capital on behalf of labor/education/environment values - this is the pipe dream not of adolescent Beats but of their fathers, the Tom McGraths of the 20th century - what does have to do with poetry? Dominant styles reflect cultural impulses & forces - the "alternative" poetries, built on an ossified tradition of "resistance" without the umbrella of a wider cultural ("revolutionary") impulse exhibit form hollowed out by ambiguity doubt tentativeness and knee-jerk victimology - symptoms of fin-de-siecle - the poem as a sign of labor - universal labor - the labor of birth-pangs - a confidence radiating from it which foliates into "full" forms and relaxed plenitudes - something coming along next year? Buildings - the old battles of thing/process, content/form, finish/experiment - well, they reflect real divisions in reality - ie. if I was building my own house of course I'd lavish blah blah on it but I'm not building it as an artifact but something to be lived in by somebody else actually - we will probably have a new/old concept of poetics, poetic form, in which experiment/craft/form are not ends in themselves but means to a broader kind of expression which is the person responding to experience - a kind of dialectic between language-per-se and what it stands toward - "There is in English what might be called a permanent experiment, which is the effort to get the language of poetry back to a certain hard, immediate actuality, what we are likely to think of as the tone of good common speech." (Lionel Trilling) - and the poems we will value in the future will not repeat the coming cliches of reality (in the future everyone will understand instinctively and obviously what the common good is, we will need no mouthpieces for the masses) - but will celebrate the weird toys & reactionary flops and sad doodles of the 20th century - in all their melodramatic-tragic stupidity - Robert Lowell will be the favorite poet of the avant-garde because he's so baroque & good with rhythms and was such a WASP son of a bitch - (doesn't that sound like something to look forward to?) (we were studying the "1960s" in history today - what did she say a wasp was again?) - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:52:11 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable ARSE NICOTINE (for henny gould) or having already been tricked away from the vent. The spit-phantom of shade or it's former blindness -- smeech of man, a house the mind rescinded in prelates with a pronoun of its own salvation. Rejoinder for a moment time has collapsed in. We are thoughts of elevation that short out in time, skiffing to an edge- worn in by the wonderous of evidence. wie sch=F6n! .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:03:54 EDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: Henry Comments: Originally-From: "Christopher W. Alexander" From: Henry Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Hey Cal, this shows a lot of promise. Here's a similar poem I found in an anthology called E-Z OFF ROSES, publ by Urban Bleat in 1997: HORSE NICHE (for Krissy Laxativity) or leaving the excrescences. my thing called name was, and then - smeeches all around. It's, or its? Yours? Tripped up and so on toward morning dune trappings we shanked a then or. See it coming and you won't bark, or, even heard, maybe - Trent Little ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- ARSE NICOTINE (for henny gould) or having already been tricked away from the vent. The spit-phantom of shade or it's former blindness -- smeech of man, a house the mind rescinded in prelates with a pronoun of its own salvation. Rejoinder for a moment time has collapsed in. We are thoughts of elevation that short out in time, skiffing to an edge- worn in by the wonderous of evidence. wie sch=F6n! .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:16:59 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded In-Reply-To: <5DB5C727AFB@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hen - yes, I'm familiar with Little's work. If you know anything of his milieu, you'll know that he's in dialogue here with Laxativity's haiku-like poem "Horsey Night", over which they argued furiously at one of their famed Sunday roundtables. (As I recall, she left in a rage, slamming his right index finger in the door; he was never able to type correctly again, a difficulty which lead to his temporary name change to "Dend Liddle" in 1966). "Horsey Night" was later to appear as the first poem in Laxativity's book GODOLPHIN'S MEASURE (Pusillanimity Press, ca. 1967). HORSEY NIGHT Here's a tiny love of excresences, a little plan that creeps, Smeechless, into sound. It isn't yours to keep Tripping until the break of day. .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 15:23:07 EDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: Henry g Comments: Originally-From: "Christopher W. Alexander" From: Henry g Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded In-Reply-To: <5DB5C727AFB@ALEX.LIB.UTAH.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I'm even more familiar with Little Work. Laxativity & I grew up in the same Minnesota neigh-neigh-neigh-bore-hood with Ro-ro-robert Bl-Bly, & I was privuhledged to be in the locale when "Horsey Night" was underwired. I think Little tape-recorded some of our conversations, in fact, before she blew up & nailed his index - you can find them in the Little Work Archives at Left Overbie U library if you really want to pursue this further than you have pursued it as far as you have so far, I mean. Anyway, Laxative used to rave on intensely about Keats and open form and the biology of meadows and field operational binoculars (Zeiss? Seuss?) and that poetry unfettered was like a horse with wings and here's an early-bird unedited version of "Horsey Night" I just happened to have on hand in my locale here within reach so to speak of my hand: HORSEY NUT There is the horseshoe and then there is you. And my tiny excretion, my fictive live louvered Hoover fills the vacuum and is n't - you can see how far she took it from this rigid fifties product. - H ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hen - yes, I'm familiar with Little's work. If you know anything of his milieu, you'll know that he's in dialogue here with Laxativity's haiku-like poem "Horsey Night", over which they argued furiously at one of their famed Sunday roundtables. (As I recall, she left in a rage, slamming his right index finger in the door; he was never able to type correctly again, a difficulty which lead to his temporary name change to "Dend Liddle" in 1966). "Horsey Night" was later to appear as the first poem in Laxativity's book GODOLPHIN'S MEASURE (Pusillanimity Press, ca. 1967). HORSEY NIGHT Here's a tiny love of excresences, a little plan that creeps, Smeechless, into sound. It isn't yours to keep Tripping until the break of day. .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:39:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Todd, when I lived in LA the lit scene seemed to consist of actors thinking they could write a poem for a publicity shoot! As for the Cal-arts kids, I know they have had quite a few group readings at Skylight Books in Los Feliz, a bunch of them attending a reading of mine there last year, etc...I can't complain about them - good listeners and enthusiastic in what i think of as an LA way which may be problematic but is Refreshing. The Bay Area can be a bit dowdy you know. My sis I know attends tons of readings, but she is much more focussed on fiction than I am, and did say she thought the showing for Lynne Tillman at Beyond Baroque was shockingly paltry. What about the fact that the dept puts out a beautiful and well-edited mag? And a lot of their graduates also have been doing art reviews, doesn't that count as dialogue? And yes, Moving Borders is a great anthology. The introduction gave gobs of historical info I was eager for too. Eliz Elizabeth Treadwell Double Lucy/Outlet users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:51:38 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit yr right--I'm bitter. But the dialogue I'm interesting in fostering and seeing fosater has directly to do with readings! Yes--Beyond Bar. gets FEW attendeees for important work while hundreds will show up for a reading by Wanda Coleman or Henry Rollins--yeah--rock'roll! THe program there does a great job--I'm only bitter about 20 years here trying to make things work. LITTORAL BOOKS, RiBOT, WITZ, ReMAp--are about it--and poorly said--too much politics keeps folks apart! I'm reading with Selby down here next week and afraid we'll have 5 people. Last I read up north there were 40, THat says alot--to me--about the dialoguae that's active. I wished I'd heard you read! SkyLight seems interesting--and on teh "other" side of town--which is nice! Anyway-- Tb ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:28:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Comments: To: toddbaron MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the Wednesday night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the only "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, Jack Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay Area in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? Which is to say there are . . . compensations, no? Rolling down the Imperial Highway, big nasty redhead at my side, Joe ---------- From: toddbaron [SMTP:toddbaron@EARTHLINK.NET] Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 4:52 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth yr right--I'm bitter. But the dialogue I'm interesting in fostering and seeing fosater has directly to do with readings! Yes--Beyond Bar. gets FEW attendeees for important work while hundreds will show up for a reading by Wanda Coleman or Henry Rollins--yeah--rock'roll! THe program there does a great job--I'm only bitter about 20 years here trying to make things work. LITTORAL BOOKS, RiBOT, WITZ, ReMAp--are about it--and poorly said--too much politics keeps folks apart! I'm reading with Selby down here next week and afraid we'll have 5 people. Last I read up north there were 40, THat says alot--to me--about the dialoguae that's active. I wished I'd heard you read! SkyLight seems interesting--and on teh "other" side of town--which is nice! Anyway-- Tb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:47:55 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ps: Bill Mohr actually has attacked "Language" writing and other schools outside of the confessional arena. Hell, once he even wrote me --years ago--that the "new group" (1980) of poets were untalented and shuld simply STOP writing! Believe me, it's not just my own personal feeling that LA is a small town--outside of here many of those peots are unheard of and don't read magazines or books published by those outside of this here town. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck in a consistent circle of voluntary inmates! That's why I go to SF at least 4 times a year--to go to readings and buy books! Tb (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:56:39 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Safdie Joseph wrote: > > Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the Wednesday > night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the only > "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know > Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if > there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, Jack > Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, > those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were > others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but > really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay Area > in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? I think my bitter mail got lost in the shuffle--but let me simply say that the poets you mentioned--and this outside of their own work as writers--have primarily been exclusive in terms of going to others readings--promoting others work outside of a "pop" and confessionalist sensibility. That years before when Barrett W. read to an audience of 8 I was ashamed to be a poet in LA. THat same thing happened to Robert Duncan year ago--to Fanny Howe recently--etc. Few poets that are listed in your note suport the work of others besides friends. Yes, I am bitter--but my job as an editor and teacher is not simply to read and promote and publish the work of those I like--but to promote and publish a POETICS that is important. I have published poetry by those whom I don't think highly of--but whose work I believe deserves to be read! Of those you mentioned only Paul V. (with whom I started Littoral Books years ago--along with D, Phillips and Martha Ronk and Lee Hickman) even show up at the readings that Sun and Moon give--while Douglas M. and others DO show up at B. B. occasionally! Damn! No compensations besides the sun! No--a scene is unimportant--a dialectic is of utmost importance! Todd Baron (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:07:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Mathews Losh Subject: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry In-Reply-To: <01BD9062.2D290660@ad73-252.arl.compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear List Members - Sorry to ask so much after such prolonged silence. I am finishing an essay on Heidegger and Oppen and would be interested in feedback or discussion about any of the following three areas. 1) HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF HEIDEGGER RECEPTION IN POETRY PROGRAMS IN SIXTIES (AND SEVENTIES) I am looking for scholarly texts, archival materials, or personal recollections about Heidegger's presence in the consciousness of American poetry in the period before the Harper & Row translations of the seventies. In particular, I would like any influence studies for Duncan, Levertov, and especially Oppen. Oppen's personal library was limited to _Being and Time_ and _Existence and Being_ and from his letters I know he was very moved by _Identity and Difference_ to the point of ascribing Yeatsian automatic writing to a particular incident, but I've heard about other texts from poets who knew Oppen (including some on this list) and would appreciate details, especially about materials he sent to other people or readings he suggested. 2) CURRENT ATTITUDES ABOUT TEACHING HEIDEGGER AS PART OF THE POETRY WORKSHOP AND/OR CLASSROOM Obviously, now there are some who feel that assigning Heidegger to their students is like assigning them passages of _Mein Kampf_ to read, but others on the list seem to be either methodically teaching Heidegger as part of twentieth century poetry theory or at least providing some Heideggerian tenets as inspiration. If you tackle Heidegger, how do you teach Heidegger and what texts do you chose? 3) THOUGHTS ON HOW HEIDEGGER'S CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS MIGHT APPLY IN THE CLASSROOM. My current position, toward which I invite debate, is that Heidegger may be best used in the poetry classroom not as a tool for talking about grand abstracts like the poet's relationship to the ineffable and the problem of the unnameable, but for very practical reasons related to his critique of metaphysics. To make this manageable (and most relevant to close readings of Oppen) I am looking at just two parts of his critique of metaphysics: 1) Heidegger's attack on metaphor as a metaphysical construct and 2) Heidegger's attack on the subject/object relation as it is expressed in terms of grammatical person. I welcome comments or suggestions. Best, Liz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:09:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: the poetics of importance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Todd -- I think I've found the problem -- there is no end to the poetics of importance -- not that anybody wants to be unimportant -- or is -- Jodfwr ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:37:55 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Lawrence Upton." Subject: vispo book - writers forum 750th publication Comments: To: british-poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit to all in or interested in the planned 750th publication from writers forum slightly delayed and we are in touch with those associated with the *slight problems causing the delay - but we *shall see it out in the autumn... further announcements then many thanks to all for all their work please be patient btw the working title _vispo book_ has now *probably become _visible utterance?_ but the sub title is not yet settled Bob Cobbing / Lawrence Upton ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:54:48 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Liz and others involved in this dialogue - I am very interested in the findings and various pieces available on this topic, so please keep some of them on the list, so others can follow! Will look forward to your article, Liz. Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:24:19 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Last Blast from Naropa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit patrick thanks for the reports from naropa, being out in the sticks that's about as close to a poetry reading as I can manage to get. mayhaps something to virtuality after all. miekal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:53:44 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: the poetics of importance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jordan Davis wrote: > > Todd -- > > I think I've found the problem -- there is no end to the poetics of > importance -- not that anybody wants to be unimportant -- or is -- > Jordan: or that anyone wants to be-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 02:32:01 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: your order Comments: To: Douglas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ps: re yr other message to (me)? (the list)? I certainly would not say there is no poetry "scene" in LA--I would say that it is not very public! In writing to folks outside of LA and even here many don't know about events--not well publizised really--outside of those that get say Sun and Moon mailings. I sent out 100 invites for my ReMap party and 200 per event while at Otis (with Noah). We tried to let the world know about the events. It's hard--i know--but the scenec needs to be les like the art world and more like a communtiy. I let the damn weekly know about every event I'm involved with and they have listed every event. I'd like to see more people at Sun and Moon. And believe me, my heart has been broken over many of these issue for years! I've been here my whole life and have heard every excuse for damning B. B. (many, mine) and/or your ventures or Littorals etc. When it comes down to it though I believe deeply that if you're not included you are excluded! That's why I have 45 subscribers outside of LA for ReMap and only 3 IN the town I was born in! Tb (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:54:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: The Real Last Blast from Naropa MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Patrick-- You didn't mention that compelling David Henderson line about the fags invading Boystown, how did it go? Eileen Myles, Akilah Oliver and I were discussing our confusion and I decided it was a persona, in the poem,ya know? That was Thursday before the clarity of the following emerged at the Final Friday Panel of Workshop Presentations. These are the events as I remember them: Almost all the teachers cme to the questioner’s mike to recap their workshops, a new convention, up till then they've sat behind the long table. Very democratizing. Eileen Myles hadn’t back from the airport where she'd gone to pick up novelist Karen Cook so Anne Waldman pressed Diana Rickard to come up and report, “get your butt up there you’re an MFA student.” Victor Hernandez-Cruz gave a long schpiel about this and entertaining that “we all know that poetry is much harder than prose and will last longer, because every word matters,” pleasing or pulleeeese. Eileen comes back! Anne invites her to speak her mind--refering apparantly to an earlier exchange. Eileen says, in Allen’s absence, Naropa is missing the ‘queer light’ that he shed,(give her this, that to say anything about Allen at Naropa one must eulogize) and that she'd been noticing an erasure of queerness at Naropa, despite the historical & present queer presence in the avant garde tradition, there is a constant ‘straightening’ so to speak, witness the failure to write Eileen into the cannon (she is not at all taught at Naropa) and we all, queer, bi, transgendered, straight must be activist in “queering the avant garde.” That’s more or less how she put it. No sooner did the last word leave her mouth and David Henderson chimes in with non-sequiter, “Bob Kaufman was a heterosexual,” and then adds, “a black heterosexual,” as though this addresses what Eileen has just said. Anselm Hollo brilliantly chimes, “and Jewish and Chinese.” And Max Regan appears, reminds Anne Waldman that she too has taught a workshop and Anne jokes, “oh that’s right, we let our staff teach,” an inside joke based on a visitor’s comment. Max, a known lesbian, goes to the mike and says “in my workshop we never discussed homosexuality,” which seems like it is an inside joke to the folks who took her workshop but to me just sounds like further burial of what Eileen had just asserted, sort of the opposity of "make it new" on the lines of 'if it's new and feels threatening, make it go away.' Then Max, who is also the administrator, begins to throw animal crackers to those who have worked for the writing program and as I run up for mine, a dog bites my ass. I thought someone had pinched me hard and don’t realize what really happened until I hear someone else say it, that the dog bit me. I turn to ___, the dog’s owner and I’m pissed because it hurts and what the fuck do I know about dog bites, and ___’s totally out of it. I say, “Your dog bit me, I don’t like to be bitten by a dog.” “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say, he’s not like that, he must’ve been startled by your sudden movement.” I say, “Aren’t you going to discipline him?” And ____ says, “I don’t hit him.” “Can’t you tell him -no-?” I return from the library bathroom having examined my butt, she’s never left her seat--events have continued along. Hours later, a fellow student approaches me, says “Rachel, I heard you got bit, I heard you really freaked out and wanted _____ to hit the dog.” No wonder the avant garde resists its queering. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:05:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Poetix programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd meant to send this a few days ago but it accidentally went to ToddBaron. Mark and Todd et al, One: a correction: since Mark graduated there is a 3 credit "contemplative" requirement, which I think, more than make Naropa vaguely "spiritual" makes it directly parochial, a feeling I have had all along here. All the contemplative courses which fill the requirement have to do with some form of buddhist practice. I took what I hoped to be a theater class called "Mudra Space Awareness" and found it total quackery, a waste of my thousand dollars which I would have preferred to spend on an academic class on Buddhism, which would not count to fill the requirement, more about that if anyone is interested. Trungpa, no disrespect intended, seems to me to have been a trickster who was taken too seriously. Two: Mark's statement that Naropa's writing program favors independence and self-study strikes me as correct. There is not a multi-pronged curriculum as there is at New College. I organized an independent study on Stein with Anne Waldman and three other students. And my thesis on Ashbery served as yet another ind. study. However, Naropa really offers no pre-20th century lit class outside of a new Blake class taught by Reed Bye and since I've been here, in three years worth of catalogs, all the major author class offered have been men: Pound, Blake, Duncan. I believe before I came a conglom "women poets" class was taught. I have felt a serious dearth of crit. reading here with fellow students--that I'm sure changes with each class. Naropa is workshop-focused with much exposure and much enthusiasm toward reading. Am I the only current Naropa student on this list? Three: In case I sound too critical. Naropa has its foibles but it's program is run by people truly crazy about poetry and informed and committed to the avant garde or alternative or wateva ya call it, and are supportive of passing on the tradition. The faculty rocks, and what does Anselm Hollo not know about that is interesting? Anne Waldman deserves all the hero-worship she gets. Besides which (I'm adding this today) what Patrick says is true, the pieces she read at the Fox from Iovis 3 knocked me off my seat. Totally urgent and unsentimental. I hope I didn't just bare myself too much in public. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:47:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: Poetix programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel Levitsky wrote: > Mark and Todd et al, > > One: a correction: since Mark graduated there is a 3 credit > "contemplative" requirement, which I think, more than make Naropa > vaguely "spiritual" makes it directly parochial, a feeling I have had > all along here. All the contemplative courses which fill the > requirement have to do with some form of buddhist practice. I took what > I hoped to be a theater class called "Mudra Space Awareness" and found > it total quackery, a waste of my thousand dollars which I would have > preferred to spend on an academic class on Buddhism, which would not > count to fill the requirement, more about that if anyone is interested. > Trungpa, no disrespect intended, seems to me to have been a trickster > who was taken too seriously. > > Two: Mark's statement that Naropa's writing program > favors independence and self-study strikes me as correct. There is not > a multi-pronged curriculum as there is at New College. I organized an > independent study on Stein with Anne Waldman and three other students. > And my thesis on Ashbery served as yet another ind. study. However, > Naropa really offers no pre-20th century lit class outside of a new > Blake class taught by Reed Bye and since I've been here, in three years > worth of catalogs, all the major author class offered have been men: > Pound, Blake, Duncan. I believe before I came a conglom "women poets" > class was taught. I have felt a serious dearth of crit. reading here > with fellow students--that I'm sure changes with each class. Naropa is > workshop-focused with much exposure and much enthusiasm toward reading. > Am I the only current Naropa student on this list? > > Three: In case I sound too critical. Naropa has its foibles but it's > program is run by people truly crazy about poetry and informed and > committed to the avant garde or alternative or wateva ya call > it, and are supportive of passing on the tradition. The faculty rocks, > and what does Anselm Hollo not know about that is interesting? Anne > Waldman deserves all the hero-worship she gets. Besides which (I'm > adding this today) what Patrick says is true, the pieces she read at the > Fox from Iovis 3 knocked me off my seat. Totally urgent and > unsentimental. > > I hope I didn't just bare myself too much in public. Hey Rachel -- After being bit on the ass, it's hard to know how much to bare... Here's my 2 cents on Naropa (I finished my MFA there last year): I did take at least two classes that directly addressed women writers and writing, and I didn't have such a bad time as Rachel doing the contemplative thing (though it does fit in oddly at best with the rest of the writing & poetics program -- seems like it's a concession to the rest of the Institute, parts of which have expressed resentment toward the writing department for its "wild" image). But really the best things about Naropa, other than actually getting a job when I finished the degree, have been Rachel Levitsky and Anselm Hollo -- and, more vicariously, Patrick Pritchett and Mark DuCharme. I have a hard time believing anyone goes to school to learn to write -- how could one teach this? I think, retrospectively, I went to school to learn to edit (which I desperately needed) and to find someone to talk to about the things we do and things that are done to us with words. School isn't really necessary for any of this, but it makes it easier. "You don't need company to be a surrealist; you need company to be alive." (said Ted) Or as Anselm once said "we get together to make noises at each other." I don't know that this addresses Todd's original question... Laura W. -- Laura Wright Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 * * * * * * "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan * * * * * * "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:12:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: The Real Last Blast from Naropa Comments: To: Rachel Levitsky MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Great report in all particulars, girlfriend. I have a feeling that that is the same sassy little dog that ruined somebody's blanket with its voluminous excrement. Which the distinguished wife of a distinguished foreign poet subsequently lay in unawares as the light was failing. And which a distinguished poet from Naropa herself very nearly sat in. As in your case, the owner of the beast maintained a studied (or is that stoned?) obliviousness as to her responsibility. Patrick ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:47:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: The Real Last Blast from Naropa Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Great report in all particulars, girlfriend. I have a feeling that that is >the same sassy little dog that ruined somebody's blanket with its voluminous >excrement. Which the distinguished wife of a distinguished foreign poet >subsequently lay in unawares as the light was failing. And which a >distinguished poet from Naropa herself very nearly sat in. As in your case, >the owner of the beast maintained a studied (or is that stoned?) >obliviousness as to her responsibility. > >Patrick Clearly this "sassy little dog" is the soul of a poet, probably the soul of a recently departed poet [though I wouldn't know which one], now returned to bite us, shit on us, and have us roll in its voluminous excrement, as you so nicely put it [where I come from, this is called "influence"]. I know all this is true because I have studied Buddhism. You should too. Good for one's poetics. Or maybe not. Recently returned myself [from elsewhere], I thank you for this report from Naropa. GT ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:29:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Shoemaker Subject: strange query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, it's been a while since i've decloaked but I have an odd request, which comes with a little story. My father just came across a fellow whose father was a vaudevillian. In the course of his act he would recite some sixty different poems. This fellow my father met, the son who is now an old man, has spent years tracking down all of these poems and compiling them into a little pamphlet. That is, *all but one*. The lines of the missing poem would be recited by his father whenever they encountered a railroad track while driving: Giving lurching Lizzy all the gas that he could give her... At this point, his father wld hit the gas and cross the tracks. I'm guessing about the line break. Of course that's Lizzy as in Tin Lizzy, & I must say I'm charmed by the mimetically lurching trochees. Any old codgers and/or masters of arcana out there who can shed some light? Thanks, Steve Steve Shoemaker Assistant Professor English Department Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC 27109 shoemask@wfu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:23:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: New title and news Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just want to recommend a fantastic title from Douglas and Sun & Moon. It's DREAM STORY by Arthur Schnitzler. I haven't finished it yet, but so far it is a wonderful book. Very sexy (well, at least to me!) I believe this is the book that Kubrick is filming right now. If so, in his hands, it should be an intersting film. Go buy it!! just a fan, tosh ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:11:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Speaking as an ex- director for Beyond Baroque, I don't think it has anything to do with politics, but more with promotion. Plus there are so many types of people involved with the writing scene - and I mean all types. Some are not at all interested in what's out there, but the poets/writers who have been working on their work for a long time are interested in other readings, etc. Plus location is everything. This is not only for readings, but also for the films that I used to show. For reasons I SORT of understand, people don't like to drive across town for any reason. Los Angeles is sort of divided by East side of L.A. and then there is the westside of L.A. So in general I think it has more to do with time, paying attention, and lack of (or bad) promotion. I can't speak for all readings, but when Lynne read at Beyond Baroque it was a full house... and yes, rock n' roll always bring people out (ie Rollins, etc.) ciao, ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:11:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >ps: Bill Mohr actually has attacked "Language" writing and other schools >outside of the confessional arena. Hell, once he even wrote me --years >ago--that the "new group" (1980) of poets were untalented and shuld >simply STOP writing! Believe me, it's not just my own personal feeling >that LA is a small town--outside of here many of those peots are unheard >of and don't read magazines or books published by those outside of this >here town. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck in a consistent circle of >voluntary inmates! That's why I go to SF at least 4 times a year--to go >to readings and buy books! > > Bill is Bill. He has/had strong opinions in the past. I don't think he speaks for a group of poets, but for himself. Basically he's a very passionate man and that's not so bad. And I don't agree with his comments above. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:11:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Safdie Joseph wrote: >> >> Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the Wednesday >> night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the only >> "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know >> Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if >> there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, Jack >> Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, >> those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were >> others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but >> really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay Area >> in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? > >I think my bitter mail got lost in the shuffle--but let me simply say >that the poets you mentioned--and this outside of their own work as >writers--have primarily been exclusive in terms of going to others >readings--promoting others work outside of a "pop" and confessionalist >sensibility. That years before when Barrett W. read to an audience of 8 >I was ashamed to be a poet in LA. THat same thing happened to Robert >Duncan year ago--to Fanny Howe recently--etc. Few poets that are listed >in your note suport the work of others besides friends. Yes, I am >bitter--but my job as an editor and teacher is not simply to read and >promote and publish the work of those I like--but to promote and publish >a POETICS that is important. I have published poetry by those whom I >don't think highly of--but whose work I believe deserves to be read! Of >those you mentioned only Paul V. (with whom I started Littoral Books >years ago--along with D, Phillips and Martha Ronk and Lee Hickman) even >show up at the readings that Sun and Moon give--while Douglas M. and >others DO show up at B. B. occasionally! Damn! No compensations besides >the sun! No--a scene is unimportant--a dialectic is of utmost >importance! > >Todd Baron >(ReMap) I would respectfully disagree about the above. There is a big difference between a Sun & Moon gathering and a Beyond Baroque reading. For instince Beyond Baroque is really open to the general public, and Sun & Moon is mostly a small gathering of friends and writers. At Beyond Baroque we produced (and they still do of course) a calendar that goes out to a mailing list that we collected at the door and elsewhere. As far as I know, Sun & Moon doesn't really advertise, except for individuals calling other individuals, etc. Also I don't normally see people going to Beyond Baroque unless they know the writers, etc. So speaking for myself and perhaps others, they didn't know or wasn't aware that things were happening at sun & moon. There are a couple of type of audiences at the Baroque: One's who go every week no matter what. Those who know the poet or author. And those who read about it in a listing in the L.A. Weekly, etc. When we get a big plug usually we get a BIG crowd. I also want to add that certain writers from Littoral and Sun & Moon were (and perhaps are) members of Beyond Baroque. And I might add that people go to things they are interested in. There is room for all types of poetics. And yes, sometimes the small readings are the best! As for the comment "Few poets that are listed in your note suport the work of others besides friends" is not true in my opinion. I truly find writers/poets are the most generous group of people - including the names above. ciao, ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:29:56 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Doug & Tony All of these poems you have forwarded to the list look like poems which really bores me senseless. Please keep this hopeless dribble off our private listserv, where we prefer to talk about poems rather than actually have to read one. While your at it, stop implicating our innocent Daniel in your scheme. Get a non corporate e-mail so you can post this crap yr damn selves you cheap magnetic poetry reading scum. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:53:31 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: new release MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Some may be interested in our new title. Advance orders taken now. Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award Series Perfect bound ISBN 1-886350-80-9 Price: $5.00 Right Livelihood was selected by Jim Daniels as the 1997-98 winner of Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award. Right Livelihood is full of both a hard-earned reverence and a refreshing irreverence. David Brook’s is not afraid to poke fun at himself—one man trying to cope with life’s absurdities. Much of this work is funny, truly joyful. The poems are “expecting something to happen,” even on the gritty floor of a meatpacking plant. The wonder here is that something great often does happen. These poems celebrate our continuing urge to dream. As we discard our “golden visions” of youth, we must replace them with something. The poems of Right Livelihood replace those visions with a bemused acceptance— “all the gaudy world clearing my mind/ like an improbable plane gliding/ over a mountaintop.” These poems are full of the kind of laughter that hurt just a little bit—laughter that sinks in, and stays with you for a long time. --Jim Daniels There is a strong consistent personal voice here, one that may have Eros in the stomach or specialize in detesting or renting out illusions. Music, laughter, and insight course like clear water through these poems. --Karl Patten Witty and elegant, unswervingly aware of life’s absurdity, the poems in David Brooks’ Right Livelihood drill steadily into the heart and make us ask for more. --Harry Humes David Brooks was born and raised in central Pennsylvannia. He has worked in a meat packing plant, a hospital, a nursing home, has installed insulation, been a masseur, an advertising copywriter, and, for a brief period of time, a salesman. He lives in Hughesville, PA with his wife. The Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award was established in 1995 to promote writers whose work challenges conventions of contemporary poetry while encouraging multiple readings. Writers world-wide are invited to participate. Each year, one manuscript is selected by a writer with a thorough familiarity of the small press realm. Publication, a prize of five hundred dollars, and ten percent of the book run was awarded to the winner. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:51:09 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: "simple location" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "For the actual difference-along-with-sameness which is found among species is destroyed by the ignoring of difference for the sake of residual identity. The conservation theories of energy, mass, and motion arise out of this same tendency of reason toward identification. In fact, all those assertions of the persistence of enduring, self-identical substances, unscathed by time, which professor Whitehead brings together under the term "simple location," arise out of the urge toward identification operating in human reason. The fallacy of simple location arises from the unchecked tendency of reason toward identification."---from Explanation and Reality in the Philosophy of Emile Meyerson by Thomas R. Kelly ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 21:57:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>ps: Bill Mohr actually has attacked "Language" writing and other schools >>outside of the confessional arena. Hell, once he even wrote me --years >>ago--that the "new group" (1980) of poets were untalented and shuld >>simply STOP writing! Believe me, it's not just my own personal feeling >>that LA is a small town--outside of here many of those peots are unheard >>of and don't read magazines or books published by those outside of this >>here town. Sometimes I feel like I am stuck in a consistent circle of >>voluntary inmates! That's why I go to SF at least 4 times a year--to go >>to readings and buy books! >> >> >Bill is Bill. He has/had strong opinions in the past. I don't think he >speaks for a group of poets, but for himself. Basically he's a very >passionate man and that's not so bad. And I don't agree with his comments >above. > >----------------- >Tosh Berman >TamTam Books >---------------- Excuse me! When I write on the net sometimes it is between acts of eating and brushing one's teeth. When I said "I don't agree with his comments above,I am talking about Bill's (his opinion then, still?) commentary about Language, etc. ciao baby, ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 17:14:16 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: romantic-not women duelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joe, > Tom, I certainly agree with you that lust is a complicated matter! One > could also say that, in Kundera, it's "mediated" through an impossible > political situation where sexuality is seen as the only outlet for > desire and thus even more desperate and compulsive. Very much so. I also see the (male) promiscuity in early Kundera as very much tied up with the sixties, and the equation "sleeping around = liberation". But I'll try anything once. > I'd like to stay out of the self/love battle, though -- if anything, my > sympathies are with Henry, though I usually think he winds up > overstating the modest points he wants to make and ends up sounding like > a buffoon. > > Nice quotes! Though, why "panic"? When I'm, shall we say, under the > influence of Aphrodite, I don't usually recognize panic as a part of the > complex. And the relative integration or dis-integration of the self > doesn't much come to mind either! The Saint-Point quote (from the Futurist Manifesto of Lust, a gloriously bizarre document) comes after another sentence, "Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself". This, I think, ties "panic" in with the loss of self, or at least a realisation of the boundaries of the self. Saint-Point (or at least her translator) uses "lust" in a slightly different manner from its current connotations of basely instinctual rutting, what my flatmate from Birmingham calls the "Phwoar!" reaction. She talks of prising lust away from the fey romanticism of flowers and violins, but also talks about turning lust into a work of art. So, it's a concept that's earthier than the "frenchified desire" that the list discussed a while back, but more complex than what most strip-joint patrons feel. Kapka Kassabova also investigates the connection between self and desire by writing of home and exile (she's a Bulgarian immigrant to New Zealand). I've come to a feeling that desire in all of its forms (whether for a lover, for family, for home and culture) is an act of annexation, an attempt to claim a part of the world as part of oneself. This is all still slopping around my head in a mass of unformed thoughts, quotes and intuitions, but I've begun to wonder whether the sort of poetry that I've been working for is a text that is to language what desire is to the self. Language caught in the act of desire, language "projected beyond itself", language aching for non-language and finding that it can never be reached. Maybe this is a definition of poetry. I don't know. Speaking of Kundera, have you read "Getting used to dying" by (I think) Zhao Xianling? He's been called "the Chinese Kundera", and while that's a gross oversimplification, it's not too far off. An incredible book, anyway. Cheers, Tom. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:54:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: liber libre tt o (shleep) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII what would freedo m be like? I liked the misspelling from senor dohr I thought it was like monk or at least like sonny sharrock as if there were a continuum of jazz in which case there is the white jazz of wha d'ya know praise be t npr and there is ornette dug dohr is somewhere near ornette loft dude may I quote bill??luoma the narrator does stupid & forgetful things because his wife died. Douglass also has trouble with spelling and capitalization. I THINK JENRALLY there is a sense of what weir spozeda do which has nothin to do with what we wfell feel belhaven ale! invwear my incwar incwar invest my r friends in belhaven ale! a pint of plain is yoru only yoruba is o is your only man, Is five ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 03:20:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >On Wed, 15 Jul 1998 >Elizabeth Mathews Losh write >and from his letters I know >he was very moved by _Identity and Difference_ to the point of ascribing >Yeatsian automatic writing to a particular incident, I suppose the 'particular incident' you are referring to is the composition of "Route" and what ultimately became section 13 . (You have obviously read the note Oppen wrote to himself on June 1, 1966 , included in Selected Letters of George Oppen , waking up after writing the lines he believed he would have to put quotation marks around , thinking the lines were from Heidegger, and "reacting with shock"(to quote Oppen) , that they occurred nowhere in the essay 'Identity and Difference', where Oppen was sure he had read there. Though be careful calling this Yeatsian. Did Oppen ever discuss in his poetry or letters or conversations at anytime, the sense of the process as being anything Yeatsian or 'automatic writing'? And yet it does seem reasonable in some way to talk not about the "mystical" . Would it be more precise to call it"uncanny", eerie, unsettling, troubling. Perhaps 'panic' could be used here to get close to Duncan's sense of the word.I think this is one place where you need to differentiate between "visionary recital" and "versionary incitement". Maybe one could try to stand in for Oppen at this moment, reacting with shock, then , imagine yourself trying to hold off the sense of panic by focusing in on "a care for inaccuracies; I strive in the poem not to make some imitation of a model experience but to go deeper and deeper into the experience of the process of the poem itself. "(Robert Duncan) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 04:15:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry! My post was cut-off in transmission. Here we go again: >On Wed, 15 Jul 1998 >Elizabeth Mathews Losh writes: >and from his letters I know >he was very moved by _Identity and Difference_ to the point of ascribing >Yeatsian automatic writing to a particular incident, I suppose the 'particular incident' you are referring to is the composition of "Route" and what ultimately became section 13 . (You have obviously read the note Oppen wrote to himself on June 1, 1966 , included in Selected Letters of George Oppen , waking up after writing the lines he believed he would have to put quotation marks around , thinking the lines were from Heidegger, and "reacting with shock"(to quote Oppen) , that they occurred nowhere in the essay 'Identity and Difference', where Oppen was sure he had read there. Though be careful calling this Yeatsian. Did Oppen ever discuss in his poetry or letters or conversations at anytime, the sense of the process as being anything Yeatsian or like'automatic writing'? And yet it does seem reasonable in some way to talk not about the "mystical" but perhaps, instead, the 'uncanny'. Would it be more precise to call it"uncanny", eerie, unsettling, troubling. Perhaps 'panic' could be used here to get close to Duncan's sense of the word, I think this is one place where you need to differentiate between "visionary recital" and "versionary incitement". Maybe one could try to stand in for Oppen at this moment, reacting with shock, then , imagine yourself trying to hold off the sense of panic by focusing in on "a care for inaccuracies; I strive in the poem not to make some imitation of a model experience but to go deeper and deeper into the experience of the process of the poem itself. "(Robert Duncan) .Panic'd & troubled because he's watching himself there , but also opposing himself . At this point I guess I would need to mention something about antinomy( and how this does or does not remain an unresolved conflict);and I know Oppen mentions this at some point, but I would need to do some digging through the letters. ****** I like very much something Emmanuel Levinas said in an interview about Heidegger , and what it "meant" to first read him (obviously Levinas is credited by Sartre and others as introducing into France Husserl's 'phenomenology' and Heidegger's critique of it, in the mid 1930's). LEVINAS>>"With Heidegger, 'verbality' was awakened in the word being, what is event in it, the 'happening' of being. . .Heidegger accustomed us to this verbal sonority. This reeducation of our ear is unforgettable, even if banal today."<< How are students in the classroom taught to listen to Oppen? How can you accustom the student to a reading of poetry? With Heidegger do they feel that they are reeducating the ear to listen to what is not "there" to be heard? Or is philosophy and the teaching of poetry just another example of how we end up talking past each other? And, inclining with the ear, what kind of head do they brin ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 04:17:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry! My post was cut-off in transmission. Here we go again: >On Wed, 15 Jul 1998 >Elizabeth Mathews Losh writes: >and from his letters I know >he was very moved by _Identity and Difference_ to the point of ascribing >Yeatsian automatic writing to a particular incident, I suppose the 'particular incident' you are referring to is the composition of "Route" and what ultimately became section 13 . (You have obviously read the note Oppen wrote to himself on June 1, 1966 , included in Selected Letters of George Oppen , waking up after writing the lines he believed he would have to put quotation marks around , thinking the lines were from Heidegger, and "reacting with shock"(to quote Oppen) , that they occurred nowhere in the essay 'Identity and Difference', where Oppen was sure he had read there. Though be careful calling this Yeatsian. Did Oppen ever discuss in his poetry or letters or conversations at anytime, the sense of the process as being anything Yeatsian or like'automatic writing'? And yet it does seem reasonable in some way to talk not about the "mystical" but perhaps, instead, the 'uncanny'. Would it be more precise to call it"uncanny", eerie, unsettling, troubling. Perhaps 'panic' could be used here to get close to Duncan's sense of the word, I think this is one place where you need to diff ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 04:20:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry! My post was cut-off in transmission. Here we go again: >On Wed, 15 Jul 1998 >Elizabeth Mathews Losh writes: >and from his letters I know >he was very moved by _Identity and Difference_ to the point of ascribing >Yeatsian automatic writing to a particular incident, I suppose the 'particular incident' you are referring to is the composition of "Route" and what ultimately became section 13 . (You have obviously read the note Oppen wrote to himself on June 1, 1966 , included in Selected Letters of George Oppen , waking up after writing the lines he believed he would have to put quotation marks around , thinking the lines were from Heidegger, and "reacting with shock"(to quote Oppen) , that they occurred nowhere in the essay 'Identity and Difference', where Oppen was sure he had read there. Though be careful calling this Yeatsian. Did Oppen ever discuss in his poetry or letters or conversations at anytime, the sense of the process as being anything Yeatsian or like'automatic writing'? And yet it does seem reasonable in some way to talk not about the "mystical" but perhaps, instead, the 'uncanny'. Would it be more precise to call it"uncanny", eerie, unsettling, troubling. Perhaps 'panic' could be used here to get close to Duncan's sense of the word, I think this is one place where you need to differentiate between "visionary recital" and "versionary incitement". Maybe one could try to stand in for Oppen at this moment, reacting with shock, then , imagine yourself trying to hold off the sense of panic by focusing in on "a care for inaccuracies; I strive in the poem not to make some imitation of a model experience but to go deeper and deeper into the experience of the process of the poem itself. "(Robert Duncan) .Panic'd & troubled because he's watching himself there , but also opposing himself . At this point I guess I would need to mention something about antinomy( and how this does or does not remain an unresolved conflict);and I know Oppen mentions this at some point, but I would need to do some digging through the letters. ****** I like very much something Emmanuel Levinas said in an interview about Heidegger , and what it "meant" to first read him (obviously Levinas is credited by Sartre and others as introducing into France Husserl's 'phenomenology' and Heidegger's critique of it, in the mid 1930's). LEVINAS>>"With Heidegger, 'verbality' was awakened in the word being, what is event in it, the 'happening' of being. . .Heidegger accustomed us to this verbal sonority. This reeducation of our ear is unforgettable, even if banal today."<< How are students in the classroom taught to listen to Oppen? How can you accustom the student to a reading of poetry? With Heidegger do they feel that they are reeducating the ear to listen to what is not "there" to be heard? Or is philosophy and the teaching of poetry just another example of how we end up talking past each other? And, inclining with the ear, what kind of head do they bring? Was it Wittgenstein who said that a philosopher's head is full of question marks? Won't the discussion of Heidegger (ie.,the essence of man takes the form of a question) force them to bring this kind of head to Oppen? Is it valid to read him with that kind of head? You know, Oppen and his poetry of ideas? Lots of problems . LOTS. Isn't this bound to be a mistake? Or is it a mistake? Where do question marks stop filling the 'head' and instead become, for example, 'marks whereby the body was said to be a world'(M.P.) , which in turn becomes another version and possible reading? *** I just recently mentioned in a post a few days ago about "Oppen's breakthrough year of 1966", and this incident was part of that. One could argue for other breakthrough years, ie. Meeting Mary Colby and finding poetry in 1926…late 20's meetings with Zukofsky and some aquaintance with Reznikoff, mostly reading a lot of his poetry…Wounding at the Battle of the Bulge 1944…Flight to Mexico to escape the McCarthy, et.al withhunts in the early 1950's…Return to poetry after the 'Rust in Copper' dream (controversy as to the year…perhaps 1958)…but for a number of reasons you've got to consider this year 1966 for many reasons which I can't describe here). ***** I'll wait and see what others mention about Heidegger in the classroom. This has been discussed on the list before. It will probably raise the temperature some. I am reconsidering my position toward Heidegger which I had when I first read What is Called Thinking or most ofPoetry, Language, and Thought. I think part of my position stemmed from feeling that we knew Heidegger must have been sincere because of how important poetry was to his teaching and writings…sincerety, is perhaps the word I'm searching for here…But is Heidegger' s attention to poetry, especially Holderlin, proof of something necessarily? I question that initial gut feeling from my first readings of Heidegger perhaps illustrated in this remark by Emmanuel Levinas in a conversation with Philippe Nemo published in Ethics and Infinity: LEVINAS>>"I know that the homage I render to Sein und Zeit seems pale to the enthusiastic disciples of the great philosopher. But I think the later work of Heidegger, which does not produce in me a comparable impression, remains valuable through Sein und Zeit. Not, you well know ,that it is insignificant; but it is much less convincing. I do not say this owing to Heidegger's political engagements, taken several years after Sein und Zeit, even though I have never forgotten those engagements, and though Heidegger has never been exculpated in my eyes from his participation in National-Socialism." PHILLIPE NEMO>>In what does the second part of the Heideggerian work disappoint you? LEVINAS>>" Perhaps by the disappearance in it of phenomenology properly speaking; by the first place that the exigesi fo Holderlin's poetry and the etymologies began to occupy in his analysis. O course, I know that in his thought the etymologies are not a contingency; for him language bears a wisdom which must be clarified. But this way of thinking seems to me much less verifiable than that of Sein und Zeit- - - a book in which, it is true, there are already etymologies , but adjacent and which only complete wht is eminently strong in the analysis proper and in the phemomenology of existence." ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 06:36:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: LA Confidential Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Bill Mohr's always been supportive and it was fun to see him when I was in San Diego most recently. But I understand the impulses behind Todd's original complaint. Scenes have their own unique dynamics and it seems like every city -- NYC and SF included -- have their fallow periods from time to time. I've given readings to audiences of 3 (at Hallwalls in Buffalo -- it was one of the best readings I've ever given) and Leslie Scalapino and I once gave a reading to an audience of 5 in SF (at USF to be exact). The largest audience I ever read to in LA came primarily to hear my reading mate, Jack Grapes. But I had a huge crowd once in Missoula. And likewise on Maui at a little used bookstore/cafe. Lee Hickman used to complain that he caught static from his local friends for publishing anyone outside LA in Boxcar, which only made him more determined when he moved on to Temblor. Some of the early SF langpo publications also had a decidedly "west of the Bay Bridge" bias that always made me (who'd started publishing earlier and had friends in far places like NY and Chicago) a little nervous. Time and mobility has a tendency to take care of much of this. Thanks to the internet Meikal And & I can be virtual neighbors, tho his woods and my own must be very different. Ron Silliman Chester County, PA ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:12:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: The Writing Center, San Diego Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks for the information, and sorry to hear it. At 08:20 AM 7/14/98 -0700, you wrote: >Susan > >The Writing Center closed due to lack of funds -- unfortunately not doing >the kind of business they needed to to keep afloat > >bill marsh > >At 09:31 PM 7/13/98 -0400, you wrote: >>Any information on The Writing Center's status would be appreciated. Their >>phone seems to be disconnected after being connected a brief month or two >ago. >> >>Thanks all, and thanks for the thinking these days. Oblomov's mine >>(character thread). >> >>Susan Wheeler >>susan.wheeler@nyu.edu >>voice/fax (212) 254-3984 >> >> > >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >William Marsh | PaperBrainPress > http://bmarsh.dtai.com >- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > Susan Wheeler susan.wheeler@nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:52:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry Comments: cc: lizlosh@uci.edu Liz, Saw your post on Poetics list. I'm at work and rushing around, and would very much like to have an extended dialogue with you about Oppen and Heidegger, about Oppen generally and about Heidegger generally. For now only these first thoughts/suggestions: In order of importance, perhaps: 1/ Contact Cid Corman in Japan (I have his address at home if you need it). He is absolutely a key figure for your inquiry, since he was an early translator of MH and as well an early conduit for GO to MH. He knows a lot about this, I suspect, that has yet to be written down. 2/ A couple of issues back in Talisman there was an essay on GO and MH (it still sits unread just in back of my keyboard, since I am slowly coming down from an incredibly busy year or two). 3/ Check out my just released book on William Bronk (it can be order from Associated University Presses at aup440@aol.com, but eventually the book will be in libraries) which contains some subtantial informatio and analysis of GO and MH (as well as of WB and MH). I will also have an essay out from Sagetrieb on WB and GO that takes up the MH influence and in their case connection to a degree). Again, I don't have typescript on me at present to send you. More later. . . Oh yeah, there's someon at Ohio State I think who is doing an Oppen book (I have his edress somewhere and will try to send it along). Good hunting, Burt Burt Kimmelman Department of Humanities and Social Sciences New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102 973.596.3376 (p) 973.596.3454, 973.642.4689 (f) kimmelman@admin.njit.edu (i) Home phone: 973.763.8761 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:57:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Heidegger's Poetics in American Poetry my apologies to the list for my longish post to Liz which i meant to be back channel. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:59:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: this is only a test MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII FIRST MAMMALS SENT AS ATTACHMENTS Buffalo, New York. July 16 (MP): With the recent upgrade of UB's email system, it is now possible to send live animals across the Internet. Researchers hope this will greatly expand the travel industry by the year 2010. As a test, Poetics is sending out a small "Rat." If the rat is not alive when you decompress it, or if for some reason you cannot receive the small lab rat, your matter filters are not adjusted properly. Also, if the Rat has any physical or behaviorial problems, or if it does not exactly look and smell like a rat, etc., then please report to the home office. The rat's first words should be (deadpan, of course): "Take me to your leader." * * * Our system came up only this morning. Apologies to all those whose lives may have been disrupted by the disruption in Poetics service. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 05:57:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tosh, I certainly was not trying to compare the two organizations. However, there is no question that Sun & Moon--with its bookstore, its salons and the drama reading series we co-sponsor with Bottoms Dream--has served as a kind of smaller literary center. I should add that our mailing list includes about 350 people, and fliers are sent our for each salon and postcards every month for the drama reading series (which is also sent to about 500 people by Bottom's Dream) so neither series of events represents "a small gathering friends and writers." As with Beyond Baroque, of course, we do not ever get the full audience. But they're invited; the public is also free to attend. Tosh, maybe you should attend. Douglas Tosh wrote: > > >Safdie Joseph wrote: > >> > >> Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the Wednesday > >> night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the only > >> "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know > >> Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if > >> there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, Jack > >> Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, > >> those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were > >> others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but > >> really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay Area > >> in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? > > > >I think my bitter mail got lost in the shuffle--but let me simply say > >that the poets you mentioned--and this outside of their own work as > >writers--have primarily been exclusive in terms of going to others > >readings--promoting others work outside of a "pop" and confessionalist > >sensibility. That years before when Barrett W. read to an audience of 8 > >I was ashamed to be a poet in LA. THat same thing happened to Robert > >Duncan year ago--to Fanny Howe recently--etc. Few poets that are listed > >in your note suport the work of others besides friends. Yes, I am > >bitter--but my job as an editor and teacher is not simply to read and > >promote and publish the work of those I like--but to promote and publish > >a POETICS that is important. I have published poetry by those whom I > >don't think highly of--but whose work I believe deserves to be read! Of > >those you mentioned only Paul V. (with whom I started Littoral Books > >years ago--along with D, Phillips and Martha Ronk and Lee Hickman) even > >show up at the readings that Sun and Moon give--while Douglas M. and > >others DO show up at B. B. occasionally! Damn! No compensations besides > >the sun! No--a scene is unimportant--a dialectic is of utmost > >importance! > > > >Todd Baron > >(ReMap) > > I would respectfully disagree about the above. There is a big difference > between a Sun & Moon gathering and a Beyond Baroque reading. For instince > Beyond Baroque is really open to the general public, and Sun & Moon is > mostly a small gathering of friends and writers. At Beyond Baroque we > produced (and they still do of course) a calendar that goes out to a > mailing list that we collected at the door and elsewhere. As far as I > know, Sun & Moon doesn't really advertise, except for individuals calling > other individuals, etc. Also I don't normally see people going to Beyond > Baroque unless they know the writers, etc. So speaking for myself and > perhaps others, they didn't know or wasn't aware that things were happening > at sun & moon. There are a couple of type of audiences at the Baroque: > > One's who go every week no matter what. > > Those who know the poet or author. > > And those who read about it in a listing in the L.A. Weekly, etc. When we > get a big plug usually we get a BIG crowd. > > I also want to add that certain writers from Littoral and Sun & Moon were > (and perhaps are) members of Beyond Baroque. > > And I might add that people go to things they are interested in. There is > room for all types of poetics. And yes, sometimes the small readings are > the best! > > As for the comment "Few poets that are listed in your note suport the work > of others besides friends" is not true in my opinion. I truly find > writers/poets are the most generous group of people - including the names > above. > > ciao, > > ----------------- > Tosh Berman > TamTam Books > ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:43:09 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Poetix programs? Content-Type: text/plain Todd-- my address is 2965 13th Street, Boulder, CO 80304. I heard Diane DiPrima lecture on Shelley the first summer I was in Boulder. She was awesome. Whitman is major, but what he was reacting to, & his sense of line, was an entirely different historical condition. We've had Williams & Creeley, among others, since. I too reject a narrow interest in "self." This is why I say that I may be atypical of "Naropa poetics" (Laura, Rachel & a few others notwithstanding). My own tendency, in my studies & in my writing, would be toward a non-"occult" reading of possibly occult texts, such as those of Spicer or Rimbaud who truly were interested in that sort of thing. This is not to "de-occult" their work, but to say that the occult axis is not my primary interest in them. This goes back to the spirituality thing, no focus for me; & the word on the page, the temporal mo(ve)ment, the poem as active gesture w/in such immediacy, the gestural move toward reader, then, would be a primary source of value. (Jackson Pollock's more of an "influence" in this regard than Duncan-- sorry). Interesting though it is, I'd personally (respectfully) reject Duncan's notion of "occult science," er even occulting Dickinson. I do love "'Trust the poem' never the poet." Not sure how this relates to th' Naropa/NC thing.... What Naropa & New College have in common is they are Western United States, non-ivy league (i.e., NOT the Killer Bees) programs, grounded in, for lack of a better term, a "counterpoetics" tradition that is both a literary & a social nexus. I think that sense of mystery you speak to is different-- necessarily so-- for different practitioners, & thus is only a common ground in only the most general sense. Interesting to (continue to) explore these connections/comparisons-- Best, Mark Todd Baron wrote: > >thank-you. > >Send me yr address so's I can send you ReMap #6. > >Anyways--the study of those mentioned has affected my work as a poet in >various sense > >1) the poem as possible dialogue with epic--as history--as > a sense so much more interesting than "self" >2) Dickinson--and my study with Rbert Duncan and Arron Shurin--has >affected my idea of what the poem is--that Robert said "Trust the poem" >never the poet..per se--and that Emily Dickinson was an Occult Poet--and >that Robert said "All poetry is an occult scinece" >3) Reading in Basic Texts--and studying--knowing whre the work comes >from--the true history of the language--as Spicer said--paraphrased-in >order to have Rabbit stew you gotta "catch the rabbit" first! >4) Whitman gave me the idea of what the poem is for me--a poem that has >everything to do with the Outisde world as repeated represented on my >Inside--the line--the LINE--as the foundation of the poem--what a poem >is anways--to look at--is lines--and the rejection of the then current >line strangulation in sonnett/neat/form. > >Though my work is nothing like the above writers--I read them all the >time--I learned to READ in Grad. school. I learned to read in 3rd grade! > >THanks Mark-- > >Your discussion of Naropa is interesting. I've wanted to see what the >possible connected between New College Poetics and Naropa is--but I >still see a different take--there--as there--was a long time ago at >Naropa-- David Meltzer and Diane DiPrima most likely the poets I studied >with that have a Naropa Connection. Imagine the joy of studying Kabbalah >and The Roamtics with these two--and though my work as a poet doesn't >directly engage(as you said yr studies don't) those "subjects"--the >constant drive towards a given mystery--I believe that's what seperates >the current "academic" departments of Creative Writing programs from >those such as Naropa--and even SFSU--and New C. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 19:29:40 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: LA Confidential MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > > Bill Mohr's always been supportive and it was fun to see him when I was in > San Diego most recently. > > But I understand the impulses behind Todd's original complaint. Scenes have > their own unique dynamics and it seems like every city -- NYC and SF > included -- have their fallow periods from time to time. I've given readings > to audiences of 3 (at Hallwalls in Buffalo -- it was one of the best > readings I've ever given) and Leslie Scalapino and I once gave a reading to > an audience of 5 in SF (at USF to be exact). The largest audience I ever > read to in LA came primarily to hear my reading mate, Jack Grapes. But I had > a huge crowd once in Missoula. And likewise on Maui at a little used > bookstore/cafe. > > Lee Hickman used to complain that he caught static from his local friends > for publishing anyone outside LA in Boxcar, which only made him more > determined when he moved on to Temblor. Some of the early SF langpo > publications also had a decidedly "west of the Bay Bridge" bias that always > made me (who'd started publishing earlier and had friends in far places like > NY and Chicago) a little nervous. > > Time and mobility has a tendency to take care of much of this. Thanks to the > internet Meikal And & I can be virtual neighbors, tho his woods and my own > must be very different. > > Ron Silliman > Chester County, PA Ron is abolsutely right--my complaints were really meant to stir up dust--some of my best readings have been to less than 10--and ALWAYS it's those who listen anyone--in crowds=etc. THere are certainly poets in LA that participate--and my friendship with Lee taught me a lot about both those that do and those that don't--the really sad thing is that those that don't(here in LA) are often those that create a politically (sorry--that's NEVER the right word--"socially"?) sorry state . Since LA has a relatively small community (again--maybe the wrong term) keeping away from readings--not going to them--not reading magazines that contain work outside of one's scope of "friends"/etc. sets up our city as a place where there is little DISCOURSE. DISCOURSE to me is what creates a poetics. And so--a sense outside of LA of what we have to offer--is limited. A sense inside too--makes it hard to work here. As I've published (along with Tosh in the 1980s) two magazines here--each time I have I've had responses about publishing "language" writers--writers otuside of LA/etc. When I and Noah De Lissovboy strated the Otis Art Institute "Writing the Margins" reading series--we were literally (the right word!) attacked for creating a schism in LA! Now, hey, we had writers from "up north" AND LA read here, poets from San Diegeo/etc. Many of ths great readings were so little attended that we were embarrased as hosts! Ill-attended by folks we expected would have been excited about such a new series. Consequently the school said --not again--. And we lost! I hope this dicussion remains not simply one of "townships" --but it seem inherently important for those of us trying for a "public" persona and doing public work such as magazines and presses. Thank g-d for this internet, as Ron said, now at least I feel like LA is simply that place "outside"... Todd Baron (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 19:50:50 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Douglas wrote: > > Tosh, > > I certainly was not trying to compare the two organizations. > However, there is no question that Sun & Moon--with its bookstore, > its salons and the drama reading series we co-sponsor with > Bottoms Dream--has served as a kind of smaller literary center. > I should add that our mailing list includes about 350 people, and > fliers are sent our for each salon and postcards every month for > the drama reading series (which is also sent to about 500 people > by Bottom's Dream) so neither series of events represents "a small > gathering friends and writers." As with Beyond Baroque, of course, > we do not ever get the full audience. But they're invited; the > public is also free to attend. Tosh, maybe you should attend. > > Douglas > > Tosh wrote: > > > > >Safdie Joseph wrote: > > >> > > >> Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the Wednesday > > >> night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the only > > >> "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know > > >> Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if > > >> there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, Jack > > >> Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, > > >> those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were > > >> others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but > > >> really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay Area > > >> in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? > > > > > >I think my bitter mail got lost in the shuffle--but let me simply say > > >that the poets you mentioned--and this outside of their own work as > > >writers--have primarily been exclusive in terms of going to others > > >readings--promoting others work outside of a "pop" and confessionalist > > >sensibility. That years before when Barrett W. read to an audience of 8 > > >I was ashamed to be a poet in LA. THat same thing happened to Robert > > >Duncan year ago--to Fanny Howe recently--etc. Few poets that are listed > > >in your note suport the work of others besides friends. Yes, I am > > >bitter--but my job as an editor and teacher is not simply to read and > > >promote and publish the work of those I like--but to promote and publish > > >a POETICS that is important. I have published poetry by those whom I > > >don't think highly of--but whose work I believe deserves to be read! Of > > >those you mentioned only Paul V. (with whom I started Littoral Books > > >years ago--along with D, Phillips and Martha Ronk and Lee Hickman) even > > >show up at the readings that Sun and Moon give--while Douglas M. and > > >others DO show up at B. B. occasionally! Damn! No compensations besides > > >the sun! No--a scene is unimportant--a dialectic is of utmost > > >importance! > > > > > >Todd Baron > > >(ReMap) > > > > I would respectfully disagree about the above. There is a big difference > > between a Sun & Moon gathering and a Beyond Baroque reading. For instince > > Beyond Baroque is really open to the general public, and Sun & Moon is > > mostly a small gathering of friends and writers. At Beyond Baroque we > > produced (and they still do of course) a calendar that goes out to a > > mailing list that we collected at the door and elsewhere. As far as I > > know, Sun & Moon doesn't really advertise, except for individuals calling > > other individuals, etc. Also I don't normally see people going to Beyond > > Baroque unless they know the writers, etc. So speaking for myself and > > perhaps others, they didn't know or wasn't aware that things were happening > > at sun & moon. One last thing: an important thing: Not only for the few of us in LA-- Leland Hickman did the most outstanding job anyone has every done in this--or any other--city. He published two magazines that were of the utmost importance to us all. Having all "schools" of writing there--having Ron S. next to a piece by Amy Gerstler/etc. and filling the damn void with poetry was indeed a magic job. His politics were outsdtanding and obvious. He, too, rambled on about the idiocy of the city he called "home"--where 10 poets refuse to speak to 3 others/etc. He was attacked/etc. But it all came down to what was good for the art--what kept it aflloat. It is in this spirit that I have angrily, bitterly, and happily--started this discussiong--which--at botton--really asks--what to do in this--or any other city--when poetry and poetics is at risk--when "groups" form that exclude other "groups"-when groups are thought to exist where there are none--etc. I'm not for rallying around the flag--but--a community discourse in obviously needed. LA is a great example of a city with resources and millions of people and vast geographies (no matter how far apart we are or how freakin' busy! I've know poets to drive 40 miles to eat at a "new" resturant--we can do the same for a reading!) and a problem with getting folks to pay attention to the valid work that is created here and outside of "here". LACMA has a reading series (the county art musuem) Athe Balconey Cafe reading series exists (Littoral Books), Skylights Books has a reading series, Beyond Barqoue exists, Sun and Moon has their Salons, and the Hammer museum has had some amazing readers of late. THese venues need to start a discourse--start to talk to one another--as poets in this town need to do--not just in "gatherings of friends and dinners"--but to gather to see if there is a solution to the late-20th Century demise of Poetry--funding undercut--publications dropping like flies, etc. Hell--in LA our own newspaper refuses to publish review of "local" or "new" poetries--instead publishing an occasional poem by Carolyn Forche or the like as a way out of that commitment! I am afraid of all the loss--as Lee said " get the work done" --this is all part of the work. Todd Baron (ReMap) > > ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:22:40 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Poetix programs Content-Type: text/plain Rachel, Thanks for your post. I didn't know about the added contemplative requirement, & this strikes me as useless. When I was a student @ Naropa I co-organized two independent studies w/ other students & faculty, one on the Language Poets, the other on the Objectivists. The lit curriculum is, or can be, a real weak point in the program-- hit or miss, as I was trying to convey, based on faculty interest. I think it's a scandal that figures like Stein, Niedecker, Woolfe, etc., haven't rated a major author course. Interest in non-Beat contemporary poetries/poetics among the writing community is shockingly low. That said-- Anselm is a natural treasure, Jack a national wonder, & Anne continues to be a model of energy & endurance. Is it baring oneself in public too much to speak the truth? For the sake of all concerned, for the sake of the work, I hope otherwise. --Mark Rachel Levitsky wrote: > >I'd meant to send this a few days ago but it accidentally went to >ToddBaron. > >Mark and Todd et al, > >One: a correction: since Mark graduated there is a 3 credit >"contemplative" requirement, which I think, more than make Naropa >vaguely "spiritual" makes it directly parochial, a feeling I have had >all along here. All the contemplative courses which fill the >requirement have to do with some form of buddhist practice. I took what >I hoped to be a theater class called "Mudra Space Awareness" and found >it total quackery, a waste of my thousand dollars which I would have >preferred to spend on an academic class on Buddhism, which would not >count to fill the requirement, more about that if anyone is interested. > Trungpa, no disrespect intended, seems to me to have been a trickster >who was taken too seriously. > >Two: Mark's statement that Naropa's writing program >favors independence and self-study strikes me as correct. There is not >a multi-pronged curriculum as there is at New College. I organized an >independent study on Stein with Anne Waldman and three other students. >And my thesis on Ashbery served as yet another ind. study. However, >Naropa really offers no pre-20th century lit class outside of a new >Blake class taught by Reed Bye and since I've been here, in three years >worth of catalogs, all the major author class offered have been men: >Pound, Blake, Duncan. I believe before I came a conglom "women poets" >class was taught. I have felt a serious dearth of crit. reading here >with fellow students--that I'm sure changes with each class. Naropa is >workshop-focused with much exposure and much enthusiasm toward reading. >Am I the only current Naropa student on this list? > >Three: In case I sound too critical. Naropa has its foibles but it's >program is run by people truly crazy about poetry and informed and >committed to the avant garde or alternative or wateva ya call >it, and are supportive of passing on the tradition. The faculty rocks, >and what does Anselm Hollo not know about that is interesting? Anne >Waldman deserves all the hero-worship she gets. Besides which (I'm >adding this today) what Patrick says is true, the pieces she read at the >Fox from Iovis 3 knocked me off my seat. Totally urgent and >unsentimental. > >I hope I didn't just bare myself too much in public. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 13:08:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: vomit & politix & poetizing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII It's like this: the oprah book club (turned up a notch only "on-line" those "in-line" need supply emails handchosen by governor's (guvner's -- you kno the thing on the engine that eeeps ya from goin too fast . . .) don't want no one left behind ain't spewing fumes offending anyone's perfumes no offensive mimeo smell no musty pages no staples attached This ain't road kill either behind IT'S DEMOCRATIC AFTERALL -- payed 4 by the American peoples a "Distinctly National Product" as Pound would say unlike Oprah not supported by "private interests" no corporate bookchain tie-dies (they're "linked" See the guvernment really does care about the arts!!! when you care enough to send the very blest/blecht/bleeachhttt ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 14:15:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: wrasslin with Rasula Since nobody wants to talk about money, here's another hot topic, Jed Rasula's AMERICAN POETRY WAX MUSEUM, which I have been unable to put down the past few days. I guess it was probably yakked up here a few years back? What an amazing history lesson this book is, the way he engages "poetics" as a whole conflicted field of engagement. I'm not done with it yet, but the readings from Louise Bogan, Karl Shapiro, & a lot of others are great - and the "blistering indictment" of the changing/unchanging poetry establishment, all the distortions that have been written into the fading canons... just some problems I'm starting to have with it, since I have to argue with everybody these days, or try to - I wonder about the overall conceptual frame of it - I guess (wild ignorant guess) it's sort of a Foucauldian-anarchist frame of history - a sort of enormous suspicion of state-cultural "structures" - is this the criticism of sane paranoia? I mean he frames his absolutely necessary critique in the "wax museum" conceit - implying that culture, like a museum, is a subset of the nation-state, and it's the coercive, "carceral", institutional taming/homogenizing/hegemonizing reality that distorts the museum-goer's perception of the artworks encased therein - I guess what troubles me is the paranoiac aspect of this kind of critical thinking: "things are never what they seem" is like the mirror-image of ("fascist") status-quo "things are only what they seem" establishment thinking. Since I haven't finished the book, I wonder if Rasula ever examines whether there's not a contradiction involved in the hindsight- historical packaging of this kind of study: ie. his metaphor of the wax museum could be applied to his own book (more like a diorama of civil wars). So that nothing is what it seems: the only purpose of the state is coercive-numbing mind control; the only purpose of the museum is to replicate that "control"; both artworks & museum-goers are puppets in that scenario; Robert Lowell is a puppet of the New Critics; Helen Vendler is a puppet of the same long-lasting establishment; the "lyric" in poetry is a mask for uncritical thinking; etc. I would argue that scary as it may seem the democratic state does have a long and bloody real history and a legitimate purpose, and if this is the case, museums, universities, and individual artworks & poets and lyric poems might also have a legitimacy - not a perfect legitimacy by any stretch of the imagination - Rasula de-legitimizes them in all justice - but I wonder if the "controlling metaphor" doesn't in its own turn go too far. My first response to the book is that it's absolutely necessary even if it can be faulted for its own semi-p.c. manuevering (ie. I got the sense that women poets were slightly criticized for developing their "own" networks, but black poets were above criticism for the same thing - it's called creative "secession". Correct me if I've misread this.) This book is part of an opening-up of poetry culture by carefully going back over what's just barely visible & re-measuring things. I think that in future decades the saddest aspects of this history will be the numbing controls in place of "official" literature, and secondly the harshness of the name-calling and the tendentiousness of the various positionings. I also think Rasula actually over-emphasizes some of the political differences between poetic approaches; I mean, this is historically correct for the era he writes about but the issue of "open" vs. "received" forms vs. new forms is still in for some major new wrinkles. Rasula contrasts for example Duncan's open form as a reassertion of Keatsian romanticism with the establishment poetics of the 50s as a contrived and superficial formalism; but the strictly historical - I mean literary-historical meanings of some of these metaphysical and renaissance forms in my opinion has not been completely used-up simply because the 50s pseudo-modernists found them useful for promoting their fantasy world. One of the never-forgettable lessons of this book is that writers come out of their own different histories and nothing is simple. That may seem so obvious now to most as to not constitute a lesson. But for a wasp boomer from the midwest born into the American language of his ancestors, who came to poetry with the sense that the work of writing was a sort of neutral ground of accomplishment, where the self met the community on the stage of achievement and the community met the self there, and there was an honest exchange because the poem on the page is sort of like a testament or a constitution, an accurate measure of work done, and so the obvious thing to do with it was to send it out to magazines in a disinterested way & let quality float to the top - when you find out that there's another reality out there - that the publishing venues are designed to filter out quality based on 2 things: a particular editor's notion of what you've done, and second, a hidden buddy system or control system; and then you find that there are these "communities" of writers who share ideological/aesthetic visions & then feed them back to one another & push into the publishing venues as groups, and everyone on the poetics list from Don Byrd on down laughs at the notion of "independent standards" of criticism and reading (this is not to single out Don Byrd for anything negative, just a memory of the indie- crit flap) - well, you take all this into account & things are very complicated suddenly... so complicated that I think I'll just go back to my original idea: let it happen in the poem, & give them all the lie. The open form concept is marvelous: but the poem is also a toy. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 13:49:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: wrasslin with money MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Henry, I was gonna talk more about money but I just got finished reading your 2,000 word post about it and now there's another one! You have to give some of us slowpokes a break now and then, pard! What I was going to say is that I'm now halfway through _Frozen Desire_, the book I quoted from a few days back and it's still just wonderful. With these tidbits . . . * The difference between the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ is the invention of money -- if there had been any in the _Iliad_, Achilles could have been bought off. "The issue is not resolved through money. It is not resolved at all, except by death. For money cannot coexist with an epic picture of the world." ("Longinus admired the _Iliad_ beyond all expressions of the human spirit but called the _Odyssey_ a 'comedy of domestic manners.') * Herodotus lived in what is now Bodrum in southern Turkey, where "the first things that have survived that we can call coins were struck late in the seventh century B. C. . . . Embedded in the first book of the _Histories_ is an immense monetary anthropology." * Something I had known, but forgotten -- Aristotle's hostility to money as capital in _The Politics_: "It is the rallying cry and point of honour of all those who dislike or distrust capitalism." Pound couldn't find much in Aristotle's _Nicomachean Ethics_, as I recall, but Aristotle would have liked the usury cantos . . . a lot! And finally . . . "Imagine a landscape: a meadow sloping steeply down to a stream, a mill with a watersplash, a locked chapel, a stand of oaks. You will see in this landscape values both economic, in its actual and potential crops of fruits, grain, timber and money, and aesthetic, in its resemblance to a painting or a touristic brochure or a literary fantasy of rusticity. What you will not feel is the medieval sense of the place's uniqueness. For to the Middle Ages, the valley I am talking about had no exchange equivalent, was inextricably bound up with its lord and tenants, could be improved or ruined but not sold and bought, for it existed in a sort of spiritual mortmain, still, inalienable, come to rest. . . It was the final and perfect embodiment of property as the earthly counterpart and sample of God's realm in heaven, eternal . . . at least until a Mirabeau or Napoleon Bonaparte comes along." He then goes on to say exactly how the inception of a money economy changes this land and what happens to it: it's pretty fascinating. I'm not trying to suggest that we can somehow exist without money today (unfortunately!), only that we realize the myriad ways it infests our perceptions, actions, and choices -- both of how we lead our lives and how the next line should break . . . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 15:18:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "tracy s. ruggles" Subject: Re: Poetix programs Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Well, I guess I'll post, too, since I'm also a graduate of Naropa. I certainly appreciate your honesty, Mark. (Do you remember me? I remember you, though we never really talked.) I wish I had known about your independent studies on the language poets and the objectivists. I would have participated. I, too, think it was surprising that no formal class on Stein was offered. I have since had an intense love affair with her writings. The spiritual side of Naropa was half the reason I attended and the amount of spiritual work I did there was invaluable. I personally found the Mudra Space Awareness class to be helpful especially in relation to writing for a printed page. The concepts and experiences there carried through for me. But, back to Todd's original question about how a POETICS school has effected my writing... the lack of language-centered study and the almost fanatical devotion to beat poets and their descendents turned me towards a rejection of that 'style' so to speak. I would second Mark's assessment of the teachers there and add that I really connected with Bobbie's southern 'charm', and that her performance prose classes did more for my development as a poet than anything else there. The fact that we were side by side with the Buddhist studies program and the transpersonal psychology department made for an interesting mix of ideas and taste. I'd hang out with my poet friends at the Sundowner playing pool and drinking beer and playing old country songs on their jukebox, and in the same day I was having tea with the buddhist folks and giving all those hugs to the psyche people. I regret that at the time I was probably a little to shy to get into any in-depth work with Anne (though I remember waltzing with her at that buddhist center on the tibetan new year). I think I would have gotten quite a lot out of it, but I was too busy being a loud poet and trying to get attention through quirky sex poems and long emotional ventings. I've certainly grown up a bit since then (not to say what I did was childish!), and the so-called 'lineage' (if there is one) that Naropa passed down is still in my work, but I've continued my studies both in poetry and spirit. Ah, so there's my 2 1/2 cents. --trace-- P.S. Those at Naropa, say hi for me and tell 'em I still exist and am dying for kindred spirits out here in Portland, OR! On Thursday, July 16, 1998 9:22:40 AM, Mark DuCharme wrote: >Rachel, > >Thanks for your post. I didn't know about the added contemplative >requirement, & this strikes me as useless. > >When I was a student @ Naropa I co-organized two independent studies w/ >other students & faculty, one on the Language Poets, the other on the >Objectivists. > >The lit curriculum is, or can be, a real weak point in the program-- hit >or miss, as I was trying to convey, based on faculty interest. I think >it's a scandal that figures like Stein, Niedecker, Woolfe, etc., haven't >rated a major author course. Interest in non-Beat contemporary >poetries/poetics among the writing community is shockingly low. > >That said-- Anselm is a natural treasure, Jack a national wonder, & Anne >continues to be a model of energy & endurance. > >Is it baring oneself in public too much to speak the truth? For the >sake of all concerned, for the sake of the work, I hope otherwise. > >--Mark > > >Rachel Levitsky wrote: >> >>I'd meant to send this a few days ago but it accidentally went to >>ToddBaron. >> >>Mark and Todd et al, >> >>One: a correction: since Mark graduated there is a 3 credit >>"contemplative" requirement, which I think, more than make Naropa >>vaguely "spiritual" makes it directly parochial, a feeling I have had >>all along here. All the contemplative courses which fill the >>requirement have to do with some form of buddhist practice. I took >what >>I hoped to be a theater class called "Mudra Space Awareness" and found >>it total quackery, a waste of my thousand dollars which I would have >>preferred to spend on an academic class on Buddhism, which would not >>count to fill the requirement, more about that if anyone is interested. >> Trungpa, no disrespect intended, seems to me to have been a trickster >>who was taken too seriously. >> >>Two: Mark's statement that Naropa's writing program >>favors independence and self-study strikes me as correct. There is not >>a multi-pronged curriculum as there is at New College. I organized an >>independent study on Stein with Anne Waldman and three other students. >>And my thesis on Ashbery served as yet another ind. study. However, >>Naropa really offers no pre-20th century lit class outside of a new >>Blake class taught by Reed Bye and since I've been here, in three years >>worth of catalogs, all the major author class offered have been men: >>Pound, Blake, Duncan. I believe before I came a conglom "women poets" >>class was taught. I have felt a serious dearth of crit. reading here >>with fellow students--that I'm sure changes with each class. Naropa is >>workshop-focused with much exposure and much enthusiasm toward reading. >>Am I the only current Naropa student on this list? >> >>Three: In case I sound too critical. Naropa has its foibles but it's >>program is run by people truly crazy about poetry and informed and >>committed to the avant garde or alternative or wateva ya call >>it, and are supportive of passing on the tradition. The faculty rocks, >>and what does Anselm Hollo not know about that is interesting? Anne >>Waldman deserves all the hero-worship she gets. Besides which (I'm >>adding this today) what Patrick says is true, the pieces she read at >the >>Fox from Iovis 3 knocked me off my seat. Totally urgent and >>unsentimental. >> >>I hope I didn't just bare myself too much in public. >> > > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 18:43:01 +0000 Reply-To: David@thewebpeople.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The Web People, Inc. Subject: Re: new release MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Forgot to include address. New rat has a few bugs. Pavement Saw Press / 7 James Street / Scotia, NY 12302 David Baratier / 345 E. Whittier St. / Columbus, OH 43206 & for selected other titles SPD / 1341 Seventh Street / Berkeley, CA 94710 .510.524.0852 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Some may be interested in our new title. Advance orders taken now. Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award Series Perfect bound ISBN 1-886350-80-9 Price: $5.00 Right Livelihood was selected by Jim Daniels as the 1997-98 winner of Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award. Right Livelihood is full of both a hard-earned reverence and a refreshing irreverence. David Brook’s is not afraid to poke fun at himself—one man trying to cope with life’s absurdities. Much of this work is funny, truly joyful. The poems are “expecting something to happen,” even on the gritty floor of a meatpacking plant. The wonder here is that something great often does happen. These poems celebrate our continuing urge to dream. As we discard our “golden visions” of youth, we must replace them with something. The poems of Right Livelihood replace those visions with a bemused acceptance— “all the gaudy world clearing my mind/ like an improbable plane gliding/ over a mountaintop.” These poems are full of the kind of laughter that hurt just a little bit—laughter that sinks in, and stays with you for a long time. --Jim Daniels There is a strong consistent personal voice here, one that may have Eros in the stomach or specialize in detesting or renting out illusions. Music, laughter, and insight course like clear water through these poems. --Karl Patten Witty and elegant, unswervingly aware of life’s absurdity, the poems in David Brooks’ Right Livelihood drill steadily into the heart and make us ask for more. --Harry Humes David Brooks was born and raised in central Pennsylvannia. He has worked in a meat packing plant, a hospital, a nursing home, has installed insulation, been a masseur, an advertising copywriter, and, for a brief period of time, a salesman. He lives in Hughesville, PA with his wife. The Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Award was established in 1995 to promote writers whose work challenges conventions of contemporary poetry while encouraging multiple readings. Writers world-wide are invited to participate. Each year, one manuscript is selected by a writer with a thorough familiarity of the small press realm. Publication, a prize of five hundred dollars, and ten percent of the book run was awarded to the winner. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 19:10:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Tosh, > >I certainly was not trying to compare the two organizations. >However, there is no question that Sun & Moon--with its bookstore, >its salons and the drama reading series we co-sponsor with >Bottoms Dream--has served as a kind of smaller literary center. >I should add that our mailing list includes about 350 people, and >fliers are sent our for each salon and postcards every month for >the drama reading series (which is also sent to about 500 people >by Bottom's Dream) so neither series of events represents "a small >gathering friends and writers." As with Beyond Baroque, of course, >we do not ever get the full audience. But they're invited; the >public is also free to attend. Tosh, maybe you should attend. > >Douglas I have attended some wonderful events at Sun & Moon. I should go to more events. Time, and... time is against me. Also, I hope no one see's my privous post as a negitive commentary on Sun & Moon. As a new publisher (yours truly) Douglas is truly one of my heroes. I was commenting strictly on Todd's viewpoints on L.A. readings, and various schools of poetry. If I sounded harse in regards to other organizations, I am sorry. I didn't mean that whatsoever. The truth is we need a healthly Sun & Moon as well as a healthy Beyond Baroque. It is not only a local thing, but Beyond Baroque as well as Sun & Moon has supported artists from different cities and nations. Many people see these organizations as being only L.A., but I see these organizations more as an international as well as a local outlet for writing, etc. Besides it is not really an aesthetic problem but a financial problem. And that is affecting culture in general. For the work Beyond Baroque & Sun & Moon has done, it should be RICH RICH!! And that goes for other art organizations! ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 23:27:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: plasma & other hotstuff In-Reply-To: <199807160407.AA04466@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" As an aside, and I say this in all friendship. as an all to whom some friend might turn, I'm not particularly shy of M. Watten despite he malaprop my name most antic. Some chop shops sell metal, some sell iron. Damnded if I'll indulge a why where how might happen. It's foolish to be lonely on this earth and that compounds it. Trap door. That and the spring are best, and the lever, as long as we have weight to drop there. > Being a bit dismayed by the reaction and/or lack thereof to my >original posting spurred by my reading of Watten's poem, I appreciate you >taking issue of whatever sort . . . As an aside, I'm not particularly >pleased with the references section tagged onto the end of the book. >After the disclaimer up front, the references (laid out much like a >"proper" section of the poem, the heroic couplet driving it all home) >would seem to attach a sort of historical valence to the preceeding text >which it had shyed away from. But, then I came across this again, perhaps >telling of the totalizing trope in Watten in general, from "Plasma"; > "But there is another level of complexity to ready-mades. Which >gets us home if you talk about poetry. You can say what happens and have >it be a part of that." > > Patrick F. Durgin ----------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/ashland.html I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them. --Susan Sontag ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 07:59:58 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit tosh: yr right--tyhe entire discussion on my part really has the same motive--to begin a DISCOURSE (large) about what to do in a city that funds everything else so wonderfully--but cannot seem to fit two venues into one city of 4.5 million people. It, I'm afraid, is political and suirely not simply a problem of funding. If we haven't learned by now how to avoid that pitfall--late 20th century--than we haven't learned much in the way of being public with our art! BB vrs Sun and Moon--no--I doubt anyone thought you were saying that. BUT--a political aesthetic is (IS) at foot and hand when one sees various and sundry wonderful porgrams in other cities--translation programs--seminars on late 20th century poetics--arts and poetry--to name a few recent happenings--and LA can't seem to support one even. (NO--NO--they don't happen here--they don't work here--WHY? support! RibOt has had the only "conference" in my mind of great value in MANY years! See the last RiBot for evidence. the LA POETRY FEST. just--I'm afraid--doesn't count. It's a conservative "pop" forum) I think BB gets the raw deal because BB is and says it is--the "only" literary arts center in LA." While this is VAGUELY true--you--more than any single soul --must know that the board of directions has--like any other (give them that) an agenda. The agenda doesn't always parlay into a stance towards or even against a "poetics"--not when the board is made up of those not in the field of literature per se. Artists that work in a visual medium are not necesarily the best to overse a oftimes federally funded venue! THAT's given BB a "bad" name--and--again--deserved or not--folks in this asylum are/have been/fed up with the "blackness" of the place. (Literally--the stage itself is solid black!) BUT--of course--suport the venues we must. I won't pretend not to accept a reading there--I go where invited! Several this past week in LA have said they missed a GREAT reading by Diane Ward and Noah De Lissovoy simply because "B.B. is not a place of importance anymore..." and the like. Phew~! Listen--we barely f**kin exist! No life support is wrong at this time--esp. the simple support of a poetics community! Breath! Tb (ReMap) ps: "distance" is no excuse. People in this pueblo travel forty miles to try the new "Japo-French-Columbian-Hungarian--Fried Chicken" resturant--further for a cocktail party--less for a reading!!! (Unles of course you count the readings where "stars" read "their" poems!) Hell----- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 08:02:53 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetix programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It sounds like the group consensus is--paraphrased--so far--that a poetics dept. doesn't really affect the poets involved! Otherthan the standard--I studied this and studied that! I wonder...what about the idea of beiung in large groups of poets and poet-teachers--and readers!? Isn't this a different world than one re-enters after grad? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 00:48:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: wrasslin with Rasula (what about a. watts?) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I read "wax museum" several years ago, and though i find it a great read (and have lot of notes on it lying around somewhere just waiting for more free time to....) i guess the big memory --or the most recurrent one--is the superficial organizing structure of a kind of manichean dualism: berryman and lowell--bad suns of pound-- vs. duncan and olson good (or less "museumed" because less "museumable" presumably); also the characterization of bogan as THE woman...... ------ A RELATED (or relatable) topic I'd like to start: and i heard one of those alan (i think not allen) watts lecture tapes on WFMU today and realize how he often gets me and how I haven't read him in years.... read him before keroauc (and read "dharma bums" not knowing he was a character in it. tempted to go back and try to find the passages) anyway, when i was a philosophy major as undergrad, i was very into THE BOOK (on the taboo against knowing who you are or something) and THE WISDOM OF INSECURITY. My Philosophy teachers of course said "well, he isn't really philosophy." Did that have something to do with my switching to English major? so, any "defenders" or "detractors" of Watts out there? (this is not an issue of "but he's not original; just a popularizer of other ideas, etc." but more of an issue of his particular style (as writer and/or performer) and the way it relates to what is more "properly" called poetry. Is he in the wax museum too? chris On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Henry Gould wrote: > Since nobody wants to talk about money, here's another hot topic, Jed > Rasula's AMERICAN POETRY WAX MUSEUM, which I have been unable to put down > the past few days. I guess it was probably yakked up here a few years > back? > > What an amazing history lesson this book is, the way he engages "poetics" > as a whole conflicted field of engagement. I'm not done with it yet, but > the readings from Louise Bogan, Karl Shapiro, & a lot of others are great - > and the "blistering indictment" of the changing/unchanging poetry > establishment, all the distortions that have been written into the > fading canons... > > just some problems I'm starting to have with it, since I have to > argue with everybody these days, or try to - > > I wonder about the overall conceptual frame of it - I guess (wild ignorant > guess) it's sort of a Foucauldian-anarchist frame of history - a sort of > enormous suspicion of state-cultural "structures" - is this the > criticism of sane paranoia? I mean he frames his absolutely necessary > critique in the "wax museum" conceit - implying that culture, like > a museum, is a subset of the nation-state, and it's the coercive, > "carceral", institutional taming/homogenizing/hegemonizing reality > that distorts the museum-goer's perception of the artworks encased > therein - > > I guess what troubles me is the paranoiac aspect of this kind of critical > thinking: "things are never what they seem" is like the mirror-image of > ("fascist") status-quo "things are only what they seem" establishment > thinking. Since I haven't finished the book, I wonder if Rasula ever > examines whether there's not a contradiction involved in the hindsight- > historical packaging of this kind of study: ie. his metaphor of the > wax museum could be applied to his own book (more like a diorama of > civil wars). So that nothing is what it seems: the only purpose of the > state is coercive-numbing mind control; the only purpose of the museum > is to replicate that "control"; both artworks & museum-goers are > puppets in that scenario; Robert Lowell is a puppet of the New Critics; > Helen Vendler is a puppet of the same long-lasting establishment; > the "lyric" in poetry is a mask for uncritical thinking; etc. I would > argue that scary as it may seem the democratic state does have a long > and bloody real history and a legitimate purpose, and if this is the case, > museums, universities, and individual artworks & poets and lyric poems > might also have a legitimacy - not a perfect legitimacy by any stretch of > the imagination - Rasula de-legitimizes them in all justice - but I > wonder if the "controlling metaphor" doesn't in its own turn go too far. > > My first response to the book is that it's absolutely necessary even > if it can be faulted for its own semi-p.c. manuevering (ie. I got > the sense that women poets were slightly criticized for developing > their "own" networks, but black poets were above criticism for the > same thing - it's called creative "secession". Correct me if I've > misread this.) > > This book is part of an opening-up of poetry culture by carefully > going back over what's just barely visible & re-measuring things. > I think that in future decades the saddest aspects of this history will > be the numbing controls in place of "official" literature, and secondly > the harshness of the name-calling and the tendentiousness of the > various positionings. I also think Rasula actually over-emphasizes > some of the political differences between poetic approaches; I mean, > this is historically correct for the era he writes about but the issue > of "open" vs. "received" forms vs. new forms is still in for some > major new wrinkles. Rasula contrasts for example Duncan's open form > as a reassertion of Keatsian romanticism with the establishment poetics > of the 50s as a contrived and superficial formalism; but the strictly > historical - I mean literary-historical meanings of some of these > metaphysical and renaissance forms in my opinion has not been completely > used-up simply because the 50s pseudo-modernists found them useful for > promoting their fantasy world. > > One of the never-forgettable lessons of this book is that writers come > out of their own different histories and nothing is simple. That may > seem so obvious now to most as to not constitute a lesson. But for a > wasp boomer from the midwest born into the American language of his > ancestors, who came to poetry with the sense that the work of writing > was a sort of neutral ground of accomplishment, where the self met the > community on the stage of achievement and the community met the self > there, and there was an honest exchange because the poem on the page > is sort of like a testament or a constitution, an accurate measure of > work done, and so the obvious thing to do with it was to send it out to > magazines in a disinterested way & let quality float to the top - > > when you find out that there's another reality out there - that the > publishing venues are designed to filter out quality based on 2 things: > a particular editor's notion of what you've done, and second, a hidden > buddy system or control system; and then you find that there are these > "communities" of writers who share ideological/aesthetic visions & then > feed them back to one another & push into the publishing venues as groups, > and everyone on the poetics list from Don Byrd on down laughs at the > notion of "independent standards" of criticism and reading (this is not > to single out Don Byrd for anything negative, just a memory of the indie- > crit flap) - > > well, you take all this into account & things are very complicated suddenly... > so complicated that I think I'll just go back to my original idea: let > it happen in the poem, & give them all the lie. The open form concept is > marvelous: but the poem is also a toy. > > - Henry Gould > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 00:54:12 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: LA Job Announcements and re:readings Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_900651252_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_900651252_boundary Content-ID: <0_900651252@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII I have actually been pretty surprised with the turnouts at readings which snail or email calendars to me (so that I can put a copy on my fridge and a copy at work): Beyond Baroque, Sun & Moon, and Writers on Site are the big three as far as organizational skills/mailings go. I am really sorry I missed Fanny Howe at Midnight Special, as she is one of my favorites, and they do have an e-mail list for readings. Complete listings of LA area readings are very helpful and much appreciated! I missed a slew of readings recently. But really, these several-hours-in-a- car-to-and-fro slogs around smog city for readings are not pleasant. Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com --part0_900651252_boundary Content-ID: <0_900651252@inet_out.mail.aol.com.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from relay28.mx.aol.com (relay28.mail.aol.com [172.31.109.28]) by air05.mail.aol.com (v45.18) with SMTP; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:33:01 -0400 Received: from shim.LABridge.com (ns1.labridge.com [206.117.169.10]) by relay28.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id OAA16970; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:31:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from 206.117.169.11 (lists.LABridge.com [206.117.169.11]) by shim.LABridge.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id LAA02876; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:27:31 -0700 Received: from LABridge.com (206.117.169.8) by lists.LABridge.com with SMTP (Apple Internet Mail Server 1.1.1); Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:58:39 -0700 Received: from thecity.sfsu.edu ([130.212.2.101] verified) by LABridge.com (Stalker SMTP Server 1.6b7) with ESMTP id S.0002244329 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:58:40 -0700 Received: from lawrence (thecity [130.212.2.101]) by thecity.sfsu.edu (8.8.7/8.8.6) with SMTP id KAA19692; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:58:12 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <005c01bdb01a$14399c00$0100a8c0@lawrence> From: "Lawrence Thoo" To: , Subject: Fw: Job Announcements Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:57:24 -0700 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Please distribute. -----Original Message----- From: CALAA@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list Date: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 7:40 AM Subject: Job Announcements >JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS > >July 15, 1998 > > >1. Director of Programs / Member Services > >Applications are now being accepted for the position of Director of Programs / >Member Services with a nationally recognized statewide arts service >organization which serves the professional development needs of the arts >community in California. > >JOB DESCRIPTION: The Director will be responsible for the oversight / >management of CALAA's technical assistance support to the local arts age= ncy >field including coordination of Fundamentals / other skills building >workshops, regional consultancies, Peer Advisory Network mentoring program - >orientation & training; email listserv / online / internet communication= s >management; newsletter production, Statewide District Network - meeting >coordination and network management; Annual Convention logistical planni= ng; >information gathering & dissemination to the membership; member services= ; and >coordination of special projects including the annual Governor's Confere= nce on >the Arts. Works closely with CAC staff. Small office. Reports directl= y to >President. > >EXPERIENCE: Minimum three years experience in Local Arts Agency managem= ent >required plus general nonprofit arts organization experience. The successful >candidate should have direct experience in, and familiarity with, techni= cal >assistance provision, including Board of Director development, marketing= , >fundraising, staff management, publications, personnel and financial matters. >Familiarity with California Arts Council workings and advocacy also helpful. >BA or higher degree a plus. > >SKILLS: Applicant must be proficient in word processing, data managemen= t, >online internet communications. Must have meeting / event planning skil= ls; >excellent written / verbal / communication skills. Must be able to mana= ge >multiple projects simultaneously, handle diverse demands and needs. Som= e >travel required. > >COMPENSATION: Competitive salary, plus excellent benefits, working >environment. > >Submit resume, list of references and cover letter to: > >SEARCH >CALAA >870 Market St., Suite 640 >San Francisco, CA. 94102 > >Equal Opportunity Employer. No telephone calls. Position open as of August >1st. > >2. Bookkeeper > >Applications are now being accepted for a part time, (3 days per week -- may >expand to full time) bookkeeper for statewide membership based arts serv= ice >provider organization. > > >JOB DESCRIPTION: Responsible for processing invoices for member based >statewide arts agency (bulk of which are under state / federal governmen= t >agency contracts); post to books, produce reports (P&L Statement; Balanc= e >Sheet; Financial Statements for Grant Awards); track Budget projected Income / >Expenses compared to Actual Income / Expenses quarterly. Compliance wit= h >regulations for fiscal sponsorship clients. Manage internal finances - A/P - >A/C (payroll handled by independent service; taxes, annual review by >independent accounting firm). Manage membership dues. Work with Board >Treasurer. Small office - report to President. > >EXPERIENCE: Nonprofit / arts agency experience preferred. Experience w= ith >state contracts a plus. Applicant should have a minimum of three years >bookkeeping experience in an organization with a minimum $250,000 annual >budget. > >SKILLS: Must have strong working knowledge of general accounting skills= . >Must be proficient in QuickBooks Pro, Excel, Microsoft Word, Mac / PC >platforms, email. Applicant needs to have excellent written / verbal skills >and able to juggle numerous detail oriented projects simultaneously. Mu= st be >organized and have excellent time management skills. Formal accounting >training a plus. > >COMPENSATION: Competitive DOE. Excellent benefits. Position may expan= d to >FT. > >Submit resume, list of references (required) and cover letter to: > >SEARCH >CALAA >870 Market St., Suite 640 >San Francisco, CA. 94102 > >Equal Opportunity Employer. No telephone calls. Position open as of August >1st. > --part0_900651252_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 00:47:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: well, now In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now it transpires that David Bromige's troublesome novel _Piccolo Mondo_, which has been for 6 months on line from Coach House Books, is at last out as a fetish object from CHB. It is a thinly fictionalized account of poetic and student life in the late fifties and early sixties, and manages to speak badly of just about everyone in both those spheres from that time. Tch tch. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 07:21:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Poetix programs Comments: To: toddbaron@earthlink.net In-Reply-To: <35AF052D.4C25@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:02 AM +0000 7/17/98, toddbaron wrote: >It sounds like the group consensus is--paraphrased--so far--that a >poetics dept. doesn't really affect the poets involved! Otherthan the >standard--I studied this and studied that! I wonder...what about the >idea of beiung in large groups of poets and poet-teachers--and readers!? >Isn't this a different world than one re-enters after grad? this consensus seems to me to underestimate the power and varieties of "influence." of course people would claim to not be influenced by their poetics department; even in a post-structuralist world people have some investment in their own "originality," or at least might not see the influence of anything as banal as an institution. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 09:42:58 -0400 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: wrasslin with Rasula In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry, i believe you are over-intellectualizing the perspective and theses of the Wax Museum. It might well be glossed as having a "foucauldian-anarchist" framework; but that would be your parsing-out of the approach JR takes...I don't believe he sets out to utilize a specific critical/historical methodolgy. Nor is one in evidence in my opinion, beyond a certain commonsense literary-historical narrativity (overlain by those fancy pyrotecnix involving the museum trope, which have blown more than a few people away, but which after a while come to seem just a mite tedious, not to say extrinsic to the specific historical insights...) And your claim (as i understand it) that the book demonstrates a "nothing is what it seems" philosophy is just plain silly. "Robert Lowell is a puppet of the New Critics?" You're not serious, right? Lines of relation and force and clash Rasula does indeed trace.....But the paraphrases you give are nonsense. That Lowell and the NCrits are part of a single very basic and powerful moment in the americun po'tree, is fairly self-evident. Indeed, MUCH of what the Wax Museum says is (like this example) hardly controversial at all! it is the sweep and fairness and specificity of JR's account that seem important. Of course if he really said Lowell was somebody's puppet, that might be a little controversial, but he doesn't. He points out alliances and influences and other lines of relation, that's all. (And, as i've posted here in the past, the other thing i find important about the book is the intelligence and nonpartisan attention with which he approaches the task of analyzing the "social sites" of poetry vocation...) from amongst the foo-cold of poetry, mark p. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 10:01:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Franco Subject: BOSTPN ALT POFEST FRIDAY UPDATE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit M. Franco here for Aaron Kiely's BOSTON ALTERNATIVE POETRY CONFERENCE: BLACKSMITH HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE MA. [HARVARD SQUARE] FRI-SUN JULY 17-19 1998. UPDATE: AWOL SCALAPINO, MLINKO, FUNKHAUSER: Joseph Lease will now be reading Sunday Night READERS/PRESENTERS: BERNSTEIN, MESSERLI, TAGGART, MATLIN, TORRA, LANSING, F. HOWE, R. WALDROP, BOUCHARD, WARSH, JARNOT, BANSINSKI, GANICK, W. ALEXANDER, PREAVALLET, FUNKHOUSER, ZHANG ER, DOUD, LEASE, L. SCHWARTZ, D. GARDNER, KRUKOWSKI, ,BURGER, W HOWE, GRUMNAN, BRADY, POUND, KRAMER, KNOX, WARSH, S. COLE, B. ANDERSON, GILMORE, KIELEYWERSHLER-HENRY, KIRSCHENBAUM, KRAMER, FRANCO, FRIDAY JULY 17 READING: 7:30 [PLEASE NOTE NEW SRTARTING TIME] INTRODUCTION TO THE WEEKEND: w/ KIELY, SCHWARTZ & ALEXANDER NIGHT READING: F. HOWE D. BOUCHARD, GARDNER SAT JULY 18- 9: 30AM {scones to be served} VOCABULARY AND IMIGINATIONS: PANAL W/ MESSERLLI, ALEXANDER, SCHWARTZ, MATLIN, KIELEY, LEASE, & FRANCO 12:00 READING W/ TORRA, LANSING, & KRUKOWSKI & KIELY 2PM: BIOGRAPHY & CRITCISM PANAL: W/ PREVALLET ON HELEN ADAM... JARNOT ON DUNCAN, ALEXANDER ON LAMANTIA TAGGART ON OPPEN, KNOX ON KOCH & ASHBERY, KIRSCHENBAUM ON d.a.levy, GILMORE ON OPPENHEIMER. 4PM AFTERNOON READING W/ TAGGART, KNOX, SCHWARTZ, ZHANG ER, KNOX, ANDERSON,BRADY, S.COLE 6PM DAVID MATLIN ON HIS NEW BOOK 7PM NIGHT READING: WARSH, JARNOT, MATLIN, ALEXANDER SUNDAY JULY 19 {more scones} 10AM NEW POETRY PANEL PRESENTED & ORGANIZED BY BASINSKI w/ KRAMER, BRADY, BURGER, W.HOWE, WERSHLER-HENRY, GRUMMAN & POUND 2PM AFTERNOON READING: WALDROP, MESSERLI, DOUD & FRANCO 4PM PUBLISHING PANAL: W/ TORRA, MESSERLI, BOUCHARD, GANICK, KIRCHENBAUM 7PM NIGHT READING PREAVALLET, GANICK & LEASE 8PM CHARLES BERNSTEIN; POETRY & POETICS ADMISSIONS: $5/reading, $15/saturday pass, $10/sunday pass, $35/weekend-people can reserve their space now through email or phone and then pay at the conference- checks payable to aaron kiely at p.o.box 441517 somerville, ma 02144- INFORMATION / RESERVATIONS: highly recomended- space is now quickly filling up Aaron Kiely PO box 441517 Somerville Ma 02144 or Email 9924akiel@umbsky.cc.umb.edu 617 629-3376 AGAIN BEST TO ALL ON THE LIST & THANKS TO AARON FOR DOING ALL OF THIS AMAZING WORK MICHAEL FRANCO ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 10:04:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: never mind the canon, here's COMBO! Comments: cc: whcircle@dept.english.upenn.edu, hub@dept.english.upenn.edu, grads@dept.english.upenn.edu In-Reply-To: from "joel lewis" at Jul 15, 98 11:29:44 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit SPLITTING CORNERS PUBLICATIONS presents... ...a HUB ROOM production... ...of a Michael Magee journal... cccc oooo mm mm bbbbb oooo cc c oo oo m mm m b b oo oo cc oo oo m m m bbbbb oo oo cc oo oo m m m b b oo oo cc c oo oo m m m b b oo oo cccc oooo mm m mm bbbbb oooo ...with... BOB PERELMAN HARRYETTE MULLEN LEE ANN BROWN CHRIS STROFFOLINO JENA OSMAN LOUIS CABRI KRISTEN GALLAGHER ANDREW EPSTEIN KATHERINE STEELE MICHAEL MAGEE KERRY SHERIN JOHN PARKER MATT HART ...and introducing JESSICA CHIU as herself ************************************************************************* COMBO is a journal of poetry and poetics designed as a forum for younger, innovative writers in their 20's and early 30's. Our premise is that it's impossible to answer questions like "What do we find in the way of work [by younger writers] that is actually new?" (Ron Silliman), unless there are contexts in which to ask them. With one exception, all the younger writers here contribute 3 or more poems or 3 or more pages of work. The more established writers were asked to contribute because, by some random and unscientific consensus, they have influenced those younger writers. Harryette Mullen's contribution is a 16 page interview, occupying the back pages as part of an ongoing discussion of poetics. COMBO is 52 pages on nice off-white paper, side-stapled with cool glossy card stock cover. So, go ahead and see what the upstarts are starting up!! Copies are $3, which can be sent to Michael Magee 31 Perrin Ave. Pawtucket, RI 02861 Feel free to e-mail requests to mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu & we'll be glad to send a copy out in advance of payment, we're a trusting (and trustworthy) bunch. Hope to hear from many of you!! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 07:43:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "tracy s. ruggles" Subject: Re: Poetix programs Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On Friday, July 17, 1998 6:21:30 AM, Maria Damon wrote: > >At 8:02 AM +0000 7/17/98, toddbaron wrote: >>It sounds like the group consensus is--paraphrased--so far--that a >>poetics dept. doesn't really affect the poets involved! Otherthan the >>standard--I studied this and studied that! I wonder...what about the >>idea of beiung in large groups of poets and poet-teachers--and readers!? >>Isn't this a different world than one re-enters after grad? > >this consensus seems to me to underestimate the power and varieties of >"influence." of course people would claim to not be influenced by their >poetics department; even in a post-structuralist world people have some >investment in their own "originality," or at least might not see the >influence of anything as banal as an institution. > There seems to be a storehouse of available public attention that recycles itself periodically. And, each poet/student lays themselves out in the field of visibility in such a way that each poet/student gathers the maximum amount attention that they're capable of (ready for). The whole field shifts and undulates as people come and go, the storehouse of public attention rises and falls, the teachers point focus to one spot, then another. Imagine a park. Three people triangulate the perimeter, each with a bag of bread crumbs. Each toss by the feeders sends the pigeon/poets in flight, each at their own pace. The flock/herd seems elastic. The feeding continues. The bread runs out. Then what? --trace-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 10:05:57 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: *wrasslin with Rasula Mark, I agree with you that the very best thing about WAX MUSEUM is the in-depth research & subtle grasp of what was at stake & all the various debates that went on over that 40 yrs. Just a couple of reiterations: I don't agree that it's silly to summarize his take on R. Lowell as a "puppet" of the New Critics - he goes to great length to show that that is EXACTLY what Lowell was - both in his literary politics & his writing itself - here's a sample quote: "He was _the_ poet prepared, golem-like, by the founders of New Criticism, programmed as it were to produce the poems that would confirm for a contemporary audience that their _tastes_ (as honed by the curriculum of _Understanding Poetry_) could handle the new poetry as readily as the old." This is just one quote among MANY. And he handles the Vendler wax very similarly. But it's a complex book - he molds the wax on all sides at various places presenting Lowell as uncannily "self-fashioned" and at other places as the puppet; he lambasts New Criticism but praises it for bring poetry per se front & center; his final section dealing with what he characterizes (following Virilio & others) society as a state of total & unacknowledged war, and arguing that mass corporate media technology has utterly debased the public sphere - his final section is a jeremiad which sounds strangely like the attacks the Fugitive New Critics made 50 years before on industrial modernity. As far as the Wax Museum metaphor, I don't think you can discount it as mere metaphor, since the total-suspicion critique permeates this analysis in the later part of the book. His evocation of the power of war, its deep connection with communication technologies, and the effect of all this on public & cultural life especially in the US, is very powerful: it seems "dated", but the frightening thing is that this datedness seems an integral aspect of the US as a whole - this is the wax-museum-preservation effect. It's a good monster movie - the US public as zombie-fodder of their television screens & day jobs. Nevertheless I still finally read it as a partial melodrama. The public sphere is changing fast, becoming more internationalized & contentious at the same time; what art & poetry have to offer is not a "take-over" of those mass instruments of control but an international imaginative reconstruction of social relations, which comes from the mass rather than the mass media. As with a lot of these historical studies, the latter more contemporary sections seem more rushed & disappointing - this is probably a wax effect too. I found a lot of special pleading for language poetry, but curiously, in the context of the "total war" era theme, & the evocation of so much social waste & despair as its outcome, I was more impressed by one line (70s) from Robert Bly as an example of political-poetic reality than the whole fanfare for what language poetry was supposedly doing. the line was: "We all feel like tires being run down roads under heavy cars". For all the special pleading about language poetry's 1-2 punch of theory & practice, what seems missing is the fusion of the two in a yes resonant speech. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 10:55:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: Henry Gould Comments: Originally-From: "christine bustany" From: Henry Gould Subject: teaching poetry network... Content-Type: text/plain Dear poetics, maybe some teachers among you could help out here. Do I really seem SO professorial? What is this prof crap? and WHAT website? I-am-under-the-control-of-an-electron-named-Crispin... - Zombie Gould ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear Prof. Gould, I have been searching the internet trying to find information on teaching poetry to secondary school students and fell upon you website. I am a student of Brown University and presently working in paris as an intern for UNESCO in the department of secondary education. I am trying to get underway a network for teachers of poetry via the internet in order for them to have a forum where they could exchange teaching methodologies; I was wondering if you had any information that could help me in this endeavor. It is to be an international project that will encompas as many countries and cultures as possible that can act as a resource to teachers of poetry. The idea is to promote the teaching of poetry to high school aged students in a more analytical and interesting way than has been traditionally taught. If you know of any webisite, organization, group, ect., who could be of use to me could you let me know ASAP. I thank you in advance for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Christine Bustany cbustany@hotmail.com UNESCO, Dept. of Secondary Education Paris, France office ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:14:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: teaching poetry network... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry, or Hank, or buddy--whatever: You have read poetry widely. You love to talk about it. You have a high level of sophistication in discussing it. You have a sense of humor discussing it. You feel comfortable bringing theory into the discussion too, but do not allow it to eclipse the "primary text." You refrain from employing the careful academic buzzwords that often litter poetic "discourse." You are usually bullshit-free. You're not afraid of looking like an ass. (Not at all.) In fact, listening to you talk about poetry makes me often want to seek out new work I haven't yet read. You make me feel like I have a lot of work to do but don't make me feel like an idiot for feeling so. And you have nothing really to gain from any of this. Therefore, I find it astounding that Christine Bustany, or any student, or any person, could mistake you for a university professor. Hope to see you this weekend. daniel bouchard At 10:55 AM 7/17/98 EDT, Henry Gould wrote: >Dear poetics, maybe some teachers among you could help out here. Do I >really seem SO professorial? What is this prof crap? and WHAT website? >I-am-under-the-control-of-an-electron-named-Crispin... - Zombie Gould > >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Dear Prof. Gould, > >I have been searching the internet trying to find information on >teaching poetry to secondary school students and fell upon you website. >I am a student of Brown University and presently working in paris as an >in <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 17 Jul 1998 08:22:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" No, I have to strongly disagree with Todd's opinions about Beyond Baroque. Los Angeles is perhaps one of the most unique cities in the world. It is not New York, it is not San Francisco. It's Los Angeles. And one can't just complain about its city in comparison to other cities. Each place has its unique history, etc. For its mental and aesthethic landscape Beyond Baroque is very important on many levels. And yes the Los Angeles Poetery Festival is pop and so what? I think there's room for both types (and more) poetics in whatever disguise it chooses itself in. Personally I am not that interested in that type of poetry, but they do manage to organize themselves in a professional matter and give an audience a show. Pop always draw a big crowd. Everything else is small,dark, mysterious, beautiful, etc. In regards to Todd's commentary on Beyond Baroque's board: It had many visual artists as well as poets/writers, etc. Generally visual artists are interested in the literary field. Many of them go to readings more than writers. Ask why, but I don't know the reason. Perhaps they're more curious. Besides schools like Cal-arts really encourage the mixture of reading, visual arts and writing in their programs. And that schooling has really affected Beyond Baroque in a very positive light. As we speak I believe there are now only writers on the board at beyond baroque. So things change as they should. I also want to comment that if you look at a regular calendar of Beyond Baroque there are so many type of things happening on it - that it doesn't really support one type of school of writing. For example I know they will be having a Todd reading there shortly - and he has read there many times in the past. As for the darkness of the place... well for me it is a technique to focus what is happening on the stage -like cinema. As for its reputation, I find most people involved with Beyond Baroque were treated really well - artists and audience. At least that's what they told me and Benjamin. And the struggle to keep a place like Beyond Baroque open is an ongoing battle. It has nothing to do with poetics, but more with the importance of all aspects of writing. Again culture itself is on attack. And I am talking about all forms of culture. If you are a director at beyond baroque you are working 10 to 12 (and more) hours a day without great pay, and the hardest part of that job is keeping that place open. It is a very difficult job. I am writing this post in haste, so excuse me for the lack of wit,etc. ciao, ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:59:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: teaching poetry network Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Don't feel bad, Henry, look at the title I got! I was going to forward her to the list, but was gentlemanly enough to ask her first. Now it's moot, so I'll do it, with my reply. I do think those who can should help--although I'm not sure I see "analytical=interesting." ( p.s. I'm no Prof. either) S. >Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:48:12 -0400 >To: "christine bustany" >From: sylvester pollet >Subject: Re: teaching poetry network >Cc: >Bcc: >X-Attachments: > >At 7:16 AM -0700 7/17/98, christine bustany wrote: >>To whom it may concern : >>I have been searching the internet trying to find information on >>teaching poetry to secondary school students and fell upon you website. >>I am trying to get underway a network for teachers of poetry via the >>internet and was wondering if you had any information that could help me >>in this endeavor. It is to be an international project that will >>encompass teaching methodologies of as many countries and cultures as >>possible that can act as a resource to teachers of poetry. The idea is >>to promote the teaching of poetry to high school aged students in a more >>analytical and interesting way than has been traditionally taught. >>If you know of any organization, group, website ect., who could be of >>use to me could you let me know ASAP. I thank you in advance for your >>time and consideration. >> >>Sincerely, >>Christine Bustany >>UNESCO, Dept. of Secondary Education >>Paris, France office >> >>______________________________________________________ >>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > >Dear Christine Bustany, > The organization Poets & Writers, Inc. (in New York City) is what >you want--many books on the subject, a directory of poets & fiction >writers, etc. Address is 72 Spring St. NYC 10012. They have a website now, >but I don't have the address at hand. Any search engine should find it for >you. > I am also a subscriber to a Poetics List, out of SUNY Buffalo, and >if you'd like I could post your message there, and ask people to answer >directly to you. > What excitement in Paris, two days, with the World Cup followed by >Bastille Day! I would have liked to have been there for that. Alors, >meilleurs voeux, Sylvester > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:57:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Loss Pequen~o Glazier" Subject: New Issue of Passages Comments: cc: cfunk@megahertz.njit.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm pleased to announce that the newest issue of Passages, Passages 6, is now available at the EPC. Passages 6 features three takes from the Poetry Project's symposium on "Identity & Invention" with articles by Tim Davis "what me worry" Lisa Jarnot "On Identity" Eddie Bell "Fundamental Truths and Other Expressions" Special thanks to co-editors, PASSAGES 6: Christopher Funkhouser, Amy Hufnagel for making this issue possible. Passages 6 is the EPC's current "Featured Resource" available from the EPC home page. --------------------------------------------------------- E L E C T R O N I C P O E T R Y C E N T E R http://writing.upenn.edu/epc --------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 20:09:48 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tosh: I wasn't attacking anything. It does seem an Agelino thing to defend this city when not necessary. I was comparing other cities because there are things going on there that promote dialogue and the communtiy of poetics. I'm afraid LA doesn't! Ocasionally there are great thing--The Italians reading here was marvelous--but really the same faces showed up for them as for anyone else--yes yes I can hear you sigh--but I was there too--I simply would like to see the boundaries broken down more. THE LA FEST. scence has funding--but the people that go there go for entertainment--the festitival renounces by not including such amazing LA poets as Fanny Howe and Diane Ward--because they "don't fit in". I sat on a panel years ago of "Language Writers" along with Fanny, Doug, Paul, and Bob Crosson! THis wasn't proper but we did it! Fanny was the only one that cold claim to be involved with Language writing historically--but the director of the series didn't know what was what--she even admited that in front of the audience--and asked "Can we learn what this writing is about--it hardly ever makes any sense---! " And that was the last time the "Fest" did anything out of the ordinary! This city is famous for Chares Buk.'s poetry--not the wondrous avante guarde tradition it USED to have! THat I will continue to bemoan as the pets I know that reside here get pushed aside for more "mainstream" poetics. THAT is truly an LA profile. Look at the LA Times! THe times--our 'offical' rag--has a policy of NOT publishing reviews of works by local poets! Not local fiction writiers--only local poets! Once a week they publish the likes of Carolyn Force and such--but they won't even mention their own poets! THAT's why I bemoan--loudly--the state of affirs--and no one can truly think this a vibrant poetics community! I've had friends move in the past year who need to be able to weekly go to readings and lectures--and they didn't find them here--and boy--they tried! Oh well. I am obvously saying this because I will not give up! And yes--I will read there and "there" even while I bemoan the "no thereness" of the place. Tb (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 12:30:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: *wrasslin with Rasula In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry's write about Rasula's argument that LOWELL is puppet (but then i don't think Rasula should be singled out for the such inside/outide rigid polarities; after all this is the land of STAR WARS and all that)..... cs On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Henry Gould wrote: > Mark, I agree with you that the very best thing about WAX MUSEUM is the > in-depth research & subtle grasp of what was at stake & all the various > debates that went on over that 40 yrs. Just a couple of reiterations: > I don't agree that it's silly to summarize his take on R. Lowell as a > "puppet" of the New Critics - he goes to great length to show that that is > EXACTLY what Lowell was - both in his literary politics & his writing > itself - here's a sample quote: "He was _the_ poet prepared, golem-like, > by the founders of New Criticism, programmed as it were to produce the > poems that would confirm for a contemporary audience that their _tastes_ > (as honed by the curriculum of _Understanding Poetry_) could handle the > new poetry as readily as the old." > This is just one quote among MANY. And he handles the Vendler wax > very similarly. But it's a complex book - he molds the wax on all sides > at various places presenting Lowell as uncannily "self-fashioned" and at > other places as the puppet; he lambasts New Criticism but praises it for > bring poetry per se front & center; his final section dealing with what > he characterizes (following Virilio & others) society as a state of > total & unacknowledged war, and arguing that mass corporate media > technology has utterly debased the public sphere - his final section > is a jeremiad which sounds strangely like the attacks the Fugitive New > Critics made 50 years before on industrial modernity. > > As far as the Wax Museum metaphor, I don't think you can discount it as > mere metaphor, since the total-suspicion critique permeates this analysis > in the later part of the book. His evocation of the power of war, its > deep connection with communication technologies, and the effect of all this > on public & cultural life especially in the US, is very powerful: it seems > "dated", but the frightening thing is that this datedness seems an integral > aspect of the US as a whole - this is the wax-museum-preservation effect. > It's a good monster movie - the US public as zombie-fodder of their > television screens & day jobs. > > Nevertheless I still finally read it as a partial melodrama. The public sphere > is changing fast, becoming more internationalized & contentious at the same > time; what art & poetry have to offer is not a "take-over" of those mass > instruments of control but an international imaginative reconstruction of > social relations, which comes from the mass rather than the mass media. > > As with a lot of these historical studies, the latter more contemporary > sections seem more rushed & disappointing - this is probably a wax effect > too. I found a lot of special pleading for language poetry, but curiously, > in the context of the "total war" era theme, & the evocation of so much > social waste & despair as its outcome, I was more impressed by one line (70s) > from Robert Bly as an example of political-poetic reality than the whole > fanfare for what language poetry was supposedly doing. the line was: > "We all feel like tires being run down roads under heavy cars". For all > the special pleading about language poetry's 1-2 punch of theory & practice, > what seems missing is the fusion of the two in a yes resonant speech. > > - Henry Gould > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 13:01:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: global branding & T&W MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sylvester -- Yes, Poets & Writers is terrific to find out which student of whom won what prize, and to find out which prizes are about to be given out to which people from where, or how to sign a book, but if you want information about teaching writing and reading to K-12 students (or college, for that matter), you more likely want to talk to Teachers & Writers. Toll free 1-888-BOOKS-TW, or http://www.twc.org or info@twc.org Hotcha -- Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 13:09:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: *wrasslin with Rasula In-Reply-To: from "louis stroffolino" at Jul 17, 98 12:30:48 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I don't want to single out Rasula either, who I think is very smart, but I do feel like saying that that argument about Lowell as New Critical puppet is tired, tired, tired. Say what you want about the guy, but that ole take is goofy: based on essentially one book - LWC - that Lowell wrote when he was in his mid-twenties. The fact is that Lowell has too severely capricious as a result of basically unmonitored bi-polar ilness to be a very convenient puppet for anyone. And his work post-Life Studies annoyed the hell out of most New Critics and was admired - albeit with some reservations by Ginsburg, Duncan and other very non-New Critics. WC Williams loved Life Studies. And in contrast, New Critic Allen Tate told Lowell, "*all* the poems about your family, including the one about you and Elizabeth, are definitely *bad*. I do not think you ought to publish them...the poems are composed of unassimilated details...The free verse, arbitrary and without rhythm reflects a lack of imaginative focus." Square this with Rasula's arguments if you like, but you'll be doing a lot of tap-dancing. I have plenty of critical things to say about Lowell's poetry, but a puppet he was not. -m. According to louis stroffolino: > > Henry's write about Rasula's argument that LOWELL is puppet > (but then i don't think Rasula should be singled out for > the such inside/outide rigid polarities; after all this > is the land of STAR WARS and all that)..... > cs > > On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Henry Gould wrote: > > > Mark, I agree with you that the very best thing about WAX MUSEUM is the > > in-depth research & subtle grasp of what was at stake & all the various > > debates that went on over that 40 yrs. Just a couple of reiterations: > > I don't agree that it's silly to summarize his take on R. Lowell as a > > "puppet" of the New Critics - he goes to great length to show that that is > > EXACTLY what Lowell was - both in his literary politics & his writing > > itself - here's a sample quote: "He was _the_ poet prepared, golem-like, > > by the founders of New Criticism, programmed as it were to produce the > > poems that would confirm for a contemporary audience that their _tastes_ > > (as honed by the curriculum of _Understanding Poetry_) could handle the > > new poetry as readily as the old." > > This is just one quote among MANY. And he handles the Vendler wax > > very similarly. But it's a complex book - he molds the wax on all sides > > at various places presenting Lowell as uncannily "self-fashioned" and at > > other places as the puppet; he lambasts New Criticism but praises it for > > bring poetry per se front & center; his final section dealing with what > > he characterizes (following Virilio & others) society as a state of > > total & unacknowledged war, and arguing that mass corporate media > > technology has utterly debased the public sphere - his final section > > is a jeremiad which sounds strangely like the attacks the Fugitive New > > Critics made 50 years before on industrial modernity. > > > > As far as the Wax Museum metaphor, I don't think you can discount it as > > mere metaphor, since the total-suspicion critique permeates this analysis > > in the later part of the book. His evocation of the power of war, its > > deep connection with communication technologies, and the effect of all this > > on public & cultural life especially in the US, is very powerful: it seems > > "dated", but the frightening thing is that this datedness seems an integral > > aspect of the US as a whole - this is the wax-museum-preservation effect. > > It's a good monster movie - the US public as zombie-fodder of their > > television screens & day jobs. > > > > Nevertheless I still finally read it as a partial melodrama. The public sphere > > is changing fast, becoming more internationalized & contentious at the same > > time; what art & poetry have to offer is not a "take-over" of those mass > > instruments of control but an international imaginative reconstruction of > > social relations, which comes from the mass rather than the mass media. > > > > As with a lot of these historical studies, the latter more contemporary > > sections seem more rushed & disappointing - this is probably a wax effect > > too. I found a lot of special pleading for language poetry, but curiously, > > in the context of the "total war" era theme, & the evocation of so much > > social waste & despair as its outcome, I was more impressed by one line (70s) > > from Robert Bly as an example of political-poetic reality than the whole > > fanfare for what language poetry was supposedly doing. the line was: > > "We all feel like tires being run down roads under heavy cars". For all > > the special pleading about language poetry's 1-2 punch of theory & practice, > > what seems missing is the fusion of the two in a yes resonant speech. > > > > - Henry Gould > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:24:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: Poetix programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria Damon wrote: > At 8:02 AM +0000 7/17/98, toddbaron wrote: > >It sounds like the group consensus is--paraphrased--so far--that a > >poetics dept. doesn't really affect the poets involved! Otherthan the > >standard--I studied this and studied that! I wonder...what about the > >idea of beiung in large groups of poets and poet-teachers--and readers!? > >Isn't this a different world than one re-enters after grad? > > this consensus seems to me to underestimate the power and varieties of > "influence." of course people would claim to not be influenced by their > poetics department; even in a post-structuralist world people have some > investment in their own "originality," or at least might not see the > influence of anything as banal as an institution. Todd, Maria, et al: I didn't mean to imply lack of influence. Rather, the influence is quite varied and not necessarily corresponding directly to the public image of the program. And the influence goes beyond the program itself. For instance, I've been influenced greatly by Anselm Hollo -- but also influenced by Rachel Levitsky, whose work is very different from what one might consider the Naropa canon. And my experience may not be representative. By the time one gets to grad school, I hope, one has learned to glean what one wants to from a situation, rather than simply ingesting and regurgitating. I'm sure my influences elsewhere would have been equally different and unpredictable. Maybe someone could get a grant to attend graduate writing programs at numerous schools and document the effects on their own writing :-{) Laura W. -- Laura Wright Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 * * * * * * "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan * * * * * * "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 13:05:29 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: teaching poetry network... In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:14:28 -0400 from I appreciate that, Dan. See me after class about your paper on "Boston Whalers : Small Craft Poetry Fishing Vessels off the Argentinian Coast". I think we may be able to "place" it in American Poetry Review [letters section]. - Prof. Gould p.s. from now on, call me Doc! p.p.s. Darn it! should have back-channeled this one - sorry, class! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 12:43:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: teaching poetry network... In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980717151428.0073ecac@po7.mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well said, though do we all deserve the abuse (humorous to be sure) of the last coupla sentences. At 11:14 AM -0400 7/17/98, daniel bouchard wrote: >Henry, or Hank, or buddy--whatever: > >You have read poetry widely. You love to talk about it. You have a high >level of sophistication in discussing it. You have a sense of humor >discussing it. You feel comfortable bringing theory into the discussion too, >but do not allow it to eclipse the "primary text." You refrain from >employing the careful academic buzzwords that often litter poetic >"discourse." You are usually bullshit-free. You're not afraid of looking >like an ass. (Not at all.) In fact, listening to you talk about poetry makes >me often want to seek out new work I haven't yet read. You make me feel like >I have a lot of work to do but don't make me feel like an idiot for feeling >so. And you have nothing really to gain from any of this. Therefore, I find >it astounding that Christine Bustany, or any student, or any person, could >mistake you for a university professor. > >Hope to see you this weekend. > >daniel bouchard > > > > >At 10:55 AM 7/17/98 EDT, Henry Gould wrote: >>Dear poetics, maybe some teachers among you could help out here. Do I >>really seem SO professorial? What is this prof crap? and WHAT website? >>I-am-under-the-control-of-an-electron-named-Crispin... - Zombie Gould >> >>----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >>Dear Prof. Gould, >> >>I have been searching the internet trying to find information on >>teaching poetry to secondary school students and fell upon you website. >>I am a student of Brown University and presently working in paris as an >>in > > > ><<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >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, 17 Jul 1998 13:48:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: puppets in the main stream In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well Henry, i know where ya stand vis-a-vis that group (which isn't a group, in any meaningful sense, in contemporary rhetoric and baiting...so i refuse to use "their" L name)........ "Special pleading"?? No i don't think so. But i know how you folks with a narrower interest in form-structures go out of your way to carry out "special bashing"!! (Thus my public stance, that the "L" name belong mostly to y'all on the contra-L barricades, and isn't really useful to folks who are actually *reading* the stuff....) So, no, i think JR is quite fair and certainly doesn't engage in "special pleading".. Your riposte about Lowell appears on the face of it more convincing. I'm willing to grant you that round, in a sense, because the very highly-charged (but very accurate) languange JR uses does indeed justify the term you used in paraphrasing him...I still think he doesn't mean to say, that Lowell was a puppet, as i understand the term..Only in the sense that say Reagan (not the world's most lucid or functional human being) was a "puppet" for other forces. If so, Ronnie was a very *powerful* puppet, and had and used real volition to initiate real evil..In a similar way, i think JR reads Lowell as able to rise to the po-world heights becasue various things about him made him the perfect embodiment of NewCrit values..But once near the heights, he had his own impact on the poetry world, and certainly achieved the sccess and fame he very much craved; in that sense, he was (and i think in JR's eyes was) an autonomous actor out to get things for himself..and (like the great Rondini) he got 'em. In that sense i stand by my original point that JR's reading of RL does not really reduce the latter to a "puppet." marionettely, mp ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 13:51:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: teaching poetry network... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The apparent abuse is not intended for anyone on this list (that I am aware), out of the context of the smiling-good-time-fun for which I am re-nouned. Altho, I reserve the right to contradict myself at a moment's notice. - db At 12:43 PM 7/17/98 -0600, Maria Damon wrote: >well said, though do we all deserve the abuse (humorous to be sure) of the >last coupla sentences. > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 17 Jul 1998 11:04:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: poetics and l.a. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In regards to Todd's statement, basically this is a complaint I hear from all of the poets in L.A. Everyone feels displaced here. Personally I like that feeling! Very Nat West!! Los Angeles is not about dialogue. It is about action and promotion. And one can't be angry at the L.A. Fest. They are what they are! Imagine a poetry conference in Las Vegas. Well L.A. is not that far off. Plus poetry will always be small compared to other arts. This is neither a good or bad thing. Yes the same faces show up at the readings. But they are nice faces! And L.A. is not really a community except for the movie biz... and of course various gangs, art dealers, and lonely ex & current Art Directors for non-profit org. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 14:03:02 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: puppets in the main stream In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 17 Jul 1998 13:48:08 -0400 from Mark, the Lowell puppet or not-puppet issue is not that interesting in itself; I pointed it out as an example of what seemed more questionable about WAX, which is, for a lack of a better phrase coming to me, the "total suspicion" theory of social reality; Lowell is a puppet because EVERYTHING is under a form of "control", and the State is ONLY a form of control. My view is the state is a form of organization, that moving from monarchy to democracy was an advance, that those who fought for democracy didn't die in vain, that there is a long way to go - and Rasula's critique of war, manipulation, and conformity is a step forward - but to say government is pure malevolence and control, and that therefore culture, museums, poems, and people fall like puppet-dominoes - well, I say that's stretching it. It's like what I said about his "diorama" effect in his own museum : location is everything; if you can show how the whole culture is duped by evil forces of control then your heroes in the alternative poetry world only seem more heroic; and as I tried to point out I think Rasula really shows how great that resistant tradition is!! But I am here to remind that the left and its poets is capable of distortion and mental blinders too, of demeaning and belittling what they don't understand; and that the most desolate cultures are those built on fantasies of victory over the "enemy" actually being FULFILLED - with all the littered corpses of the vanquished foe lying about under the monuments whose languages they can no longer decipher. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 12:59:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: interior decorating In-Reply-To: <35ABF8E4.66B6@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII RE: Moving Borders: Todd you're right. Neidecker's poem is GREAT & "major" & certainly gave me cause to refigure her place in my mental lit history. I'm still not sure she "belongs" in the anthology to the exclusion of other "forgotten women" (Kyger? I don't have the anth with me but I think she might've been left out). Any sort of lineage -- the sort histories and anthologies try to construct -- is necessarily problematic. I know Margy Sloan must've struggled and she does make a compelling case for her inclusion. I'm just glad Neidecker's in though, I'm not complaining. (Maybe this is an "uncritical" typically 2nd wave feminist response -- just being *glad* for more women writers -- and am I oldfashioned/we're *beyond* that? The fact that this text is just now recovered, after Neidecker's resuscitation several years ago, seems to suggest the contrary.) I do think MB is sort of the come-lately Allen's New American Poetryesque come-uppance long overdue yet timely nonetheless. It probably couldn't have been done so wonderfully volumnuously at a previous date. (and your prompt, Todd, is long overdue too. Thanks for bringing it up!) But what I found Most Compelling was the "statements of Poetics" section (as Don Allen called it in his anthology). I'd come across a lot of poetry by most of these poets (thanks by and large I must say to Peter Gannick -- many of those included are widely published, but many others are primarily potes & poets poets -- Diane Ward, Jean Day, Maureen Owen -- or at least p&p has made them more accessible). I wish there were more "statements"! Here was an opportunity to read "poetics" by many who'd written such things for say Poetics Journal or In The American Tree -- but otherwise hard to find. Encountering Carla Harryman and Tina Darragh, for example -- again two whose poetry (plays etc) I knew -- was and is a thrill. Linda Russo On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > Any responses to Margy Sloan's MOVING BORDERS ANTHOLOGY--since we've > talked of the damned Millenium--which never seems to come? I believe > THIS is the anthology that I want to reread and that matters. If for > nothing else but Margy's immense intro and Neidecker's amazing "lots" > poem that opens the text. THis is a GREAT text! > > Tb (ReMaP) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 15:28:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: global branding & T&W In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:01 PM -0400 7/17/98, Jordan Davis wrote: >Sylvester -- > >Yes, Poets & Writers is terrific to find out which student of whom won >what prize, and to find out which prizes are about to be given out to >which people from where, or how to sign a book, but if you want >information about teaching writing and reading to K-12 students (or >college, for that matter), you more likely want to talk to Teachers & >Writers. > >Toll free 1-888-BOOKS-TW, >or http://www.twc.org >or info@twc.org > >Hotcha -- >Jordan Davis Oh my god, a mind failure of major proportions. That's what I meant, of course. It's been over 9o here several days & I'm melting. I'll send a correction Thanks. S. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 23:09:54 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetix programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit thanksLaura E. Wright wrote: > > Maria Damon wrote: > > > At 8:02 AM +0000 7/17/98, toddbaron wrote: > > >It sounds like the group consensus is--paraphrased--so far--that a > > >poetics dept. doesn't really affect the poets involved! Otherthan the > > >standard--I studied this and studied that! I wonder...what about the > > >idea of beiung in large groups of poets and poet-teachers--and readers!? > > >Isn't this a different world than one re-enters after grad? > > > > this consensus seems to me to underestimate the power and varieties of > > "influence." of course people would claim to not be influenced by their > > poetics department; even in a post-structuralist world people have some > > investment in their own "originality," or at least might not see the > > influence of anything as banal as an institution. > > Todd, Maria, et al: > I didn't mean to imply lack of influence. Rather, the influence is quite > varied and not necessarily corresponding directly to the public image of the > program. And the influence goes beyond the program itself. For instance, I've > been influenced greatly by Anselm Hollo -- but also influenced by Rachel > Levitsky, whose work is very different from what one might consider the > Naropa canon. And my experience may not be representative. By the time one > gets to grad school, I hope, one has learned to glean what one wants to from > a situation, rather than simply ingesting and regurgitating. I'm sure my > influences elsewhere would have been equally different and unpredictable. > Maybe someone could get a grant to attend graduate writing programs at > numerous schools and document the effects on their own writing :-{) > > Laura W. > -- > You're right--ok then--here's question: dumb as it sounds: why would one get a degree in Poetics? Against ALL odds I've formed a teaching career--but Robert Duncan used to say--"you're not getting a job out of this..." and so--aside from th knowledge--aside from the study--why a degreed program? Black Mountain--while degreed--turnd out few "degreed" writers--but they did not care! Tb ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 23:26:13 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: interior decorating MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit yes--margy did work hard! almost to the exclusion--NO--to the exclusion of all else in her life. She said in her statement exactly why there are folks there and some folks not--and the Neidecker piece seems to be explained beautifully. No, we not beyond any discussion that continues to be one. Lately all sorts of news on the radio (KPFK here) about post-feminist ideologies and--to my mind--we need more more more! The entire thing (and I live in a "hip-hyped city") about RETRO crap from the seventies that mostly benefit men: strip joints--martinis--cigars--steaks--causes me to URP and feel as if all the work done prior has falled into NOWHERE. These "kids" and their dang styles--don't they know they'll die from 'em? --my parents did! . But seriously--I am certain that this anthology came out at specifically the most important time. I urge everyone to buy it. Margy deserves the biggest applause. Yes, other anthologies are out there--but I deny anyone to find one with this gaze--this field of force. thansk for replying-- Others? Tb (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 15:26:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Suspicion and the State In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i dunno--- Quite a few people have posted on the list about Rasula's book in the last two years; very few of us saw in the book what you see (that's my impression); .... In a way it sounds much more exciting and interesting, in your reading, than the book i remember... How about other folks who have read Rasula's Wax Museum? Do you-all agree with Henry that it is characterized by "total suspicion" as a theory of social reality? That it's paranoid about the State as a force of control?? Lurid and compelling terms. Much as i loved the book, i don't recall it's being **that** interesting! mark p. @lanta On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Henry wrote: > Mark, the Lowell puppet or not-puppet issue is not that interesting in itself; > I pointed it out as an example of what seemed more questionable about WAX, > which is, for a lack of a better phrase coming to me, the "total suspicion" > theory of social reality; Lowell is a puppet because EVERYTHING is under > a form of "control", and the State is ONLY a form of control. My view is the > state is a form of organization, that moving from monarchy to democracy was > an advance, that those who fought for democracy didn't die in vain, that there > is a long way to go - and Rasula's critique of war, manipulation, and > conformity is a step forward - but to say government is pure malevolence > and control, and that therefore culture, museums, poems, and people > fall like puppet-dominoes - well, I say that's stretching it. It's like > what I said about his "diorama" effect in his own museum : location is > everything; if you can show how the whole culture is duped by evil > forces of control then your heroes in the alternative poetry world > only seem more heroic; and as I tried to point out I think Rasula > really shows how great that resistant tradition is!! But I am here to > remind that the left and its poets is capable of distortion and > mental blinders too, of demeaning and belittling what they don't > understand; and that the most desolate cultures are those built on > fantasies of victory over the "enemy" actually being FULFILLED - > with all the littered corpses of the vanquished foe lying about > under the monuments whose languages they can no longer decipher. > - Henry Gould > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 16:34:19 -0400 Reply-To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: forgotten women MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >>Todd you're right. Niedecker's poem is GREAT & "major" & certainly gave me cause to refigure her place in my mental lit history. I'm still not sure she "belongs" in the anthology to the exclusion of other "forgotten women" (Kyger? I don't have the anth with me but I think she might've been left out).<<< One of the things I'm liking about the new Spicer bio is the way it shows Kyger as poet and participant in a blossoming poetry scene--a fuller sense of her, not just as "Gary Snyder's wife" (or "ex" etc.) & thus, by extension, the SF/Berkeley renaissance as about more than just its famous men. Helen Adam also gets a fuller treatment than she has elsewhere. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 16:31:58 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Todd wrote: <> i think it's always at risk mr barron. that's the fun part of it. tho i think i recognize the situation you're describing. group thingness that has no permeable boundaries. i found this situation when i lived in nyc. ear inn people would not go to newyorican, poetry project people would not go to segue, etc etc. and then you could easily map the people who wouldn't go certain places with the way they wrote. ie. they wrote in ONE rather, as blake would have it, newtonian way. but then also you would run into the more gregarious types who would go to everything, yet still somehow maintain a close circle of friends and "some" kind of approach to poetry that was unique to who they were. i guess i mean their poetry had a sense of honesty and diversity. as easy as it is to leave d. rothschild out of anthologies and dismiss him as a crank who doesn't know the english language, he is one of these. i salute his various field. Bill Luoma ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 14:39:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: Poetix programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------DC2266D225D845CE1CCB5FFF" --------------DC2266D225D845CE1CCB5FFF Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit toddbaron wrote: > > > You're right--ok then--here's question: dumb as it sounds: why would one > get a degree in Poetics? Against ALL odds I've formed a teaching > career--but Robert Duncan used to say--"you're not getting a job out of > this..." and so--aside from th knowledge--aside from the study--why a > degreed program? Black Mountain--while degreed--turnd out few "degreed" > writers--but they did not care! > > Tb Hm. This gets really personal, so I'll speak for myself. This also relates to the various poetry and money threads of the recent past, does it not? I went to music school and then poetics. Neither time did I expect a career to arise directly from the education. I think education solely as a means to a job, while practically unavoidable today, is a recent concept, springing from education no longer being available only to the financial/social/cultural elite. Maybe my path marks me as an elitist? At any rate, music was even worse, because it's so demanding (time, energy, presentable attire, instrument, sheet music, etc.) and when one works in the field, it's usually demeaning (bad music, disrespect, etc.). At least with poetry, one can write late at night and the neighbors don't complain. And the tools are a lot cheaper. So, why go to school? I did it because it was a way to focus for 2 years on my writing, and take my own work more seriously. A friend once said "I bought 2 years to write." Also, and more to the point, I had a blast. This was fun. I got to read and write and call it work. I once had a roommate who collected "useless degrees" -- he had an MA in theology and was working on one in psychology. He was a lot of fun to talk to, and he made a living as a carpenter. Yours in impracticality, Laura W(hy not) -- Laura Wright Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 * * * * * * "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan * * * * * * "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein --------------DC2266D225D845CE1CCB5FFF Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit  

toddbaron wrote:

>
You're right--ok then--here's question: dumb as it sounds: why would one
get a degree in Poetics? Against ALL odds I've formed a teaching
career--but Robert Duncan used to say--"you're not getting a job out of
this..." and so--aside from th knowledge--aside from the study--why a
degreed program? Black Mountain--while degreed--turnd out few "degreed"
writers--but they did not care!

Tb

Hm. This gets really personal, so I'll speak for myself. This also relates to the various poetry and money threads of the recent past, does it not?

I went to music school and then poetics. Neither time did I expect a career to arise directly from the education. I think education solely as a means to a job, while practically unavoidable today, is a recent concept, springing from education no longer being available only to the financial/social/cultural elite. Maybe my path marks me as an elitist?

At any rate, music was even worse, because it's so demanding (time, energy, presentable attire, instrument, sheet music, etc.) and when one works in the field, it's usually demeaning (bad music, disrespect, etc.). At least with poetry, one can write late at night and the neighbors don't complain. And the tools are a lot cheaper.

So, why go to school? I did it because it was a way to focus for 2 years on my writing, and take my own work more seriously. A friend once said "I bought 2 years to write." Also, and more to the point, I had a blast. This was fun. I got to read and write and call it work. I once had a roommate who collected "useless degrees" -- he had an MA in theology and was working on one in psychology. He was a lot of fun to talk to, and he made a living as a carpenter.

Yours in impracticality,
Laura W(hy not)
--
Laura Wright
Library Assistant
Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute
2130 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80302
(303) 546-3547
 * * * * * *
"All music is music..."  -- Ted Berrigan
     *      *      *     *     *       *
"It is very much like it"  -- Gertrude Stein
  --------------DC2266D225D845CE1CCB5FFF-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 17:02:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: forgotten women Comments: To: Gwyn McVay In-Reply-To: <35AFB549.72C1F46B@osf1.gmu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Didn't Michael Davidson give Kyger quite a lot of respectful attention in her own right, in his book, the San Fancisco Renaissance?? It has been some years since i read it, may or may not be recalling it accurately.......... mp On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > >>Todd you're right. Niedecker's poem is GREAT & "major" & certainly > gave me cause to refigure her place in my mental lit history. I'm still not > sure she "belongs" in the anthology to the exclusion of other > "forgotten women" (Kyger? I don't have the anth with me but I think she > might've been left out).<<< > > One of the things I'm liking about the new Spicer bio is the way it shows > Kyger as poet and participant in a blossoming poetry scene--a fuller sense of > her, not just as "Gary Snyder's wife" (or "ex" etc.) > & thus, by extension, the SF/Berkeley renaissance as about more than just its > famous men. Helen Adam also gets a fuller treatment than she has elsewhere. > > Gwyn > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 02:20:49 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maz881@AOL.COM wrote: > > Todd wrote: > > < "groups"-when groups are thought to exist where there are none--etc. >> > > i think it's always at risk mr barron. that's the fun part of it. tho i think > i recognize the situation you're describing. group thingness that has no > permeable boundaries. i found this situation when i lived in nyc. ear inn > people would not go to newyorican, poetry project people would not go to > segue, etc etc. and then you could easily map the people who wouldn't go > certain places with the way they wrote. ie. they wrote in ONE rather, as blake > would have it, newtonian way. > > but then also you would run into the more gregarious types who would go to > everything, yet still somehow maintain a close circle of friends and "some" > kind of approach to poetry that was unique to who they were. i guess i mean > their poetry had a sense of honesty and diversity. as easy as it is to leave > d. rothschild out of anthologies and dismiss him as a crank who doesn't know > the english language, he is one of these. i salute his various field. > > Bill Luoma I would say tho--that the "fun" I'm afraid is not truly fun for the aesthetic and principal of the politic--that said--I spend many years in Show Business--and cruelty never formed--nor did borders there--any work to be pursued--only to be conquered. Tb ReMap ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 16:02:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: poetics and l.a. -Reply somebody wrote, and my system here doesn't identify everyone very well, so sorry, somebody, but as follows: \ "In regards to Todd's statement, basically this is a complaint I hear from all of the poets in L.A. Everyone feels displaced here. Personally I like that feeling! Very Nat West!! Los Angeles is not about dialogue. It is about action and promotion. And one can't be angry at the L.A. Fest. They are what they are! Imagine a poetry conference in Las Vegas. Well L.A. is not that far off. Plus poetry will always be small compared to other arts. This is neither a good or bad thing. Yes the same faces show up at the readings." to which i must add (if douglas messerli hasn't already weighed in here) that l.a. is the center of avant-garde publishing in america. sun & moon is doing 50 books a year (50 BOOKS A YEAR!), with an interest mainly in getting these books into print, as published objects (of which one, i have to say, is mime). other small presses, understandably, take another tack, trying to publish many, many fewer books and publishing them with more attention, perhaps, while douglas, it seems to me, is commited to getting these books into the public world, where they can live and be found by those so motivated. now, to hear people complaining about the scene out there, being too intimate and not public enough, or, on the other hand, that it is all about "action and promotion" : i wonder what in the hell people want. Douglas is getting the work done, at great risk and with tremendous toil, not to mention the joy that he will telll you about if you happen to talk to him. He is doing his salon, it is ongoing, it is tireless, and so, it seems, is he; whoever is doing the "action and promotion" that is complained about, well i don''t know. But let's be clear: the avant-garde, risk-taking major publisher of innovative work, in translation, third world and otherwise is on Wilshire Blvd. And you can go there to hear work and talk and have a wine. Or two. What was the LA poetry scene, perhaps someone can say, when S&M was in College Park, Md. something mighty less, I would guess. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:19:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: [publication announcement] Comments: To: "-->*<--" , Andrea Troolin , Dave Lofquist , arteaga@altavista.net, BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU, bernstei@BWAY.NET, bluebed@hotmail.com, chax@theriver.com, DarraghM@gunet.georgetown.edu, "A. Morris" , 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, rescuefantasy@mailcity.com, SSSCHAEFER@AOL.COM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII After somewhat of a delay, I am happy to be: ANNOUNCING KENNING #2, A NEWSLETTER OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY, POETICS, AND NON FICTION WRITING. Featuring: A. L. Nielsen, Emily Wilson, John M. Bennett, Keston Sutherland, Ron Silliman, Alfred Arteaga, Andrew Levy, Katy Lederer, Alice Notley, Taylor Brady, Liz Waldner, Paul Silvia, Jen Hofer, Heather Fuller and Rod Smith, and Spencer Selby. A subscription beginning with this most current issue is $9.50. You will receive a hand printed portfolio/slip case to accomadate the loose leaf pages which comprise issues 2 and 3. A single copy of issue 2 is available for $5.00. Non-subscribers receive staple-stitched editions. In the coming weeks, Kenning #2 will appear on the shelves of Cody's & City Lights in the bay area, Bridge Street Books in D.C. As many of you know, you may place orders with the kind people at Bridge Street via e-mail. In stores, Kenning is staple-stitched, with a hand printed cover of tough stock paper for that commodified tactile sensation. Anyone willing to help distribute Kenning is welcome to contact me at this e-mail address to discuss your ideas. Kenning is a not-for-profit, non-institutional, out-of-pocket enterprise based on the notion that poetics is an integral facet of progressive social discourse. Forthcoming issues will include the work of Hoa Nguyen, Charles Bernstein, Lisa Jarnot, Ida Yoshinaga, Peter Ganick, Daniel Bouchard, and many more. The premier issue of Kenning is available for a limited time, $4.00 from the editor, featuring: Mark Wallace, John Kinsella, Daniel Zimmerman, Juliana Spahr, Summi Kaipa, Michael Angelo Tata, John Lowther, Ryan Whyte, and Stephen Ellis. You might also check for it now at the book sellers listed above. Mail order from the editor, Patrick F. Durgin, to whom you should make out your checks, and use the address below. I look forward to hearing from you. | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:22:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Susan Schultz? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi. Sorry to clog the list with this, but I'm trying to track down Susan Schultz, who has not been responding to e-mail lately. If anyone knows how to contact her, I'd appreciate your help. I have to bring something to her attention a.s.a.p. Back channel please. thanks Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 15:37:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: never mind the canon, here's COMBO! -Reply what is a "michael magee journal"? i just don't now it. maybe i should. are there others out there, other m.m.j.'s? >>> UB Poetics discussion group 07/17/98 10:04am >>> SPLITTING CORNERS PUBLICATIONS presents... ...a HUB ROOM production... ...of a Michael Magee journal... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 20:59:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Kyger/Renaissance Comments: To: Poetics List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark P., should have been more clear, I didn't mean in *that* book, which is quite fine, but more in a nebulous "popular concept" or less thorough print sources--no diss on anyone else was intended, just kudos for the presentation of women writers and artists in the Spicer bio. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 17:59:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: la scene/ vispo book - writers forum 750th publication Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" to tell you the truth this whole discussion makes me feel so much better because often after a poetry evening where eight-twelve people attend i go home telling myself billy why do you even bother. then i think of far off hollywood where all the millionaires, speilberg, stallone, woody allen, coppola, shirley mclaine, lina wertmuller, max von sydow, arnold, they've all got a poet or two on the payroll, one for the limo and one for the poolside, i'd be a poolside poet, lighting the cigars of sly's girlfriends, reciting the communist poems of Pasolini in the original Italian. I've heard it was becoming a trend in other cities, if you dined in Le Cirque you just had to have a poet or you didn't rate. the attorney general it is rumored is looking into putting a poet or two on the payroll, just because we work for the government doesn't mean we aren't millionaires he jested, and millionaires must have poets or whats a million mean. maybe defense and health will follow and establish rival poets in their baileywickes, the FBI poet will write poems in bulletholes and the cia poet in blood shipped fresh daily. Milosz @ Pentagon! Ackermann @ Environment! Forche@state! Mark my words there's going to be lots of jobs for poets, so study hard boys and girls and learn a second language. the millionaire's tongue, billy little visible otherance billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 Yeah, I stole from the treasury of human folly I spent it all on you, baby... don't mention it Duncan McNaughton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:38:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: poetics and l.a. -Reply Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >now, to hear people complaining about the scene out there, being too >intimate and not public enough, or, on the other hand, that it is all about >"action and promotion" : i wonder what in the hell people want. Douglas >is getting the work done, at great risk and with tremendous toil, not to >mention the joy that he will telll you about if you happen to talk to him. He >is doing his salon, it is ongoing, it is tireless, and so, it seems, is he; >whoever is doing the "action and promotion" that is complained about, >well i don''t know. But let's be clear: the avant-garde, risk-taking major >publisher of innovative work, in translation, third world and otherwise is >on Wilshire Blvd. And you can go there to hear work and talk and have a >wine. Or two. What was the LA poetry scene, perhaps someone can >say, when S&M was in College Park, Md. something mighty less, I would >guess. And I might add he has a great bookstore at that location too, as well as a nice website. Sun & Moon rocks! ciao, tosh ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:46:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: la scene/ vispo book - writers forum 750th publication Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Billy understands the business of poetry like no one. And one who lives in Los Angeles, he's got the poet's life down pat. Oh by the way, has anyone on this list seen HENRY FOOL? ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 18:57:27 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Meyerson radical on relativity. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Identification thus eliminates time from the account of cause and effect. All questions about the simultaneity or succesion of cause and effect disappear, for time really means nothing at all in a rational account of the world. The timelessness of the logical necessity which we have already noted in deductive systems is here once more. The effect is the explication of the cause; it is the revelation of the implication of the cause. The mere unfolding of history is as unfruitful in enrichment of that earlier cause as is the process of inference with respect to implication of the cause. The range of being which we call "the actual," which is never apart from time, is explained by identification, which eliminates time entirely from the account. And thus again the crucial problem which occupies us appears: How can the permanent be significantly employed in an account of the changing? Meyerson pushes his investigation of the identifying tendency of reason in science to a stage beyond this. Not only does rational explaining ultimately eliminate time; it finally eliminates qualitative diversity and leaves us with bare homogeneous space."---from Explanation and Reality in the Philosophy of Emile Meyerson by Thomas R. Kelly---Carlo Parcelli---(These quotes are supplied by Carlo Parcelli and not R. Gancie who is innocent in the whole matter.) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 01:35:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Difficult and Delicate Matter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Difficult and Delicate Matter Well, I have a good deal of diary material from Kathy Acker, 1974 and earlier; some of it is in the form of letters or texts directly to me, and some of it is revised carbon copy, and some of it is mimeograph. None of this has been published. So I write to someone I know who writes to someone he knows and finds out I cannot in fact quote from the words of the diary, which belong to the estate of Kathy Acker, although I can paraphrase the words which she has written. But then, who can check up to make sure I am paraphrasing accurately? For example, if I write, that Kathy says on March 1, 1974, that she wishes me dead, then I am writing a fabrication; there is no such state- ment. Which is not to say that Kathy did not wish me dead on that date - only that I do not have such material in my possession. What Kathy does say is that I am her father and she wants to experiment to see how close she can get to me. She also states that I help her, al- though later I am sure she would not have felt this way. But what are these statements, in light of the fact that they are neither quotations nor content that you may ascertain for yourself? To be sure, if you visit me in Brooklyn, then I might deign to show you the original material, and you could decide for yourself, providing I did not fabricate such as well - forging a signature, duplicating, etc., from texts I composed for whatever reason. Kathy says she doesn't understand who she is and doesn't understand a lot of my writing, and I wonder, would she understand this text and ap- prove of it? It is easy to circumscribe, literally, the dead, who are given and given up without recourse; mourning is a moment astride the real, returning the world to itself, and these textual gifts back to a present life, harboring and framing the past. But this is not about mourning. Kathy says I understand everything she writes and that she understands what I say directly to her. She says she feels as if we're twins joined together, as if I'm protecting her. She continues speaking about power, about my taking power from her, which later became an issue between us, appearing later in the videos we did together (and within what jurisdiction are those spoken words now, as well as those words written on the screen, as well as those unspoken words in her eyes?). She ends this particular section by saying she doesn't want parents, and wants to know what's happening. She's remembering, and describes a white shawl and a red-brown dress, blankets. Then there is half a page of blank space, and she's into a second, carbon-copied part, about Peter, with a different title as well. Could I quote the different title? I would choose not to, insisting on paraphrase. Kathy was trying to map out her consciousness; _she says so, in so many words._ I attempt to interface with virtual subjects, dreams, ghosts, machines, mournings, technologies, internets, those moments of syncope described by Clement in Syncope, holding itself back in the throat. "temporary loss of consciousness from fall of blood-pressure," and I feel comfortable quoting from the living Concise Oxford; so many texts begin with dictionary definitions, and this one ends with one. ________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 06:33:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: assume the position! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" up here where it is not known (knot-node) before hand or be forehead what might comb itself out the nothing-nest swooner or rate her a swell-ass hem an article or particle of clothing in on the flavor-writes how swarming might o' could o' had the versed part last wronger 'til now new and the so-culled end to begin beaconly rest next text as well as texterior http://www.inch.com/~abz/ http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/3361/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 06:36:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: EXCESSive multi-directionally yet well-aimed onglowing ecologically dynamic imbalance: the good vectors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" itching aching I-Ching location left up top where before the sign for void not literally nothing or no thing although there might well have pen nothing the air itself not even around nor with write-angles quantum energies fed back into wakefulness when needed a particular book off the shelf concreteness of fuel-type step to aid in not falling asleep a slip into a slip of mad gladness thinly concealed by product placement the sort of opportunism questionable under these illuminating electrical currents an example of translation at every painted entreaty the need of a moment to faintly edit the lyrical insertion wake sure t' lick all post-age invisibles t' stimulate'm to adhere add here its uncountable un-addable richness to what already is everywhere that's anywhere or so-coiled thing the ink-think and the angst-person steamed up http://www.inch.com/~abz/ http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/3361/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 07:17:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: fire-sighed chap-hook gallery 'n' guylery Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" seed the need to get out t' fill screen rhymes with name unmentioned dear free terminal headlamp arsenal the ability to set fire to whatever you like to seethe yourself also go up in blazes 'n' flames the double or multiple multi-pli multi-plea ploy-type(e) toy pipe trouble snowed as heartbeat 'n' heartbeef proof of non- so-signed death the impossible and non-imposeable prefer an ocean-blue sea t' view t.v. through for a change in (self-)programming and thin thenly d' skies-ed return t' non-action as clickly as pose a pill http://www.inch.com/~abz/ http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/3361/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 07:08:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: I'm ba-ack MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The argument about Lowell begin a puppet of the new criticism goes back to Perloff's _The Poetics of Indeterminacy_; there is a nice demonstration of the way in which the early Lowell seeds his work with symbols and paradoxes in anticipation of New Critical classroom exegesis. Of course, calling him a puppet is rather crude--isn't it more of a convergence of interests? The New Critics might be Lowell's puppets just as plausibly. The Rasula analysis of Lowell is devastating and for me irrefutable; this does not mean that Lowell does not transcend his "institutional" role within the wax museum, but I am not the person to ask since my aversion to Lowell's work is tempermental and visceral. I realize he is hugely accomplished and great in his own way--I just can't stand him. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 10:27:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: never mind the canon, here's COMBO! -Reply In-Reply-To: <35AFAB56.E28A.004A.000@MHS> from "Michael Coffey" at Jul 17, 98 03:37:00 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit parody, parody, parody, my friend. -m. According to Michael Coffey: > > what is a "michael magee journal"? i just don't now it. maybe i should. are > there others out there, other m.m.j.'s? > >>> UB Poetics discussion group 07/17/98 10:04am >>> > SPLITTING CORNERS PUBLICATIONS presents... > > > > > ...a HUB ROOM production... > > > > ...of a Michael Magee journal... > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 11:18:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: signing off for a spell... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ok folks, gonna sign off the list for a month or so, leaving chicago for points west... if you need to reach me, please just post my address and i'll try to telnet in once or twice in the coming month... need to give my pinkies/eyes/etc a rest from terminal delights... hey, keep the good vibes flowing!... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 13:52:40 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: LA Lit Orgs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit It seems to me that if place is the problem, it should be simple enough to invade some den of mediocrity. It seems to me that Sun & Moon and Cal Arts have begun a pretty effective invasion of LACMA. What about MOCA? What about the science museum with the 50 foot woman in it? The "Buk. School" is ABOUT self promotion. The performance poets are also _everywhere_. Incommunicado and Manic D and 2.13.61 have done good music industry-style promotion for lit. (as well as celebrity publishing, but well). I think of all the celebs writing books now. By and large, they seem to read at either their local independent bookstore or local B&N rather than do a tour of shopping malls or record stores or whatever. It is a bid for legitimacy. Where promotion is work, to not promote may seem genuine. As for Bel Air and Fifth Avenue, who cares? Except that British Vogue reviews poetry, you know. Here in LA, I'm mostly told, "Oh yeah, I published poetry in Ploughshares, The Harvard Review, got into the Best blah blah of some year, but then, then I started writing for _Blossom_. Now, I don't have to write." Maybe it's not so bad to be here! If you really suck, they'll throw a lot of money at you and you'll stop writing. Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 12:19:08 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded Content-Type: text/plain Hear hear. Enough of these posting on the post-whatever drivel. Let's bring back normative syntax, there's something that never gets formulaic. Better to be bored than provoked. Jolly good, jolly good. .... >Hey, you poets have got the flat disjunctive incomplete sentence down, >which is the main thing by which we experimentalists distinguish between >us and them & what poetry is. The poem as something that started someplace >else in your head you've already forgotten and gets truncated in order to >remember that missing element. Work a little more on the non-rhythm >the boredom the feeling of unexplained angst; learn to throw in some >plangent multisyllabic non-references from a fairly large dictionary; >work on your spatial distances between words and "lines" which are what >shows you are a thoughtful alternative poet patted on the head by major >people like Olson Creeley Duncan or genericnewyorkbeatlanguagepoet - >and they'll put you in an anthology of (Newer) Americans - (the 14th >one - from Urban Bleat Press). >- Henry Gould > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 15:18:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matt Kirschenbaum Subject: Blake Archive's July Update Comments: To: humanist@kcl.ac.uk, H-CLC@h-net.msu.edu, H-MMEDIA@h-net.msu.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The latest news of work completed here at the Blake Archive. Apologies for cross-posting. Please forward as appropriate. Matt K. -- The editors of the William Blake Archive are pleased to announce the publication of six new electronic editions of Blake's illuminated books. They are: _All Religions are One_ copy A _There is No Natural Religion_ copies B, C, G, and L _Milton, a Poem_ copy C Composed and executed in 1788, _All Religions are One_ and _There is No Natural Religion_ are Blake's first works in illuminated printing, though no copy of either work survives from this date. The ten plates of _All Religions_ were followed quickly by twenty _No Natural Religion_ plates in two antithetical sets (a and b series). Only one copy of _All Religions_ is extant, now in the Huntington Library, printed c. 1795 with and in the same style as _There is No Natural Religion_ copy L, the only copy consisting exclusively of the ten b-series of plates, now in The Pierpont Morgan Library. The other twelve recorded copies of this book consist of a mixture of the same eight to twelve plates, which appeared to be merely incomplete sets of proofs until it was discovered that six of these copies were 19th-century reproductions. Once the inauthentic impressions were weeded out, it became apparent that what remained was Blake's selection of a and b plates for an abridged version of the work printed around 1794. We present copies B, C, and G of this twelve-plate work, now in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art, Library of Congress, and The Pierpont Morgan Library, respectively. There are only four copies of _Milton_, Blake's most personal epic. Copy C, from the New York Public Library, was Blake's own copy. Printed c. 1811, it was later reconfigured and renumbered by Blake when he inserted extra plates, which he appears to have done on at least two different occasions. All of these editions have newly edited texts and are all fully searchable for both text and images and supported by the unique Inote and ImageSizer applications described in our previous updates. We now have twenty-two copies of thirteen illuminated books. Over this and next year, we will be adding Blake's last illuminated works, _On Homers Poetry [&] On Virgil_, _The Ghost of Abel_, and _Laocoon_, as well as _Milton_ copy D and _Jerusalem_ copy E. We will also be adding at least six more copies of _Songs of Innocence and of Experience_, two copies of _Songs of Innocence_, five copies of _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, four copies of _The Book of Urizen_, and two copies each of _America, a Prophecy_ and _Europe, a Prophecy_. In addition, work continues on the SGML edition of David V. Erdman's _Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake_. We will continue to post updates on various lists every few months, but readers interested in the progress of the Archive can subscribe to our Blake Update list, which can be found on the Archive's Contents Page. On this page readers will also find that we have opened the top level of the Contributing Institutions Page, which provides contact information and links to institutions participating in the Archive. In the coming months, we plan to include color-coded and linked lists of each institution's entire Blake collection to indicate what is and is not in the Archive and what is forthcoming. Morris Eaves Robert Essick Joseph Viscomi ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 12:43:40 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Content-Type: text/plain I can't help jumping into this, altho' I've never been to L.A. & don't know the scene down there. What Todd describes sounds more like Boulder than what I'd expect of a place like L.A., especially considering Sun & Moon's longstanding presence there. I suspect that outside of "centers" like SF & NYC there's little "popular" audience for alternative poetix; this is a separate issue from the exclusionary tactics one finds all over, & which Todd describes so candidly. What to do, except continue in dialogue, er, dialectics? & After all, isn't that what this list is for? ---Mark DuCharme > >Safdie Joseph wrote: >> >> Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the Wednesday >> night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the only >> "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know >> Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if >> there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, Jack >> Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, >> those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were >> others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but >> really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay Area >> in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? > >I think my bitter mail got lost in the shuffle--but let me simply say >that the poets you mentioned--and this outside of their own work as >writers--have primarily been exclusive in terms of going to others >readings--promoting others work outside of a "pop" and confessionalist >sensibility. That years before when Barrett W. read to an audience of 8 >I was ashamed to be a poet in LA. THat same thing happened to Robert >Duncan year ago--to Fanny Howe recently--etc. Few poets that are listed >in your note suport the work of others besides friends. Yes, I am >bitter--but my job as an editor and teacher is not simply to read and >promote and publish the work of those I like--but to promote and publish >a POETICS that is important. I have published poetry by those whom I >don't think highly of--but whose work I believe deserves to be read! Of >those you mentioned only Paul V. (with whom I started Littoral Books >years ago--along with D, Phillips and Martha Ronk and Lee Hickman) even >show up at the readings that Sun and Moon give--while Douglas M. and >others DO show up at B. B. occasionally! Damn! No compensations besides >the sun! No--a scene is unimportant--a dialectic is of utmost >importance! > >Todd Baron >(ReMap) > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 00:06:08 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: LA Lit Orgs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Catherine Daly wrote: > > It seems to me that if place is the problem, it should be simple enough to > invade some den of mediocrity. It seems to me that Sun & Moon and Cal Arts > have begun a pretty effective invasion of LACMA. What about MOCA? What about > the science museum with the 50 foot woman in it? > > The "Buk. School" is ABOUT self promotion. The performance poets are also > _everywhere_. Incommunicado and Manic D and 2.13.61 have done good music > industry-style promotion for lit. (as well as celebrity publishing, but well). > > I think of all the celebs writing books now. By and large, they seem to read > at either their local independent bookstore or local B&N rather than do a tour > of shopping malls or record stores or whatever. It is a bid for legitimacy. > Where promotion is work, to not promote may seem genuine. > > As for Bel Air and Fifth Avenue, who cares? Except that British Vogue reviews > poetry, you know. Here in LA, I'm mostly told, "Oh yeah, I published poetry > in Ploughshares, The Harvard Review, got into the Best blah blah of some year, > but then, then I started writing for _Blossom_. Now, I don't have to write." > Maybe it's not so bad to be here! If you really suck, they'll throw a lot of > money at you and you'll stop writing. > > Catherine Daly > cadaly@aol.com I think that "infiltration" and subversion is a good idea--but I disagree that Sun and Moon has done so outside of the bookstore that they run. LACMA has a pretty narrative and non-innovational series--Laurel Ann Bogen is running it and she has nothing to do with Sun and Moon--nor--do I think )(know) she reads outside of a linear school. THe "stars" I refered top certainly have a right (and several ornamental lefts) but they read at a series that for years has been sponsered by the ever conservation Poetry of America Foundation--at the Chateau Marmont (the hip place for a martini!) and so I'm afraid they don't really count. (Of course--there's room for all--I'm turning sweet now) BUT No one will throw alot of monet at innovational writers--LA has a rich history of the avante-guarde but not a funded a.g. ! Ribot, Remap, Witz, Rhizome, and the poets reflected in those experiemental**conte,porary**innovation based magazines don't care to publish in Ploughshares/etc--cuz that's not our readership. THose magazines--like the New Yorker--have an investment in narrativity that describes (As Roberts Peters once beautifully stated) the season depicted on the cover! It's not so "bad" here--but--I, broken "record" dismiss the idea that complaining is a negative thing. While other cities support symposums and conferences (well, not the city itself) we can't fathom anything outside of the BOOK FAIR (promotion) at UCLA and the Poetry Fest. We need to learn to expand this here horizon--I, a citizien of this berg--publish here and want to see the daily sunrise reflect more than the sorrid details of one's "self" as reflected in the poems of complaint! Rememeber, Huxley Yeats Isherwood Cage Mann Fitzgerald Duncan, I ALL complained and worked here not to mention the poets such as Doug Messerli, Dennis Phillips, Martha Ronk, Diane Ward, (myself), Paul Vangelisti, Guy Bennett, Fanny Howe, etc still do! Todd Baron (ReMap) ps: this is fun! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 13:20:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: bread & its crumbs-- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tracy, nicely said there! -Elizabeth >There seems to be a storehouse of available public attention that >recycles itself periodically. And, each poet/student lays themselves >out in the field of visibility in such a way that each poet/student >gathers the maximum amount attention that they're capable of (ready >for). The whole field shifts and undulates as people come and go, the >storehouse of public attention rises and falls, the teachers point focus >to one spot, then another. > >Imagine a park. Three people triangulate the perimeter, each with a bag >of bread crumbs. Each toss by the feeders sends the pigeon/poets in >flight, each at their own pace. The flock/herd seems elastic. The >feeding continues. The bread runs out. Then what? > >--trace-- > Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 13:30:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: no subject or I LOVE LA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Tosh I just want to second the general feeling of love for LA as is-- I will mention some things that affected my writing while living there rather briefly in early 90s-- looking at those midcentury architect's buildings, like Neutra, etc--- browsing for ages at BB and S/M--- knowing some people who could actually make a living writing, albeit for the screen -- and I know that last one is really Uncool -- plus, just sitting in those chairs having drinks at LACMA, looking around MOCA --- and the grid of streets over landscape-- it inspired me. x from No-cal, Eliz. ps the professors at CAL-ARTS were nothing but friendly to me in several brief mtgs as the sister of one of their students -- also, they did a 6 person TANGO in honor of their students at graduation!! oh was I jealous -- professors at SFState don't even attend graduation. Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 14:38:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth In-Reply-To: <19980718194340.25023.qmail@hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" These questions of audience are so difficult -- I've struggled with them, in terms of people attending readings and poetics talks, for parts of the last 18 years. Here in Tucson, our audiences, and I'm thinking of various events and series from about 1986 to the present, have ranged widely. Because there is a university here, and a lot of poetry students at that university, we have been able to get 75 people to certain Chax Press or POG-sponsored events in the past. But we've also had our share of events with ten people or less. When our audiences are more than 20, I think that half or more of those audiences are in some way associated with the University of Arizona. When 20 or less, that's not so true. Why does there continue to be great variance in attendance? Is Leslie Scalapino really that much better known than Steve McCaffery? Or Bob Perelman than Michael Davidson? Does it depend on the weather? On quirks of scheduling? I'm sure these audience issues, which in some ways are community-building issues, will continue to bug me -- but I also try to keep the attitude that it's the people there, no matter their numbers, that count, and that allow us (POG these days) to continue presenting such events. I haven't noticed that there's a lot of 'popular' audience for alternative poetics even in SF or NYC, although there is the ability to draw 25 or more people, most of the time -- although, as some have pointed out, and as I've witnessed, not all the time. I've read to one of my largest audiences in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I tend to think, at this time, that it's something of a myth that the audience or production centers for innovative writing are NY and SF -- although those are certainly important points on the map. charles At 12:43 PM 7/18/98 PDT, you wrote: >I can't help jumping into this, altho' I've never been to L.A. & don't >know the scene down there. What Todd describes sounds more like Boulder >than what I'd expect of a place like L.A., especially considering Sun & >Moon's longstanding presence there. I suspect that outside of "centers" >like SF & NYC there's little "popular" audience for alternative poetix; >this is a separate issue from the exclusionary tactics one finds all >over, & which Todd describes so candidly. What to do, except continue >in dialogue, er, dialectics? & After all, isn't that what this list is >for? > >---Mark DuCharme > > > >> >>Safdie Joseph wrote: >>> >>> Todd, Elizabeth -- it's been many years since I helped run the >Wednesday >>> night poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque, but that was really the >only >>> "scene" I ever knew, and still is, I suspect. Do you, though, know >>> Holly Prado, Harry Northrup, Bill Mohr (an L.A. mover and shaker if >>> there ever was one), Phoebe MacAdams, Lewis Macadams, Jim Krusoe, >Jack >>> Grapes, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Phillips, Paul Vangelisti . . . . well, >>> those were only the people I knew and hung out with, but there were >>> others (Dennis Cooper, of course, before his move to New York) -- but >>> really -- I admit it can seem a bit provincial compared to the Bay >Area >>> in terms of poetry, but that's the ONLY contest it loses, isn't it? >> >>I think my bitter mail got lost in the shuffle--but let me simply say >>that the poets you mentioned--and this outside of their own work as >>writers--have primarily been exclusive in terms of going to others >>readings--promoting others work outside of a "pop" and confessionalist >>sensibility. That years before when Barrett W. read to an audience of 8 >>I was ashamed to be a poet in LA. THat same thing happened to Robert >>Duncan year ago--to Fanny Howe recently--etc. Few poets that are listed >>in your note suport the work of others besides friends. Yes, I am >>bitter--but my job as an editor and teacher is not simply to read and >>promote and publish the work of those I like--but to promote and >publish >>a POETICS that is important. I have published poetry by those whom I >>don't think highly of--but whose work I believe deserves to be read! Of >>those you mentioned only Paul V. (with whom I started Littoral Books >>years ago--along with D, Phillips and Martha Ronk and Lee Hickman) even >>show up at the readings that Sun and Moon give--while Douglas M. and >>others DO show up at B. B. occasionally! Damn! No compensations besides >>the sun! No--a scene is unimportant--a dialectic is of utmost >>importance! >> >>Todd Baron >>(ReMap) >> > > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 17:32:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: forgotten women Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark Prejsnar wrote-- >Didn't Michael Davidson give Kyger quite a lot of respectful attention in >her own right, in his book, the San Fancisco Renaissance?? > This is Kevin Killian. Mark, you're 100% right, and even better than Michael's version of Kyger is his reading of Helen Adam. Honestly I think it must have been the first account of her work to take it seriously and to place it into the context of the currents from which, at first glance, she and her work seem so distant. [Michael Davidson, "The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-century" (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989)] Gwyn, thank you for your kind words about the book Lew Ellingham and I have written on Spicer "Poet Be Like God". Where I disagreed with Michael D is in his underlying thesis, I don't think it's ever stated explicitly, that Spicer's fears of women and their sexuality precluded him and his circle from supporting and engaging in the work of the women poets of the period, and also the great female modernists of the 20th century that preceded his own work. Michael and I were both lucky in that Kyger's papers are so marvelously available to the public at the grand Archive for New Poetry at UCSD, they are a great collection and make her life in the 50s and 60s a total open book; lucky also that she is still alive and among us and so helpful to researchers and critics and biographers. In the case of Adam, whose papers are at Buffalo, I expect wonderful things from the work that Kristin Prevallet has been conducting on her the past few years. And there's a biography being written about Ruth Witt-Diamant, the impresario of the SF State Poetry Center, whose career Lew and I sketch out in "Poet Be Like God." The strangest case of "forgotten women" in the Spicer crowd is that of Jamie MacInnis, the super-talented San Francisco-born poet with whom Spicer became acquainted in his final years. She lived on after him and continued to write some stunning poems, but nobody now knows where she is or even if she's alive or dead! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:58:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: trbell Subject: Re: Call Forth Further Notes to Poetry -Forwarded Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thias is more for Henry but I'll use this chance. I may have it wrong but I think in a recent post on the wax museum you said that essentially nothing muchh changes in the realm of poetics (i.e. good guys and establishment, good women vs. the establishment). This hit me especially hard for some reason - maybe because I've been an 'anti' for a long time. Taken with the ironic and profound gesture of the 80 yr late funeral (with it's reawakening for me the temporal coincidence ?co-happening? ?co-habiting? with zaum, futurism, war, revolution, Trotskii, constructivism, productivism, etcetc of eighty years ago. Has anything changed or are we stuck in these conflicts indefinitely/ tom bell At 12:19 PM 7/18/98 PDT, Mark DuCharme wrote: >Hear hear. Enough of these posting on the post-whatever drivel. Let's >bring back normative syntax, there's something that never gets >formulaic. Better to be bored than provoked. Jolly good, jolly good. > >.... > >>Hey, you poets have got the flat disjunctive incomplete sentence down, >>which is the main thing by which we experimentalists distinguish >between >>us and them & what poetry is. The poem as something that started >someplace >>else in your head you've already forgotten and gets truncated in order >to >>remember that missing element. Work a little more on the non-rhythm >>the boredom the feeling of unexplained angst; learn to throw in some >>plangent multisyllabic non-references from a fairly large dictionary; >>work on your spatial distances between words and "lines" which are what >>shows you are a thoughtful alternative poet patted on the head by major >>people like Olson Creeley Duncan or genericnewyorkbeatlanguagepoet - >>and they'll put you in an anthology of (Newer) Americans - (the 14th >>one - from Urban Bleat Press). >>- Henry Gould >> > > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 22:00:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980718143831.007b9100@theriver.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Regarding the discussion of audience size (Mark DuCharme, Charles Alexander and others): Jack Spicer's now historic lectures at Vancouver, which I've just been reading in Peter Gizzi's THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, is good evidence that the size of the crowd at a reading or lecture is little indication of its eventual influence. There were perhaps 30 people in attendance in Warren and Ellen Tallman's living room. I was one of three poets reading in Elizabeth Robinson's Berkeley house this month, on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps 40 people were there. It was one of the best reading experiences I've had--a perfect sense of attention in the room for all three poets. Salon settings are just the best. Only Allen Ginsberg and slam tournaments fill larger halls anyway, and few poets are up to that harsh glare, thank god. Best, Paul Hoover ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 01:24:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics Agent 288793 Subject: no confidence/UPDATE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This is your local poetics list manager reporting to you live from Buffalo, New York, where the dew point is high enough to make your computer sweat all its bells & whistles into an organic mush so lush that even roaches will chow down on your motherboard's main wires. But enough of the "bug" motif. Seems like I'm obsessed with pests and the nasty business of either letting those flies crawl all over me or resorting to the dragonslayer napalm-equivalent in the ant's world (so much for those damn centaurians!) but enough metaphor! some facts: I logged in for the first time in a day and saw that the nasty business of UB's changeover to the "IMAP" method of mail delivery (which I know nearly nothing about) is finally over. There were nearly 100 messages to the Poetics List's custodial address: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu -- the most messages in a long time (besides the now ubiquitous error messages). No one from UB was able to send or receive messages until Thursday and stored-up mail was still being delivered yesterday and even today. Sorry if this delay prevented me from signing people up to the list in a timely manner. For those newbies to the list, welcome! If you have any questions, or would like to pummel me with your poetical criticisms, please write to me directly at kuszai@acsu.buffalo.edu Thanks for your patience - joel kuszai ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 03:05:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: LostTime MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII [the kernel is the central core of the unix or linux computer operating system. ktrace is used to analyze its operations.] LostTime {k:15}time pico LostTime 2.13s real 0.00s user 0.00s system * {k:16}LostTime, hold on, I'm calling the system, calling the kernel, hold on: ktrace /usr/local/bin/LostTime ktrace /bin/LostTime ktrace /usr/bin/LostTime ktrace: exec of 'LostTime' failed /usr/share/nls/C/libc.cat No such file or directory * {k:17}Hold on, LostTime, system callup: Jennifer * {k:18}Jennifer calling the Colonel: * Oh do come to me so sweetly, for I, you, we, will we now, for I will have all the world's dark time, and you, Colonel, you have time lost, LostTime, this missing file in which I deposit all the world's lost words, all those letters, numbers, those signs of dreary punctuation - * Come, Colonel, let me sit upon your knee, I shall raise my pinafore so prettily, do not forbear the passage of wise time while your soldiers, dark from heat of passage through the wired jungle, patrol, patrol, and will never ever notice, for I, I, Jennifer, have all this time at my disposal * And against your death, do give it all of you, and towards your death, to take it from myself, only to return it all; while you, Colonel, disport against my knee with gallantry, your soldiers march their bamboo way to victory. I shall remain, you notice with your dying words, for I have still this wondrous time, this disregard - I will do you grand, Colonel, I will do you grand. * {k:22} time pico LostTime 11.20s real 0.01s user 0.01s system {k:23} LostTime * _______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 03:09:44 -0400 Reply-To: Orpheus Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Orpheus Subject: Since MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Since Orpheus, we know we must never turn Back to look at what we love, or risk Destroying it. Barthes: Critical Essays 1964 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 06:28:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: lit. scene in LA. --Cal-arts/ Moving Bdrs anth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I also want to mention in regards to size, that the Beyond Baroque room never seems empty. Besides programming I have read there myself, and when I read in a group reading of course it's packed. But I also read in that room with 20 or less people and it is still an enjoyable event. So the room itself has lot to do with the reading as will as the work and the size of the crowd. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 01:19:03 +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: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 Jul 1998 to 18 Jul 1998 (#1998-5) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan -- The Boston Alternative Poetry conference still in progress at Blacksmith House, as I tap on these keys, is at fevery pitch, to coin a phrase. Friday kicked off with readings from Daniel Bouchard, Drew Gardner, Wil Alexander, Fanny Howe. Bouchard bounces off generic events, news wrap-ups, say, and apt linkages such as those between game show evangelism and Mr. Clinton's recent visit to the MIT computer labs. Drew Gardner resuscitates (one of my favorite words right now!) something verging on urban elegiac, thinking it through to its after-Ashbery and unawful, sense-making matrices within angst in big space. Gardner knows something about cowboys and how they dress. Wil Alexander delivers fresh lines of defense for tropicalism north of Sunset and Canal, variations on never saying anything you could not mean if you had the time to stare for days at cawcaws, Lamantia lizards, stuff. He loves poesies and shows it, and even better, talks it when he does his "prose" intros and so forth. Fanny Howe, who might be wearing sunglasses now, employs a term like "soul" in polished ovular forms that cover no language we can understand equivocally, tanning with HD. I want to pick through those ovals and spin them in my right hand, Queeglike. Sat.: vocabularies and imaginations panel -- missed this. Biography/criticism panel -- missed. Missed the noontime reading too, but the buzz is that Gerrit Lansing is a wonder, fully clothed in Boston haberdashery, Blackmountain tie. (Will get details on this, later.) Afternoon reading a Boston phenomenon that occurs every other generation. Last time, perhaps, was during Hurricane Carol (or someone's) when John Wieners swept into Charles Street Meetinghouse to attend his first ever poetry gig, that : to hear Charles Olson read every poem he -- Charles, that is -- had written up to that point. He read for hours and hours, and John and poetry have never been the same. (Two generations before that: Henry James revised brother William's application to Harvard.) Among the readers this Saturday afternoon: Zhang Er reading in Mandarin and Leonard Schwartz offering the crispest English versions. John Taggart moaning on the blues, repetition, feeding and leading, singing soft, singing "precious," and the mother of it all, the blues, having her vision of how to give it birth -- one that includes, I think, our hearing Taggart moaning "preceeeeessuss" on. A genuine history and a poem performed as a piece! Unstoppably first rate. Chris Funkhouser also singing, bridegroom to his skeleton, flooding the room with a sutra that is not a sutra from nowhere, moving it gracefully on. Caroline Knox tearing into writers' pretensions such as, to paraphrase, "composing" a stark language framework and "going back" and filling it with "content." Knox got some of the biggest laughs, deservedly. Sean Cole got lots of laughs too and a few cardiovascular molecules had to have imploded -- someone's, somewhere -- at Cole's most astonishingly diverse send-ups -- Dickens, house plant life, teen lust, three-family crisscrossed dreams, warped dials... well it's finely warped into a poetry and a poetic presence not unlike his precursors, Ricard, O'Hara, Artaud. Rare. Andrea Brady stands as tall as you want while she rips your pea-brain (mine, anyway) into smithereens, flowing, protoliterate incursions into inchoate bliss and something opposite -- isn't this what we all need now? The afternoon and the conference have been the greatest sort of success, pairing the established with the not-quite-yet, just what a serious gathering of poets should be. The spotlight shines until late tonight. More soon. Call you soon, -- Ja ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 13:00:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Private Eye MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Looking to hear from Keston Sutherland. If you're out there, please back-channel. Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 14:32:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan or Orion Raphael Dlugonski Subject: Local scenes In-Reply-To: <199807190404.VAA07627@jumping-spider.aracnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" to some extent the dynamics of who goes or doesnt go to what readings is similar in towns of various sizes (from boulder to nyc). here in portland (the western one) there are groups that go mostly to one reading series, but its more the writers who attract the artist through people they know (which has the corollary that the best method of publicity is direct notification--phone or e-mail) for example, while my own work is toward the edge, a lotta words without standard sentencing (delivered energeticly)-- people who come to hear me read come coz of their connections with me and my work; but most of these people would probably not go to see barret watten or lyn hejinian. (any out of town writer without some sort of local rep has difficulty pulling an audience.) i dont go to many readings, usually just close freinds (so rarely does someone interesting come through to read here; the only person who books outside writers in the area has stongly academic tastes); my main excuse is having a day job, a family and my own writing and publishing to tend to. dan raphael ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 13:26:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: For Bay Area Activists MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For those of you interested, these folks are calling for a supportive presence in court on july 31, Oakland, CA. --RAchel D. ------------------ >Justice for Judi Bari! > >106 W. Standley St. Ukiah, CA 95482 (707)468-1660 > >July 15, 1998 > > > >Dear Friends, > > > > On May 24, 1990, a motion-triggered pipe bomb exploded beneath > >environmental/labor activist Judi Bari's car seat as she and Darryl > >Cherney > >drove through Oakland, California, on an organizing tour for Earth First! > >Redwood Summer. Today, over eight years later, the people who placed the > >bomb are still walking the streets. > > > > The would-be assassins were allowed to slip away with the > >approval > >of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oakland Police Department, > >who have never investigated the politically-motivated attack. Instead, > >they used the bombing as an excuse to vilify and collect information > >about > >environmental activists, falsely arresting Judi and Darryl within hours > >of > >the blast on charges of transporting explosives. > > > > In 1991, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney filed a Federal Civil > >Rights > >lawsuit against the FBI and OPD, charging them with false arrest, illegal > >search and seizure, and conspiracy to violate the activists' civil > >rights. > >They claim that the FBI used the tactics of their notorius > >Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to smear Judi and Darryl as > >bombers in an attempt to "neutralize" the Earth First! movement. > > > > The Civil lawsuit has held up to numerous attempts by the > >defendants to have it dismissed, based on the strength of the evidence > >collected so far. It has unearthed thousands of pages of FBI and Police > >documents that show clearly that the government lied and knew they were > >lying when they arrested Judi and Darryl for bombing themselves. > > > > On March 2, 1997, Judi Bari died of metastatic breast cancer. > >The > >absence of her powerful voice to publicize the lawsuit this last year has > >served to underscore what Judi knew all along: that this case is our > >case. > >It is about the rights of all progressive activists to effectively > >organize > >for social change without a constant covert assault by the FBI. It is up > >to us to fill the silence left by Judi's untimely passing with a > >resounding > >united call for justice! > > > > The Redwood Summer Justice Project, made up of friends and > >comrades > >of Judi's who have been working on the case with her for years, will take > >the bombing case to trial. The legal team has persevered in the face of > >a > >relentless strategy of delay by the FBI and OPD. Recently, Judge Claudia > >Wilken granted our motion to certify that the Government and Police do > >not > >have immunity from prosecution. This victory should have cleared the way > >to trial, except the Oakland Police snared the case once again by filing > >a > >frivolous appeal that could hold things up for yet another 12-14 more > >months. Now the FBI is refusing to move forward with discovery until the > >Oakland appeal is resolved. > > > > This is why we need your help. The bombing case gives us an > >unprecedented opportunity to take the FBI to task for COINTELPRO > >activities > >and expose their covert reign of terror against activists and > >organizations > >that has undermined progressive movements in the U.S. and elsewhere for > >decades. But if we want a trial, we're going to have to demand it! > > > > We will be happy to provide copies of RSJP's bombing case > >leaflets should you want to distribute them to your members or pass them > >on > >to other interested groups and individuals. Also, please sign on to the > >attached statement calling for a trial NOW, and an end to FBI COINTELPRO > >once and for all. If you know of additional groups and individuals who > >should receive a packet about the bombing and COINTELPRO, please send us > >their names and numbers. > > > > The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July 31, 1998, at > >1:30 PM, before Judge Claudia Wilken at the Oakland Federal Courthouse > >(1301 Clay Street, downtown Oakland). Any way you can help publicize > >this > >date and mobilize people to attend will be invaluable. We must show up > >in > >full force to let the court know that we won't accept any more delays! > >Make sure to check with the Mendocino Environmental Center at > >(707)468-1660 > >before you leave to confirm. Thank you again for your support. > > > > Justice for Judi Bari! > > > > Alicia Littletree > > 106 W. Standley St. > > Ukiah, CA 95482 > > (707) 468-1660 > > > > > >STATEMENT DEMANDING A TRIAL IN THE EARTH FIRST! BOMBING CASE: > > > > We, the undersigned, add our names to the long and diverse list > >of > >groups and individuals who demand justice for Judi Bari and a full jury > >trial in her and Darryl Cherney's civil rights lawsuit against the FBI > >and > >Oakland Police. In 1990, Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl > >Cherney were the targets of not only a brutal car bombing assassination > >attempt, but a vicious smear campaign by the FBI and Oakland Police. > >These > >agencies used the bombing as an excuse to vilify Earth First!, a > >nonviolent radical environmental movement, as terrorists. The FBI has > >never looked for the real bomber, and the person or persons who tried to > >kill Judi Bari are still at large. > > > > This case of outrageous police misconduct must be brought to > >trial > >without delay. We will not accept further FBI and OPD stall tactics, and > >we fully expect the court to dismiss any and all frivolous motions and > >groundless appeals aimed at dragging out the case. We insist that the > >FBI > >agents and Oakland Police officers involved in the bombing case be > >brought > >to the witness stand to answer for their conduct. We recognize the far > >reaching implications this trial could have for activists from all > >struggles who work to achieve social change in the U.S. > > > > Ultimately, we demand an immediate end to the use of > >COINTELPRO-style tactics by the FBI to disrupt and "neutralize" > >progressive > >organizations working for social change. > > > >Signed, > > > > > > > >(If you or your group would like to sign on, please contact us at the > >address > >at top of this page with your name, address, and other contact info.! > >Thanks! > >Earth First!) > > > >The Judi Bari Home Page on the Internet is located at: > >http://www.monitor.net/~bari > >bari@monitor.net ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 15:23:38 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: LA Lit. Orgs. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit What I meant by LACMA was Will Alexander's Writers On Site grant-funded symposium, and the Cal Arts Asian Art weekend. While Laurel Ann Bogen is certainly regional, she is rather hardworking. I find it hard to believe she is actually opposed to lengthening her mailing list. Also, since she's teaching the on-the-ground entry-level workshop at UCLA Extension this term, I've got some wonderfully experimental beginners (I feel were pushed over into) my online version. Ah, but that horribly organized poetry tent at that book fair. And what is this Susan Loomis Y2K poetry shindig? Why did Molly Bendall charge FIFTEEN DOLLARS for her last reading? What is that? And what about the Barnsdall Art Park? But as for money, or Monet (but that's in San Diego), seems to be a matter of outreach. For every hack out of Harvard there are people who, with a push, could find that $25,000. is really a tiny sum, really not enough for a car, but just enough to issue a book, not of one's own work, but, you know, something one was able to help get done. Really a lot classier than all those actors writing about sunset in Malibu. It's really "Los Angeles, the Four Economies". Catherine Daly cadaly@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 14:46:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: address search for DIFFERENCE ENGINE In-Reply-To: from "Field of Roses" at Jul 6, 98 12:05:41 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dear poets, does anyone know chris meyers's (i think i have the spelling right)--e-mail address, or know how i can reach him (snail mail address is also helpful)? chris runs a small press called DIFFERENCE ENGINE. if you know his address, could you post me back door? many thanx in advance, carl clpeters@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 18:09:22 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: "Reason , faced with a datum, " MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Reason, faced with a datum, attempts to transform the blind necessity of the datum, as sheer datum, into a necessity which is a logical necessity. But in doing so it arrives at an eternal Identity, the Parmidean sphere, from which nothing at all can be deduced. Explaining carried out rigorously, has led finally to explaining away! This is indeed the Selbstmord der Vernunft. Meyerson's (and parcelli's) own term for the predicament is, 'THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PARADOX.' His classic discussion of explanation, the Explication, which begins with the insistence upon the third factor, the realistic penchant of science, ends with the climactic--and despairing--statement of the epistemological paradox."---from Explanation & Reality In the Philosophy of Emile Meyerson by Thomas R. Kelly---carlo parcelli (It's too bad I haven't been able to let Meyerson speak for himself but I've misplaced a collection of his essays published by Dover which contain Meyerson's own insights regarding Epistemological Paradox beginning with his critique of Einstein's special & general relativities.) ---"The Newport factory, built at a cost of eight million dollars, was run for the Pentagon by the Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation of New York. By 1967 it had produced between four and five thousand tons of VX (e.g. Nerve Agent), and a new generation of chemical weapons had entered service with the United States. VX had been loaded into landmines, artillery shells, aircraft spray tanks, even warheads of battlefield missiles. In less than ten years a potential British pesticide had become THE MOST POISONOUS WEAPON IN SERVICE WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES."---from A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman, Noonday Press, 1982 (A book called Gene Wars has even more declassfied info but again, I can't locate my copy in the paper vistas surrounding me.) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 09:33:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "rachel s. kubie" Subject: Henry Dumas Tribute in Baltimore MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry Dumas 1934 - 1968 >A Celebration of His Life & Work >Saturday, July 25, 1998, 11 a.m. - 5 p.m. >Enoch Pratt Free Library >400 Cathedral Street >Baltimore, Maryland 21218 >(410) 396 5430 >FREE > > >Special Guests: >Loretta Dumas >Eugene B. Redmond >Quincy Troupe >Kenneth Carroll >E. Ethelbert Miller >Chezia Thompson-Cager >Reggie Timpson > > >Born July 20, 1934, in Sweet Home Arkansaa, Dumas was raised in Harlem from >the age of 10. He studied at City College and Rutgers University, served i >the U.S. Air Force, married, fathered two sons, and participated in the >Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Dumas helped develop the little >magazine circuit (Hiram Poetry Review, Umbra, Untitled, Negro Digest) and >wrote what Toni Morrison has called "heroic" poetry and fiction. At the time >of his death in 1968, he was a teacher-counselor and director of Language >Workshops at Southern Illinois University -Experiment in Higher Education in >East St. Louis. > >Dumas did not live to see his poetry and fiction published in book form. On >May 23, 1968 he was shot and killed by a policeman on the Harlem Station >platform of the New York Central Railroad. Dumas writings were published >posthumously under the editorship of Toni Morrison and Eugene B. Redmond. > >Works by Dumas: > >Ark of Bones and Other Stories (1970) >Play Ebony, Play Ivory (1974) >Jonoah and the Green Stone (1976) >Rope of Wind and Other Stories (1979) >Goodbye, Sweetwater (1988) >Knees of a Natural Man (1989) > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 06:39:43 +0000 Reply-To: arshile@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Salerno Organization: Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts Subject: Hard Press Contact Info MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Friends: If anyone knows the telephone number, fax number or e-mail for Jonathan Gams' Hard Press in West Stockbridge, Mass., I'd be grateful to receive that information by back channel. Thanks. Mark Salerno ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 08:56:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: forgotten women In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 5:32 PM -0700 7/18/98, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: ... The strangest case of "forgotten women" in the >Spicer crowd is that of Jamie MacInnis, the super-talented San >Francisco-born poet with whom Spicer became acquainted in his final years. >She lived on after him and continued to write some stunning poems, but >nobody now knows where she is or even if she's alive or dead!... in 1977 larry fagin showed me her work and said she was his best friend. he might know her whereabouts, give him a call. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:13:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Jamie MacInnis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Larry Fagin's here in the office right now. He says to say he hasn't heard from her in a long time, and that although no one knows whether she's alive, no one has heard that she died. As for her work, Larry says there is no more than what he has. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 08:47:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Lost Time In-Reply-To: <199807200402.WAA11605@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I remain a user of computers & the net who simply doesn't understand the hardware, but pieces like this do tickle my funny bone. The piece is itself an analytical engine of sorts, & it works. Thanks again, Alan. Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 By stress and syllable by change-rhyme and contour we let the long line pace equal awkward to its period. The short line we refine and keep for candor. Robert Duncan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 10:37:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Katherine Lederer Subject: Announcing SHARK, a magazine of poetics In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" S H A R K : A journal of poetics and art criticism Edited by Emilie Clark and Lytle Shaw Announces the publication of its first issue, on the "pre-poetic" featuring: -Dodie Bellamy, "A Poetics of Boundary Problems" -Gregg Biglieri, "The Torsion of Thought" -Mary Burger, "Abjectivist Festschrift" -Emilie Clark, "Some Ladies in Diagram" -Alex Cory, "Monologue for SHARK" -Adam DeGraff, "Poetic Statement" -Craig Dworkin, "The Brack of Meaning" -Dmitry Golynko-Volfson, "Walking Past the Church of the French Consulate" -Robert Hale, "Opposition to Return" -Lyn Hejinian, "Reason" -Kevin Killian, "The Pre-Poetic" -Katy Lederer, "Surprise and the Appropriate: Appropriate Surprise" -Pamela Lu, "Inappropriations" -Laura Moriarty, "Simultaneous Journal" -Eugene Ostashevsky, "Dmitry Golynko-Volfson and New Petersburg Poetry" -Leslie Scalapino, "Footnoting" -Lytle Shaw, "The Historical Sentence" -Mark Shepard, "Situating the Device: Arverne, New York and an Urbanism of Stillborn Renewal" Issue #1 costs $8; a year's subscription (two issues) is $14 We pay postage Send Email Requests to: Shark@erols.com Mail: SHARK 74 Varick Street #203 New York, NY 10013 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 13:59:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: I'm ba-ack Also back, after a short hiatus from work. > The argument about Lowell begin a puppet of the new criticism goes back to > Perloff's _The Poetics of Indeterminacy_; there is a nice demonstration of > the way in which the early Lowell seeds his work with symbols and > paradoxes in anticipation of New Critical classroom exegesis. Of course, > calling him a puppet is rather crude--isn't it more of a convergence of > interests? The New Critics might be Lowell's puppets just as plausibly. I haven't read the essay, so I'm not sure if the "seeding" is discussed as anything more than a textual artifact (i.e., no incriminating letters from Lowell). In that case, it just seems to be another example of the way criticism and poetry depend on each other in the 20th century, and, indeed, in any other century. Did Shakespeare "seed" Hamlet with melancholy so that the psycologies of the time would see their theories mirrored on the stage? > The Rasula analysis of Lowell is devastating and for me irrefutable; this > does not mean that Lowell does not transcend his "institutional" role > within the wax museum, but I am not the person to ask since my aversion to > Lowell's work is tempermental and visceral. I realize he is hugely > accomplished and great in his own way--I just can't stand him. Which years of Lowell can't you stand? I personally don't care for some of his later work -- _Histories_ seems a royal pain in the ass, a sort of failed hermeticism. He tried to be Yeats, but failed ("failed utterly"). But it seems as if there is a lot of difference in his early (and much later) work. If the list has polarized into camps in my absence, then I'm certaintly on Lowell's side. Again, I'm not familiar with the "wax museum" book, so if I've missed the point, apologies. Does Plath get the same treatment from Perloff? I would assume that she could also easily be accused of New Critical pandering, but Perloff, as I remember, writes very highly of her in places. What is the difference -- morally speaking -- between seeding your work with Leavis and taking a liberal helping of Derrida? It doesn't matter if you like Derrida more; as countless poetic failures in our time testify, it's not the source, but the channeling. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:23:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: <35AFDD94.22D8@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Todd Baron (and months of burying my head in Margy Sloan's Moving Borders) prompted this response: To my mind, any innovative writing (by a femininst) that challenges, innovates on, problematizes, makes interesting, or moves away from an identity/voice-based poetics (which employs lyric forms so called "masculine" in this context because they're "traditional" and tradition, created by men, is "masculine") is necessarily post-feminist (i.e. moving away from 1st and 2nd wave feminist agendas -- giving voice to women's experience, recovering erased women, creating an exclusively "women's cannon," and working to be inclusive of other oppressed identities, etc.) That puts writers like Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino, Joan Retallack, and Lyn Hejinian in interesting positions, as they all work toward an ungendered poetics (i.e.not priviliging the experiences of women, or viewing innovative writing practices as somehow "feminine" counterparts to the "masculine" tradition -- tho Retallack holds onto this distinction most strongly, and makes it most useful) while retaining (and now I have to add Susan Howe to the list, but it of course continues to grow) a feminist awareness of literary history. Alice Notley once wrote "you can't have your own tradition, it's not nice" though she's repeatedly invested in configuring a "woman's epic" -- how a woman can write (through) a traditionally masculine form. I find this the most interesting challenge facing women writers today -- but doesn't it also face men writers? They face the same tradition, and and have every reason and right to challenge the (cultural) construction of their gender and of "our" tradition (I mean by "our" not as a gendered distinction but the fact that cultures, via literary history, construct traditions -- so we're all sort of faced with this thing to go to work on -- is it really "ours," this inheritance? Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Caddie Stanton et al's Womens Declaration -- modeled after that "masculine" form, it reads as a sort of "fill in the blanks" substitute "woman" for "man." It's not as simple as all that -- but I wonder whether and how men respond to tradition. Why I feel obliged (in a way) to read (almost exclusively at this point of my bread-crumb spewing) women writers. I'm well aware that men read women & vice versa -- I don't have a problem with women being "under-represented" (that makes me a post-feminist)(even though I'd like to see more talk that I feel really invested in on this list). But I wonder why the problematic way that "tradition" has treated/"constructed" gender is presently a "woman's problem." And another question: How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) all yours in words, linda russo On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > No, we not beyond any discussion that continues > to be one. Lately all sorts of news on the radio (KPFK here) about > post-feminist ideologies and--to my mind--we need more more more! The ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 14:59:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too linda -- I can't remember if this topic was covered here or on the British Poet's list, but the question of feminism in poetry is similar to the question of political action in general. I've made this point before, but again: the only "true" source of politics in poetry consists in the innovation of form. Subject matter is forceless, because there are far more effective means of conveying political beliefs than a poem, and it's more often than not the poorer poems that are the most effective political cants. Even the gender of the author is immaterial to the extent that it does not cause a shift in the methods of creation, although I don't mean to dismiss anthologists who seek to include women -- gender often is a deep source of voice. > And another question: > How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were > "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to > "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) I think you've sort of answered your own question here; with a basic idea of how poets create -- through a combination of observation and language -- there seems to be no reason that the Poetics of the "male gaze" (yadda, yadda) would bear any relation to that that might be written by a woman. The question of moving the love poem away from "constructions of the self" is another part of this; it's not what you see, it's how. One doesn't expect an 18th gynecologist and a 20th century midwife to concur in their visions of a woman; the difference would arise from the point of view of a third person. "Gynceological", "Masculine", is how we label them. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 15:07:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Just arrived today from Australia -- Anthony Lawrence's New & Selected; I've lost your address, Anthony, so I can't thank you directly. Work has officially ceased while I drink coffee and browse. I was pleased to see a Elegy for Berryman; rather appropiate, since that's what the man spent his own life writing; I was also very interested to catch a glimpse of your _Bird Calls_. In any case, thank you very much for sending it along, and I now vacate the machine for the day. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 13:57:13 +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: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Simon -- yes, I agree, (you wrote "the only "true" source of politics in poetry consists in the innovation of form") but I think you perhaps misread me. I wasn't talking about "gender [as] . . .a deep source of voice" -- That is exactly the facile premise that MOVING BORDERS allows us to move away from. I agree that many "women's anthologies" come to that, but MOVING BORDERS doesn't. I also have a problem with _needing_ a women's anthology at this point in time as it is a sort of ghettoization. But as Todd Baron points out, we are having this conversation so we need it. If not a ghetto than MOVING BORDERS serves to collect (and allow readers to compare) the thought of innovative women poets of 2+ generations. We may reveal that feminism, a feminist poetics, is many things and in varying degrees concerned with gender at all. "Feminism _in_ poetry" is different (and yes, often voice based) from poetry that comes out of a feminist awareness of one's context -- which is operative in the poets I mention -- scalapino, howe, hejinian etc. you say, in an interesting dialogue to Elizabeth Treadwell's (et al -- i don't know the post she originally lifted from) wonderings of about a week ago > The question of moving the love poem away from "constructions > of the self" is another part of this; it's not what you see, > it's how. I agree. Tradition is masculine (created by men), true, but labelling it thus is a problem. Male does not equal masculine. This has been reductive reasoning (necessarily so) on the side of feminist scholars. I'm interested in how we can talk about these things (power structures -- as tradition is a power structure that "feminizes" certain people who approach it -- I mean it "disempowers" them -- it has nothing to do with gender in the end. ) and my point is that we label "feminist" a focus on gender in relation to literary history -- our fault is not in labeling certain poets/ approaches femininst (always women!! when I'm sure many men on this list will and have come forward to say they consider themsevles (post)"feminist") But to confine our investigation of a gendered relation to tradition to Women. And this is perhaps my most important point: you say >Even the gender of > the author is immaterial to the extent that it does > not cause a shift in the methods of creation, I disagree, though, on the "materiality" of gender when approaching tradition. Gender ISN'T immaterial, it DOES cause a (particular) shift According to Waldrop, (as recorded in Bernstein's _Politics of Poetic Form_). the "main device"of _The Road is Everywhere orStop This Body (Open Places, 1978): is that the object of one phrase turns into the subject of the next phrase without being repeated. I was interested in extending the boundaries of the sentence . . .. However, it also comes out of my feminist preoccupation . . . I propose a pattern in which subject and object function are not fixed, but temporary, reversible roles, where there is no hierarchy of main and subordinate clauses, but a fluid and constant alternation. (61) Waldrop deals with a theme of feminism though not "as theme." Since "the woman as `love object' is a prevalent archetype in our culture" this technique, Waldrop explains "has definite feminist/political implications." "Of course," Waldrop adds, "this is hindsight. Consciously, I was working on a formal problem"(66). ALL relations cause a particular shift though. e.g. we read celan as having a "feminized" ("disempowered" i.e. as a jew) relation to his language. -- linda russo p.s. simon thanks for responding. I wondered if anyone would respond. Simon DeDeo wrote: > I can't remember if this topic was covered > here or on the British Poet's list, but the question > of feminism in poetry is similar to the question of > political action in general. I've made this point > before, but again: the only "true" source of politics > in poetry consists in the innovation of form. Subject > matter is forceless, because there are far more effective > means of conveying political beliefs than a poem, and > it's more often than not the poorer poems that are the > most effective political cants. Even the gender of > the author is immaterial to the extent that it does > not cause a shift in the methods of creation, although > I don't mean to dismiss anthologists who seek to include > women -- gender often is a deep source of voice. > > And another question: > > How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were > > "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to > > "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) > > I think you've sort of answered your own question here; > with a basic idea of how poets create -- through a combination > of observation and language -- there seems to be no reason > that the Poetics of the "male gaze" (yadda, yadda) would > bear any relation to that that might be written by a woman. > > The question of moving the love poem away from "constructions > of the self" is another part of this; it's not what you see, > it's how. One doesn't expect an 18th gynecologist and a 20th > century midwife to concur in their visions of a woman; the > difference would arise from the point of view of a third person. > "Gynceological", "Masculine", is how we label them. > > -- Simon > > http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html > sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu > sdedeo@naic.edu > lydianmode@ucsd.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 13:57:13 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: Guest (for Notley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I had an intersting dream last night. Barbara Guest had been asked to give an unrehearsed reading of a new female playwright. I was in the audience (naturally) with my partner (Chris Alexander) (naturally). Guest would look at the script and memorize a bunch of lines very quickly and then read them, between gulping from a glass of water. She didn't look quite nervous and I thought it was very interesting but I reflected on the nature of what "experimental" "women's" theatre HAD TO say, without having any context to know exactly. I found I was then looking at a t.v. screen, which was televising the very same performance. The color on the screen was tweeked a little and looked sort of neat. Thinking I should look at the person and not the image. Looking back and forth a bit. More worried than confused. Woke up. Can anyone tell me what this means? Linda Russo ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 15:56:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) In-Reply-To: <199807201948.NAA23132@bobo.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does a dream have to mean? We tend to find associative meanings with any- thing, but dreams, which can be the mind's attempt to structure random neural firings on another level (the randomness seems to increase with temperature, and the dreams become more surrealist), may mean nothing at all. In general, that is "difficult to deal with" - this nothing at all, just as what is taken as an omen is only the falling of a brick or a piece of the sky. In the post it is unclear if looking at the person instead of the image is looking _at the person_ instead of the television; perhaps the person is on television, in television, perhaps we are all Guests of the real in such a fashion. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 16:08:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Linda, as a male poet who has tried in various ways to respond to patriarchy *as well as* (and also, inseperable from) other social and political violences, encoded in and ongoing in our day-to-day world..... --i will throw out a couple of thoughts. I believe there *are* responses to gender oppression and disequalibrium, in some high-profile male poets. My first thought would be to mention Bruce Andrews, whose responses are certainly rent and explosive (as well as implosive..); very problematic much of the time. Also urgent and brilliant and i feel i've learned a lot from his work and theory. I Don't Have Any Paper remains a very disturbing (i use the word as praise, mostly anyway) exploration of (among other things) the way masculine experience is cognitively structured by experiencing otherness as violence (and responding in kind, with violence and rage). Pretty much the opposite, in poetic temperment, is Bernstein, who certainly twists and yanks at tattered threads of unraveling gender uptightness...and does so for (with, by means of) laffs. Probably there are male poets who have been influenced by contemporary female poets in their responses to genderpol. Speaking for myself, S. Howe has been central, in presenting a temperment equally different from CB's wackiness and BA's furor: a nuanced focus on how a consciousness can respond to history, to the violences clenched in history, by means of an empathy that tries not to be swept up and violated, that strives also to avoid generating counterviolence as its tool of self-being.. mark p. @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 16:44:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: f.y.i. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** Still mourning Diana? Shouting 'Hoo' may help The followers of Indian free-love guru Bhagwan Rajneesh have advice for the legions of people still traumatized by the death of Princess Diana. Osho Dynamic Meditation, created as a way "to help modern man release accumulated grief and tension before moving into silent meditation," should help, the cult said Monday. The one-hour drill starts with "deep, fast, chaotic" breathing to bring up repressed tension followed by "total catharsis," or the throwing out of all that has been stirred up by the breathing. Diana fans are then advised to jump with arms raised, shouting the Sufi mantra "Hoo!" Once that is accomplished, they are told to be still and silent, and finally "celebrate through dance." See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2555159162-de7 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 17:03:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) In-Reply-To: <199807201948.NAA23132@bobo.oz.cc.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:57 PM +0000 7/20/98, linda russo wrote: >I had an intersting dream last night. Barbara Guest had been asked >to give an unrehearsed reading of a new female playwright. I was in >the audience (naturally) with my partner (Chris Alexander) (naturally). >Guest would look at the script and memorize a >bunch of lines very quickly and then read them, between gulping from >a glass of water. She didn't look quite nervous and I thought it was >very interesting but I reflected on the nature of what "experimental" >"women's" theatre HAD TO say, without having any context to know >exactly. I found I was then looking at a t.v. screen, which was >televising the very same performance. The color on the screen was >tweeked a little and looked sort of neat. Thinking I should look at the >person and not the image. Looking back and forth a bit. More worried >than confused. Woke up. Can anyone tell me what this means? > >Linda Russo Could mean it's time you wrote a play. Good luck with it! Sylvester ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 18:22:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too linda -- I think you're right to call me on the phrase "gender as a deep source of voice", which is pretty vague. What I had in mind, however, began with the idea that one's use of language arises in part out of where you've been in the past and to what uses you've seen language put. If one considers the differences in societal experience that arise from gender, it seems as if the "oddity" of female experience with society's use of word would lead to different direction in style. In retrospect, I think I overestimated such influences -- looking at, say, the Modernists, there are far more differences between poets than there are between genders; sort of like S.Gould's point that there is far more variation within a race than across racial boundaries. > Tradition is masculine (created by men), true, but labelling it thus is > a problem. Male does not equal masculine. I guess I have a lot of trouble distinguishing "male" from "masculine" without descending into a deep analysis of society's conception of the masculine. "Male" is biological; that we can all (?) agree on, up to the Foucalt limit. To call celan's language "feminized" sounds strangely quaint, a little like calling a particular philosophy "womanish". I saw a book once called "Nietzsche for Women". But maybe Foucalt has a point here -- if what we consider "rock solid" notions of gender are seen, by an examiniation of the points of rupture, to arise less from any potentially objective criteria, but instead from threads of discourse, where does that take us? I guess I don't quite understand how you take gender to be in some way _material_ without returning to the reception of woman in society. Your point seems very interesting, however -- I like the way Waldrop problematizes the whole issue by bringing up the political implications of a formal stance ("old school feminism"?) and then retracts them from discussion by noting that she was working on "a formal problem". At the risk of breaking Adorno's dictum and paraphrasing a philosophical stance, is Waldorf coming out and saying that certain formal modes where, for e.g., "subject and object function are not fixed", are essentially gendered? That there is some occult connection between the female body and language? How can a feminist poetics, as you say, be potentially "unconcerned" with gender? Isn't gender the sine qua non? Or is it just the starting point? From there, to where does it go? There is a danger, of course, that "postfeminism" might end up looking like New Criticism -- an analysis of formal structures within a "self contained and democratic whole". As a side note, I wonder what the "theoretically apatheic" folk on the list think about the problem, since Waldorf's point seems to be a retreat from traditional activist notions of poetry. Henry, others? -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 20:07:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Poetry Daily Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I thought I ought to note that Poetry Daily (normally pronounced "Dully") -- www.poems.com -- is making an exception to its usual fare this week and will feature poems next weekend by the following: Saturday - Rae Armantrout Sunday - Michael Palmer The site also has links to lots of stuff, including whatever is the latest in the mainstream media. There's a shortlist for some prize in the UK that will make you cringe. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 20:38:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Bay Area representationalism Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Poultry Doily --- www.poems.com -- also has a link to an article in one of the SF papers about the search there for a Poet Laureate (does one hear Kathleen Fraser's name? Palmer's? Rakosi's? Gluck's? Killian or Bellamy? Myung Mi Kim? In addition, the SF Chronicle has a contest going on the "Best of" for the Bay Area -- you can get to it quickly through www.sfgate.com -- and there is a category for East Bay Bookstore that seems just made for Small Press Distribution. It would be good to give it support -- SPD is really a national (even international) resource. There's also a "best Bay Area author" selection that I'd hesitate to make any suggestions about, but it would be great to see a bunch of poets get votes. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 15:33:43 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Dream meanings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan said: > Does a dream have to mean? Which reminds me of something the Brothers Quay (who made the extraordinary film _Institute Benjamenta_, among others) said, when challenged about the lack of narrative structure in their films; something along the lines of "No-one says, 'I had this amazing dream last night, but it had such a lousy story'". BTW Alan, you may be interested in the following url (you may already know about this): http://foner.www.media.mit.edu/people/foner/Julia/Julia.html "You say, `what is e?' to Julia. Julia says, `The most common English vowel?' You say, `what is e?' to Julia. Julia says, `I think it's about 2.71828182845904523536.' You say, `what is e?' to Julia. Julia starts to smoke. `Oh no, this doesn't end! Help me, help me!' she cries". Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:43:36 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Linda Russo wrote: > > Todd Baron (and months of burying my head in Margy Sloan's Moving > Borders) prompted this response: > > To my mind, any innovative writing (by a femininst) that challenges, > innovates on, problematizes, makes interesting, or > moves away from an identity/voice-based poetics (which employs lyric > forms so called "masculine" in this context because they're > "traditional" and tradition, created by men, is "masculine") > is necessarily post-feminist > (i.e. moving away from 1st and 2nd wave feminist agendas -- giving > voice to women's experience, recovering erased women, creating an > exclusively "women's cannon," and working to be inclusive of other > oppressed identities, etc.) > > That puts writers like Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino, Joan Retallack, > and Lyn Hejinian in interesting positions, as they all work toward an > ungendered poetics (i.e.not priviliging the experiences of women, or > viewing innovative writing practices as somehow "feminine" counterparts to > the "masculine" tradition -- tho Retallack holds onto this distinction > most strongly, and makes it most useful) while retaining (and now I have > to add Susan Howe to the list, but it of course continues to grow) a > feminist awareness of literary history. > > Alice Notley once wrote "you can't have your own tradition, it's not nice" > though she's repeatedly invested in configuring a "woman's epic" -- how a > woman can write (through) a traditionally masculine form. > > I find this the most interesting challenge facing women writers today -- > but doesn't it also face men writers? They face the same tradition, and > and have every reason and right to challenge the (cultural) > construction of their gender and of "our" tradition (I mean by "our" not > as a gendered distinction but the fact that cultures, via literary > history, construct traditions -- so we're all sort of faced with this > thing to go to work on -- is it really "ours," this inheritance? > > Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Caddie Stanton et al's Womens > Declaration -- modeled after that "masculine" form, it reads as a sort of > "fill in the blanks" substitute "woman" for "man." It's not as simple as > all that -- but I wonder whether and how men respond to tradition. Why I > feel obliged (in a way) to read (almost exclusively at this point of my > bread-crumb spewing) women writers. I'm well aware that men read women & > vice versa -- I don't have a problem with women being "under-represented" > (that makes me a post-feminist)(even though I'd like to see more talk that > I feel really invested in on this list). But I wonder why the problematic > way that "tradition" has treated/"constructed" gender is presently a > "woman's problem." > > And another question: > How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were > "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to > "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) > > all yours in words, > > linda russo > > a wonderful re-spone--to co-respond--and that men's or masculine forms confuse me--other than saying--that when I walk into a skyscraper--so to speak--I KNOW i'm in a form that came from many men's pressurized ways of thinking--and that I find no interest in that--nor the sonnett--IF I think of the form in that way--but once I pay attention to the form itself--then--then-it becomes of interest as a form outside of gender-- and hgow to respond then--other than--write with it--against it--towards it--and include it in the dialeltic that a poem can be. Gender is in relation to an other. then. Tb (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:50:27 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: self promotion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Spencer Selby Todd Baron read July 24th 7:30 pm Beyond Barqoue ------ please attend if you're in town please attend if you're not ----- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:53:42 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Linda Russo wrote: > > Todd Baron (and months of burying my head in Margy Sloan's Moving > Borders) prompted this response: > > To my mind, any innovative writing (by a femininst) that challenges, > innovates on, problematizes, makes interesting, or > moves away from an identity/voice-based poetics (which employs lyric > forms so called "masculine" in this context because they're > "traditional" and tradition, created by men, is "masculine") > is necessarily post-feminist > (i.e. moving away from 1st and 2nd wave feminist agendas -- giving > voice to women's experience, recovering erased women, creating an > exclusively "women's cannon," and working to be inclusive of other > oppressed identities, etc.) > > That puts writers like Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino, Joan Retallack, > and Lyn Hejinian in interesting positions, as they all work toward an > ungendered poetics (i.e.not priviliging the experiences of women, or > viewing innovative writing practices as somehow "feminine" counterparts to > the "masculine" tradition -- tho Retallack holds onto this distinction > most strongly, and makes it most useful) while retaining (and now I have > to add Susan Howe to the list, but it of course continues to grow) a > feminist awareness of literary history. > > Alice Notley once wrote "you can't have your own tradition, it's not nice" > though she's repeatedly invested in configuring a "woman's epic" -- how a > woman can write (through) a traditionally masculine form. > > I find this the most interesting challenge facing women writers today -- > but doesn't it also face men writers? They face the same tradition, and > and have every reason and right to challenge the (cultural) > construction of their gender and of "our" tradition (I mean by "our" not > as a gendered distinction but the fact that cultures, via literary > history, construct traditions -- so we're all sort of faced with this > thing to go to work on -- is it really "ours," this inheritance? > > Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Caddie Stanton et al's Womens > Declaration -- modeled after that "masculine" form, it reads as a sort of > "fill in the blanks" substitute "woman" for "man." It's not as simple as > all that -- but I wonder whether and how men respond to tradition. Why I > feel obliged (in a way) to read (almost exclusively at this point of my > bread-crumb spewing) women writers. I'm well aware that men read women & > vice versa -- I don't have a problem with women being "under-represented" > (that makes me a post-feminist)(even though I'd like to see more talk that > I feel really invested in on this list). But I wonder why the problematic > way that "tradition" has treated/"constructed" gender is presently a > "woman's problem." > > And another question: > How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were > "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to > "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) > > all yours in words, > > linda russo > > my last response was sluggish--tired--too: to re-state: Gender then is a role we are put into and take on-- I find interest in a response to and notice of gender as a social and written tool--but the attention paid to such as a poet doesn't interest me though the forms (sigh) do: sonnett as skyscraper shakespeare as Mies take them apart to see wherer one lives and renotgiate the halls-- Is there a "masculine" form? The Epic? Is history retold as a sequence of (told) lies of the victor? The victor then reframing HimSelf as male? Tb ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 23:53:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: trbell Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The description of dreams as 'attempt to structure random neural firings' is too often taken a step further to dismissing dreams as therefore meaningless. Is not poetry an attempt to do the same with life's random firings? Language can either anchor meaning in an image or else helps serve a relay function to put the image into relation with other elements in a complex structure. - Barthes is it not then the image (or dream) that really matters or means? tom bell At 03:56 PM 7/20/98 -0400, you wrote: >Does a dream have to mean? We tend to find associative meanings with any- >thing, but dreams, which can be the mind's attempt to structure random >neural firings on another level (the randomness seems to increase with >temperature, and the dreams become more surrealist), may mean nothing at >all. > >In general, that is "difficult to deal with" - this nothing at all, just >as what is taken as an omen is only the falling of a brick or a piece of >the sky. > >In the post it is unclear if looking at the person instead of the image is >looking _at the person_ instead of the television; perhaps the person is >on television, in television, perhaps we are all Guests of the real in >such a fashion. > >Alan > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 01:31:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980721045334.00691cc0@pop.usit.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, trbell wrote: > The description of dreams as 'attempt to structure random neural firings' is > too often taken a step further to dismissing dreams as therefore meaningless. > Is not poetry an attempt to do the same with life's random firings? This depends on how "meaning" is defined - as symptom, portent, or as something acceptable to the mind as constituting sense. I would never go so far in relation to poetry unless one wants to say everything is such an attempt. > > Language can either anchor meaning in an image or else helps serve a relay > function to put the image into relation with other elements in a complex > structure. - Barthes > > is it not then the image (or dream) that really matters or means? No, why or how? And what is meant by "really" here? I would be wary of assigning priority. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 07:54:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: yo silliman finch et al In-Reply-To: <1998720212015226962@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" so, like, could one request a precis of your experiences at the westchester formalist boot camp? did it happen, i mean, your workshop? how'd it go? how'd you like it? wd yuou do it again? were people receptive? etc ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:30:09 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 20 Jul 1998 13:57:13 +0000 from Responding to the various threads of this thread, I'd like to recommend a book that has really turned my head around on some of these issues & I wonder if others have read it too. The book is _Bardic Ethos and the American Epic Poem_ by Jeffrey Walker. One thing Walker does is analyze the long poem as a specific development out of Whitman & Emerson, that WITHIN a a challenging "alternative" rhetoric (Whitman's free-verse democratic open-shirted rough), encodes an elitist and authoritarian message: American culture must be transformed by a select group of transcendental literati speaking an archaic shamanistic poetic speech AGAINST the rationality of civil society. Walker argues that Pound took this approach to its limit and Crane, Williams, and Olson followed in the same tradition (anyone who wonders at the idea of Williams' "elitism" should read some of the quotes Walker includes from IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN: ie. "puritanism" has resulted in "a generation universally eager to barter permanent values (the hope of an aristocracy) in return for opportunist material advantages..." and later in the same text, Williams claims that an aristocracy is "the flower of a locality and so the full expression of a democracy". I don't want to get into a long illustration of Walker's book; only to point out that the traditions of innovation and experiment - both male-oriented and feminist - have been heavily influenced by the Whitman-Pound STANCE toward traditions and society, and their approach to epic and poetry should be seen as culturally & historically specific (even peculiar). Their approach to writing has had enormous influence on the "alternative' tradition to this day. I would disagree with Simon that technique rather than subject matter is where the "alternatives" are marked; I would disagree with Notley & Waldrop (if that's what they're saying) that formal innovation is the only challenging writing. In my view the subject & the technique can't be separated, and a really innovative writing today might implement the "ars est celare artem" or "art is to hide art" approach: developing a "modest" style which foregrounds the real history or real story. I would also suggest that the strictures against "male voice" should not throw writers uncritically into the experimental-formalist camp; Walker's book shows clearly how Whitman's, Pound's, Williams's "abysmal" rhetoric of anti-rational collage have been applied to the most archaic (shamanistic) and authoritarian rhetorical programs of our age. The crux of the problem is the foregrounding of the heroic shaman as exemplar and leader, as opposed to the true "subject" of democracy, which is not a leader but a process of political covenanting and agreement, or peacemaking. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 07:58:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: query In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:31 AM -0400 7/21/98, Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: etc yo alan and others, does anyone have access to or know how to find that sondheim poem of some time ago that went "A lake you a lattle bat," etc? Alan i looked at your website A-Z and couldn't find any of the poems you'd posted to POETIX, so maybe there's another site where i'd find 'em? unfortunately i don't remember titles. thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 08:56:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrea Brady Subject: New Book by Jordan Davis (for uber list) (forwarded) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barque Press gladly announces the publication of Jordan Davis' new book, 'Poem on a Train' a sustained and self-interrupting (round-)trip (NY to Providence, initially) e-mail Keston Sutherland for a copy, at GMSutherland@compuserve.com #3.50 / $6.00 incl. p&p. (Barque subscribers will receive a copy very soon, thanks) Please support our Press! (also available from the Barque crypt: JORDAN DAVIS' _UPSTAIRS_, J.H. Prynne's _Red D Gypsum_, Andrea Brady's _open bond_ and _Of Sere Fold_, Keston Sutherland's _Girls At Trusion_ and _At The Motel Partial Opportunity_, James Lucas' _hex_ and _Body Clock_ - e-mail Keston for copies) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 09:56:33 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: SF READINGS ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Susan Schultz posted to the list a while back; she's reading with Douglas Rothschild and another at Canessa Park in San Francisco on Sunday July 26 Does anyone know what TIME that would be happening? And any other readings in SF this weekend? Is that heat wave from April '97 over yet? thanks -- & if you're at readings, please come say hello to me -- I'll be hard to pick out of a crowd but Chris Alexander is rather distinguished looking. yrs in words, Linda Russo ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 11:58:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable When the New York poets come into town you=92ve got to lie about Time and Space. For example, a New England poet who lives 10 minutes from the Conference Space will tell the New York poets that the Conference Space is a ten minute walk. The New England poet plans to leave for the Conference Space about fifteen minutes before the starting time. OK, say the New York poets. At 18 minutes before the starting time, however, the New York poets decide they each need a shower. The New England poet will never learn.=20 But this is cool (not to mention exaggerated) and only mentioned as a starting point. We=97-Drew, Douglas, Dave, and I=97-made the walk with no problem save that Harvahd Yahd was blocked off by construction fences on the interior so that we had to skirt along the alleys of the Yard and miss the strange clich=E9 of its bucolic interior. We arrived just as Aaron was speaking which gave us, me at least, no time to talk to anyone. This is ideal when reading.=20 Some places from which people traveled for the alternative Boston conference this weekend at 56 Brattle Street, a limestone=92s throw from the Longfellow House: New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Buffalo, Providence, San Francisco, and Japan.=20 What was learned?=20 1) Only poets would spend a 3 day weekend in a hot and cramped room for up to, or over, 12 hours a day on a beautiful, sunny weekend and be very excited about it. 2) If the conference is deemed "alternative," then anything goes. I slipped a Robert Frost poem into my reading ("The Vantage Point") and heard a distinct, pleasurable "hmphh" come from outside the veil of U-V lights. It was my backyard; I had to do it. I decided not to read the short poem about how lousy it is to be in a room full of milling poets. This is because I was a reader, and that produces a kind of rush for me. Besides, my "I Make a Pact with you Ron Silliman" poem fell flat. Not a giggle was heard. People told me later that I read it as something very serious, but I have always cried the tears of a clown.=20 Drew=92s reading was fantastic. It is unusual that I was able to hear it (having just read, and playing back my own reading=97-so egocentrically!-=97= in my mind) but his opening was sharp and irresistable: "I can tell by the way you dress that you=92re a cowboy." (Roughly.) And his reading was paced so that in the silences I became expectant of the poems, waiting, paying more attention; and as Drew read more, the energy soared.=20 During Will Alexander=92s reading I must admit that I lapsed into space. I bounced back for Fanny Howe however. I was so engrossed by her reading that when she stopped I thought my watch was dead. She only read for 10-15 minutes. It seemed, richly, like much longer. And I wanted more. During the milling bit after the reading a Harvard Lit Comp prof. approached me with the usual chat and asked for poems. No problem. Then she explains, as she hands me her business card, that she is waiting for her mother to die ("she will not, eternally, ever give in. She refuses to die!") so she can take her inheritance and publish poetry. (And people probably think I am sour for the little poem about "milling poets" but I am sure you each have your own stories to tell.) Having nothing to answer this strange remark I stand smiling, nodding, scanning the room with my eyes. Peter Ganick tells me he loved my line about "the way cowboys dress." (Should I tell him? Should I tell him?) I tell him that line was actually Drew Gardner=92s line which causes him a visceral spasm of embarrassment. (It had to be done.)=20 On the walk to the car Prageeta and Maggie discuss lesbian dress protocol which has an emphasis on practicality. As I never dress with an objective other than practicality (i.e., comfort) I one-up them on the entire aesthetic by adding, "besides I don=92t give a fuck what I look like"= wearing green shorts, a black T-shirt (both of which are drenched), old running sneakers and ankle-high socks. This boldness earns me the epithet of "Dan: the Complete Lesbian" which I revel in for a night.=20 Meanwhile, my friend Sven from Cambridge (a Spenser scholar) and Douglas grab a ride with Richard. Richard is filming the entire conference for some reason. In the car Sven notices a hat from Washington & Lee=97-a college in Virginia renowned for old-boy fraternities and inbred aristocracy. The hat produces apprehension in Sven, and he hopes it does not come up in conversation. But Douglas has already picked up on its motto (which I disremember) and inquires of it of Richard. As it turns out, Richard and Sven both "spent time" there, and may likely be (despite their generation differences) the only two alums never to have belonged to a fraternity. They discuss later, at Michael Franco=92s, a shared hate for a certain Milton professor.=20 The party is fine. We get home ok in the crowded car, with Douglas in the trunk. I give Maggie and Prageeta directions to the Mass Pike, but Dave Kirschenbaum prefers not to make the short walk from the bridge, so Maggie and Prageeta end up getting lost for many hours. We don=92t see them again till well into the next day.=20 In the morning I make juice for everyone (oranges and grapes, straight up=97-very rich), and we arrive during the panel almost on time. I cannot process anything being said so I try to focus by making sketches of the panelists. I gauge my success by showing the caricatures to Isabel Franco (sitting next to me) as I go. I am feeling better when manna from heaven drops into my lap in the form of a scone, placed with a "whump" from behind me by Douglas.=20 Some things I remember: Joseph Lease=92s metaphor about how the Cold War was two dogs facing each other, and the Post-Cold War a single dog in which we are all micro-organisms. This guy can think on his feet I think. But he dilutes this perception by announcing that he had thought of it earlier and even collaborated on it by phone with Jordan Davis. Still, he=92s saying intelligent things, as are all the panelists.=20 Despite a dangerous level of exhaustion I enjoy the afternoon readings. Gerrit Lansing is fantastic. He is my new model for reading. Beth is great, as is Andrea; the two reminding me of each other in their delivery: low, even tone of long (or long-ish) lines. Joe Torra is high-energy. Zhang Er is good, and Caroline Knox is funny.=20 >From the bio panel I mostly take comfort in Kristen=92s presentation that Helen Adam worked a dull job in which she was able to get a lot done during down time. I decide I like Helen Adam a lot and will seek out her work. I get this also from Lyman Gilmore=92s presentation on Joel Oppenheimer, whom= I have not read much of. Then I take off to a bar with Patrick Doud to cool off with a margarita, which is refreshing for about fifteen minutes, but I nearly pass out later during the evening readings. In fact I was probably saved from doing so by Lisa Jarnot=92s and Lewis Warsh=92s reading. Warsh=92= s "Secret Police" had me stitches; Lisa=92s chinchilla and other animal poems had me in a pleasant catatonic state. Kristin Prevallet=92s footnote poem= also created this effect. Untitled, I suggested to her: "A poem of not-so-useful information." =20 Another party at Michael and Isabel=92s Saturday night. I crash for an hour= in an empty room, waking up glad to find the Buffalo/Toronto guys had not drawn on my forehead, and also finding Christian crashed (vampire-like: body straight, arms folded in X on chest) on the floor across the room.=20 Outside there is literary chat. And Dave Kirschenbaum putting together his instant =91zine on a laptop in a cloud of mosquitoes by the porch light. The literary chat gets controversial: Douglas argues with Alan about Paradise Lost. Alan, in a manner reminiscent of Steve Evans, sits calmly and accepts Douglas=92 points and then evenly returns his own. The crux: what line does Milton=92s epic hinge on & is Satan a hero? Alan is firm: better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Douglas does not accept. It goes back and forth, bringing Dante, Chaucer, and Chomsky (a la Drew and Bill Howe) marginally into the picture. Hanging back I suggest "to justify God=92s ways to man" which Andrea seconds. (As I was not centrally involved in this argument, I=92ll cease its narrative here.)=20 Because I am the only one not to have had a drink all night, I drive the car home. It=92s tight and we gather Will Alexander and Aaron from the driveway top where they had been waiting for a cab. Douglas gets into the trunk again, Aaron sits on Dave in the passenger seat and away we go. Another thing learned from the weekend: an overcrowded car with the conference organizer=92s head protruding from an open window does not sit well with Arlington police. As I pull over with the blue lights and siren screaming behind us, Aaron queries (from outside the car) "why are we pulling over here? Who are we dropping off here?" It was difficult to ascertain whether the cops were poetry fans. I mean, I could have said "it=92s cool, officer, we have Will Alexander in the car"= but I=92m not sure how that would have played out.=20 So, as the cops approached, one on each side, I announce sternly to the excited passengers: "everyone shut the fuck up." One cop asks me if I am aware how many seat belt laws I am breaking. One per person except me I think to myself but say nothing. I give him my license. Hess fumbles (unsuccessfully) for his Missouri registration. The officers (one male, one female) note aloud how dangerous our driving situation is, and then huddle up back at the cruiser to ensure our Dodge Shadow is not stolen. As they confer in swirling blue lights, Aaron announces that he and Will can walk from that point and he wishes us well. I tell Aaron that it=92s probably not advisable to walk away from the scene at that particular moment.=20 To be short, the cops let us off without even requesting an intimate acquaintance with my breath. We leave two by the road while we drop off another two and return for the other two shortly. As I was handed back my license it didn=92t even occur to me that the law officers will forever= remain unaware of Douglas Rothschild, now grown very quiet, cooped up in the hatch-back trunk. Later, Douglas noted that the incident constituted a good adventure, and it would make Bill Luoma proud.=20 On Sunday I outted SubPress in the publishing panel. Preceding this debut were fine presentations by Kirschenbaum (the traveling/instant magazine), Douglas Messerli (brief history of Sun&Moon), Peter Ganick (brief history of Potes&Poets), Chris Funkhouser (on Internet publishing and E-things in general), and Joe Torra (on his magazine "lift").=20 I began by showing off books received thru the "Self-Publish or Perish" initiative, and note how the project grew out of a community; how it all was (my involvement anyway) an extension of MASS AVE., which grew out of a sense of community that began at the Fitterman Poetry Talks in 1996, the Buffalo Poetics list, and then the Subpoetics list (at which point I thumbnail for people what a listserv is). RESULTS: A lot of people want to inspect the SelfPub books after the panel. A lot of people want to know how to get onto the "Buffalo list thing," and many more people want to know where to send money for the "SubPress" thing. I take their addresses instead.=20 Someone (Maria Damon?) tells me her initial thoughts of what the publishing panel would consist of was "how to get published." It was not so. It was more a testimony of doing things oneself, how to seek out or define your community thru print and initiative (as Torra=92s presentation manifested,= and Michael Franco=97-contrib editor to lift=97-supported with comments in the audience). I was happy with it.=20 There were many great readings Sunday: Rosmarie Waldrop, Joseph Lease, Patrick Doud, Charles Bernstein, Damon Krukowski, Peter Ganick and others; some of which I caught portions of, or missed due to extreme unction, I mean extreme exhaustion.=20 The weekend ended for me in a seafood restaurant near my house with Beth, Maggie, Drew and Douglas. I had the fish and chips.=20 After they left for the bus, I went back to the reading and then to the party where I talked with Cambridge poet Jim Dunn (who traded my cop/poetry story with his own, in which a Boston bike cop runs into his car while he is driving John Wieners to the supermarket; "oh christ!" John exclaims) and Heater Scott Peterson (a painter, poet, bookbinder, and ex-student of Ange Mlinko's).=20 Other participants or attendees are encouraged/requested to fill in gaps or post their own narratives and perceptions to supplement this woeful= inadequacy.=20 daniel bouchard <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard =09 The MIT Press Journals =09 Five Cambridge Center =09 Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 10:39:00 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980721155820.0074acb4@po7.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Thanks for the extensive report, Dan. I can see Cambridge has gotten a lot more fun since I left (please - no causal relationship implied). I've been told by two people so far that I was/wld be there, but really I wasn't, or only 'in spiritus' (i.e., that was my heavy breathing in the back). thanks, too, for this lovely addendum to Drew's line: > "I can tell by the way you dress that you=92re a cowboy." (Roughly.) c h r i s .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:16:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Ode to Bill Howe's Bowling Ball O Magic Black Diamond Orb of Eight-to-the-nth-power facets, Tell me who was it that stepped on a dog's turn and unstepped it just as matter-of-factly and walked onward kicking down the alley a rock in the shape of the spherical carved heart of a decapitated electric typewriter, headed for France or Brazil or France, back and forth, this way and that, keeping score with secret numbers in order to record each strike while leaving every frame open? Who was that sun-glassed Sisyphus? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:43:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Subject & Technique Henry wrote -- > In my view the subject & the technique can't be separated, and > a really innovative writing today might implement the "ars est celare artem" > or"art is to hide art" approach: developing a "modest" style which foregrounds > the real history or real story. I would say we both agree; I had in mind poets who consider themselves innovative simply because their subject matter is "new". Pound's "make it new" is eternally valid, but it doesn't stop at changing the stars into quasars. The stylistic innovation is more often than not the more original and difficult; most "subjects" have already been done before, and it's unfortunately true that whenever a new subject is broached -- child abuse, the information revolution -- most of what is written is in the dull and repetitive modes of older forms, or in poorly thought out and self-conscious "innovations". It's true that the subject and technique cannot be separated, but that requires a more complex concept of "subject" that I don't think you're including here. There have been countless poems on war, and I don't think anyone can find a common theme in technique between them. I'm interested in your concept of a "modest" style. What does that mean? Imagism has always seemed "modest" to me, with the way it foregrounds the words themselves as opposed to the poet's construction of them, but one could easily take any set of poets, with radically different styles, and call them modest. Shakespeare, modest? Auden? Yeats? Plath? What would you consider a "modest" style? Or, better, in which direction from the writers you consider most fruitful does a "modest" style lie? (The excessive quotes are not sarcasm, just my own confusion.) And, just to finish the paragraph, what do you consider the "real" story? Do you mean to exclude all poetry with ambiguity or mulitple narratives, because they deny the reader access to a solid and "real" substrate? -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:53:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Occult Epics Henry -- thanks also for the reference to the Walker book. For many poets who attempt to write an "epic", the aristocratic model presents itself, and Walker's analysis of the Whitman attitude towards America seems dead on -- the endless catalogues always seemed to me to have somewhat a posessive attitude, an image of control or at least omnisence; a "true" democratic poet would perhaps have to realize a speaker that could not transcend space in the most literal sense -- I think of Gary Snyder here, with his endless preoccuption with the mechanics of being. There's been chatter on EPOUND-L about Pound and the Occult; a question I brought up in reference to Old English translations of the bible -- questions of preserving the numerological significance of the text in translation. Pound himself, when constructing the Cantos, was quite preoccupied with the occult -- as separate from questions of religion and spirituality; I wonder if you can detect the "aristocracy" of Pound's style in his mage-like adoption of occult principles. If anybody's interested in the references to Pound's occultism, backchannel; Michael Coyle at Colgate dropped a good list of texts on the subject. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:46:40 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: Subject & Technique In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:43:47 -0400 from Simon, I've yammered at some of these issues before on the list, so apologies if I repeat myself. By "subject" I guess I mean "content" in general, not simply a general topic or theme (war, etc.). These themes or topics are always around, but if we're talking about a "modest" style in relation to something like epic, for example, then the "war" would have to be complexified in its specific historical circumstances. What I'm getting at is, to extend some of the insights of the Walker book: Ezra Pound was mightily successful within the parameters of a sublime rhetoric, in which the poet by disrupting rational thought & speech, creates a voice of authority; what Walker argues is that writing in this tradition is not the ONLY possible approach to epic or historical materials. But we have an alternative tradition which not only builds on this rhetoric but follows the Whitman-Pound "stance" as a whole : capitalistic democracy is condemned in favor of a visionary alternative which is not exactly spelled out (it can't be : this would contradict the rhetoric of the sublime) but which underwrites every mannerism of disrupted syntax and justifies it as "alternative". A modest style in my book would foreground neither the stance of the poet nor the sublimity of the discourse; the sublime is most sublime as an occasional intrusion. It would not be disruptive for disruption's sake or dissonant for dissonance's sake; it would develop from communicability toward complexity. It would foreground "what happened": clarity does not necessarily rule out ambiguity or even undecidability (while obscurity sometimes rules out both). Now I'm not in favor of capitalistic status quo, but I am in favor of democracy (I think capitalism/socialism is a fading dialectic). And I'm not in favor of techno-rationalism, but I'm against a bardic authoritarianism posed as its alternative. And I'm not promoting "modesty" as a mold for all kinds of poetry! Just as a different way of thinking about "innovative" writing, especially in an "epic" frame of mind. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 12:55:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII alan esp., please notice i asked "CAN anyone tell me what this ["my" dream] means" of course it just "is" but I just thought it was neat, the experience was neat. That it didn't particularly resonate with meaning to me is interesting (I have no particular engagement with Guest or with theatre -- except as icons both) One day after having a great dream i wrote & re-wrote it to myself, mentally, just to play with the language and connections the dream presented me with. I didn't write it down -- I was walking. I think of it (the mental exercise of moving around the language and images of the dream) as writing, though some would argue it's not writing because I didn't inscribe it & it hasn't been activated by an audience as writing. Maybe the dream was "writing" that I was the "audience" for. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 15:19:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Ode to BOOG From the imitation-vanilla sky of your jiffy sidereal homeland, the star-cats keep watch over the mushroom caps, while across the stapled centerfold of the 8.5 x 11 night the Comet of Belle-Doom streaks on the hauser of my arm, taut and slack, slack and taut, toward the rolling letters. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:35:40 -0600 Reply-To: Linda Russo Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: <9807202222.AA28978@nevis.naic.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII you (simon) sort of hit on my point exactly -- when you say > -- looking at, say, the Modernists, > there are far more differences between poets > than there are between genders; sort of like S.Gould's > point that there is far more variation within a > race than across racial boundaries. there are tons of variations (back to mark presjnar's comment on "how" we look at something). But gender as a sort of node has received focus only in terms of women writers, who, perhaps because they throw tradition in relief, point out the "masculine" nature, of say lyric, which objectifies the other and unifies the "I". As these are problems many (esp. lang & post lang) poets deal with, why is it mostly women who explore a GENDERED relation to tradition? I'm not trying to be reductive about gender. the way we use it to describe power relationships is problematic (male-active/female-passive) WHILE continuing to link it to biological sex -- as in the case of the term "Women Poets" (which often prompts cliched responses such as "it's women's voice-oriented) Being an innovative (woman) writer necessitates an active scrutiny of literary history. Why is it that innovative men aren't also viewed as exploring a gendered relation to traditional modes of poetic utterance? Is it just another instance of the masculine stance being universal and the woman's other? For so long poetry was formal & Dorothy Wordsworth didn't write "poetry" -- now journaling has been "legitimized" as a poetic form (cf. Mayer's _Midwinter Day_ for example, and Hannah Weiner) -- But I don't think these innovations are peculiar to women, yet they are couched so, because they are couched as a gendered relation to tradition (though this may be a problem of feminist scholarship) We all have a gendered relation to everything -- and that's such a large statement, as gender is so complex. And I don't mean gender as biological sex merely, but as a cluster of attributes that constitute our understanding of culture and literary history. > we can all (?) agree on, up to the Foucalt limit. > To call celan's language "feminized" sounds strangely > quaint, a little like calling a particular philosophy > "womanish". I saw a book once called "Nietzsche for Women". My point exactly -- why link "feminine" with womanish? You're making a biological and not a gendered connection. (As for the title, it's just dumb -- I'm tired of the notion that there is certain sort of information that women must know (to defend themselves?) MIght the same information not be imperative for men as well?). I'm maddened that it persists to be true (i need to know how not to get raped, for example -- but this of course has to do with the larger problems of living in a violent culture) > But maybe Foucalt has a point here -- if what we > consider "rock solid" notions of gender are seen, > by an examiniation of the points of rupture, to arise > less from any potentially objective criteria, but instead > from threads of discourse, where does that take us? Then all innovation is, in relation to the "dominant" tradition, "feminine" and it has nothing to do with gender. Not a bad place to start rethinking what it means to be feminine. Or to start throwing out those terms "masculine" and "feminine" because they're obviously too laden with biological markers (Masculine = hairy armpits are ok) > I guess I don't quite understand how you take > gender to be in some way _material_ without returning > to the reception of woman in society. I meant that only in response to your comment that it was "immaterial" -- whatever you meant by that >Your point > seems very interesting, however -- I like the way > Waldrop problematizes the whole issue by bringing > up the political implications of a formal stance > ("old school feminism"?) and then retracts them > from discussion by noting that she was working on > "a formal problem". At the risk of breaking Adorno's > dictum and paraphrasing a philosophical stance, > is Waldorf coming out and saying that certain formal > modes where, for e.g., "subject and object function > are not fixed", are essentially gendered? Only inasmuch as WE gender them, in assigning them positions in a power relationship. She says elsewhere that language is ungendered. > That there > is some occult connection between the female body > and language? of course not, except when words (usually the title of some pop pscyhology book likw "women who love too much") fall out of my vagina. (Kathy Acker and Dodie Bellamy gave me the balls to say that) (That was for all of you who're sticking it out through this post) > How can a feminist poetics, as you > say, be potentially "unconcerned" with gender? Isn't > gender the sine qua non? Or is it just the starting > point? From there, to where does it go? Yes, in 500 words or less please. > There is a danger, of course, that "postfeminism" > might end up looking like New Criticism -- an analysis of > formal structures within a "self contained and democratic > whole". I doubt it. anyway I'll let you know when I get there, or when I get there I'll let you know . . . yrs in words, lvr ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 12:50:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Jen Hofer/Lori Lubeski reading in San Fran Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If you're in the Bay Area check out Jen Hofer and Lori Lubeski reading at 5:30 saturday july 25 at the attic, 3336 24th @ mission, san fran. right across from the mission st BART sta. cocktails & coketails!! See you there! -Elizabeth Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:52:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35B45716.53F8@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > Is there a "masculine" form? The Epic? Notley would argue that (pretty much) all forms" are masculine. She addresses this in "Epic and Women Poets" (paraphrase) in one of the Naropa Disembodied Poetics anthologies (the recent one) and in her piece excerpted in MOVING BORDERS she talks about the difficulty of writing about VietNam -- for the same reasons -- they are/were "man made" events, epic being a man made record of man's conquests etc. the world (literally -- architects, civil planners, financiers etc.) is man-made. Kathleen Fraser's lines "otherwise the world is simply that which has been described for you" always resonate for me. Notley takes on the same problem -- how to be a woman -- to be HERSELF -- and write poems? Her writing is a record/response to that struggle. The problem with saying that all forms are masculine, or describing certain shapes as gendered (venus of willendorf vs. the twin towers (double your power)though the latter is a reconstruction of matriarchy whereas we KNOW that skyscrapers are patriarchal temples) is that there is no point of entry. We can only "imagine" (John & Yoko?) what a more equitable world (or poetry) would look like. Hence innovative poetry. yrs in words lvr ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 15:55:27 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 21 Jul 1998 13:52:50 -0600 from Linda, Poetry has often been metaphorized as weaving. Does weaving create masculine forms? I understand you were not simply assenting to the idea that "all forms are masculine". - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 14:08:44 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Mark P. sez: > I believe there *are* responses to gender oppression and disequalibrium, > in some high-profile male poets. very much agreed, and thx Mark for the interesting read of Andrews and Bernstein. I'd also add Silliman to that list (and others...) -- thinking, e.g., of sentences in XING that are insistent in their representation of male-ness/masculinity as culturally and esp. (hetero)sexually dominant (oppressive/coercive) -- which makes, for me as a male reader, for an uncomfortable or even humiliating situation. Want to say more about the book (and not leave my remarks so one-dimensional), but it's been over year since last I read it -- quotations are not forthcoming. ("shldn't have drank all that cough syrup this morning"). I think the problem Linda is addressing here-- and one which Rachel Daley and I tried severally to address not long ago (myself with agonized clumsiness, I'm sorry to say) -- is not so much whether the 'gender issue' affects writers of all genders (it does), but a problem of ghettoization, in this case specifically that the critical treatment of gender in writing too often leans toward making it a 'women's issue', and vice versa -- the insane assumption that all women's writing necessarily has to address the reader beginning with "I, woman, say..." or be otherwise dictated by biology. LR: > I don't have a problem with women being "under-represented" > (that makes me a post-feminist) [...] But I wonder why the problematic > way that "tradition" has treated/"constructed" gender is presently a > "woman's problem." Oops, now she's pre-empted me with another post, and I have to get to a meeting. damn this 'real-time' stuff! chris p.s. Simon -- 'postfeminist' = return to New Crit. seems a bit baroque, really. It's not as if the poem has been evaculated of it's historical context (which, anyway, is a caricature of New Crit) -- .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 17:44:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville In-Reply-To: <01IZO0O75HMEHV4YIG@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII It was hot! And anywhere from 40 to 80 people in a room that was about 15x35 with two ceiling fans and two low-BTU ACs doing their best and probably enough or else we would have all melted into a pool of poetics on the floor. and there were highlights (not to speak of the lights over the stage with the funky orange gels) and for me it was first among equals with Will Alexander whose name I had seen here and there and before but not the poems and his presentation in which he directed thoughts and phrases out of his head into the air and from the air into his head with his index finger. it was digital one moment, analog the next. and then Sunday a.m.'s panel, "New Poetry," orgainzed by Michael Basinski around and about and between visual, aural, fusion, performance poetics and beyond. This is where the bowling ball was which I missed in process but saw the product upon the floor being cut off the roll of white paper and its skid marks and runes by Bill Howe with a box cutter it seemed like the ones used in grocery stores, all to make way for the afternoon reading which was slipping into the present as the panel edged up to the limit of its future. it was close. Douglas Messerli, Rosmarie Waldrop, Patrick Doud, Michael Franco and I introduced myself to Maria Damon up from Woods Hole. but that was now and there was still then: Christian Bok and his sound poems one of which was called "Ubu Hubbub" I think and it was syllables and sounds and Bill Clinton and maybe even Jimmy Carter's malaise upon the land. and then there was Bob Grumman, oh Bob Grumman, is there anybody with a better map up by bus 26 hours from Florida and sleeping on comfortable couches from what I heard there in Cambridge, not Beantown. mathemaku: now I know why I took 2nd semester calculus and why if I wuzn't infected by these poems, I might have been a mathematician and then again maybe not but no need now because the asymptotes and delta neighborhoods, and primes and theory, number theory, are there are there. Darren Wershler-Henry (I'm pretty sure it was him) did a poem in Klingon. Wendy Kramer and Ellay Phillips eyedeared their way around a 3-D collage, reading words and pictures and weaving and dancing. Oh, and Michael Basinski and his daughter Natalie rendered words and pictures and sounds and definitions (this was the place of mushrooms, shrooms) in their amuletic poem because it releases. It's Tuesday afternoon. I just came home from a swim at the beach. I'm still hot. best and best, Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 15:18:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: postwomen+ (or is not equal to) speculative equations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" First I'd like to say, since I bemoaned the review in the NYer, that the summer issue of Bookforum contains a much more interesting review of the new Lib of Cong Stein anthologies. Linda, SImon, et al--I will now throw in 2 more cents. Is there a possibility of an ungendered poetics, even if it is something its possible to work toward or to see others as working toward? I mean if you're looking in terms of gender, won't you see gender? I wonder what postfeminism really is -- is it an apology I wonder sometimes (tho I do write for a site called 'the Postfeminist Playground' - which this month contains an article by DOdie Bellamy(www.pfplayground.com)) I think PLAY is key to this -- perhaps we are now more free to PLAY -- to speculate, to speculate on speculations,...- than in the 50s or the Victorian era or whenever, with GENDER AS AN IDEA, construction, etc.....The motifs of our clothing. Maybe we are just now more able to have FUN (or if you prefer: imagination). I don't mean this dumbly, I mean not having to spend so much energy "to not be swept up and violated, (& also) to avoid generating counterviolence as its tool of self-being". I do CLAIM writing as a woman, writing as a "girl", writing about that, engaging in that. Proud of that, then bored by it, etc. Its constantly ENACTED isnt it, along with ten dozen (or a few) other Big Things.... I like it, writing as a WOMAN, thnking about Women. However I of course don't want to be 'marginalized' either, or not taken seriously, or taken seriously in only one way. (But of course it happens...to everyone) misreading is so key aint it intriguin/ I do like Linda read many more women than men. Why? I think my next point might speak to it at least in some way. Linda wrote: >> And another question: >> How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were >> "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to >> "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) Simon wrote: >I think you've sort of answered your own question here; >with a basic idea of how poets create -- through a combination >of observation and language -- there seems to be no reason >that the Poetics of the "male gaze" (yadda, yadda) would >bear any relation to that that might be written by a woman. > >The question of moving the love poem away from "constructions >of the self" is another part of this; it's not what you see, >it's how. One doesn't expect an 18th gynecologist and a 20th >century midwife to concur in their visions of a woman; the >difference would arise from the point of view of a third person. >"Gynceological", "Masculine", is how we label them. Here I can't agree. I think the "Poetics of a male gaze" does bear relation to that that might be written by a woman. Here and now. From childhood, books with first person male narrators, looking at movies, whatever: the woman not only sees 'herself' ('itself') *in* 'the male gaze', but *sees as* the male gaze, or self-gaze, or whatever. It's like the beginning of "The Bluest Eye". & of course there are responses to gender oppression and disequilibrium in the work of some high profile male poets, as someone wrote, this strikes me as having gone on since the beginning of time. whether they were aware of it in our current jargon or not, and no matter what kind of personality or politic or wife-treatment they lived in. isn't even creating something in a way responding to it? I think so. >Waldrop problematizes the whole issue by bringing >up the political implications of a formal stance >("old school feminism"?) and then retracts them >from discussion by noting that she was working on >"a formal problem". At the risk of breaking Adorno's >dictum and paraphrasing a philosophical stance, >is Waldorf coming out and saying that certain formal >modes where, for e.g., "subject and object function >are not fixed", are essentially gendered? That there >is some occult connection between the female body >and language? How can a feminist poetics, as you >say, be potentially "unconcerned" with gender? Isn't >gender the sine qua non? Or is it just the starting >point? From there, to where does it go? as perhaps one of the "theoretically apathetic" I would like to note that in the quote from Waldrop, she first states "I was interested in extending the boundaries of the sentence" then says "it comes out of my feminist preoccupation" [this quote is 20 yrs old] and then says this is all hindsight, "Consciously, I was working on a formal problem." So it seems to me that she was interested in form, whilst of course being aware of herself as a woman/feminist and *in the world as such*. I don't think gender is the starting point or the only point, i think she is merely using it as a way in to explain something, as TRACTION, and then of course there are all these other conscious and unconscious things, RETRACTION.............................. .....what if the male poets had to explain themselves in this type of terminology? Isn't your gender important to you, and then again hardly the only thing? Best, Elizabeth Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 18:19:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hey, anybody who attended conference, wanna say anything about Caroline Knox's reading and/or talk? She's kinda the one person there I have NO SENSE about what she's doing, and am curious (also because I think she spoke of O'Hara, Ashes, etc.....). Thanks, chris stroffolino On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Steven Marks wrote: > It was hot! And anywhere from 40 to 80 people in a room that was about > 15x35 with two ceiling fans and two low-BTU ACs doing their best and > probably enough or else we would have all melted into a pool of poetics on > the floor. and there were highlights (not to speak of the lights over the > stage with the funky orange gels) and for me it was first among equals > with Will Alexander whose name I had seen here and there and before but > not the poems and his presentation in which he directed thoughts and > phrases out of his head into the air and from the air into his head with > his index finger. it was digital one moment, analog the next. and then > Sunday a.m.'s panel, "New Poetry," orgainzed by Michael Basinski around > and about and between visual, aural, fusion, performance poetics and > beyond. This is where the bowling ball was which I missed in process but > saw the product upon the floor being cut off the roll of white paper and > its skid marks and runes by Bill Howe with a box cutter it seemed like the > ones used in grocery stores, all to make way for the afternoon reading > which was slipping into the present as the panel edged up to the limit of > its future. it was close. Douglas Messerli, Rosmarie Waldrop, Patrick > Doud, Michael Franco and I introduced myself to Maria Damon up from Woods > Hole. but that was now and there was still then: Christian Bok and his > sound poems one of which was called "Ubu Hubbub" I think and it was > syllables and sounds and Bill Clinton and maybe even Jimmy Carter's > malaise upon the land. and then there was Bob Grumman, oh Bob Grumman, is > there anybody with a better map up by bus 26 hours from Florida and > sleeping on comfortable couches from what I heard there in Cambridge, not > Beantown. mathemaku: now I know why I took 2nd semester calculus and why > if I wuzn't infected by these poems, I might have been a mathematician and > then again maybe not but no need now because the asymptotes and delta > neighborhoods, and primes and theory, number theory, are there are there. > Darren Wershler-Henry (I'm pretty sure it was him) did a poem in Klingon. > Wendy Kramer and Ellay Phillips eyedeared their way around a 3-D collage, > reading words and pictures and weaving and dancing. Oh, and Michael > Basinski and his daughter Natalie rendered words and pictures and sounds > and definitions (this was the place of mushrooms, shrooms) in their > amuletic poem because it releases. > It's Tuesday afternoon. I just came home from a swim at the beach. I'm > still hot. > > best and best, > Steven > > __________________________________________________ > Steven Marks > > http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html > __________________________________________________ > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 18:55:14 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Franco Subject: dromenon / lift back-list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit lift backlist lift announces a limited number of back issues of issue 10/ 11: the Stephen Jonas issue; as well as # 15/16 the William Corbett issue are available @ $12. each, post-paid. lift 10&11 JONAS ISSUE. fall, 1992. Torra, editor. 132 pages; wrappers. with photo of Jonas by Petricone. Contains selections from Jonas’ EXCERSISES FOR EAR; Orgasms & other work: Essays by Rattray, Killian, Spicer, Dunn, Dorra Fitzgerald, Torra, Wieners, Corman, de Gruttula, Lansing, Ellingham & Weston. Interview with Joe Dunn. lift 15&16 WILLIAM CORBETT ISSUE. Fall, 1994. Torra, editor. 160 pages; wrappers. Cover photo by Dorfman: Interview w/ Corbett; 9 poems; Review of Vendler’s Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry; Essays/poems/ art by Creeley, Auster, Kleinzhaler, Lawrence, Harwood, Yau, Meyer, Warsh, Palmer, F. Howe, Mayer, M. Gizzi, Barrett, Pruitt, Mazur, Pruitt, Gander, Mckim, Sawyer- Lauçanno, Franco et al: Art by: Guston, Watkins, Amenoff, Imber, M. Torra, Seidman, M. Mazur, et al. lift chapbook series #’s 1-4 # 1. AT LAST ROUND UP: T.J.Anderson III. 1996. 29p. wrappers by Molly Torra. # 2. the journals of the man who kept bees [from A BOOK OF MEASURE; Second Circumference (complete)]: 1996. 44 p. wrappers by Katha Seidman. # 3. TIMESERVER: Nick Lawrence. 1996. 30p. Wrappers by Ben E. Watkins. # 4. Immediate Orgy & Audit: Ange Mlinko. 1996. 26p. Wrappers by Molly Torra. Individual titles 1,3,4: $8.00 #2 $8.50: all post-paid. A limited number of complete sets are available on a first come- first served basis at $25.00 post paid. Also available from dromenon press: I have several copies of Joseph Torra’s 16 Paintings: Edition was limited to 50 signed & numbered copies, hand-sewn in wrappers decorated by Molly Torra. 1992. 21 p. $10 post paid. checks to M. Franco/ dromenon press. __________________________________ Copies & sets can be reserved via E-mail. Payment must be received with 7 days of confirmation [E-mail] for copies to be held. Checks for lift book to J. Torra/ lift. All Checks & Mail Orders: c/o dromenon press 34 Jason St. Arlington Ma. 02476-6409 E-mail mfranco34@aol.com all best Michael Franco ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 03:27:20 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit you are absolutle and correct! I agree in all way and from my privilidge and handicapped zone (male) I am more than stuck in my gender stupidity--as we all are... But yes--the forms--hmmmmm....are masculine and such--what do you think of Dickinson's rewritting the hymnal structure--which is male--and damn it--is writing--gender based--re writing or reasembling of structure--and sometimes I wonder if it's all structure anyway--and how sad..but tghe narrative...the epic...the content-based and lecture hall--the architecture of the 20th century (war) yes--I agree and love Notley's undergound ventures and Mayers "Letter to mothers..."...and (sigh) (sic) is there a maleness seriously paid attention to I wonder in the newer poets? Is Silliman "new sentence"--there is an address there to self/and gender/no? Hmmm... I am lost in the funhouse for sure.. Tb (ReMap) ps: which is one reason Carolyn and I do ReMap--I would NOT do a magazine alone--nor with another male--have done that--and yes--I believe strongly our magazine was prone to pen(is) as I hope RE MAp is not (but not without ink, too!) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 17:26:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville Comments: To: Steven Marks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Great reports from Bahston, J. Kimball, Daniel Bouchard & Steven Marks! I hereby relinquish the tattered palm of hyperbole. Thanks. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 18:49:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: new O book by Lisa Samuels MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dearly missed poetics persons, newly settled for a year in louisville, i am happy to announce the appearance of *The Seven Voices*, just published by O Books. it's all poetry, with a way-cool 4-color cover image of one of joseph cornell's boxes. you can order it from small press distribution, through their mag or website (www.spdbooks.org) -- leslie has a website too, for O Books (www.obooks.com). it's perfectbound, $10, 96 pages, and the blurbs are really sweet though i'm too shy to include them here. those boston conference reports, btw, are lovely -- lisa ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 19:39:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35B55C17.2E8D@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII dickinson's hymnal (todd baron) are you penning HYMENAL stretched over all our noses - cf, Christo's hymen over the colorado basin - ah thx chris and linda, getting a bit more of this thread into the lingo, the lack of necessity to decided HERE or NOW - delueze might say to FOLLOW that nose sometime not just try to re-do it, no need to continue reproducing MY self,me Self, mEYEsELF - a la scalapino yes or also parts of Stevens i have recently bumped into . is a matter of FOLLowing what i can imagine is someone elses nose, my own surroundings as they are always MY surroundings and ...so stevens is a bastard cannot i like him already? when he rocks my boat - surprises even the superhuman....'like this saps like the sun true fortuner for all it takes it gives a humped return exchequering from piebald fiscs unkeyed postfeminist seems , in large parrt my party dress today or my do to the do before i figure where it hurts - as long as it does and it does and it does so maybe 'gendering' becomes a convenient term? can it be utilized, i think yes as anything that keeps moving, and this is , like, one of the most popular threads that lingers and recurs and full of buttons... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 22:57:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Varrone Subject: address query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII does anyone know how I might contact Cole Swenson? please backchannel. and thanks in advance. Kevin ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 23:31:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris, I wasn't there but I will vouch for her books, which are astonishing, pitched carefully at a resonance between mirth and despair, assertively idiosyncratic, and very smart. Good reading, especially for a heat wave. The House Party, U of GA Press 1984 To Newfoundland, U of GA Press 1989 Sleepers Wake, Timken Publishers 1994 At 06:19 PM 7/21/98 -0400, you wrote: > Hey, anybody who attended conference, wanna say anything about > Caroline Knox's reading and/or talk? > She's kinda the one person there I have NO SENSE about what she's > doing, and am curious (also because I think she spoke of O'Hara, > Ashes, etc.....). Thanks, chris stroffolino > Susan Wheeler susan.wheeler@nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 01:23:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christian Roess Subject: Re: Came to Cambridge: Not Bean-ville Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Tue, 21 Jul 1998 Patrick Pritchett writes: >Great reports from Bahston, J. Kimball, Daniel Bouchard & Steven Marks! I >hereby relinquish the tattered palm of hyperbole. Thanks. >Patrick Pritchett Yes , my thanks to all for the reports. Also a belated thanks to Patrick Pritchett for his wonderful reports from Naropa. Chris ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 23:28:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain toddbaron said (in replying to a post from Linda Russo): you are absolutle and correct! I agree in all way and from my privilidge and handicapped zone (male) I am more than stuck in my gender stupidity--as we all are... To which (besides questioning his spelling, and differing with Jordan on the importance of that ability in poetics) I ask: Why is being male or female "stuck"? Why is it a "handicapped zone"? Why is Todd seemingly apologizing for being male? Are we perhaps to become ambi-sexual and aware of all possible gender perspectives at once? Look: I like Alan Jennifer's work a lot, but surely one of its virtues is the perception that IDENTIFICATIONS ARE ODIOUS (which is perhaps one of the reasons I've always felt uneasy with "identity politics"). I like SPUNK myself; a certain liveliness and intractability, no matter what sex it emanates from. I myself am "of the male gender" (gag) -- and white besides. I understand that white males are over-privileged in American society (but not only that society -- in fact, LEAST of all in that society). Moreover, I understand that sometimes I exercise these privileges unconsciously. There are, to my great misfortune, innumerable things that I assume unconsciously. No doubt some of these things are related to my maleness and whiteness. No doubt my whiteness and maleness determine many of the decisions I make in my life and, more than that, many of the decisions I make in my poems. But folks . . . GIVE ME A BREAK! Maybe I'm just too much of an old Marxist, but the impersonal economic forces of capitalism seem to me to determine us in a far more comprehensive and degrading way than what sex we happen to be inhabiting. To take an example from the membership of this list, the denial of Joe Amato's tenure (and his postings explaining his perception of that action) are far more alarming than the limitations of "the male gaze." This is just an opinion, limited in universal applicability like any other feeling or opinion. But why should I apologize for my perceptions? Why should ANY OF US APOLOGIZE? And furthermore . . . how can it BE that NOBODY cares if a fucking POET is A MEMBER OF THE FBI!!! "But yes--the forms--hmmmmm....are masculine and such--" Jesus. Maybe there's a REASON so few people go to poetry readings in L.A! (I don't mean to criticize you personally, Todd; I don't know you or your magazine, and you're more than likely a good guy and a fine poet; I hope you understand it's a style of rhetoric I'm objecting to here). And you know, Bukowski was an asshole, but he wrote one or two good poems! Forever, I guess, in the _derrier garde_ (though I like Rachel Daley's post a lot), Joe Safdie _________________________________ STUFF THE VOICE-PRINT Admission of error is a weakness of judgement, if one senses beforehand that it will be seen as a weakness. ---Edward Dorn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 01:32:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: trbell Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Alan, Findmyselfre assessingsomethingsso notalwayscoherent,but >> The description of dreams as 'attempt to structure random neural firings' is >> too often taken a step further to dismissing dreams as therefore meaningless. >> Is not poetry an attempt to do the same with life's random firings? > >This depends on how "meaning" is defined - as symptom, portent, or as >something acceptable to the mind as constituting sense. YES > >I would never go so far in relation to poetry unless one wants to say >everything is such an attempt. PERHAPS >> >> Language can either anchor meaning in an image or else helps serve a relay >> function to put the image into relation with other elements in a complex >> structure. - Barthes >> >> is it not then the image (or dream) that really matters or means? > >No, why or how? And what is meant by "really" here? I would be wary of >assigning priority. YES, "really" is the issue - > >Alan > if anyone is still with me Asapsychologistindisguisehere I am aware that there is a particular verbal therapy that is the treatment of choice for a class of disorders. Neurochemical treatments also work. The fascinating thing here is that the verbal therapy produces the same neurophisical changes on the same brain sites that the neurochemical treatments do. Does this mean that one or the other should be given a priority or are they essentially the same? Does language or neurochemicals "really" produce the change? tom ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 20:05:22 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Safdie Joseph wrote: > > toddbaron said (in replying to a post from Linda Russo): > > you are absolutle and correct! > I agree in all way > and from my privilidge and > handicapped zone (male) > I am more than stuck in my > gender stupidity--as we all are... > > To which (besides questioning his spelling, and differing with Jordan on > the importance of that ability in poetics) I ask: > > Why is being male or female "stuck"? > Why is it a "handicapped zone"? > Why is Todd seemingly apologizing for being male? > Are we perhaps to become ambi-sexual and aware of all possible gender > perspectives at once? > > Look: I like Alan Jennifer's work a lot, but surely one of its virtues > is the perception that IDENTIFICATIONS ARE ODIOUS (which is perhaps one > of the reasons I've always felt uneasy with "identity politics"). I like > SPUNK myself; a certain liveliness and intractability, no matter what > sex it emanates from. I myself am "of the male gender" (gag) -- and > white besides. I understand that white males are over-privileged in > American society (but not only that society -- in fact, LEAST of all in > that society). Moreover, I understand that sometimes I exercise these > privileges unconsciously. There are, to my great misfortune, innumerable > things that I assume unconsciously. No doubt some of these things are > related to my maleness and whiteness. No doubt my whiteness and maleness > determine many of the decisions I make in my life and, more than that, > many of the decisions I make in my poems. > > But folks . . . > > GIVE ME A BREAK! > > Maybe I'm just too much of an old Marxist, but the impersonal economic > forces of capitalism seem to me to determine us in a far more > comprehensive and degrading way than what sex we happen to be > inhabiting. To take an example from the membership of this list, the > denial of Joe Amato's tenure (and his postings explaining his perception > of that action) are far more alarming than the limitations of "the male > gaze." This is just an opinion, limited in universal applicability like > any other feeling or opinion. But why should I apologize for my > perceptions? Why should ANY OF US APOLOGIZE? > > And furthermore . . . how can it BE that NOBODY cares if a fucking POET > is A MEMBER OF THE FBI!!! > > "But yes--the forms--hmmmmm....are masculine > and such--" > > Jesus. > > Maybe there's a REASON so few people go to poetry readings in L.A! (I > don't mean to criticize you personally, Todd; I don't know you or your > magazine, and you're more than likely a good guy and a fine poet; I hope > you understand it's a style of rhetoric I'm objecting to here). Todd Baron: I must start off by saying Buk. NEVER wrote a good poem--sorry--I am not in favor of a) poor writing and silliness in the name drunken stupidity and ill-defined post-beat romanticism b) HE is a mysoginist idiot! (Phew!) being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- never impersonal. Tb ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:33:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: For Joel K. (2 wks late) Comments: To: "J. Kuszai" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel Kuszai asked me, a long while ago, to post something on Steve Dickison's Naropa Lecture. Lemmesay first that Steve did a beautiful thing for the opening panel, which was to approach the issue of Community/Performance/Publishing topic through the Jazz performance scene of the Bay Area, which has been taken back or over by the musicians themselves creating relationships which are direct, no middle developer. This Steve posed in comparison to some venues in Europe that are subsidized by generous art funding but end up with small scattered audience that fail to provide the critical mass necessary for vibrancy. This double edged sword was embodied for us by Kai Nieminem, who was thrilled at the energetic poet's dialogue here but who was only able to get to Naropa through the funding of the Finnish Bureau of Culture, an entity, it was observed, that doesn't have an equal here, unless you consider the international marketing of Armagedon to be such an equal. As for Steve's lecture I can only by very subjective in terms of what I remember. He raised the question of independence in publishing, whether it was possible in a time when even the smallest press must arrange their marketing to serve the systems of Barnes and Noble and Borders. For example, if presses don't print a computer scanner thing, they can expect their books to get stuck with a large marring sticker--which will come back on the returned books. Small Press Distribution's sales, he told us, had gone up 50%, largely because B&N in their effort to beat Amazon in being the World's Largest, had ordered 2 of everything for their warehouse. Raising all sorts of issues. On one hand the access of largeness has enabled a proliferation of small presses, on the other a devastation of small bookstores. LIke I said, all this raises much. Sorry the report is so short so late. Off to camp. RDL ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:26:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Good example, henry -- in the Odyssey -- who weaves? Penelope or Homer? Arachne weaves -- but who weaves the myths of Penelope and Arachne? I know it's ridiculous to try to get down to first causes, to try to separate what's "man-made" and "woman-made" (preferring this to masc/fem) a 2nd wave feminist would Re-Vision these weaving myths to give penelope more autonomy, perhaps make her less chaste, etc. (cf Rukeyser "No more masks! No more mythologies") A post-feminist read -- necessarily post-structuralist -- would recognize the myth of penelope woven into, and inseparable from, the frames other (man-made) myths. Weaving -- the technique, the writing strategy -- is neither masculine nor feminine -- Forms are neither masculine nor feminine (an extension of Waldrop's claim that language is neutral). Forms are not masculine but the construction of literary history, the way we view forms, is -- I think it's time feminist scholarship came to grips with its limitations on this front. i was pointing the gendering of forms as a problem of feminist scholarship (at one point necessary) -- a reduction that perhaps "prohibits" male writers also from assuming a "gendered" relationship to literary history -- which perhaps frames all men as complicit in maintianing this oppressive history On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, henry g wrote: > Linda, > Poetry has often been metaphorized as weaving. Does weaving create masculine > forms? I understand you were not simply assenting to the idea that "all forms > are masculine". > > - Henry G. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 20:30:14 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: For Joel K. (2 wks late) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel Levitsky wrote: > > Joel Kuszai asked me, a long while ago, to post something on Steve > Dickison's Naropa Lecture. Lemmesay first that Steve did a beautiful > thing for the opening panel, which was to approach the issue of > Community/Performance/Publishing topic through the Jazz performance > scene of the Bay Area, which has been taken back or over by the > musicians themselves creating relationships which are direct, no middle > developer. > This Steve posed in comparison to some venues in Europe that are > subsidized by generous art funding but end up with small scattered > audience that fail to provide the critical mass necessary for vibrancy. > This double edged sword was embodied for us by Kai Nieminem, who was > thrilled at the energetic poet's dialogue here but who was only able to > get to Naropa through the funding of the Finnish Bureau of Culture, an > entity, it was observed, that doesn't have an equal here, unless you > consider the international marketing of Armagedon to be such an equal. > > As for Steve's lecture I can only by very subjective in terms of what I > remember. He raised the question of independence in publishing, whether > it was possible in a time when even the smallest press must arrange > their marketing to serve the systems of Barnes and Noble and Borders. > For example, if presses don't print a computer scanner thing, they can > expect their books to get stuck with a large marring sticker--which will > come back on the returned books. Small Press Distribution's sales, he > told us, had gone up 50%, largely because B&N in their effort to beat > Amazon in being the World's Largest, had ordered 2 of everything for > their warehouse. Raising all sorts of issues. On one hand the access > of largeness has enabled a proliferation of small presses, on the other > a devastation of small bookstores. > > LIke I said, all this raises much. Sorry the report is so short so > late. > > Off to camp. > > RDL But steve poses some very important questions. I believe--and the discussion not that long ago here abt. the LA or any local "scene" --that we must begin again to redefine ways of distribution and publishing for the many many small(er) presses that exist--from magazines to books. Carolyn Kemp and I do ReMap as only by sub. but we don't want to--even distribution sources that might take our magazine are frenzied and incoherent enugh to scare us--I'd rather give the mag. away (as I have...) to true readers and participants in the porject than have to wait 1 year for small sums. What do we do? How do we--also as poets--get work published? I have been "lucky" enough to work with some very fine presses (O Books, texture, Avenue B..etc) but now I have several manuscripts I would like to see pubished--and how and where. I always feel sheepish sending to presses I have no working relationship with--but must. Direct co-relation to Steve's work--steve's workshop--lectures--(as I understand them from Steve, too) that it's time we think of ourselves in much the same manner as other arts communities. Bands start off small but gain a public if they're good (>?<) enough, etc. I'd love to hear more on what everyone else in the world thinks about a) dist. and publishing of mags and books b) getting work published and (AND) supporting small(er) publishing houses. Tb (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:10:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Subject: combo? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've misplaced the ordering info (where, how much) for Michael Magee's magazine -Combo-. Could someone re-post this (backchannel fine)? thanks fjb ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 12:23:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: The A's and B's of small press publishing: Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35B64BD4.A71@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Todd Baron wants insights into a) dist. and publishing of mags and books b) getting work published and (AND) supporting small(er) publishing houses. a) Well, as far as I can tell, outside the bustling matrices of SF & NY (etc), magazines publishing avant-garde poetry & really vital poetics come in two very general varieties. There's the glossy/perfect-bound mag. with a dependable stable of "established" poets representing their latest leading up to its publication in glossy/perfect-bound book form, often in tandem or under the umbrella of an institution, such as a university. These magazines, to my mind, often do not or cannot take the sorts of risks of the second brand; There is a glut of little "experimental" magazines, such as my own or yours, Todd, that can often develop their own stable of authors, but will more often take risks with "emerging" writers, since those with the capital (economic and cultural) to wind up an "important" source of cultural and economic viability, vibrancy, would consider the cottage-industry mag.s' stable of authors "emerging" so long as they allow themselves to be seen in the company of unknowns. I make this admittedly clumsy distinction to make the point that poets & "poeticians" like any other practitioner in a capital economics will run with their own crowd, because one cannot generally afford the other. In other words, what is vital to one community is often misinterpreted as aesthetic posturing, or mere pretense, in another. Anyone publishing independently must first decide what that means as far as procedural concerns go, distribution, marketing, format, then realize that, should you fall into the second category, this provides you a not unique but happy nonetheless opportunity to cross those borders, as far as whom you choose to represent in your pages. Engaged authors produce work which will engage in such a dialogic configuration. Thus, hopefully, the work will carry the mag. into the hands of an audience(s). b) Thus, hopefully, the work will carry the author into the magazine of an audience. Patrick F. Durgin | | k e n n i n g````````````````|`````````````````````````````````` a newsletter of contemporary |poetry, poetics, and non-fiction writing |418 Brown St. #10 Iowa City, IA 52245 USA ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:09:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:26:29 -0600 from On Wed, 22 Jul 1998 10:26:29 -0600 Linda Russo said: > >Weaving -- the technique, the writing strategy -- is neither masculine >nor feminine -- Forms are neither masculine nor feminine (an extension >of Waldrop's claim that language is neutral). Forms are not masculine but >the construction of literary history, the way we view forms, is -- I think >it's time feminist scholarship came to grips with its limitations on this >front. > >i was pointing the gendering of forms as a problem of feminist scholarship >(at one point necessary) -- a reduction that perhaps "prohibits" >male writers also from assuming a "gendered" relationship to literary >history -- which perhaps frames all men as complicit in maintianing this >oppressive history This makes me think of Ann Douglas' books, _Feminization of American Culture_, and _Terrible Honesty_ - and how modernist poets (Pound, Williams especially) were part of a general cultural reaction against the "suffocating genteel Victorian"(& white) feminism of the later 19th century - and how Pound's "breaking of forms" (all the little effete sonnet men) was a macho thing - so that the sonnet was a feminine form (in his mind, at that time), feminine = effete, genteel, soft - but women writing sonnets in the 19th century was maybe a feminist thing to do - and I wonder how much the dissociated, experimental, post-Poundian, postmodern forms illustrate a repeat of this pattern - women "appropriating" "masculine" forms - but too late; there always seems to be a late-arriving avant-garde ready to lead their disciples & acolytes further into a dead-end wilderness supposedly "new" - (just trying to be provocative) these things are just too durn complicated!! There are at least three/four levels: the personal/artistic, which is a person working out of a semi-damaged personal psyche into artistic form; there is the legal/political , where a society tries to control/compromise/negotiate social peace; and there is the intellectual/theoretical, where all the personal/artistic issues are hashed out and analyzed in the sociological/objective abstract (both helping and screwing up the other levels in the process) - and the men poets weave their appropriated forms into a shroud around the actual weavers themselves - - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 12:03:12 -0600 Reply-To: Linda Russo Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: <35B64601.1050@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rah rah. I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in patriarchal biases. But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! Until we get some intelligent conversation going to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) Todd's comeback: > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > never impersonal. > > Tb > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 12:16:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, R M Daley wrote: > so maybe 'gendering' becomes a convenient term? can it be utilized, i > think yes as anything that keeps moving, and this is , like, one of the > most popular threads that lingers and recurs and full of buttons... > OR Conveniently inconvenient how about instead of MASCULINE and FEMININE we use CANINE FELINE HEGEMONIC NON-HEGEMONIC CORSETTED BRASSIERED COOKED RAW MEDIUM RARE PINK DUSTY ROSE WINEDARK SPARKLING STRAPPED-ON SLAPPED-ON OR ANY COMBINATION OF THE ABOVE. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 12:09:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bradford J Senning Subject: room MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 26 year old senior at the University of Arizona moving to NYC to attend Hunter College as a National Student Exchange (NSE) member. Needs a cheap room for no more than a semester beginning August 22. Genteel, studious, willing to do chores. Backchannel response. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 21:46:43 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alaric Sumner Subject: Michael Basinski reviews The Unspeakable Rooms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have just received the following review from Michael D. Basinski (poet, critic, Rare Books/Poetry Librarian etc) of State University of New York at Buffalo. The two previous reviews posted have been about the performance in Cleveland, Ohio. Special thanks to Taylor Brady (Stratch and Dent/Cartograffiti) for organising the gig. "I recently had occasion to watch and hear the work of sound poet Alaric Sumner and performer Rory McDermott in my home town of Buffalo, New York at the HallWalls Contemporary Art Center (22nd May 1998). The evening featured two works by Sumner. The first, 'error studies and portraits', was a multi-voice, conversation poem carried on between Sumner and McDermott. Certainly, this was interesting because multi-voice presentation poetry looms a major avant garde technique. Sumner's sound poems weave literally philosophy with the aural. The form it manifests exists in a matrix of poetics and sound. It was a pleasure to hear this burgeoning form worked by a poet whose ear is well tuned and whose intellect can manipulate the multi-voice tool to form poetry. "In retrospect, this first piece acted as a prolog and introduction to the second piece of the evening, 'The Unspeakable Rooms'. This was a more physical piece that featured McDermott strenuously and emotionally, passionately moving in front of a screen on which was projected McDermott passionately moving. The sound tract was McDermott's reading, rendering of Sumner's text. Perfectly balanced it was strenuous, riveting performance. McDermott miming himself on film ranged through a host of emotions. As a poetic piece, as a poem, one was constantly aware of the dual qualities of language. Language is both the material of meaning and a veil surrounding meaning. The two McDermotts, one real and one a real film, became a metaphor of this constant and irreconcilable struggle. Beyond this, of course, as poem it was a tactile event, therefore, much new in the realm of the poem. "Both pieces were extremely interesting and engaging and the evening will stick long in my mind because of the challenge it posed to contemporary poetry. That challenge was to become tactile yet intellectually philosophical. The team of Sumner and McDermott seem to be the best operating this day in this opening arena." Enquires about bookings to: a.sumner@dartington.ac.uk or phone: +44 (0) 1803 867829 JPEG screen dumps from the video made during the Buffalo performance are available as attachments on request (they are not of the highest quality but give a good sense of the visual impact.) The piece's requirements are: space: 12ft wide x 9ft tall white wall or screen (performance is end on, so audience should not be too far to the sides of the 12 ft) blackout video projector (high quality single beam) video player (SVHS ideally, VHS ok) cd player good sound system (for vocal range) The piece has been designed with art galleries in mind and does not require conventional performance spaces (though they accommodate it perfectly well). University venues particularly welcome (especially with educational sessions (workshop/lecture) attached on the piece/performance writing/collaboration, etc). A future issue of PAJ (Performing Arts Journal, published by Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA) will include the text of The Unspeakable Rooms in a section I have edited on (live) Performance Writing. Their web site is at: http://calliope.jhu.edu/journals/performing_arts_journal/ It looks as if we have a London Venue for The Unspeakable Rooms in late September. More details shortly. Other venues in October and November in Leeds, Devon and Cornwall. --------------------------------- Performance Writing Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EJ, UK http://www.dartington.ac.uk/prospectus/pw.html "error studies and portraits" in Cartograffiti (ed. Taylor Brady) http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/cartograffiti/contents/poems.htm l The Unspeakable Rooms, 11th Performance Art Festival, Cleveland, Ohio http://www.performance-art.org/weekone.html "One of the most stunning performances the Festival has ever presented." Amy Bracken Sparks, "The Plain Dealer" "One of the most powerful performances I've ever witnessed, and I've attended hundreds. A difficult masterpiece." Frank Green, "Cleveland Free Times" Formerly resident writer at Tate Gallery, St Ives. Book from residency: "Waves on Porthmeor Beach" (words worth) illustrated by Sandra Blow RA. First prize, Renato Giorgi Poetry Award (Cornish section) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 13:50:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" If that was a "brilliant" comeback, Linda (and where, indeed, would Todd be coming back from?) the word doesn't mean what I thought it meant. Speculations as to Mrs. Marx aside, the economic system is no respecter of persons. I appreciate that you seem to be wrestling with something and I hope you and others continue to produce the challenging work that would help illuminate the problems as you see them. (Is "patriarchal" really so much a better word than "masculine"?) Here's an excerpt from this month's Harper's from one William Phillips, which deals a bit with what I said last night . . . "I've been wondering where the ideas and movements on the left today come from. They do not have their source in either Marx or Lenin, yet they are deemed by the left itself to be authentic, especially in the academy. . . . 1. Cultural diversity. Neither Marx nor Lenin was interested in any kind of cultural diversity. Lenin supported the various nationalisms in Russia, but that was mainly a part of his revolutionary strategy. 2. Gay liberation. Neither Marx nor Lenin had the slightest interest in homosexuality of any kind. . . . And certainly they had no notion of an "alternative lifestyle." 3. Radical feminism. Neither Marx nor Lenin was especially concerned with feminism, though they did not directly oppose it. What they actually believed was that no questions concerning feminism could be adequately solved under capitalism, and that only under socialism would people be free of prejudice or bigotry. And women would be equal to men in all respects. 4. Gender studies. Marx and Lenin, of course, never heard of what are called gender studies. But obviously they would not have had the slightest interest in them and would have thought of them as intellectual and political distractions. Etc., etc. He makes a few cheap rhetorical points at the end, but I was most interested in his No. 3 above. That is, speculations about gender don't HAVE to be "intellectual and political distractions" . . . they can be linked with other pursuits, some of which I would certainly hope would be poetic and economic. I would repeat, again, my post of last week -- it's the existence of money that makes it impossible to sustain an "epic" view of the world. (And speaking of persons, my FIRST name is Joseph.) ---------- From: Linda Russo [SMTP:Linda.Russo@M.CC.UTAH.EDU] Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 1998 11:03 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too Rah rah. I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in patriarchal biases. But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! Until we get some intelligent conversation going to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) Todd's comeback: > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > never impersonal. > > Tb > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 01:13:08 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit weird. I meant simply that as response to the statement earlier made that "economics are impersonal" that that was wrong. Economics are Gender and Race and Age based. This must enter into a discussion of gender based writing--what keeps poets where they're kept in the class system--and writers--and visual artists--etc."--and that economics being gender based (etc) the question must focus on /more/econmics than simply form and function. Marx would not have thought gender studies were "distractions" had they been presented in this manner--He well understood who got paid for what/etc. And Reich (let's get going here) focused much attention on economic constraints primarilly placed on women and child in relation to sex/gender based roles. THAT"S the reason he got kicked out of the Communist party--he wanted to break down the standard economic roles that capitalism AND communism was placing on women and children. esp. Tb the poem has possibilities like this, also. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:57:18 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: Poetry Daily Website Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all- Ron mentioned that Poetry Daily is featuring a poem of mine on their website (www.poems.com) on Saturday. Disconcertingly, I've just heard now (for the first time) from them and it seems what they're planning to do is post the second half of a two part poem. So what will show up there isn't complete. That makes the experience even stranger. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:30:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: queries In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" are there surviving members of the Oulipo group and do they still meet in paris? inquiring minds need to know ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 19:16:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: life in late capitalist society (f.y.i) Comments: cc: sweetsod@aol.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 0:39 AM ET 07/22/98 FEATURE-''Air rage'' on the rise on U.S., other airlines By Diana Fairechild KAUAI, Hawaii (Reuters) - Blame it on a lack of oxygen or being packed like sardines in a can, but ``air rage'' is on the rise. In well-publicized incidents, airline passengers have defecated on food carts, been aggressive with the crew and even sexually assaulted their seats. Airline travel once was exclusively for a more refined jet set, but these days flying has become a perilous proposition. Unruly behavior in the skies has been increasing at an astonishing rate in both numbers and the level of hostility. A recent report by the International Cabin Crew Association showed a rise of about 400 percent in incidents since 1995. In early July, the ICCA, the International Transport Federation and the International Federation of Airline Pilots issued a joint statement saying airlines should adopt a policy of prosecuting all offenders. They also called for a blacklist of offenders and said airlines should ensure there is restraint equipment such as plastic handcuffs aboard all planes. In 1996, banker Gerard Finneran was fined $50,000 after he assaulted an attendant and then defecated on a first-class food cart during a Buenos Aires-to-New York flight. More recently, a man on a Northwest Airlines flight removed his pants and ``simulated having sex with the back of his seat,'' airline officials reported. And a man on a flight to Honolulu ``allegedly urinated on the seats,'' then punched another passenger who told him to stop. Other incidents include passengers becoming enraged after being asked if their seat-belts were fastened and crews being attacked for trying to put trays back in the upright position. The problem is not just an American one. In 1995 a large group of British and Irish tourists ran amok aboard a trans-Atlantic flight after being denied more alcohol. The drunken tourists sent their children to steal more drink from service carts, attacked other passengers and pelted the crew with food until they were overcome by some wrestlers aboard, giving the entire incident a three-ring circus flavor. BOUND AND GAGGED Airline crews have been forced to take drastic measures. A British Airways passenger who ``improperly touched a flight attendant'' this year was bound with handcuffs and duct tape by the crew and subsequently fined $11,000. Another passenger was tied up with a headset cord by United Airlines crew members after he disturbed the flight. Japan Airlines also has given flight attendants permission to tie up unruly and raucous passengers. The airline issued the edict last year after incidents on its planes more than doubled between 1995 and 1996. JAL said its crew members had been stabbed with pens, had their buttocks and breasts groped and were even forced to get on their hands and knees to apologize for bringing drinks late to some drunken passengers. Experts say the airline equivalent of road rage is a complex problem with many contributory factors. It could simply be a reflection of increased violence in society, but there may be other underlying issues triggering the rise in unruliness. Some medical experts blame the cabin environment, which they say is high in toxic chemicals and allergens and low in air pressure and oxygen. ``Curtailment of fresh air in airplanes can be causing deficient oxygen in the brain of passengers, and this often makes people act belligerent, even crazy,'' said Dr. Vincent Mark, an environmental physician in Santa Cruz, California. The link between air rage and poor air quality may deserve a closer look. Passenger unruliness began to rise some 20 years ago, coinciding with the cost-cutting practice of using recycled air instead of fresh air in passenger cabins. SARDINE-CLASS SEATING Another possible culprit, high on the list of irritations for airline passengers, is cramped ``sardine seating.'' Airline seats are now as small as seats on subway trains, and with many flights lasting longer passengers feel they are packed in like sardines in a can, or chickens in crowded cages. Is it any wonder they peck peevishly at those around them? Airline executives point the finger in part at excess luggage. In recent testimony before Congress one blamed an explosion in the number and size of bags passengers carry on. But critics say airlines themselves have contributed to the problem by removing coat closets, leaving little room for garment bags. And with eight percent of all airline baggage lost or stolen, travelers are increasingly reluctant to check their luggage. While Congress and the airlines think about ways to fix the problem, here are a few tips if you find yourself on a flight with an unruly passenger: -- Rather than confront the offender directly, leave your seat and seek out the purser or senior flight attendant. The purser is usually found in first class, so bypass the flight attendants in coach. -- Give the purser the row and seat number of the unruly passenger. Remain calm and communicate clearly. -- If you have a tendency to be an unruly passenger yourself, keep in mind that the trip is a challenge for everyone on board. Tolerance and polite gestures could make your flights more pleasant for you and everyone around you. (Diana Fairechild is an expert in aviation health and safety and author of the book ``Jet Smart.'' She maintains a Healthy Flying Web Site at www.flyana.com.) ^REUTERS@ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 10:59:44 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "d.j. huppatz" Subject: new webpage/journal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dear all ANNOUNCING the new TEXTBASE webpage featuring experimental writing & visual art projects from MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. TEXTBASE has been operating for a few years as a loose collective of writers working in the visual arts scene & we are now publishing our own literary journal. the TEXTBASE webpage features a(n almost) complete documentation of our visual arts projects as well as the first two issues of the journal. there are also some interesting hypertext pieces on the webpage - i recommend benjamin brady's "a is for geophysics" for those of you with good graphics & sound. any comments/criticism/inquiries appreciated. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: i still have about ten hard copies of the first two issues of the journal which i'm willing to send to interested parties. this is a free offer but swaps for your journal/chapbook/whatever would be great. backchannel a name & address. dan huppatz melbourne ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 21:06:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Guest (for Notley) In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19980722063240.0067da28@pop.usit.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think this is the greatest mystery - the relation of the symbolic to the neurophysiological - how certain words, certain orders, can bring on chem- ical depression, neurosis, even death, how voudou operates, hypnosis; we live half-in, half-out the symbolic - we're cluttered by it... Alan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 19:03:31 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: reductio ad absurdum MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "The concerted effort around 1950 to reduce human affairs to positive science or techniques and technologies led to mislabeling that made much of what was said and done in connection with psychoanalysis absurd. We encounter a similar bias toward techniques, positivism, and reductionism in various forms at the meetings: in the enthusiasm for interpreting existential issues in terms of mathematical decision theory and game theory; in the mislabeling of the political World Federation for Mental Health as a scientific organization; in the reference to psychology as "behavioral science"; in Northrop's replacement of the actual social and political events by logical systems; in Stroud's technical fix to deal with the dangers of nuclear annihilation. This mislabeling is the earmark of not only the Macy meetings but of the postwar era in the United States.... The taboo, around 1950, against tracing the origins of psychological suffering to political and economic conditions and seeking to alter them, the "social amnesia" (to borrow Jacoby's phrase) of psychotherapists, was itself part of the political climate."---from The Cybernetics Group by Steve Joshua Heims---carlo parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 01:14:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: BEYOND THE PAGE (SD CA Reading Series) from Stephen Cope MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII as I've been out of the office for three days where the electicity don't shine (michigan during a storm) don't know if this went through. Will read digests later. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 19 Jul 1998 19:50:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Stephen Cope To: kuszai@acsu.buffalo.edu BEYOND THE PAGE PRESENTS: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: What: Beyond the Page continues its series of monthly performance and arts events with BOBBIE WEST and STEVE CARLL Where: Faultline Theatre, 3152 5th Avenue (at Spruce in Hillcrest), San Diego. When: Sunday, July 26. 4:00 PM. Contact: Stephen Cope at (619) 298-8761 or Joe Ross at (619) 291-8984. E-mail at scope@ucsd.edu, or jjross@cts.com. * * * * * * * * * STEVE CARLL received an MA in Poetics from New College of California, and is about to become a resident of Honolulu, Hawai'i. He is the editor of _Antynym_ (currently on hiatus), and has published two chapbooks: _Sincerity Loops_ (Bathysphere Press) and _trace a moment's closure for clues_ (Logodaedalus). His book _DRUGS_ is forthcoming from Black Fire White Fire, and his poems have recently appeared in _Rhizome_, _Melodeon_, _Angle_, and _The Washington Review_. BOBBIE WEST grew up on a farm in Illinois. After drifing into various jobs as a waitress, union machinist, translator, and English teacher in China, she discovered poetry. Since then, her work has appeared in various magazines, the most recent of which is _Tinfish #6_. Currently employed part time at the San Diego Public Library, she works full time on various poetic projects, including a new book of literary responses to the work of Rae Armantrout, edited by Tom Beckett. * * * * * * * * * BEYOND THE PAGE is proud to continue its monthly series of arts-related events with this reading. Beyond the Page is an independent arts group dedicated to the promotion of experimental and explorative work in contemporary arts. For more information, call: (619) 298-8761, (619) 291-8984; e-mail: scope@ucsd.edu, jjross@cts.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:36:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: weaving/tying In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Weaving -- the technique, the writing strategy -- is neither masculine >nor feminine -- Writing is textual So is textile. Hence weaving. The ending of the Odyssey is literal denouement. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 17:38:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: queries In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >are there surviving members of the Oulipo group and do they still meet in >paris? inquiring minds need to know Harry Mathews is certainly alive. As are some of the ones whose names I dont know. But of course Perec and Queneau and Calvino are all gone. The big Oulipo book should be out within the next year. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 03:02:16 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Oliver Subject: Re: Oulipo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit For Maria Damon: Jacques Roubeaud and Harry Mathews are surviving Oulipoites but I don't know if there are others. Best Doug Oliver ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 00:27:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: reductio ad absurdum Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" to footnote r gancie's citation under this heading : ". . .In this society, we shift social conflicts to psychic problems that can thus be charged to individuals at 50 bucks an hour as private matters. But isn't a percentage of our wages intended to cover the case? It's not only embarrassing to be like a dumb Swede in an Ingmar Bergman movie, it's suicidal. Of course suicide can be the ethically correct choice. I think of him often." I cite my book _Red Hats_ , published in 1986 but written years earlier (that $50/hour needs updating!). As I read it today, the objection re- a percentage of our wages sounded dumb to me, the "devil's advocacy" an uncalled-for equivocation, thus bringing in the next sentence. One of the more impressive facts of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was that once the protests began, the number of students seeking psychiatric help dipped sharply -- dramatically, I'd say. db3. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 04:14:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: re /dream MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII L'image est formee de mots qui la revent. An image is formed by words dreaming it. (Jabes, trans. K. Waldrop) - Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 11:45:20 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: subpo In-Reply-To: <199807221448_MC2-53E0-E287@compuserve.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Here's a one-two from the subpo list What's the 'subpo list'? Something other or another name for something else? Details please. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 13:38:01 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sean bonney Subject: rooms in london? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sorry to clog up the list with this sort of thing but ---- poet (and cat), 29 years, occaisonally noisy about to start PhD on Olson & Artaud at Kings College, London, seeks flat/houseshare by mid-September --- any London poets backchannel PLEASE ---- warm regards, Sean ---------------------- el0p71e9@liverpool.ac.uk ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 08:42:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: <199807230403.WAA11562@pilsener.ucs.ualberta.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry asks about all those 'feminine' sonneteers of the 19th century & the male macho response to them, but I immediately think of one 19th century woman poet, Emily Dickinson, & how powerful her 'influence' on men as well as women is in the late 20th century. Not with sonnets either (& I know, her work wasn't 'present' in its time). With regard to gender in writing: it would probably seem a country-minded thing to say, but couldn't it nevertheless be said, that gender is a given, ineluctably there in whomever's writing? But, then, even if 'we' were to agree to such a simple statement, we still might add that the really interesting question is whether or no the writing (& the writer?) interrogates the concept of gender both _in_ & _by_ its formal strategies...? Douglas Barbour (h) [403] 4363320 (b) [403] 492 2181 Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5 By stress and syllable by change-rhyme and contour we let the long line pace equal awkward to its period. The short line we refine and keep for candor. Robert Duncan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 10:47:44 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 23 Jul 1998 08:42:05 -0600 from On Thu, 23 Jul 1998 08:42:05 -0600 Douglas Barbour said: >Henry asks about all those 'feminine' sonneteers of the 19th century & the >male macho response to them, but I immediately think of one 19th century >woman poet, Emily Dickinson, & how powerful her 'influence' on men as well >as women is in the late 20th century. Not with sonnets either (& I know, >her work wasn't 'present' in its time). Dickinson's NOT writing in sonnets was a comment on the conventional writing of her time, ahead of the (sexist?) critiques of a later time. Society struggling along cleans the slate, and what was dominant (sentimental genteel versifying) is tossed out - but the battle-lines of "form" are dated now... I mean the old battle-lines... - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 19:20:04 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit henry g wrote: > > On Thu, 23 Jul 1998 08:42:05 -0600 Douglas Barbour said: > >Henry asks about all those 'feminine' sonneteers of the 19th century & the > >male macho response to them, but I immediately think of one 19th century > >woman poet, Emily Dickinson, & how powerful her 'influence' on men as well > >as women is in the late 20th century. Not with sonnets either (& I know, > >her work wasn't 'present' in its time). > > Dickinson's NOT writing in sonnets was a comment on the conventional > writing of her time, ahead of the (sexist?) critiques of a later time. > Society struggling along cleans the slate, and what was dominant (sentimental > genteel versifying) is tossed out - but the battle-lines of "form" > are dated now... I mean the old battle-lines... > - Henry G Don't agree that Dickinson's writing was a "comment" at all-- just tht she did not write in the conventional form--but not as a comment--she didn't live in a world she was against.... Let's not make her a warrior. She did follwo the voices she heard on the page and the occasional church hymn (written by men) and of course Shakespeare and the bible. Tb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 11:30:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: oulipo howlipo whylipo wherelipo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Two people have responding (sort of) to Maria's inquiry about Oulipo. They simply mentioned a few names of folks who are (either) living or dead... The other part of her question was whether the group still has any ongoing existence qua group: whether anyone oulipan still meets. That to me is the interesting part of the question. If they ceased as a group entity, when did they do so? and similar gossipy inquiries.... The lists of membership i have seen, and group photos, show how perfectly they reflected (at one time, certainly) the assumptions of the world of letters pre-1970: a reasonably large bunch of writers, and they were *all men*...Can anyone indicate if they ever eventually had a woman member? (or two?) Mark P. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 11:36:31 -0400 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: reductio ad absurdum MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit david bromige wrote: > > to footnote r gancie's citation under this heading : > > ". . .In this society, we shift social conflicts to psychic problems that > can thus be charged to individuals at 50 bucks an hour as private matters. > But isn't a percentage of our wages intended to cover the case? It's not > only embarrassing to be like a dumb Swede in an Ingmar Bergman movie, it's > suicidal. Of course suicide can be the ethically correct choice. I think of > him often." > > I cite my book _Red Hats_ , published in 1986 but written years earlier > (that $50/hour needs updating!). As I read it today, the objection re- a > percentage of our wages sounded dumb to me, the "devil's advocacy" an > uncalled-for equivocation, thus bringing in the next sentence. One of the > more impressive facts of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley was that > once the protests began, the number of students seeking psychiatric help > dipped sharply -- dramatically, I'd say. > > db3. In support of David's contention, Human Behavior magazine once ran a piece on how depression and suicide decreased dramatically in West Belfast when riots were in full swing: "Suicides Down. Since their neighborhood turned into a battleground, fewer of the downhearted haved moved to end their own lives. The mean suicide figures for both men and women in 1970 were almost half the mean for the years 1964-69." Of course, the psychiatric reasons given for the decline are inane. The Belfastians, who were immersed historically in their condition, have simply identified the cause of their 'depression' and attempted to eliminate it.---Rosalie Gancie (By the way the original quotes as well as the quotes from the passed few months are from Carlo Parcelli who abuses my e-mail in my name. Of course, he hastens to add his agreement to David's post). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 10:07:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carolyn Guertin Subject: BeeHive #2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: "Talan Memmott" Subject: BeeHive #2 goes LIVE!!! PERCEPTICON is pleased to announce that the second issue of its Hypertext fiction/theory/poetry journal BeeHive is now online! _______ http://www.temporalimage.com/beehive/index.html BeeHive #2 features; QUEEN BEES AND THE HUM OF THE HIVE : Carolyn Guertin a critical overview of feminist hypertext's subversive honeycombings THE RED SPIDER and RAZORBURN : Brian Pritchett 2 short stories 5 NEW POEMS : David Hunter Sutherland 6 POEMS : Janet I. Buck _________ You may also revisit BeeHive #1 in the newly added ArcHive ___________________________________________________ Carolyn Guertin, Department of English, University of Alberta E-Mail: cguertin@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca; Tel/FAX: 403-432-2735 Website: ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 12:37:47 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: back from the 19th century Brief note -- telephone and power lines have been down, here, for two days, and just returned a few hours ago, so if anybody has been trying to reach me, their mail probably bounced. Apologies for missing the rest of the postfem. discussion; I'll check the archives after I deal with the work backlog. Also (separate note), there's a brief snippet of my work up at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/sonnet2.html -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 19:51:51 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Re: oulipo howlipo whylipo wherelipo In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > men*...Can anyone indicate if they ever eventually had a woman member? (or > two?) > > Mark P. > The following list can be found online somewhere under http://www2.ec-lille.fr/~book/oulipo/ - a good Oulipo-site, French. There seems to be at least one female member. Fred Noël Arnaud - président - membre fondateur Marcel Bénabou - secrétaire définitivement provisoire Jacques Bens - membre fondateur Claude Berge - membre fondateur André Blavier Paul Braffort - premier membre élu Italo Calvino [décédé] François Caradec Bernard Cerquiglini Ross Chambers Stanley Chapman Marcel Duchamp [décédé] Jacques Duchateau - membre fondateur Luc Etienne [décédé] Paul Fournel - secrétaire provisoirement définitif Michelle Grangaud Jacques Jouet Latis [décédé] - membre fondateur François Le Lionnais [décédé] - président fondateur Hervé Le Tellier - trésorier Jean Lescure - membre fondateur Harry Mathews Michele Métail Oskar Pastior Georges Perec [décédé] Raymond Queneau [décédé] - fondateur Jean Queval [décédé] Pierre Rosenstiehl Jacques Roubaud Albert-Marie Schmidt [décédé] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 12:58:30 EDT Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: henry Comments: Originally-From: toddbaron From: henry Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Don't agree that Dickinson's writing was a "comment" at all-- just tht she did not write in the conventional form--but not as a comment--she didn't live in a world she was against.... Let's not make her a warrior. She did follwo the voices she heard on the page and the occasional church hymn (written by men) and of course Shakespeare and the bible. Tb On the other hand, Dickinson read more widely than that, and anybody who wrote "publication is prostitution" (I don't know the exact quote) seems to be at war with literary protocols on some level. - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 13:53:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tb wrote of Emily Dickinson that: >...she didn't live in a world she was against.... > I'm not so sure about this. If you mean that she didn't live in that world I would agree: she didn't [she lived in a little room upstairs]. If you mean that she wasn't against it, I think that you'd be completely wrong: for she was as against it as they come, and all of her work says so, don't you think? As for Henry's remarks lately, they continue to entertain and inform me. Thanks again, Henry. GT >On the other hand, Dickinson read more >widely than that, and anybody who wrote "publication is prostitution" >(I don't know the exact quote) seems to be at war with literary protocols >on some level. - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 14:24:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: New from Meow Press MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Meow Press is pleased to announce the publication of its 50th and 51st chapbooks, Benjamin Friedlander's _Selected Poems_ and Don Cheney's _The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart_. Benjamin Friedlander's _Selected Poems_ contains poems from manuscripts completed in 1990 in Oakland through writing done in Buffalo this year, and includes selections from _Anterior Future_ (Meow Press, 1993) and _A Knot is Not a Tangle_ (Meow Press, 1995). With cover art by Armando Billitteri. 44pg. $6 Don Cheney's _The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart_ includes 27 poems from the full length work. In a comment about this book on the Poetics List, Bill Luoma notes: "Don is a skilled prose writer, so in his hands you get a real nasty & hilarious narrative, as you get in Catullus & Propertius, but you also get great sound. Whereas in Zukofsky's homophones, eg, you for the most part just get great sound, with the nasty humors subordinate." Selected by Bill Luoma. Cover art by Rose Anne Raphael. 32pg. $6. for more information: kuszai@acsu.buffalo.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/presses ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 12:35:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: re /dream In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jennifer -- this is lovely! thanks. A prof of mine used to say . . . a dream has _You_ On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: > L'image est formee de mots qui la revent. > > An image is formed by words dreaming it. > > (Jabes, trans. K. Waldrop) > > - Jennifer > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 12:58:46 -0600 Reply-To: Linda Russo Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: <35B68E23.2D13@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: Joseph & Todd -- I meant simply that I thought Todd responded well to what Joseph seemed to read as an apologist stance ("Give me a break . . "). I felt uncomfortable with Joseph's privileging of economics over gender, but perhaps he's e right, it is a _more_ oppressive system. This is something I need to think on a little more, but I felt uncomfortable measuring one against the other -- as Todd points out they're so integrally related. Didn't mean to misread or offend. I'm really enjoying this discussion. Sorry I have to sign off for a couple of days for a long weekend in the Bay Area! linda > weird. I meant simply that as response to the statement earlier made > that "economics are impersonal" that that was wrong. Economics are > Gender and Race and Age based. This must enter into a discussion of > gender based writing--what keeps poets where they're kept in the class > system--and writers--and visual artists--etc."--and that economics being > gender based (etc) the question must focus on /more/econmics than > simply form and function. Marx would not have thought gender studies > were "distractions" had they been presented in this manner--He well > understood who got paid for what/etc. And Reich (let's get going here) > focused much attention on economic constraints primarilly placed on > women and child in relation to sex/gender based roles. THAT"S the reason > he got kicked out of the Communist party--he wanted to break down the > standard economic roles that capitalism AND communism was placing on > women and children. esp. > > Tb > the poem has possibilities like this, also. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:03:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS (relavant to Russo/bAron etc. discussion) Comments: To: Linda Russo In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" and negotiating the representational anxieties that might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... chris stroffolino On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > Rah rah. > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > patriarchal biases. > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > Todd's comeback: > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > never impersonal. > > > > Tb > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:13:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS (relavant to Russo/bAron etc. discussion) In-Reply-To: from "louis stroffolino" at Jul 23, 98 03:03:53 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Haven't read the Yau but I often teach Harryman's "In The Mode Of" to my students, a gender bending masterpiece to be sure. -m. According to louis stroffolino: > > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" > and negotiating the representational anxieties that > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... > chris stroffolino > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > > > Rah rah. > > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > > patriarchal biases. > > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > > > Todd's comeback: > > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > > > never impersonal. > > > > > > Tb > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 23:18:08 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Thompson wrote: > > Tb wrote of Emily Dickinson that: > > >...she didn't live in a world she was against.... > > > > I'm not so sure about this. If you mean that she didn't live in that world > I would agree: she didn't [she lived in a little room upstairs]. If you > mean that she wasn't against it, I think that you'd be completely wrong: > for she was as against it as they come, and all of her work says so, don't > you think? > > I do not agree--she did not write "against" but created "for" ---I am simply saying also that I'm "against" others using her (or otehrs) to promote an ideology the /she did not share. You can't just read the work and say "look-- here she's writing against the role of women and marriage" she was an occult writer--writing to a certain "self" that was surely not the politics of the day-- but rather ....... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:20:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Party In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just wanted to remind people again that I and Gary Sullivan are having a roof party (not to be confused with ROOF BOOKS; though people with ROOF BOOKS are invited) tomorrow night. Friday 7/24... We will be UNDER the roof it it rains......in Brooklyn, NY.... Anybody in the NYC area (or "just visiting") is welcome to attend. Backchannel for directions, etc..... chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:24:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: DICKINSON Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35B7C4B0.7E0@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am ABSOLUTELY SURE that Dickinson has at least some poems that pretty blatantly (and more that do it more subtly) write AGAINST the society woman role, and marriage. Sure, they are also FOR something, but it's not always just the occult..... (i don't have any definite examples handy, and I have no time to dig through the books at present, but unless my memory is TOTALLY faulty, it's there...... c On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > George Thompson wrote: > > > > Tb wrote of Emily Dickinson that: > > > > >...she didn't live in a world she was against.... > > > > > > > I'm not so sure about this. If you mean that she didn't live in that world > > I would agree: she didn't [she lived in a little room upstairs]. If you > > mean that she wasn't against it, I think that you'd be completely wrong: > > for she was as against it as they come, and all of her work says so, don't > > you think? > > > > > I do not agree--she did not write "against" > but created "for" ---I am simply > saying also that I'm "against" others > using her (or otehrs) to promote > an ideology the /she > did not share. You can't just > read the work and say "look-- > here she's writing against the role > of women and marriage" > > she was an occult > writer--writing > to a certain "self" that was > surely not the politics of the day-- > but rather ....... > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:28:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: Party Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris, What time does the party start and how many ROOF BOOKS will you have for sale? Shall I bring a banana for Hannah? A salami for Tommy? Does everyone eat when they come to your house? - db At 03:20 PM 7/23/98 -0400, louis stroffolino wrote: > Just wanted to remind people again that I and Gary Sullivan are > having a roof party (not to be confused with ROOF BOOKS; though > people with ROOF BOOKS are invited) tomorrow night. Friday 7/24... > We will be UNDER the roof it it rains......in Brooklyn, NY.... > Anybody in the NYC area (or "just visiting") is welcome to > attend. Backchannel for directions, etc..... > chris stroffolino > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:23:03 EDT Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: henry Comments: Originally-From: toddbaron From: henry Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I do not agree--she did not write "against" but created "for" ---I am simply saying also that I'm "against" others using her (or otehrs) to promote an ideology the /she did not share. You can't just read the work and say "look-- here she's writing against the role of women and marriage" she was an occult writer--writing to a certain "self" that was surely not the politics of the day-- but rather ....... - it is pretty easy to read your own concerns into somebody's work, and pretend authorial intention is meaningless or not worth trying to understand. In that sense I agree with you that saying Dickinson was "making a statement" about sonneteering & other forms of "pop" literature without any historical record to that effect is just that kind of misreading-chatterteering. But I do think that when she sent her poems to Higginsworth [name right?] she was "testing the waters" in more ways than one - and when she found them wanting, her whole approach became "at war" with conventional literary activity in them days. - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:33:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: DICKINSON In-Reply-To: from "louis stroffolino" at Jul 23, 98 03:24:39 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poem #199 - "I'm Wife - I've finshed that" - is one that backs you up Chris - anyone who deson't see how this can be read as a vitriolic deconstruction of the institution of marriage doesn't know how to read. -m. According to louis stroffolino: > > I am ABSOLUTELY SURE that Dickinson has at least some poems > that pretty blatantly (and more that do it more subtly) write > AGAINST the society woman role, and marriage. Sure, they are > also FOR something, but it's not always just the occult..... > (i don't have any definite examples handy, and I have no > time to dig through the books at present, but unless my memory > is TOTALLY faulty, it's there...... > c > > On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > > > George Thompson wrote: > > > > > > Tb wrote of Emily Dickinson that: > > > > > > >...she didn't live in a world she was against.... > > > > > > > > > > I'm not so sure about this. If you mean that she didn't live in that world > > > I would agree: she didn't [she lived in a little room upstairs]. If you > > > mean that she wasn't against it, I think that you'd be completely wrong: > > > for she was as against it as they come, and all of her work says so, don't > > > you think? > > > > > > > > I do not agree--she did not write "against" > > but created "for" ---I am simply > > saying also that I'm "against" others > > using her (or otehrs) to promote > > an ideology the /she > > did not share. You can't just > > read the work and say "look-- > > here she's writing against the role > > of women and marriage" > > > > she was an occult > > writer--writing > > to a certain "self" that was > > surely not the politics of the day-- > > but rather ....... > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:21:39 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS (relavant to Russo/bAron etc. discussion) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Ms. Chris Stroffolino, what exactly do you mean by "cross-gendered identification" And how does this imply a form of newness? For example: Tom Gunn's "All my sad captains" or the guy who wrote the quote both fit the above generalized parameter.How is speaking as woman with Yau different than Browning, in your estimation? Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:37:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: Henry g Comments: Originally-From: Andrew D Epstein From: Henry g Subject: Re: post-Fem/For you Guys too In-Reply-To: <35B78CE2.361E@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Courtesy of Andrew Epstein - ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Dickinson line, in case it was bugging you -- "Publication -- is the Auction/ Of the Mind of Man --" and it ends "reduce no Human Spirit/ To Disgrace of Price--" (#709) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 14:34:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------AECCBC83C78BC5AECB98AF9A" --------------AECCBC83C78BC5AECB98AF9A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I had to get something in with this subject title, so: 1) Safdie Joseph wrote: > toddbaron said (in replying to a post from Linda Russo): > > you are absolutle and correct! > I've always wanted to be absolutle(there is nothing more delightful than a good typo) 2) Why should ANY OF US APOLOGIZE? > And furthermore . . . how can it BE that NOBODY cares if a fucking POET > is A MEMBER OF THE FBI!!! > Well, then, why should we apologize if he (Jeff Clark, I believe was the suspected agent) were? But, as this question keeps reappearing, I doubt he really is, any more than I am the captain of the Naropa football team*. *Naropa's athletics program consists of yoga, tai chi, aikido, and african dance. 3) _Who_ one is does matter to the extent it shapes how one writes. But _what_ one is -- does this matter? NOBODY -- aka Laura Wright Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 * * * * * * "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan * * * * * * "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein --------------AECCBC83C78BC5AECB98AF9A Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I had to get something in with this subject title, so:

1)
Safdie Joseph wrote:

toddbaron said (in replying to a post from Linda Russo):

you are absolutle and correct!
 

I've always wanted to be absolutle(there is nothing more delightful than a good typo)

2)
Why should ANY OF US APOLOGIZE?

And furthermore . . . how can it BE that NOBODY cares if a fucking POET
is A MEMBER OF THE FBI!!!
 

Well, then, why should we apologize if he (Jeff Clark, I believe was the suspected agent) were? But, as this question keeps reappearing, I doubt he really is, any more than I am the captain of the Naropa football team*.

*Naropa's athletics program consists of yoga, tai chi, aikido, and african dance.

3)
_Who_ one is does matter to the extent it shapes how one writes. But _what_ one is -- does this matter?

NOBODY
--
aka
Laura Wright
Library Assistant
Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute
2130 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80302
(303) 546-3547
 * * * * * *
"All music is music..."  -- Ted Berrigan
     *      *      *     *     *       *
"It is very much like it"  -- Gertrude Stein
  --------------AECCBC83C78BC5AECB98AF9A-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 14:27:12 MST7MDT Reply-To: calexand@library.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher W. Alexander" Organization: U of U Marriott Library Subject: wiggling fare-thee-well query Comments: cc: hitinfish@aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hi everyone -- getting ready to set nomail for my last (for awhile) trip out to San Francisco; if anybody needs to reach me in the next few days, you can backchannel me at my "iname.com" address (below). I can't promise I'll see it, but it's worth a shot. oh, and does anybody know what-the-hell time is the Susan Schultz reading (sunday) at Canessa Park!? c h r i s .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. / nominative press collective email: calexand@library.utah.edu / nonce@iname.com snail-mail: P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 press/zine site: http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 16:57:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: Poetry Daily Website In-Reply-To: <5239dbf1.35b6603f@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Rae, I should be around, just back from Buffalo and also just about to leave for Buffalo, as usual! I think your best best is James: it is rarely at his place over the weekend. sherryj@msn.com is his work email, which I think he will get sooner that his home email. If that doesn't work, let me know. Since one of the characteristics of electronic textual space is that there is no real scarsity of "space" -- it wouldn't cost anything more to post your whole poem, then the Poetry Daily thing is even more odd. Anyway, I had never heard of the site till Ron mentioned it -- Love, Charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 14:57:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: CS Giscombe directory assistance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi this is Dodie. I'm trying to reach CS Giscombe. Does anybody have a phone number or e-mail address for him they could backchannel me? Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:16:57 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too I think I missed the mutation of the subject line, but I did have much fun trying to pronounce it. Regarding Marx & feminism -- this is one of those old faultlines that shows up every now and then, with lots of bourgeois namecalling mixed in. Class and gender don't get mixed up too much, although it is important to note the "commodification" of women in society, as well as their lack of a salary for work. In a sense, a woman is the asymptotic point of the proletariat, reduced to being supplied with just enough material compensation to sustain her labor (pun perhaps intended.) I went to a great Judith Butler lecture in the Fall on Antigone and gender -- a wonderful Hegelian analysis of the positon of Antigone relative to the emerging "Marxist" (meaning "predicted by Marx") aristocratic society of Ancient Greece. In many ways, women are placed anterior to considerations of class; they are perceived as lilliths preceeding the creation of economic production. The position of Lillith is interesting, in any case; before the initiation of the Old Testament, she's a spectre in her own right. Communism may haunt from the future, but gender perhaps hearkens from the past. Regarding the sonnet form; while women may choose to embody notions of "effeminacy" by writing prissy poems, one of the most interesting convergences of political and literary history is the connection between resurgent interest in the "primitive" in literature (e.g., Russia in the '10s) and the "woman question". I haven't been able to keep up with all the posts on the subject, so I apologise if I'm a few hours (minutes?) out of phase. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 16:37:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Linda Russo Subject: Re: postwomen+ (or is not equal to) speculative equations In-Reply-To: <199807212218.PAA04454@lanshark.lanminds.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Back to Elizabeth's fecund post: www.pfplayground.com I felt I was dismissive of POSTFEMINIST PLAYGROUND -- which I honestly hadn't looked at for quite a while -- great graphics!, very smart with a current essay by DODIE BELLAMY that's cool. Part of what IS attractive is the "no more victims/no more apologies" angle. But I really felt when I'd met Lily James and Susannah Breslin (at a Conference (of all places) over 2 years ago), who were powerful presences, that they were sort of forging onward somewhat narrowly. PFPlayground has grown into something major & I appreciate they're grappling with Post-Femininsm, though it's not quite what I have in mind . . . Elizabeth, as the archives aren't arranged by author, what's the shortcut to some of your stuff? HINT: Don't click the PLAYBOY seal of approval ("playboy online's pick of the day") because once you go there you're TRAPPED (cyberly, not psychologically) On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > Is there a possibility of an ungendered poetics, even if it is something its > possible to work toward or to see others as working toward? I mean if > you're looking in terms of gender, won't you see gender? I hope so but doubt it, and Yes, most definately. The world we live in is so gendered, & though there's a lot of wonderful blurriness, there's still those two extremes. Am I referring to "man & wife"? or Christian Fundamentalism and The Gap? > PLAY is key to this -- perhaps we are now more free to PLAY -- to speculate, > to speculate on speculations,...- than in the 50s or the Victorian era or > whenever, with GENDER AS AN IDEA, construction, etc.....The motifs of our > clothing. Maybe we are just now more able to have FUN (or if you prefer: > imagination). I don't mean this dumbly, I mean not having to spend so much > energy "to not be swept up and violated, (& also) to avoid generating > counterviolence as its tool of self-being". Good points about having more freedom to mess around in the symbolic, so to speak. But I find the play-only attitude (pfp's primary attitude) to be a little shortsighted and breezy. Maybe I'm just getting old. I mean their use of breasty characters may be ironic, funny, or empowering, but I still feel like the mass of those images, while creating a ambiguous message (are they sexy? are they coming on to ME? they're just drawings! Is that Angie Dickinson?!), are, well, like too much -- feels to much like oppression! advertising! I don't "identify" with those images. . . what's wrong with me. I mean I just can't strike such an ironic posture towards them as they do towards me. Maybe they're supposed to make me feel "uncomfortable"? More -> > I do CLAIM writing as a woman, writing as a "girl", writing about that, > engaging in that. Proud of that, then bored by it, etc. Its constantly > ENACTED isnt it, along with ten dozen (or a few) other Big Things.... > I like it, writing as a WOMAN, thnking about Women. However I of course > don't want to be 'marginalized' either, or not taken seriously, or taken > seriously in only one way. > (But of course it happens...to everyone) misreading is so key aint it > intriguin/ > > I do like Linda read many more women than men. > > Why? I think my next point might speak to it at least in some way. . . . > > Linda wrote: > >> And another question: > >> How can forms be "masculine" when, though, they were > >> "created" by men, they were done (usually) intensely in relation to > >> "woman" (no matter how facile and passive his construction of her?) > > Simon wrote: > >I think you've sort of answered your own question here; > >with a basic idea of how poets create -- through a combination > >of observation and language -- there seems to be no reason > >that the Poetics of the "male gaze" (yadda, yadda) would > >bear any relation to that that might be written by a woman. > > > >The question of moving the love poem away from "constructions > >of the self" is another part of this; it's not what you see, > >it's how. One doesn't expect an 18th gynecologist and a 20th > >century midwife to concur in their visions of a woman; the > >difference would arise from the point of view of a third person. > >"Gynceological", "Masculine", is how we label them. > > Here I can't agree. I think the "Poetics of a male gaze" does bear relation > to that that might be written by a woman. Here and now. From childhood, > books with first person male narrators, looking at movies, whatever: the > woman not only sees 'herself' ('itself') *in* 'the male gaze', but *sees as* > the male gaze, or self-gaze, or whatever. It's like the beginning of "The > Bluest Eye". > > & of course there are responses to gender oppression and disequilibrium in > the work of some high profile male poets, as someone wrote, this strikes me > as having gone on since the beginning of time. whether they were aware of > it in our current jargon or not, and no matter what kind of personality or > politic or wife-treatment they lived in. isn't even creating something in a > way responding to it? I think so. I'd like to see someone else (Simon?) respond to this. I agree more or less > >Waldrop problematizes the whole issue by bringing > >up the political implications of a formal stance > >("old school feminism"?) and then retracts them > >from discussion by noting that she was working on > >"a formal problem". At the risk of breaking Adorno's > >dictum and paraphrasing a philosophical stance, > >is Waldorf coming out and saying that certain formal > >modes where, for e.g., "subject and object function > >are not fixed", are essentially gendered? That there > >is some occult connection between the female body > >and language? How can a feminist poetics, as you > >say, be potentially "unconcerned" with gender? Isn't > >gender the sine qua non? Or is it just the starting > >point? From there, to where does it go? > > as perhaps one of the "theoretically apathetic" I would like to note that > in the quote from Waldrop, she first states "I was interested in extending > the boundaries of the sentence" then says "it comes out of my feminist > preoccupation" [this quote is 20 yrs old] and then says this is all > hindsight, "Consciously, I was working on a formal problem." So it seems > to me that she was interested in form, whilst of course being aware of > herself as a woman/feminist and *in the world as such*. I don't think > gender is the starting point or the only point, i think she is merely using > it as a way in to explain something, as TRACTION, and then of course there > are all these other conscious and unconscious things, > RETRACTION.............................. Actually, that quote is only 10 years old, but still "hindsight" -- foremost was the formal problem, the hindsight is her realization that the tackling that particular formal problem WAS related to her gender. See you soon, Elizabeth . . . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:40:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Katherine Lederer Subject: Re: Party In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Chris-- I want directions! From 108th and B'way (1,2,3, and 9 trains to which transfers?)... See ya-- Katy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 17:26:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R M Daley Subject: Re: Party In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hey people, stop fucking up the list with these backchannels On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Katherine Lederer wrote: > Hi Chris-- > > I want directions! From 108th and B'way (1,2,3, and 9 trains to which > transfers?)... > > See ya-- > Katy > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 17:28:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 21 Jul 1998 to 22 Jul 1998 (#1998-9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "I can't get out of this poem it's Your poem you're making me make it this way it's us, this poem is alive even if it's ugly or I'm dead it's the City of You even if you aren't 'in it'" _Alice Notley, ms, in the MOVING BORDERS anthology ET Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 03:29:50 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: pen(is)essesss post-Fem/For you Guys too MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit isn't football played with the foot? isn't that an absolute? Laura E. Wright wrote: > > I had to get something in with this subject title, so: > > 1) > Safdie Joseph wrote: > > toddbaron said (in replying to a post from Linda Russo): > > you are absolutle and correct! > > > I've always wanted to be absolutle(there is nothing more delightful > than a good typo) > > 2) > Why should ANY OF US APOLOGIZE? > > And furthermore . . . how can it BE that NOBODY cares if a > fucking POET > is A MEMBER OF THE FBI!!! > > > Well, then, why should we apologize if he (Jeff Clark, I believe was > the suspected agent) were? But, as this question keeps reappearing, I > doubt he really is, any more than I am the captain of the Naropa > football team*. > > *Naropa's athletics program consists of yoga, tai chi, aikido, and > african dance. > > 3) > _Who_ one is does matter to the extent it shapes how one writes. But > _what_ one is -- does this matter? > > NOBODY > -- > aka > Laura Wright > Library Assistant > Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute > 2130 Arapahoe Ave > Boulder, CO 80302 > (303) 546-3547 > * * * * * * > "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan > * * * * * * > "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 05:50:21 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 21 Jul 1998 to 22 Jul 1998 (#1998-9) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > > "I can't get out of this poem > it's Your poem > you're making me make it this way > it's us, this poem is alive > even if it's ugly or I'm dead > it's the City of You even if you aren't 'in it'" > > _Alice Notley, ms, in the MOVING BORDERS anthology > He began my creation with constraint, By giving me life he added only confusion; We depart reluctantly still not knowing The aim of birth, existence, departure. (second Rubiya: Omar Khayyam) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 03:34:03 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: I will not stand undressed for use! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 714 Rests at Night The Sun from shining, Nature--and some Men-- Rests at Noon--some Men-- While Nature And the Sun--go on-- E.D. (1863) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:57:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS (relavant to Russo/bAron etc. discussion) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I recently read something of Yau's in a mag--was it First Intensity? I'm sorry--I can't recall, but it was perhaps from the new book & was the narrative of a stripper & I found it rather disturbing in that the narrator was kind of dumb & angry & thought highly of her breasts (no prob with that in & of itself) & little of men in general--she was kind of a jaded line drawing of a woman--with the interior monolog of a stereotype, which I suppose is okay, though as this thread goes to show, the whole male/female or masc/fem question is much more complex than Yau's piece implied, and I guess I just felt annoyed that he was willing to throw another stereotype my way. louis stroffolino wrote: > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" > and negotiating the representational anxieties that > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... > chris stroffolino > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > > > Rah rah. > > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > > patriarchal biases. > > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > > > Todd's comeback: > > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > > > never impersonal. > > > > > > Tb > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 00:21:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Orpheus Subject: adam Dalgliesh In-Reply-To: <199807240404.AAA25241@alcor.concordia.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A poet who is cop. Saves the good from the bad. Nice combo. Thanks to PD James. Why not? And why not poets who who are patriarchal, monarchists; Dostoevski - at the end years, a believer in the Orthodox. Why the assumption that poets must believe in feminisms, or be non-patriarchal. Poets, can be anything they want. Long as they write poetry. They don't need or have to justify anything . The rest is about being a citizen. Besides , who says Patriarchy is bad? What is wrong with the Father? That is not wrong with the Mother? Joyce, from the evidence one gathers inthe Wake, was a catholic, a patriarch, and indeed a fine and great writer. 'Et tant d'autres et tant d'autres.' and please dont say Dostoevski was not a poet, just because he wrote novels. That means Joyce was not a poet. O yes I realize that Finnegans Wake is different. I like the last word 'the' ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 00:34:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Orpheus Subject: who MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII who was it said: the unexamined life is not worth living? like wise: the unexamined assumptions. For over 30 years the Papa has been attacked in one shape form or another. fair enough. But now the tables are turning. "the best lack all conviction, while the worst/ are filled with passionate intensity." So one sees the poetics built so far onto a political need to 'justify' [a disgusting practice which smacks of protestant secular thought'] one's position, that the poetry has gone off the deep end of a reterritorialized liberalism. it is very sad to know that eliot's poems were kept out of Poems for the Millennium because of financial constraints. Jack Spicer is also missing from Volume 2. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 00:53:50 -0400 Reply-To: Orpheus Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Orpheus Subject: poetics/patriarchy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the epistemes required a fiction which stood en place for centuries.... so imagine a patriarchy which is poetic anarchic and rather like ancient ireland's society of ollav orders... but not a denial of the Father. But Anna Livia crying as she sailflows back into her Papa Sea as Writing Precedes speech so with the father. if we change the biology then perhaps we can change the order of the epistemes on levels which would allow a poetry of the city, of the body. Of 'Unreal City' and L'Homme Approximatif the inexact word, the almost almosting body each change produces and requires monstrosities. Oh Wonderful monstrosities of mothers and fathers!! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 02:05:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Sermounts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Sermon on the Mount by Jennifer The Real is so stupid and Insignificant, I am saying under the sign of Clement Rosset do you know him? That it is inert, dull, repetitious and Full of our Meanderings. So that We do not Face Face, that is a Moment of what might be a Considerable grain, have you looked at Face up close and then Wondered how your Theories fall apart in the Proof? Because I cannot Do this for too Long, this Look at the Up-Close Face, I mean the first Thing you Notice are Pores and other Holes everywhere There and in the Middle of such Hairs as you will never See at a Distance. So is that an Unknown Horror to Dream of and not to Disparage as you might on a fair Day from a Distance. You will know what I mean. It is never or Nary a Code, Nary or Never a Discourse, when you are that Close that it is as if the Bed left Marks impervious. I am Talking to You. Those impervious Marks. You will look at Stains up close, why there are Stains on this very Chair upon which I am sitting, Leaks from my Panties, you will know how Stupid the real is, you can almost Smell it. Up Close Like a Gulliver wandering, then I know you will Know the World which is what Surrounds you. Then and Precisely then, When you can Speak, Then you Will be ushered into Silence, nary a Thing to Say. Thus I might say from a Distance, you will have been Done to by the World, but you must Know, if the Last Thing, it is of your Doing. Sermon on the Mound by Jennifer The Cock is so stupid and Insignificant, I am saying under the sign of Catherine Clement do you know her? That it is inert, repetitious and Full of our Meanderings. So that We do not Talk Cock, that is a Moment of what might be a Considerable grain, have you looked at Cock up close and then Wondered how your Theories fall apart in the Proof? Because I cannot Do this for too Long, this Look at the Up-Close Cock, I mean the first Thing you Notice are Pores and other Holes everywhere There and in the Middle of such Hairs as you will never See in Perversion. So is that an Unknown Horror to Dream of and not to Disparage as you might on a fair Day in Perversion. You will know what I mean. It is never or Nary a Cunt, Nary or Never a Discourse, when you are that Close that it is as if the Bed left Marks impervious. I am Talking to You. Those impervious Marks. You will look at Stains up close, why there are Stains on this very Chair upon which I am sitting, Leaks from my Panties, you will know how Hardness the Twat is, you can almost Smell it. Up Close Like a Gulliver wandering, then I know you will Know the World which is what Surrounds you. Then and Precisely then, When you can Speak, Then you Will be ushered into Silence, nary a Thing to Say. Thus I might say from Perversion, you will have been Bound by the World, but you must Know, if the Last Thing, it is of your Doing. _________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 01:01:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: oulipo In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have not heard of recent Oulipo meetings. Outside of writings by Mathews etc. the latest newsy thing I remember is Warren Motte's Primer published by Nebraska in about 1986. Of course, if one keeps track of what the Atlas people are publishing, that's about the best one can do. As to female members--one always notices their absence. Perhaps this is due to the relatively (until recently) small percentage of women interested in being mathematicians. There is/was a member named Michele Metail. I dont know whether that first name is French or Italian. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 03:58:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: rew : adam dalgleish Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nice endrun Orpheus. It takes a village to crucify its poet. Not the scatter we know. I Tiresias have foresuffered all. Once the Imagination is opened, who knows what flies out? Oops. At the dentist's today, the woman cleaning my teeth had several rumbles thru her body, and finally apologized. I said "I thought you were talking to me in code." One may suffer clitoris-envy, and still imagine having a penis. When I'm walking uphill, I wish the world were flat. Adam Dalgleish is a wimp. Thats what makes him attractive. Brahms. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 04:04:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: who Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Socrates. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 04:24:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: poetics/patriarchy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Emerging from the Unconscious of Civilization in our day is the entire gendering of power-abuse and unlevel playing fields. I appreciate yr application of a logic to dismember this problem but it wont go away. Neither by waving one's lily nor by cutting it off can one avoid the Penis Wars. The penis (phallus, I guess) is the first offense. The inequity starts there, whether it's a burden or an advantage. "He pulled her down with his muscles." Just as was expected. The tact required is extensive and really only realizable one-on-one (and even then . . .). Dont you really think? I hugely wish we could keep the personal out of the poetry, so it could personally be _me_ not Emily Dickinson or TSE. But why didnt Eliot get his double hernia fixed? Doesnt that detail open his poetry to a fuller reading, a fuller recoil? Poetry problematizes vividly the insolubles of this firkin existence. With Beckett one wants an elegant absence of exit to be one's exit but tomorrow someone will be in yr face, dammit. No wonder all these pretty poems avoid the issue. Cash in on the issue. Skirt. I'm with you Orpheus in yr Underground but I want you to stop looking back. Is the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel? How about "Che faro senza Eurydice"? In Room 101, we can be disabused of that sort of love. In Room 101. What was Orwell's problem with rats? Kids keep them as pets. I know a poet who shot them at the city dump. He was a good poet (naif disingenuous statement). D.Broadbent. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 10:04:40 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert D'Attilio Subject: Re: Party Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit dan this is my first day on the buffalo listserv. I imagine that you have received the entire mess also. Is this typical of what goes on? or is this there a nonsense filter somewhere? If I get so many useless messages eachday I think I shall dissappear myself. saluti r d'a where is the marty? In NYC? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 05:17:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: queries Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria, accordingly to my editor, Guy Bennett an Oulipo group (new and old) still meet in Paris quite often and read their work. Douglas Maria Damon wrote: > > are there surviving members of the Oulipo group and do they still meet in > paris? inquiring minds need to know ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 07:34:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Your friend E Dickinson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit . . . Your second letter surprised me, and for a moment, swung - I had not supposed it. Your first - gave no dishonor, because the True - are not ashamed - I thanked you for your justice - but could not drop the Bells whose jingling cooled my Tramp - Perhaps the Balm, seemed better, because you bled me, first. I smile when you suggest that I delay "to publish" - that being foreign to my thought, as Firmament to Fin - If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her - if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase - and the approbation of my Dog, would forsake me - then - My Barefoot Rank is better - You think my gait "spasmodic" - I am in danger - Sir - You think me "uncontrolled" - I have no Tribunal. Would you have time to be the "friend" you should think I need? I have a little shape - it would not crowd your Desk - nor make much Racket as the Mouse, that dents your Galleries - If I might bring you what I do - not so frequent to trouble you - and ask you if I told it clear - 't would be control to me - The Sailor cannot see the North - but knows the Needle can - The "hand you stretch me in the Dark," I put mine in, and turn away - I have no Saxon now - . . . But, will you be my Preceptor, Mr Higginson? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 12:49:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: (Fwd) On the SAWSJ Conference and After MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I thought some on the List would be interested in this information from Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice, including the report below on the SAWSJ founding conference. (website is www.sage.edu.) Kent ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Tue, 9 Jun 1998 13:14:16 -0400 (EDT) From: J Saws Reply-to: J Saws To: SAWSJ Information List <> Subject: On the SAWSJ Conference and After SAWSJ INFORMATION LIST CONTENTS I. Introduction to This List II. A Report on The National Labor Teach-In and First Annual Meeting of Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice III. List of the SAWSJ Coordinating Committee Members IV. Radio Documentary on SAWSJ Conference V. The SAWSJ Constitution as Ratified at the National Conference. VI. How to Join SAWSJ ________ I. INTRODUCTION TO THIS LIST During the month or so since the Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice Conference in Washington, DC, the new Coordinating Committee has begun the process of reorganizing SAWSJ along the lines of the new Consitution. At this point the CC has asked me to set up this SAWSJ information list on an experimental basis. The goal of this list is to encourage communication nationally among people -- whether SAWSJ members or not -- working to rebuild the alliance between artists and intellectuals on the one hand, and the multicultural workers' movement on the other. The names and addresses on this list have been compiled from several e-mail lists that SAWSJ developed during its first year. There are THREE PROBLEMS with the present list as it stands: 1. It does not yet include the addresses of those who signed on at the national conference -- apologies. 2. There may be people who are on the list who do not want to receive the list messages. If this is the case for you, again, our apologies -- please write a short message in reply to this one asking to be removed, and it will be done immediately. 3. There are undoubtedly people who aren't on this list who would like to join. Please ask anyone in this situation to e-mail us at the above address, and they will be added. As listed in "Contents" above, this message contains three documents relating to the recent SAWSJ conference. More information on the conference and on SAWSJ in general is available on the SAWSJ web site at http://www.sage.edu/html/SAWSJ (the last five letters MUST be upper case). In solidarity, Andor Skotnes _________ II. A REPORT ON THE NATIONAL LABOR TEACH-IN AND FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF SAWSJ, By Michael Denning and Steve Fraser for the SAWSJ Coordinating Committee SAWSJ organized a national teach-in on "Democracy and the Right to Organize" and convened its first annual meeting over the weekend of April 24-26 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. It was a high energy event of great promise. The vital work of taking on Corporate America by mobilizing the academic and cultural communities in alliance with the revitalized labor movement was carried a giant step forward by the doings at GWU. Approximately 600 people assembled on the opening (Friday) night to hear a diverse array of speakers. Julian Bond's presence as Moderator for the evening was inspirational. His heroic role as a civil rights leader helped establish the critical political and historic connections that make the "Right to Organize" not only a vital issue for the labor movement, but for all movements for social justice. Three local organizers - Betty Dumas of the Avondale Shipyards in New Orleans; Juan Mazlymian, an abstestos worker from New York City; and Jonathan White, an organizer of adjunct teachers at GWU - delivered compelling accounts from the front lines about how imperilled the right to organize has become. John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, reiterated the Federation's warm support for the work of SAWSJ, explaining how welcome the teach-in movement has been in arousing public alarm over what he called "the Nike economy". Juliet Schor of Harvard University emphasized the "time famine" which is putting both work and family life under unbearable stress, arguing the need for SAWSJ to take up the battle against the corporate seizure of "free time." Robin Kelley of New York University, while acknowledging the importance of SAWSJ's link to the labor movement, urged the organization to embrace more actively the struggle against racism and other social injustices. UCLA and Columbia University Law Professor Kimberle Crenshaw focused her remarks on the concept of "intersectionality"; namely the need, both intellectual and political, to explore the connections between gender, race, and class. Writer and editor, Steve Fraser, spoke on behalf of SAWSJ, rehearsing the history of the organization since the Columbia teach-in of 1996 (there have been over 30 teach-ins since then), and sketching SAWSJ's broadest principles and purposes as it goes about the work of helping build a new culture of solidarity. Saturday began with two series of panels and workshops. About 350 people circulated through an opening set of thematic panels: the future of the teamsters, labor and political action, organizing the south, organizing and the law, labor and social movements, anti-labor legislation, lawsuits and ballot initiatives, international organizing, and adjunct and graduate teacher organizing. A second set of "activist workshops" followed: organizing cultural workers, academic support for unions, academic labor, the anti-sweatshop campaign, student labor action, welfare and workfare, the work of the Economic Policy Institute, and Metro Washington alliances. Discussion in both panels and workshops was intellectually vigorous, marked by a respect for the concrete, and permeated by a sense of the potential for SAWSJ to grow and accomplish much politically over the next months and years. That sense of down-to-earth possiblity continued into the first session of the SAWSJ annual meeting which took place Saturday afternoon. Reports from all the "activist" workshops laid out a series of practical suggestions about how to further the alliance between SAWSJ and the labor movement. This first business session was also well attended - about 150 people. There was a shared sense that SAWSJ needs to concentrate during this next year on organizing local SAWSJ chapters and creating "activist networks" across chapters to mobilize around a broad range of issues: sweatshops, workfare, campus labor, and so on. The afternoon ended with a showing and discussion of two films: "Out at Work" - a documentary about sexual identity and representation in the workplace; and "Degrees of Shame" - a film about the plight of adjuncts in the university. SAUSAGES then spent the night partying at a local club, entertained by the band Bones of Contention together with guest poets and musicians. The final session on Sunday morning was devoted to adopting a constitution and organizational structure for SAWSJ. After some discussion and minor amendment, the draft constitution was approved: it is published on the SAWSJ website at http://www.sage.edu/html/SAWSJ. A National Coordinating Committee of 8 persons was elected, charged with operational responsibility for SAWSJ in between meetings of a larger Steering Committee, a body to be created over the next year. The members of the Coordinating Committee are Dan Clawson, Michael Denning, Dorothy Fennell, Steve Fraser, Adam Green, Jenny Lee, Margaret Levi, and Jamal Watson; their email addresses are available on the SAWSJ website. WBAI Pacifica Radio's "Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report" has produced an 58-minute program based on the teach-in which is available for your local college, independent or NPR radio station. For information about the May 18 downlink or for audio tape call Pacifica: 1-800-735-0230 X 266, Mark Torres, or see the notice on this website. It is now available in RealAudio on the "Building Bridges" website, which can be reached from the SAWSJ website. While both the teach-in and the first annual meeting must be accounted successes, the real future of SAWSJ depends entirely on the energy and activity at the local level. We urge all of you to take the intitiatve to inaugurate a SAWSJ chapter where you live or work or go to school. We can help with advice and contacts and explain the rather simple relationship between a local chapter and the national organization. But the future of SAWSJ is in your hands. HELP BUILD THE NEW CULTURE OF SOLIDARITY! _________ III. SAWSJ 1998-99 COORDINATING COMMITTEE MEMBERS Dan Clawson, University of Massachusetts Michael Denning, Yale University Dorothy Fennell, Cornell Industrial & Labor Relations Steven Fraser, writer and editor Adam Green, Northwestern University Margaret Levi, University of Washington Jenny Stevens, student activist Jamal Watson, Baltimore Sun __________ IV. WBAI RADIO DOCUMENTARY ON THE SAWSJ CONFERENCE -- ON THE AIR, ON TAPE, AND ON THE WEB WBAI Pacifica Radio's "BUILDING BRIDGES: Your Community and Labor Report" has produced a 58-minute radio show on the SAWSJ Labor Teach-in, "Democracy and the Right to Organize." The program is being broadcast in the New York City area and around the country -- over 20 stations are broadcasting it so far. BUILDING BRIDGES is produced by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash. BUILDING BRIDGES has also received a grant from the AFL-CIO to subsidize 40 public and college radio stations to receive a copy of the tape for broadcast and to uplink the show over the NPR satellite. The Pacifica Network will make tapes available to radio stations through the Pacifica Archives and will uplink the show to its affiliates through its Ku band satellite uplink. There are thus several ways for college and public radio stations to receive the program for broadcast. Contact your college or public radio stations and lobby them to get the tape of the conference and put it on their air. Individuals may also purchase the tape from the Pacifica Archives. WBAI has also put the SAWSJ documentary on its web site in RealAudio. The url for the documentary is: http://www.igc.org/wbai-labor/rightorg.htm You can also access this through a link on the SAWSJ web site http://www.sage.edu/html/SAWSJ SELECTIONS FROM THE DOCUMENTARY INCLUDE: *John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO on the degradation of workers in the "Nike economy" and how have no rights in the workplace without unions. *Julian Bond, Chair of the NAACP Board of Directors on the maldistribution of wealth in the economy, and the need for workers to organize and form coalitions between labor and civil rights organizations for social change. *Betty Dumas, an Avondale Shipyard Worker from New Orleans tells her story of being fired and then arrested for organizing. *Kate Bronfenbrenner, Professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations tells of the lawsuit filed against her by Beverley Nursing Homes as a result of her Congressional testimony about their unfair labor practices. *Richard Bersinger, Director of Organizing, AFL-CIO. *Elaine Bernard, Director of Harvard's Trade Union Studies Program on campus based protests over sweatshops here and abroad. *Ken Paff, Director of Teamsters for a Democratic Union talks about the history of organizing for democreacy in the Teamster Union and the bid for the Teamster Presidency by James Hoffa, Jr. ________ V. SAWSJ CONSTITUTION, Ratified Sunday , April 26, 1998 Article I: NAME The name of this association shall be "Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice" (SAWSJ). Article II: PURPOSES To assist: in reshaping the nation's political culture and fostering the growth of a vibrant, progressive, multicultural working-class movement; in shaping the terms of political debate and contesting corporate dominance of politics and culture; in restoring the mutually empowering relationship between the labor movement and its allies in the academic and cultural communities, and reassessing their places in a changing world. Article III: MEMBERS Any person who agrees with the purposes outlined in Article II may become a member of SAWSJ upon payment of the dues established. Article IV: DUES Section 1: Dues levels Annual dues shall be paid according to the following schedule: Student/low income: $10 per year Others with incomes below $40,000: $25 per year Those with incomes of $40,000 or above: $40 per year Section 2: Modifications Said dues may be modified in any given year by vote of the Steering Committee, provided that the change of dues for any member is not made effective until the end of that member's membership year. Section 3: Allocation of dues money If a member is recruited by a chapter, the new member may request that 25 percent of the dues be allocated to the chapter. If a member is recruited by a regional organization, the new member may request that 25 percent of the dues be allocated to the region. Members may designate money to both chapter and regional organizations, in which case only 50 percent of their dues will be for the national organization. If members do not explicitly designate money for the chapter or region, all dues will be for the national organization. Article V: CHAPTERS Chapters shall consist of any geographically based group of 10 or more members who constitute themselves as a chapter and plan or carry out a collective action or project. Chapters may take positions, issue statements and endorsements in their own name, but not in the name of the regional or national organization. Each chapter shall be entitled to elect one representative to the steering committee. Article VI: REGIONS The Steering Committee may determine the geographic boundaries of regions, up to a maximum of six regions. Regions shall consist of geographically based groups of 100 or more members who constitute themselves as a region and hold a meeting, conference, or action open to all members of the region. Regions may take positions, issue statements and endorsements in their own name, but not in the name of the national organization. Each region shall be entitled to elect two representatives to the steering committee. Regions may, by a majority vote of the membership, decide on such regional officers and governance procedures as they deem appropriate, subject to acceptance and certification by the Steering Committee. Article VII: ACTIVIST NETWORKS Activist networks shall consist of any group of 10 or more members, united by an interest in an issue, who constitute themselves as an activist network and plan or carry out a collective action or project. Activist networks may take positions, issue statements and endorsements in their own name, but not in the name of the regional or national organization. Each activist network shall be entitled to elect one representative to the steering committee. Article VIII: ANNUAL MEETING SAWSJ shall hold a meeting, open to all members, at least once each year, to discuss issues of common concern, debate and vote on resolutions, and elect leadership. A vote open to the entire membership shall be the highest decision making authority of the organization. Article IX: STEERING COMMITTEE Section 1: Composition The Steering Committee shall consist of elected Chapter Representatives, elected Activist Network Representatives, elected Regional Representatives, national officers, and elected members of the Coordinating Committee. Section 2: Terms of Service Members of the Steering Committee shall serve terms of two years and may be re-nominated and re-elected, except that during the first year the Steering Committee shall, by random lot, designate half its members for one-year terms, in order to provide staggered terms thereafter. Section 3: Meetings The Steering Committee shall meet at least once each year, and may, by decision of the Steering Committee or the Coordinating Committee, meet more frequently. Meetings of the Steering Committee shall be announced in advance, and all members of SAWSJ shall be able to attend and observe meetings, unless by a two-thirds vote the Steering Committee decides to go into executive session. Section 4: Authority The Steering Committee shall have authority on all matters of policy, management, and control of the organization's affairs and property, with full power to transact its business and to do and perform all things necessary to be done in order to carry out the purposes of the organization, subject only to the final authority of votes of the entire membership at the annual meeting or by such other means as shall be determined by the Steering Committee. Article X: COORDINATING COMMITTEE Section 1: Coordinating Committee The Coordinating Committee will consist of eight members, will select from its members the Chair or Co-Chairs, Treasurer, and Secretary, and will develop its internal division of responsibility. Coordinating Committee members will be elected by open vote of the entire membership, or, in case of a vacancy, by vote of the Steering Committee. Section 2: Terms of Service Members of the Coordinating Committee shall serve one-year terms and may be re-nominated and re-elected. Section 3: Meetings The Coordinating Committee shall meet whenever necessary to conduct the business of the organization, in person or by such other means as it may decide. Meetings of the Coordinating Committee may be called by either of the National Co-Chairs, or by a petition signed by half the members of the Coordinating Committee. To the extent reasonably possible, meetings of the Coordinating Committee shall be announced in advance, and all members of SAWSJ shall be able to attend and observe meetings, unless by a two-thirds vote the Coordinating Committee decides to go into executive session. Section 4: Authority The Coordinating Committee shall have authority on such matters of policy, management, and control of the organization's affairs and property as are designated to it by the Steering Committee, with full power to transact the organization's business and to do and perform all things necessary to be done in order to carry out the purposes of the organization, subject to the authority of the Steering Committee and to votes of the entire membership. Article XI: NOMINATIONS Section 1: Nominations Committee The Steering Committee shall elect a Nominations Committee to consist of at least six members (who may or may not be members of the Steering Committee), of whom at least half must be women and at least half must be people of color. Section 2: Candidates Selected by Nominations Committee At least six weeks prior to elections, the Nominations Committee shall prepare and circulate to the entire membership a list of candidates for officers, coordinating committee members, steering committee members, and such other positions as are open for election. The aim and intent shall be to select two candidates for each position, in order to guarantee contested elections. Section 3: Open Nominations Any additional candidate may qualify for the ballot by submitting a petition to the Nominations Committee, containing the names of 10 or more members in good standing who support the person's candidacy. Such petitions must be received at least two weeks prior to the elections, unless this rule is waived by vote of the Steering Committee or by a vote of the entire membership at the annual meeting. Article XII: ELECTIONS All members in good standing are eligible to vote. Voting may be conducted at the Annual Meeting, or by mail (including email) ballot. The choice of election procedures shall be decided by a vote of the entire membership or by a vote of the Steering Committee, if the membership votes to designate this authority. If no candidate for an office receives 40 percent or more of the vote, a run-off election shall be held between those candidates with the highest vote totals. Article XIII: STAFF The Coordinating Committee may hire such staff as it deems appropriate to conduct the operations of the organization. Article XIV: ADVISORY BOARD The Steering Committee may select an Advisory Board, and may determine its rights, privileges, and obligations. Article XV: AMENDMENTS These by-laws may be amended, rescinded, changed, or supplemented at any time by a majority vote of the entire membership. Proposals for revisions of these by-laws may be placed on the ballot by a majority vote of the Steering Committee, or by means of a petition signed by 25 or more members in good standing. _________ VI. HOW TO JOIN SAWSJ To become an individual member, send your name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, phone, fax, and email, along with a check, to: Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice 2565 Broadway #176 New York, NY 10025 Dues are $10 for student/low income, $25 for others with incomes below $40,000, and $40 for those with incomes of $40,000 or above. *** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 13:53:24 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Directory Assistance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi again- Does anyone know where or how I can reach Harryette Mullen? I've tried calling her home in L.A. with no luck. I don't have an e address. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 11:15:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Re: postwomen+ (or is not equal to) speculative equations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Linda, if my post is fecund am I a girlywoman? responding about > >www.pfplayground.com > >I felt I was dismissive of POSTFEMINIST PLAYGROUND -- which I honestly >hadn't looked at for quite a while -- great graphics!, very smart with a >current essay by DODIE BELLAMY that's cool. Part of what IS attractive is >the "no more victims/no more apologies" angle. But I really felt when I'd >met Lily James and Susannah Breslin (at a Conference (of all places) over >2 years ago), who were powerful presences, that they were sort of >forging onward somewhat narrowly. PFPlayground has grown into something >major & I appreciate they're grappling with Post-Femininsm, though it's >not quite what I have in mind . . . > >Elizabeth, as the archives aren't arranged by author, what's the shortcut >to some of your stuff? Since you asked I will say! Go to "Dick Search" (!) and type my last name--my favorite things are of course my own fiction: "The New Slut Feminism" and "The Resulting Claire". There is also up some memoir and a review I did of Lynne Tillman's work (Its named "Lit Squad Has A Fling") & yes the Dodie B. article is great - I was happy to see it there. As to your concerns/troubles with the site and its focus, I don't feel totally comfortable responding in public as Lily, Susannah & Joshilyn Jackson (who took over for Susannah in January) are dear to me. Lily & Joshilyn have fiction in Outlet 1 & 2...Lily has a book out from FC2 called _The Great Taste of Straight People_, and it will be clear as (if) you read Joshilyn's story in Outlet 2 (Outlet 2 also featuring Linda Russo!) that she does have what might be considered 'more political? more Feminist?' concerns, too.........Their use of humor is great, I think, and the intended audience is........not this list? I'm also impressed with Lily's critical cyberedge. As for the tittygirl illustrations, yes its strange, in the New Slut Fem, my narrator is chubby, in the illustration, she's...........Cindy Crawford with glasses on? But shit, its up and illustrated, what can I say? ANd Susannah's editing helped bring out the story, too, which was written years ago originally. So now I've admitted everything. and one mor ething- This month I wrote an article for them featuring a condom at their request as an attempt was being made to get a condom company to sponsor the site---crass commercialism? & maybe MARX (or at least the 'economy') comes (!)(excuse me) in here: I know years ago this would have made me sick, but then years ago I thought MFA programs were ridiculous, now I've attended one, and now I've written an article to try for a sponsor....not my main goal, but an interesting exercise (would you be pleased as an executive to read of a boy's 1st-sex condom being found a month later under a Converse tenny, full of maggots?) > The world we live in is >so gendered, & though there's a lot of wonderful blurriness, there's still >those two extremes. Am I referring to "man & wife"? or Christian >Fundamentalism and The Gap? Or the House of Dior and Ann Demuelsteer (SP!)? Is the Waldrop quote from '78 or '88? Todd thanks for the lovely poem(s)! Elizabeth Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 15:10:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Subject: Re: postwomen+ (or is not equal to) speculative equations In-Reply-To: <199807241815.LAA01119@lanshark.lanminds.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > Dear Linda, if my post is fecund am I a girlywoman? Funny but I was just wondering about this ... "fecund" sounded somewhat horrid in relation to Elizabeth's post ... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 14:26:18 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: queries In-Reply-To: <35B87B4F.3D09@cinenet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks to all all all who responded in various ways to all these queries. 5:17 AM's mighty early; i think i'm discovering a secret to great productivity. whether i can emulate it; who knows At 5:17 AM -0700 7/24/98, Douglas wrote: >Maria, accordingly to my editor, Guy Bennett >an Oulipo group (new and old) still meet in Paris >quite often and read their work. > >Douglas > >Maria Damon wrote: >> >> are there surviving members of the Oulipo group and do they still meet in >> paris? inquiring minds need to know ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 23:45:33 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Directory Assistance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit RaeA100900@AOL.COM wrote: > > Hi again- > > Does anyone know where or how I can reach Harryette Mullen? I've tried > calling her home in L.A. with no luck. I don't have an e address. > > Rae Armantrout Rae: I'm afraid I've only been able to reach her through her dept. at UCLA-- but that's been awhile. Douglas might/must know. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 16:10:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: Party Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris, the best intentions. . . Sorry. We're both flatout. But I wish you much revelry! XOX At 03:20 PM 7/23/98 -0400, you wrote: > Just wanted to remind people again that I and Gary Sullivan are > having a roof party (not to be confused with ROOF BOOKS; though > people with ROOF BOOKS are invited) tomorrow night. Friday 7/24... > We will be UNDER the roof it it rains......in Brooklyn, NY.... > Anybody in the NYC area (or "just visiting") is welcome to > attend. Backchannel for directions, etc..... > chris stroffolino > > Susan Wheeler susan.wheeler@nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 09:40:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: I dislike chilled soups MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I dislike chilled soups as a general rule for you I'll glady make an exception given your penchant for assassination As a general rule I sleep only on Thursdays Given your penchant for assassination I'll give up even this small pleasure I sleep only on Thursdays Such is the limit of my wit I'll give up even this small pleasure a tax levied on my mere existence Such is the limit of my wit A vaster corral would require too much effort A tax levied on my mere existence equal to 150 pounds of flesh A vaster corral would require too much effort I am unaccustomed to mental labor equal to 150 pounds of flesh A calculation foreign to my nature I am unaccustomed to mental labor I dislike chilled soups a calculation foreign to my nature For you I'll gladly make an exception Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 12:29:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Query In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For a piece I'm researching, I'm trying to find out who on the Wesleyan University Press Board of Advisors (assuming there is one) is responsible for the more experimental choices on their list: Howe, Retallack, Scalapino, Perelman, etc. Please back-channel. Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 16:05:54 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: rhyme & reason I apologize for the earlier posting with the subject above -- somebody decided to be awful funny and send mail in my name. I hope all is well with the listfolk, Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 13:28:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Yedda Morrison's _The Marriage of the Well Built Head_ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" _____________ Double Lucy Books is proud to announce the publication of Yedda Morrison's first collection, _The Marriage of the Well Built Head_. Staple bound, 40 pp., $3. Yedda Morrison co-edits TRIPWIRE: A POETICS JOURNAL. Her work has appeared in Mirage #4 Period(ical), Outlet, & elsewhere. ********* Outlet (2) Fairyland will be available in the first part of September. Work by Tan Lin, Michelle Murphy, Todd Baron, Linda Russo, & others. ************ please make checks payable to E. Treadwell. ____________________ Many thanks to those of you who've already ordered Yedda's book - your copies are in the mail! And thanks also to those of you who've subscribed to Outlet - your copies will arrive in September. ET Outlet, a periodical Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013 Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 01:03:33 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Yedda Morrison's _The Marriage of the Well Built Head_ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Odering up! I'll send the check asap and look forward to the book. Your name is popping up in many conversations of late--Noah and others up there. Double Lucy ! etc! best of all, Todd Baron 2860 exposition blvd #A santa monica ca 90404 ps: I'm going to send you a manuscript--and I knwo you don't have time to read it--but I want to give you a copy not only for "consideration" but for a "gift" or such--I think you'll like the work and I really want to have folks read this body of work--and discuss it when we can..etc. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 22:08:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Kathy's Diary (last of 2 installments) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Kathy's Diary (last of 2) In Kathy's diary/epistolary material, she also said that the idea of us completely knowing each other stunned her; she thought there were a lot of ways we were alike, and talked about our fantasies in relation to each other. She said she didn't quite understand what was going on, and I re- member feeling the same way myself. She was working on a book at the time, this was when she was calling her- self The Black Tarantula, publishing under the name. I was involved in her thinking. Our thinking about each other was intertwined, inseparable. I can't think of a gap; we filled each other's spaces. She wanted us to send each other as much information as possible about each other, in varied media, so that we could continue along these lines. She mentioned Vito Acconci, saying the kind of intimacy he explores in his work, she had never seen done between two people who were both subjects and objects. She thought all of this would make an incredible work as well. I thought and still think that Vito's exploration wasn't all that risky, but articulated so as to appear so, without props; the props in fact provided the frame- work, moving the periphery towards the center. But that wasn't clear until much later. She thought I was more systematic in my exploration than she was; is that true? Certainly I pick up and drop systems like water, like there's link- ages surrounding the gasp of the earth's equator - but then these same systems become corroded by desire, tend to fray/stare at one from the edges where I reside. I was residing there at the time. A bit later we were making tapes together, worlds falling apart, and as the content of one of the tapes indicated, I was reading Norman O. Brown's Love's Body at the time. I just found the book again. Kathy thought my work could profit from the intimate sexual concerns of hers - perhaps it has. Certainly the tape we did was the farthest I've been able to stretch my body, on the operating-table so to speak, of both semiosis and psychosis. I could but won't speak towards her state of mind at the time, from what she said. But this was later. Now, she was writing to me before that, asking whether I would collaborate with her, speaking of her fanaticism in relation to what she was doing - I certainly shared (and share) that aspect of her psychology. Now I'm intertwined with this text, which on my part within it, still re- flects concerns I've never figured out, in the sense of a figure or trope, those moments which become signs or ghosts in the very background of our being. They remain there just as these letters and diary have accompanied me; would that they were published, but who is to say concerning the Estate, and to what extent would I want to give up the paraphrase for the real? And am I living through text, and if so, whose? __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 21:06:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Yedda Morrison's _The Marriage of the Well Built Head_ Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35BA8064.6374@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Haven't seen Yedda's book yet, but she's a terrific writer. Maxine Chernoff On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > Odering up! > > I'll send the check asap > and look forward to the book. > > Your name is popping up in many conversations > of late--Noah and others up there. > Double Lucy ! etc! > > best of all, > > Todd Baron > > 2860 exposition blvd > #A > santa monica ca 90404 > > ps: I'm going to send you a manuscript--and I knwo > you don't have time to read it--but I > want to give you a copy not only > for "consideration" but for a "gift" > or such--I think you'll like the work > and I really want to have folks > read this body of work--and discuss it > when we can..etc. > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 09:21:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: hugh steinberg's e-whereabouts Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anyone having an up-to-date e-ddress for Hugh please b-c me with it? hsteinberg@grin.net is no longer valid, it seems. Thanks, David ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 13:43:57 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Poetry Daily Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all again, This is the most I've ever posted to the list. I don't know that this matters to anyone else, but I got the folks at www.poems.com to post my full poem (instead of just the second half) starting Monday. So if anyone would like to see the whole thing, it'll be there under Saturday's poem. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 13:44:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: For J. Mayhew MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Coney Island after Cesar Vallejo I’ll die drinking I remember it already in Paris, slow, maybe Peoria, or Brooklyn on a Thursday, like today, in fall or I’ll die on a Thursday, maybe today, thursday promises poems while the bad humors pass me by to join other bad and, like never before, I have returned with all my cards, my ways and means, and smiles to see myself alone. You see I have died, they fought me I did nothing--they gave it to me hard with a stick and hard With a story; without testimony on Thursdays, bleached bones solicitude, stone stoops, the rides. . . ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 14:20:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: oulipo howlipo whylipo wherelipo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit For Maria et al belated, In April Harry Mathews was at DU Denver. He said Oulipo is wildly popular these days, attracting crowds in the hundreds to their readings. And by the way, since the question was asked, about women, a question that was on my mind as Harry was discussing the strict application of rules and limitation. I asked Harry if he thought the method appealed to men more than women. He scowled and asked me if I ever watched a game of hopscotch. I never was any good at hopscotch, or jacks, for that matter. From one who thinks rules are at their best when they are judiciously broken. --rdl (p.s.--I'll be off for a week or two on the road back home to B'lyn--A. Hollo, L. Wright, P. Pritchett, M. DuCharme, D. Rogerson-- I'll miss you terribly) Fredrik Hertzberg LIT wrote: > > On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > > men*...Can anyone indicate if they ever eventually had a woman member? (or > > two?) > > > > Mark P. > > > > The following list can be found online somewhere under > http://www2.ec-lille.fr/~book/oulipo/ - a good Oulipo-site, French. There > seems to be at least one female member. Fred > > Noël Arnaud - président - membre > fondateur > Marcel Bénabou - secrétaire > définitivement provisoire > Jacques Bens - membre fondateur > Claude Berge - membre fondateur > André Blavier > Paul Braffort - premier membre élu > Italo Calvino [décédé] > François Caradec > Bernard Cerquiglini > Ross Chambers > Stanley Chapman > Marcel Duchamp [décédé] > Jacques Duchateau - membre fondateur > Luc Etienne [décédé] > Paul Fournel - secrétaire > provisoirement définitif > Michelle Grangaud > Jacques Jouet > Latis [décédé] - membre fondateur > François Le Lionnais [décédé] - président fondateur > Hervé Le Tellier - trésorier > Jean Lescure - membre fondateur > Harry Mathews > Michele Métail > Oskar Pastior > Georges Perec [décédé] > Raymond Queneau [décédé] - fondateur > Jean Queval [décédé] > Pierre Rosenstiehl > Jacques Roubaud > Albert-Marie Schmidt [décédé] ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:34:25 -0400 Reply-To: Orpheus Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Orpheus Subject: Poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Poetry, don't you start telling me about poetry. I know all about poetry, thank you very much [he said with a sort of bull-snort]. But let me tell you this. There's no obligation to accept society or women or religion or anything else, not for anyone there isn't. As for poetry, that's a job for anarchs. Poetry's made by rebels and exiles and outsiders, it's made by people on their own, not sheep baaaing bravo to any Pope. Poets don't need religion and they don't need bloody little cocktail-party gossip either; it's they who make language and make myths. Poets don't need anybody except themselves. [Undisclosed source] let me add to list of things Poets don't need: theories, and any form of dogma of the left or right. The great poet Tristan Tzara was a leftist all his life. But he never kissed the ass of any Stalinist. In fact, there was fist fight at his funeral. Between some lettrists and some dogmatic Stalinists. And I am not running down Stalin, and I am not running down the Pope, any more than I would run down the Dalai lama. All these contemporary leftists type autmatically assume that being Christian, patriarchal makes one an idiot. Well friends, Paul Virilio is a christian, and so was Grahame Greene. One does not have to accept any or not even some of the premises of any movement to be a good, great or special poet. IT is all very individual. L.F. Celine was a pretty bad politican in my books, but he was a great novelist. PD James portrays a type of man and poet which you seem to think is mediocre. Oh well. What is mediocre? Anything which disagrees with a leftist politics. Balderdash is what we say. Politics like poetry should be a porocess of constraint and movement. Not dogma and not a dogma riddled with some blather based on a fickle and badly digested Lacan-ism. That is not a typo. Ism the ism of justifications. Pah! I have sung 'theory' in three countries. And the hexagram says: Let It Go. last but not least if you going to attack orpheus then do so properly. In Lacanian 'thought and doctrine' the penis as you so prudently refer to the male cock is not the Phallus. You can go read that. And see. Not that I am especially interested in that sort of pyscho-analytic gibberish But you shld. know the difference. BEcause I am no fan of Lacan. I prefer Duns Scotus, James Joyce, Milton, HD, Plath, Everson, and hosts of others. Adam Dalgliesh is something you cannot understand. Because you imagine that poetry is associated with virtue. I mean a circle of virtue which you associate with the left I suppose. Dalgliesh is just part of the English poet image as establishment figure. But if your politics are so paranoid that you cannot imagine beyond that, well then you beyond reprieve. After all, so many great poets are of the right and conservative. In fact it seems that all the American poets who everyone now declares great, were men whose politics was either informed by a Christian view point, and or men whose politics was conservative at one level or another. Long Live the fictional Adam Dalgliesh. I love the sound of Dalgliesh. One thinks of Hopkins, and Donne and Shakespeare. As close to the establishment of their times as a man can get and still sing and bring home the bacon. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 19:17:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Inagaki Taruho Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Right now I am in the middle of reading Inagaki Taruho's "One Thousand and One-Second Stories" published by Sun & Moon. My wife (who is Japanese) have been raving about this writer for some time to me. This Japanese writer is a combination of fairy tale meets sophisticated urban life meets slapstick. Most of these stories I believe were written in the Thirties and Twenties. If you are familar with Edogawa Rampo, Taruho is a 'lighter' version of Rampo's dark sexuality and horror. And I wanted to mention this title because one - our friend Douglas published it, and two the images are hauntingly (is there such a word) poetic in its language and imagery. ciao, Tosh ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 22:48:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Inagaki Taruho In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I do get to second this as well; it's a wonderful book straight out of Meiji era I think although much later than that, owes to Melies as well, lots of Mr. Moon falling just about everywhere! And I don't even have _any_ friend named Douglas! Alan On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, Tosh wrote: > Right now I am in the middle of reading Inagaki Taruho's "One Thousand and > One-Second Stories" published by Sun & Moon. My wife (who is Japanese) > have been raving about this writer for some time to me. This Japanese > writer is a combination of fairy tale meets sophisticated urban life meets > slapstick. Most of these stories I believe were written in the Thirties > and Twenties. > > If you are familar with Edogawa Rampo, Taruho is a 'lighter' version of > Rampo's dark sexuality and horror. And I wanted to mention this title > because one - our friend Douglas published it, and two the images are > hauntingly (is there such a word) poetic in its language and imagery. > > ciao, > Tosh > > ----------------- > Tosh Berman > TamTam Books > ---------------- > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 23:59:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Saving Private Ryan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I saw this movie yesterday and am still thinking about it somewhat confusedly. Very powerful, a work of cinematic genius in the battle scenes, no question, but disturbing, it seems to me, in its broader, potential impact on the culture (i.e. Will it help make U.S. police actions against "non-democratic" states more attractive to the public? Will it help set the stage for patriotic rally around our soldiers who are willing to put up with, and rise to--like the heroic, play-calling, and Emerson quoting quarterback Captain Miller--so much visceral violence? ). I'm not sure here... The treatment of the American soldiers (though not the Germans--they are pretty much all bad guys and, suggestively, through the temporarily captured one, plain despicable) is quite moving, and one senses what the U.S.veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam must feel about not being fully understood in regards to the horrors they endured. Wondering what people think about this movie? Or are _all_ the critics right that it's a wonderful movie through and through? Is this the best treatment we can get of the "good war"? And actually, if I may ask,what do people on this List think? Was it a "good war"? Kent ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 01:26:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS In-Reply-To: <35B7E9F9.FF9979D8@bayarea.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dave Baratier asks what "cross-gendered identification" is. I guess I just meant the term simply (if loosely) to mean when someone of one gender and/or sex adopts or takes on the voice of someone of another gender and/or sex.... I didn't say that YAU was NEW for doing that.... but then "make it new" has never been much of a standard for me (see Mike Magee's intro to his mag COMBO for a view I largely share) Karen Kelley. COuld you tell me which particular piece of Yau's was in First Intensity? My hunch is you're talking about a piece called BUTCHER, BAKER, or CANDLESTICK MAKER, but I'd like to know more specifically before I respond....Because I'm curious about what you mean by "stereotypical" and why you think the piece you read is so..... Thanks, chris stroffolino On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: > I recently read something of Yau's in a mag--was it First Intensity? I'm > sorry--I can't recall, but it was perhaps from the new book & was the narrative > of a stripper & I found it rather disturbing in that the narrator was kind of > dumb & angry & thought highly of her breasts (no prob with that in & of itself) > & little of men in general--she was kind of a jaded line drawing of a > woman--with the interior monolog of a stereotype, which I suppose is okay, > though as this thread goes to show, the whole male/female or masc/fem question > is much more complex than Yau's piece implied, and I guess I just felt annoyed > that he was willing to throw another stereotype my way. > > > > louis stroffolino wrote: > > > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? > > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" > > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, > > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as > > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages > > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does > > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" > > and negotiating the representational anxieties that > > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... > > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... > > chris stroffolino > > > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > > > > > Rah rah. > > > > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > > > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > > > patriarchal biases. > > > > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > > > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > > > > > Todd's comeback: > > > > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > > > > > never impersonal. > > > > > > > > Tb > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 01:58:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: izak Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan Comments: To: KENT JOHNSON In-Reply-To: <65988D96A46@student.highland.cc.il.us> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard that there are no African American or Chicano soldiers shown in any of the larger battle scenes. Strange since Spielberg claimed to try and make this movie as close to reality as possible and quite a large number of the soldiers that fought in WWII were African American and Chicano or Latino. -Joanna Sondheim ******************************************************************************* "It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." -Edith Sodergran ******************************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 03:13:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: Re : Saving Private Ryan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Kent, I havent seen this movie yet, & may never. (I have spent much time imagining combat, from what I knew of physiology and from what books tell, among earliest memories being _The Great War Illustrated_ , which I discovered in a closet under the stairs where we took refuge (?) during a buzzbomb attack in WW2.) Here, I am only interested to cope with your question, was WW2 a 'good' war? The only way I can answer that is to say that were the exact historical conditions to obtain today, it would need to be fought and I would feel impelled to take part. David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 10:00:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ShaunAnne Tangney Humanities Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: <65988D96A46@student.highland.cc.il.us> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, KENT JOHNSON wrote: > I saw this movie yesterday and am still thinking about it > somewhat confusedly. Very powerful, a work of cinematic genius in the > battle scenes, no question, but disturbing, it seems to me, in its ***** > Wondering what people think about this movie? Or are _all_ the > critics right that it's a wonderful movie through and through? Is > this the best treatment we can get of the "good war"? > admitedly, i haven't seen the movie (and probably won't) but i loved what the guy on NPR (sorry, can't remember his name) said: that the problem w/ the movie was that we could still see "little stevie spielberg" behind the curtin, pulling all the levers. will the movie "do any good"? well, here's a bit of dialogue from the pen of kurt vonnegut, many years ago: "Is it an anti-war book?" "Yes," I said, "I guess." "You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing an anti-war book?" "No. What _do_ you say, Harrison Starr?" "I say, 'Why don;t you write an anti-_glacier_ book instead?" i was thinking about this "will it do any good" question just this weekend, actually. i saw a clip of an interview w/ spielberg saying that he wanted everyone to understand "the horrors of war" and then, chanel-surfing, i happened upon the defense dep't (remember when it was the war dep't?) press conference about the CNN/Time story about using agent orange on AWOL soldiers in laos. one of the def. dep't guys said that "according to the records" one of the former soldiers who said he was in laos never was there--and i thought to myself, "jesus christ! 'according to records'?! who is this guy kidding?! if it was a secret mission, would there be any records?! i mean, hasn't this guy even seen _apocalypse now_?!" will it do any good? did _the best years of our lives_? did _coming home_? did the poetry of sigfried sassoon? did _catch-22_ or _going after cacciato_? --shaunanne ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 11:01:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > will it do any good? did _the best years of our lives_? did _coming > home_? did the poetry of sigfried sassoon? did _catch-22_ or _going after > cacciato_? > > --shaunanne Someone reads that stuff & is changed by it ... maybe not the culture-as-a-whole ... but "some people" ... _Catch-22_ adds to the dialogue ... so we have something, there, to put eye to & finger on ... other than say "yellow ribbon = support the troops" ... or "loose lips sink ships" ... we have, for instance, Slaughterhouse 5 ... which I read when very young ... & it did make a difference ... so did Deer Hunter ... opposition needs to be articulated ... in whatever medium ... otherwise? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 09:18:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In the segregated army of WW II black soldiers served in separate units, none of which, as I remember, saw action on D-Day, although they were active elswehere in the European theater. At 01:58 AM 7/27/98 -0700, you wrote: >I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard that there are no >African American or Chicano soldiers shown in any of the larger battle >scenes. Strange since Spielberg claimed to try and make this movie as >close to reality as possible and quite a large number of the soldiers that >fought in WWII were African American and Chicano or Latino. > >-Joanna Sondheim > > > >*************************************************************************** **** >"It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." >-Edith Sodergran >*************************************************************************** **** > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 13:44:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Re : Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I worked on a reply, discarded it; and can only say that I agree with David, although there are no good wars. I have difficulties with "good" and "bad" as well, not believing in any transcendent metaphoricity that would garner such divisions; which places me in the camp of Tertullian I suppose. And I would have gone as well. Alan On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, david bromige wrote: > Kent, I havent seen this movie yet, & may never. (I have spent much time > imagining combat, from what I knew of physiology and from what books tell, > among earliest memories being _The Great War Illustrated_ , which I > discovered in a closet under the stairs where we took refuge (?) during a > buzzbomb attack in WW2.) Here, I am only interested to cope with your > question, was WW2 a 'good' war? The only way I can answer that is to say > that were the exact historical conditions to obtain today, it would need to > be fought and I would feel impelled to take part. David > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:07:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: FEAST 27 July (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just in case you forget. see you in church. Today, 27 July, is the feast of ... * Pantaleon or Panteleimon, martyr (c. 305?) - the Romans tried killing him by burning, liquid lead, drowning, wild beasts, the wheel and the sword, before finally succeeding by the old standby, beheading; and after the decapitation, milk flowed from his veins instead of blood kevin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 13:01:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Re : Saving Private Ryan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I agree with Alan, about no good war, though violence simply is. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a pretty comprehensive piece on the movie in this week's New Yorker. He seems to feel the two 25 minute real life depictions of combat made the movie important, though not great, all by themselves. Posing the question of the value of realism. I remain skeptical. --rdl Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: > > I worked on a reply, discarded it; and can only say that I agree with > David, although there are no good wars. > > I have difficulties with "good" and "bad" as well, not believing in any > transcendent metaphoricity that would garner such divisions; which places > me in the camp of Tertullian I suppose. And I would have gone as well. > > Alan > > On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, david bromige wrote: > > > Kent, I havent seen this movie yet, & may never. (I have spent much time > > imagining combat, from what I knew of physiology and from what books tell, > > among earliest memories being _The Great War Illustrated_ , which I > > discovered in a closet under the stairs where we took refuge (?) during a > > buzzbomb attack in WW2.) Here, I am only interested to cope with your > > question, was WW2 a 'good' war? The only way I can answer that is to say > > that were the exact historical conditions to obtain today, it would need to > > be fought and I would feel impelled to take part. David > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 11:55:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Farr Subject: "Book Fungus Can Get You High" Comments: cc: sward@vcn.bc.ca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > "Book Fungus Can Get You High" > > By Ellen Warren / Chicago Tribune > > CHICAGO -- Getting high on great literature is taking on a whole new > meaning. It turns out that, if you spend enough time around old books > and decaying manuscripts in dank archives, you can start to > hallucinate. Really. > > We're not talking psychedelia, "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" stuff, > here. But maybe only a step or two away from that. > > Experts on the various fungi that feed on the pages and on the covers of > books are increasingly convinced that you can get high - or at least a > little wacky -- by sniffing old books. Fungus on books, they say, is a > likely source of hallucinogenic spores. > > The story of The Strangeness in the Stacks first started making its way > through the usually staid antiquarian books community late last year > with the publication of a paper in the British medical journal, The > Lancet. > > There, Dr. R.J. Hay wrote of the possibility that "fungal > hallucinogens" in old books could lead to "enhancement of > enlightenment." > > "The source of inspiration for many great literary figures may have been > nothing more than a quick sniff of the bouquet of mouldy books," wrote > Hay, one of England's leading mycologists (fungus experts) and dean of > dermatology at Guy's Hospital in London. > > Well, said an American expert on such matters, it may not be that > easy. > > "I agree with his premise - but not his dose. It would take more than a > brief sniff," aid Monona Rossol, an authority on the health effects of > materials used in the arts world. > > For all the parents out there, these revelations would seem ideal for > persuading youngsters to spend some quality time in the archives. > > But attention kids: You can't get high walking through the rare books > section of the library. > > Rossol said it would take a fairly concentrated exposure over a > considerable period of time for someone to breathe in enough of the > spores of hallucinogenic fungus to seriously affect behavior. There are > no studies to tell how much or how long before strange behavior takes > hold. > > Still, this much seems apparent - if you want to find mold, the only > place that may rival a refrigerator is a library. > > Just last week the Las Cruces, N.M., Public Library was closed > indefinitely, prompted by health concerns after a fungus outbreak in the > reference section. Library director Carol Brey said the fungus promptly > spread to old history books and onward to the literature section. > > The town's Mold Eradication Team, she said, shuttered the library as a > precaution. "We didn't want to take any chances," she said. A mold > removal company will address the problem, which is believed to have > originated in the air conditioning system. > > Psychedelic mushrooms, the classic hallucinogenic fungus, derive their > mind-altering properties from the psilocybin and psilocin they produce > naturally. > > One historic example of this phenomenon, scientists now believe, is the > madness that prevailed in the late 1600s in Salem, Mass., where ergot, a > hallucinogenic fungus, infected the rye crops that went into rye bread. > Ergot contains lysergic acid, a key compound of the hallucinogenic drug > LSD. This tiny fungus and its wild effects on the rye-bread-eating > women may have led to the Salem witch trials. > > Rossol, a New York chemist and consultant to Chicago's Field Museum of > Natural History who publishes the newsletter Acts Facts, the journal of > Arts, Crafts and Theater Safety, said that there have not been > scientific studies on the hallucinogenic effects of old books. > > But, relying on accounts from newsletter readers who report their own > strange symptoms - ranging from dizziness to violent nausea - she says > there is no doubt that moldy old volumes harbor hallucinogens. > *******************************8 > (Thanks to Jill Hackenberg, who sent me this e-mail. A great way to > start my Monday! Aloha, Liz ) > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:05:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Saving Private Ryan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Interesting that 25 minutes should seem "long" for a war scene. It's a result of the time-compression brought to us in part by movies themselves. A 25 minute sex scene would likely be labelled pornographic no matter how it was shot. Speaking of which: I'm listening to a pop station while writing this and just heard a (male) DJ give away tickets to a (female) listener; they banter back and forth, agreeing that the movie will inevitably be great because Matt Damon is so "hot." No good wars, agreed; I would probably have gone; but can any of us seriously imagine the U.S. faced with a situation that morally unambiguous? (Not the U.S. itself necessarily, but the enemy faced). 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: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 12:46:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: <65988D96A46@student.highland.cc.il.us> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Saw the movie with my 2 sons (twins, age13) the other day shortly after viewing a documentary about VietNam war widows that my cousin ismaking for NPR (she herself is one). Found both to be horrific and convincing as did my boys, future war fodder. The personal stories and visits to Viet Nam sites in my cousin's piece moved them as did the Spielberg movie's "realistic" violence and carnage. I was pleased by their thoughtful response and can't imagine how "Saving. . ." could make anyone gungho to go fight the next big one. Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:01:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: FEASTing on Oulipo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------9AC5B6754CAAF8878F3DF97F" --------------9AC5B6754CAAF8878F3DF97F Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit And my calendar only said it was Take Your Houseplants For a Walk day... k.a. hehir wrote: > > > Today, 27 July, is the feast of ... > > * Pantaleon or Panteleimon, martyr (c. 305?) - ... But more seriously, re Rachel (soon to be sorely missed in Boulder) Levitsky's post on Oulipo and so on, in which she said:And by the way, since the question was asked, about women, a question that was on my mind as Harry was discussing the strict application of rules and limitation. I asked Harry if he thought the method appealed to men more than women. He scowled and asked me if I ever watched a game of hopscotch. I never was any good at hopscotch, or jacks, for that matter. Does anyone else gag when they read this? Why is it still acceptable to dismiss rather than addressing (or even refusing to address but owning up to it) questions if they relate to a gender or race or sexual orientation or etc. other than one's own? I'll take forthright bigotry over this sort of snideness any day. With curry all over my keyboard, Laura (I was never any good at hopscotch either but I loved logic) W. -- Laura Wright Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 * * * * * * "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan * * * * * * "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein --------------9AC5B6754CAAF8878F3DF97F Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit And my calendar only said it was Take Your Houseplants For a Walk day...

k.a. hehir wrote:

 

Today, 27 July, is the feast of ...

* Pantaleon or Panteleimon, martyr (c. 305?) - ...

But more seriously, re Rachel (soon to be sorely missed in Boulder) Levitsky's post on Oulipo and so on, in which she said:And by the way, since the question was asked, about women, a question
that was on my mind as Harry was discussing the strict application of
rules and limitation.  I asked Harry if he thought the method appealed
to men more than women.  He scowled and asked me if I ever watched a
game of hopscotch.

I never was any good at hopscotch, or jacks, for that matter.

Does anyone else gag when they read this? Why is it still acceptable to dismiss rather than addressing (or even refusing to address but owning up to it) questions if they relate to a gender or race or sexual orientation or etc. other than one's own? I'll take forthright bigotry over this sort of snideness any day.

With curry all over my keyboard,
Laura (I was never any good at hopscotch either but I loved logic) W.
 

--
Laura Wright
Library Assistant
Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute
2130 Arapahoe Ave
Boulder, CO 80302
(303) 546-3547
 * * * * * *
"All music is music..."  -- Ted Berrigan
     *      *      *     *     *       *
"It is very much like it"  -- Gertrude Stein
  --------------9AC5B6754CAAF8878F3DF97F-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:56:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:46 PM 7/27/98 -0700, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: >I was pleased by their thoughtful >response and can't imagine how "Saving. . ." could make anyone gungho to >go fight the next big one. but isn't the film more war-IS-horrible-but-by-god-someone's-got-to-do-it? someone's got to fight the Evil Forces. someone's got to be brave but there are no heroes here. there are no heroes here because we're just doing our duty. we're just doing our duty, and it is a bitter pill, and that is heroic, altho we're reluctant to accept such labels, because our boys suffer... "morally unambiguous"--what does that mean? <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:21:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: FW: Can you post this on poetics list? Thanks, David MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey, Everyone ... fyi: -----Original Message----- From: David A. Kirschenbaum [SMTP:dak@booglit.com] Sent: Monday, July 27, 1998 4:14 PM To: Gary Sullivan Subject: Can you post this on poetics list? Thanks, David Saturday Aug. 8, 1998 BOOG Literature 7th anniversary party Hammell on Trial, Wanda Phipps, James Wilk, Three Guys from Albany, Suburban Life and more Hosted by BOOGLIT editor David Kirschenbaum Segue Space 303 E.8th St. (bet. B & C) $6 door Info: (212) 330-7840 Email: info@booglit.com F train to 2nd Avenue ________________________________________________________________________ Belinda P. Yong ph: (212) 328-0800 Publishing Associate fax: (212) 328-0600 MBL Communications e-mail: fitness@interport.net 665 Broadway, Suite 805 New York, NY 10012 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:06:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" or Dalton Trumbo's Johnnie Got His Gun or Nathaniel West's Dream Life of Balso Snell, or Kenneth Patchen's Sleepers Awake, but they only make pacificists one at a time, not like tanks rolling off the chrysler line, and by the way nobody's talking about one of the real reasons the japanese economy is faltering, for fifty years they were forbidden to spend on military but that's all changed in the past decade, they're working hard to make the arms dealers (like Harrod's owned by Diana's boyfriend's Dad) wealthier still and defence spending is a dead loss what i've heard is if you took the money in the defence budget and just threw it in the street more jobs would be created than spent as it is. billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 Yeah, I stole from the treasury of human folly I spent it all on you, baby... don't mention it Duncan McNaughton ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:27:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Hello I must be going MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Be back in about 2 weeks. hasta la vista, RDL ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 18:16:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I probably would not have gone....Hail Robert Lowell! (though, he's been called a mere wax-museum puppet). Hail John and Yoko!...... cs..... On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, David Kellogg wrote: > Interesting that 25 minutes should seem "long" for a war scene. It's a > result of the time-compression brought to us in part by movies > themselves. A 25 minute sex scene would likely be labelled pornographic > no matter how it was shot. > > Speaking of which: I'm listening to a pop station while writing this and > just heard a (male) DJ give away tickets to a (female) listener; they > banter back and forth, agreeing that the movie will inevitably be great > because Matt Damon is so "hot." > > No good wars, agreed; I would probably have gone; but can any of us > seriously imagine the U.S. faced with a situation that morally > unambiguous? (Not the U.S. itself necessarily, but the enemy faced). > > 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: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:25:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980727195653.0069db1c@po7.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII And as we left the film and drove home, my boys were grappling with the difficulty of just that: "You're Jewish, right, Mom?" (showing what little religious training they've had). "So if Germany had won World War Two, you might not have been born?" Then to father, who isn't Jewish but was conscientious objector in Viet Nam era, the question, "Would you have gone to WW2?" So complex thoughts are being engendered by the experience, no matter what Spielberg or official culture wishes. Maxine Chernoff On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, daniel bouchard wrote: > At 12:46 PM 7/27/98 -0700, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: > >I was pleased by their thoughtful > >response and can't imagine how "Saving. . ." could make anyone gungho to > >go fight the next big one. > > > but isn't the film more war-IS-horrible-but-by-god-someone's-got-to-do-it? > someone's got to fight the Evil Forces. > someone's got to be brave but there are no heroes here. > there are no heroes here because we're just doing our duty. > we're just doing our duty, and it is a bitter pill, and that is heroic, > altho we're reluctant to accept such labels, because our boys suffer... > > "morally unambiguous"--what does that mean? > > > > > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > Daniel Bouchard > The MIT Press Journals > Five Cambridge Center > Cambridge, MA 02142 > > bouchard@mit.edu > phone: 617.258.0588 > fax: 617.258.5028 > >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:36:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Re: Hello I must be going In-Reply-To: <35BCFED5.69D4@ibm.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" rachel, damn! i thought you were going to bring up DUCK SOUP as the classic anti-war movie. but of course your subject would've been HAIL HAIL FREEDONIA! don >Be back in about 2 weeks. > >hasta la vista, > >RDL ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 17:19:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Chris, Good call: it IS "Butcher, Baker..." "I'm a dancer who makes men spin in their graves, gets them to yell 'bay bee,' whisper 'gosh' and 'honey,' and dream of 'whoopee.'" "Fate got warm with me, dealt me a flush. So I'm packaged right for the job. I have an easygoing, cornstalk smile; I'm tall and tilted just enough so short guys don't have to crane their little necks and hurt themselves. I can crouch and rise smooth as a wave. Twist and twirl until their brains turn to jellyfish bobbing in a beer bottle." "Early on I learned that men like to be swatted a little if you do it right and put on your girl-next-door smile while shaking your assets just beyond reach. I had tits and a smile that gave men cramps." This seems *extraordinarily* off-base as a representation of what a woman might think when contemplating male reaction to her body. Admittedly I am *one* woman among many. But I wonder if perhaps Yau isn't closer to what *men* *think* women think. When I first read the piece I felt guilty about finding it an amusing read when it was so clearly a man's idea of a woman's feelings. And as someone who's held the same job as the narrator, I'm aware of how routinely dancers are stereotyped. It sounds like you felt differently about the piece, Chris. C'mon, spill it. Karen louis stroffolino wrote: > Dave Baratier asks what "cross-gendered identification" is. > I guess I just meant the term simply (if loosely) to mean > when someone of one gender and/or sex adopts or takes on > the voice of someone of another gender and/or sex.... > I didn't say that YAU was NEW for doing that.... > but then "make it new" has never been much of a standard for me > (see Mike Magee's intro to his mag COMBO for a view I largely share) > > Karen Kelley. COuld you tell me which particular piece of Yau's was > in First Intensity? My hunch is you're talking about a piece called > BUTCHER, BAKER, or CANDLESTICK MAKER, but I'd like to know more > specifically before I respond....Because I'm curious about what > you mean by "stereotypical" and why you think the piece you read is > so..... > Thanks, chris stroffolino > > On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: > > > I recently read something of Yau's in a mag--was it First Intensity? I'm > > sorry--I can't recall, but it was perhaps from the new book & was the narrative > > of a stripper & I found it rather disturbing in that the narrator was kind of > > dumb & angry & thought highly of her breasts (no prob with that in & of itself) > > & little of men in general--she was kind of a jaded line drawing of a > > woman--with the interior monolog of a stereotype, which I suppose is okay, > > though as this thread goes to show, the whole male/female or masc/fem question > > is much more complex than Yau's piece implied, and I guess I just felt annoyed > > that he was willing to throw another stereotype my way. > > > > > > > > louis stroffolino wrote: > > > > > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? > > > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" > > > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, > > > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as > > > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages > > > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does > > > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" > > > and negotiating the representational anxieties that > > > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... > > > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... > > > chris stroffolino > > > > > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > > > > > > > Rah rah. > > > > > > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > > > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > > > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > > > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > > > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > > > > > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > > > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > > > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > > > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > > > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > > > > patriarchal biases. > > > > > > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > > > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > > > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > > > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > > > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > > > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > > > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > > > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > > > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > > > > > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > > > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > > > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > > > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > > > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > > > > > > > Todd's comeback: > > > > > > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > > > > > > > never impersonal. > > > > > > > > > > Tb > > > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 18:14:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: poets & patriarchy (Orpheus Deconstructed) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, now, there, Orpheus, you're off to a fine start with your "Poetry, don't you start telling me about poetry. I know all about poetry, thank you very much." There's an end to discussion right there. No principle of exchange informs your procedures? You will be telling _us_ about poetry. And after all, we don't know all about poetry yet. Well, then, Yessir! Permit me (or don't permit me) to take issue with certain of your pronouncements (or Papal bulls---). "There's no obligation to accept society." I would say that you already are enjoying this obligation. I'm sure you use money, and that the electric company introduces power to your home, that when you turn the tap, potable water flows.Some arm of society probably taught you to read and spell. And we know for a fact that you are on a Poetics List on the Internet. "There's no obligation to accept women." Well, it all depends what you mean by "accept." At one level, you have to accept their existence and the exclusive function of childbirth, unless you were not of woman born. "Poets don't need religion...[nor]...theories, and any form of dogma of the left or right." Yet later, you remark that all the American poets now considered great, were men whose politics were either informed by Christian viewpoint, or...whose politics were conservative. Can you clear up this apparent contradiction in your thought? [Btw, Emily Dickinson? Not a man.] You are correct in identifying my thinking with Lacan's, although I reject your assertion that my thinking is "a fickle and badly digested Lacan-ism." In fact, when you write "the penis is not the Phallus" it is your Lacan that sounds poorly digested, for although you know that "penis" and "phallus" are not synonymous in his terminology, it did not occur to you that they sometimes overlap, and that my aside indicated one of these times. After all, the penis is a source of the trouble we were discussing, and the phallus is a term for that trouble. It is simply too simple to make the sweeping statement you were anxious to make. I think you might enjoy reading Lacan at greater length. His is a poetic sensibility; he was a rebel; he was a man. But I am a poet and I would agree with you that as creators we need humble ourselves before noone. When in 1966 I wrote the poem "A Final Mission" (_The Ends of the Earth_, Black Sparrow, L.A., 1968), in which a B-52 transforms into a penis that then transforms into a naked woman, I had not read Lacan, although I had of course read Freud, and, beyond that, I had experience and the feelings it brings with it. When, a decade later, I _did_ begin to read Lacan, I was drawn on by my recognition of, if not a like-mindedness, then of a shared interest, and a sense that I might find articulated in ways beyond my abilities, insights I'd had. I thought, you know, I might learn something. Even though I am a poet. As to a damn' Dogleash : I had the chance to do further research just last night, before I fell asleep. I admire the pretty lawns and the well-kept-up cottages, and the alluring rivers and wave-swept beaches (where would England be today without its tourist industry?) where the corpses keep popping up. Dogleash looks like a wimp to me (whereas, despite his "culture," Morse doesn't) but that's dismissibly subjective. The bigger picture is that in a time of universal police-inspired repression, I balk at making a hero out of even the most sensitive and perspicacious of fictional cops. And that is political, no two ways about it. But I am entertained by the landscape, the lightning, the editing, the sets, the high-priced cars, the make-up and costumes, the simulation of emotions, the memorized dialogs, the shell-game plot, the simple notion that beneath respectable exteriors may lurk evil, a family of ferocious moles beneath one of those lovely lawns... Btw, what's the signification of the increase in corpse dissection in the police labs in all these English tec shows? Is that what market research shows the Brits want? And the rest of the viewing world? David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 19:39:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Billy Little wrote: > what i've heard is if > you took the money in the defence budget and just threw it in the street > more jobs would be created than spent as it is. I spent three years as a full-time antinuclear activist (and lifelong red diaper baby peace creep etc. etc.), so please don't misunderstand my intentions here. But in a fabulous bit of irony, the internet on which you're reading these words began, and probably could only have begun, as a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Program Agency) project. And writing from the heart of the Silicon Valley, as I do, it's clear that the internet is creating most of the "best" jobs. Which is not to say that such a chain of events is anything more than random, or that most defense spending is productive. It isn't. Would that the question were simpler and less vexed-- Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 22:09:14 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re: Saving Private Ryan, which I haven't seen and don't intend to see, having found SCHINDLER'S LIST quite phoney and manipulative: Kent, if you want to see what WWII "felt like," look at some of the superb documentaries often shown on the History Channel. That was the real thing. Spielberg's simulations, as a letter to the editor in the LA Times pointed out today, are on the following order: in one battle scene the officers were helmets with insignias that, acc. to this letter writer who fought in the war, no officer ever would wear in battle because it showed up too much. A small detail but typical. I personally think the simulation of violent battle scenes is voyeuristic and also false. It does NOT tell you what war felt like. My husband Joe who was actually in WWII (tail end, missed the battles) in the Pacific Theatre will tell you how disappointed the 18-year olds like himself were to miss the battles because the felt they weren't being brave and heroic enough. Frank O'Hara, in the Pacific theatre at about the same time, writes the same thing in letters to his family. It may have been crazy, but there it is. As for the "good war" question, as someone who wouldn't be here today if the British and US had not fought, I find the question really creepy. Would you have liked to live under the Nazis? Not a hypothetical question for the British in 1939. Nothing like a lot of people who have never had to fight or indeed do anything on that order to sit around and discuss whether or not they would have gone, and yes, as we all know all wars are evil! IWhat else is new? It shows that it's time for a few history lessons for the kids. and, by the way, as endless letters in LA have been saying to Spielberg, who said there were no great war movies?? There have been dozens with amazing battle scenes but perhaps the greatest ever is the Bridge on the River Kwai. Not exactly a "recruiting" picture --it's very anti-war --but deals with real issues not, "Oh boy, war is hell." Isn't there something wrong with sitting comfortably in a theatre, warm enough, well-fed enough, eating popcorn and watching "War is hell" films? Well--I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I had to sound off a bit.... xxx Marjorie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 22:51:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 12:46 PM 7/27/98 -0700, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: >>I was pleased by their thoughtful >>response and can't imagine how "Saving. . ." could make anyone gungho to >>go fight the next big one. > > >but isn't the film more war-IS-horrible-but-by-god-someone's-got-to-do-it? >someone's got to fight the Evil Forces. >someone's got to be brave but there are no heroes here. >there are no heroes here because we're just doing our duty. >we're just doing our duty, and it is a bitter pill, and that is heroic, >altho we're reluctant to accept such labels, because our boys suffer... > >"morally unambiguous"--what does that mean? > > >I just saw the movie and I have to agree with the above. I thought the >whole film is a piece of hack work. War films by Sam Fuller, Kurbrick and >others are much better. The hype around the 'realistic' war scenes is >just that - images that have been used before and I think done in a better >way in the past. Something like Kurbrick's film is much more terrifying >than anything I saw this afternoon. Speilberg is a filmmaker without any >soul. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 04:17:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: haraldo de campos In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hi, after reading the excerpt from 'transient servitude' in the much talked about poems for millenienites, i want to perform it with another member of the modern languages dept. can any body point me to a parallel translation of the whole thing? if it is a whole book, please excuse my ignomance. i too am using the series(of 2) as an education. still, kevin |-------------------------------------------------------------| | Arsenic, a classic homicidal poison, occurs naturally | | in small amounts in many foods. | | The World of Chemistry Essentials | |-------------------------------------------------------------| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:51:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Kuszai" Subject: Meow Press is Moving! Comments: cc: kuszai@pilot.msu.edu, steve@spdbooks.org, spd@spdbooks.org, Shirley Kuszai MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Meow Press is Moving! * EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY * Meow Press Joel Kuszai, editor POBox 948568 La Jolla, CA 92037 kuszai@acsu.buffalo.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/presses ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 09:49:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) In-Reply-To: <35BCEC4C.C0F31F05@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Marjorie, These young people today . . . Seriously, though, I think we're seeing different things here. The question of "would I have gone" is not I think mainly directed at the actual past but at our imagined future. True, I haven't suffered or done anything "of that order," but why is the _question_ creepy? The answer may be. You and I may actually converge on a question of "national feeling." I read Richard Rorty's _Achieving Our Country_ a few weeks ago and haven't been the same since. 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: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:06:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: what doing there? why play that? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Marjorie Perloff: I haven't seen the film either, and don't intend to for similar reasons that you state. Actually, I haven't seen SCHINDLER'S LIST either; something about Spielberg's films make me feel really angry. (Except JAWS, which was relaxing and enjoyable.) Perhaps I'm misreading your tone below but I think talking about "whether one would go" during peacetime is quite important. After all, if one wants to conscientiously object out of the military, you've got to do a lot of groundwork before the war comes. It's not just important, it's imperative. The history lessons for many kids I knew were completely inadequate to stimulate such discussions. I'm talking about classroom lessons. Movies, however, provoked talk; however basic they might have been, the questions came up. The films were THE DEER HUNTER, FULL METAL JACKET (viewed one summer over 60 times with friends, we still have it largely memorized), BIG WEDNESDAY (believe it or not), and PLATOON. Generally, a lot of guys felt (feel) the gov't/military is a fucked lot of liars and dickheads but nevertheless they would go to war if called. (This was before the ROTC guys who were trying to pay for college found themselves in Saudi Arabia, "making the world safe for democracy.") One guy in particular I remember phrased it as "going to bat for you country." He was against senseless war (Korea, VietNam, the Gulf, assorted invasions of Latin American countries) but by-god you've got to "go to bat for you country." His expression as he said it still pains me. (Some kind of vague devotion to... something.) So sit around. Talk about it. Watch war-is-hell films. Read THE ENORMOUS ROOM, ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, "Route," FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (you can watch this too). Find the documentaries that show how we began a systematic destruction of Iraqi society (and continue to do it). Better to talk of these things over popcorn in the air-conditioned theater, than in the bunker thru your gas mas---I'm guessing anyway; rather not have to go both roads. simplistic, naive, bourgeois, - db >Nothing like a lot of people who have >never had to fight or indeed do anything on that order to sit around and >discuss whether or not they would have gone, and yes, as we all know all >wars are evil! What else is new? It shows that it's time for a few >history lessons for the kids... Isn't there >something wrong with sitting comfortably in a theatre, warm enough, >well-fed enough, eating popcorn and watching "War is hell" films? > >Well--I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I had to sound off a bit.... <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 28 Jul 1998 11:16:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: FEASTing on Oulipo In-Reply-To: <35BCDCB6.8B169B83@naropa.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i agreed with Laura, that the response about hopscotch seemed deliberately evaisive and even meaningless... Quite frankly, as the person who brought the gender-in-Oulipo question up: i stick by what i felt to start with, that they have retained a strong bias characteristic of the time and place in which the workshop was founded: that most serious intellectuals most of the time, are going to be men. (or, put more simply, that women aren't really human, though of course few individuals would be able to admit that that is a core implication of their thoughts...) luta continua, by Panteleimon! mark On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Laura E. Wright wrote: > And my calendar only said it was Take Your Houseplants For a Walk day... > > k.a. hehir wrote: > > > > > > > Today, 27 July, is the feast of ... > > > > * Pantaleon or Panteleimon, martyr (c. 305?) - ... > > But more seriously, re Rachel (soon to be sorely missed in Boulder) > Levitsky's post on Oulipo and so on, in which she said:And by the way, since > the question was asked, about women, a question > that was on my mind as Harry was discussing the strict application of > rules and limitation. I asked Harry if he thought the method appealed > to men more than women. He scowled and asked me if I ever watched a > game of hopscotch. > > I never was any good at hopscotch, or jacks, for that matter. > > Does anyone else gag when they read this? Why is it still acceptable to > dismiss rather than addressing (or even refusing to address but owning up to > it) questions if they relate to a gender or race or sexual orientation or > etc. other than one's own? I'll take forthright bigotry over this sort of > snideness any day. > > With curry all over my keyboard, > Laura (I was never any good at hopscotch either but I loved logic) W. > > > -- > Laura Wright > Library Assistant > Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute > 2130 Arapahoe Ave > Boulder, CO 80302 > (303) 546-3547 > * * * * * * > "All music is music..." -- Ted Berrigan > * * * * * * > "It is very much like it" -- Gertrude Stein > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:25:51 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan I'm just a young one who was hardly alive when the Falklands were going on; having never really been around during a serious war that my own country was involved with, I find a lot of the "war movies" (including more "gritty" ones such as Kubrick's) somewhat disturbing. Knowing how much the media distorts, say, the underground environmental movements such as Earth First!, which I'm familiar with, it's hard to take their fare in even more important aspects of an education. _The Killing Fields_, for example, is a pretty good movie, but rather confused; as an emotional work, it's excellent, but in the way it blurs the actual events around, I think it fails in it's duty somehow; I remember having to explain to everyone in the rooom what was going on, who Pol Pot was, why everyone getting shot was wearing glasses -- even, at one point, why the Cambodians spoke French. I realize that this is part of the viewer's problem, but it seems that, if the movie can have its effect without the audience needing to know what's going on, they might as well have made a movie about the Crusades and left it at that. So what's left, if you exclude the motion picture? For me, I've always found the craters in the side of the V&A in London the most eloquent "rememberance" of the Blitz; for those who haven't been there, imagine the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art with chunks of stone missing from the side. In the same way, physically being present in a concentration camp is a fundamentally different experience from watching the Spielberg recreation. There's something about physical presence -- or, at least, a representation of physical presence without a narrator -- that overwhelms the senses more than a report, or a film. Perhaps this is a historical approach similar to the Quaker "bearing witness"; it's not enough to be aware second hand. That's not to say that fiction or poetry or filmmaking has no place in war or tragedy; far from it -- Doris Lessing, for example, has, to my mind, a brilliant depiction of just-post-war London in the Four Gated City. But when you deal with these events as a political being, as a "citizen", it seems as if a different approach is needed. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:47:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: saving public poets in a pentagon world MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The observation that the internet emerged and in some sense could only have emerged out of the military machine, is accurate. By and large (as lots of you know) the research that allowed the creation of functional computers with vacuum tubes was almost entriely pentagon-driven. (During ol' wwii that we've been discussing, much of the idea was to be able to calculate long-range targeting of large cannons; almost immediately thereafter, of course, it became coordination of the US nuclear war machine.) The shape of our lived world, is strongly determined by the reality of war. **No war** undertaken by the US machine can be better than problematic. Because of the huge weight of US coercion toward its 80 percent working population, we who seldom vote and have no money, and toward most of the world, on behalf of its capitalist elite, it is very, very unlikely that any war launched by the US machine would be supportable, right now. (Think of Grenada, Panama, even apart from murders of civilians in those incursions that are public record, but denied and buried by the state-subservient US media; the "turkey-shoot"...) Sociopolitical circ's change, and it is hard for me to imagine opposing a war against the fascist powers, yet it led to the two nuclear bombings, not to mention Dresden and other ariel murder-bombings; how can a thinking person, with any values at all, support that scale of murder of civilians? For me, the best response in any medium to the way war has been accepted and integrated into an undemocratic century, is in the work of Susan Howe, especially in The Europe of Trusts (tho' elsewhere too). It is hard to convey how urgently her poetry grapples with the way gender and political weights determine violence, and direct it toward those who have not gained a measure of protection by becoming implicated in a violence of their own (or who have not had any chance to do so). One of the problems with gazing at history's violations and oppressions is, that they are too large and also tangled, to easily discuss; Howe brings the ability of words to *frame silence* into play, and thus through sounds and visual text images actually brings the wounded violence from history onto the page... mark ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:51:36 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I wrote last night's message at white heat, mispelled "wear" (put "were") and so on so let me add a little p.s. The question "Is there such a thing as a good war?" is a non-question. The real issue would be: Since we all know that war is hell for those who fight it, one must ask 1) what led up to War X? 2) could it have been avoided? (in this case, as Churchill shows so beautifully in THE GATHERING STORM) it probably could have been avoided f the West had armed and not let Hitler get away with his actions beginning in 1933. 3) Once war IS declared, can one turn one's back on those who are fighting, in essence, for your ability to continue living and say you won't participate? Refusing to fight in the case of the Vietnam War was one thing; in the case of WWII it was quite another. There really wasn't much choice since the victory of the Germans was a very real possibility. I've just been reading (for a conference at Yale in the fall) Eugene Jolas's autobiography, about to be published. Jolas (the editor of transition, Joyce's great friend, poet, etc) was Alsatian, tri-lingual, describes movingly how his brother got into a fight right on the border with a Nazi as early as 1933 and was jailed for 2 years by the Nazis and tortured just for that. He describes how the whole literary and intellectual community felt when France fell and the Nazis marched into Paris. At a moment like that, you don't sit around and say, "Isn't war hell" and "is this a good war?" You just defend your friends as Beckett did by doing whatever you can. Therefore I am wholly unimpressed with Spielberg's latest Star Wars venture--cops and robbers yet again. I don't care how "authentic" it is; it's a simulation meant to do--exactly what? Make people wonder if it was worthwhile? Make money? Whatever the motives, they're not very good ones and they totally distort what really went on in WWII. Incidentally, the best movie on this question (not battle scenes but otherwise) aside from "River Kwai" is surely Ophuls' THE SORROW AND THE PITY. Splices actual war footage and occupation footage with interviews with the survivors, of all political stamps. It's hair-raising. Basta! Marjorie Perloff ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 09:16:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Her Privates We Comments: To: Marjorie Perloff MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain When Sam Fuller's WWII film _The Big Red One_ came out in the early 80's, he was asked the usual questions about the verisimilitude of war films and responded by saying that the ony way to give an audience any idea of "what it was like" would be to have rifllemen shoot into the audience. As far as great battle scenes go, it's hard to imagine anyone improving on Welles's Battle of Shrewsbury in _Chimes at Midnight_, or Kurosawa's storming of the Third Castle in _Ran_. The best war film I've ever seen, bar none, and one that I'm not ashamed to say makes me weep unabashedly, is Kon Ichikawa's _Harp of Burma_, also a WWII film, also "anti-war," and yet, so much more, of course. (Also on WWII by Ichikawa and worth seeing: _Fires on the Plain_). I look forward to the Spielberg, nevertheless. He's far too important a cultural barometer to dismiss out of hand, regardless of what one may think of him as a filmmaker. Besides which, teenage girls in LA used to mistake me for him when I wore my baseball cap. And me, with such a humble schnozz! Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Marjorie Perloff To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) Date: Monday, July 27, 1998 4:09PM Re: Saving Private Ryan, which I haven't seen and don't intend to see, having found SCHINDLER'S LIST quite phoney and manipulative: Kent, if you want to see what WWII "felt like," look at some of the superb documentaries often shown on the History Channel. That was the real thing. Spielberg's simulations, as a letter to the editor in the LA Times pointed out today, are on the following order: in one battle scene the officers were helmets with insignias that, acc. to this letter writer who fought in the war, no officer ever would wear in battle because it showed up too much. A small detail but typical. I personally think the simulation of violent battle scenes is voyeuristic and also false. It does NOT tell you what war felt like. My husband Joe who was actually in WWII (tail end, missed the battles) in the Pacific Theatre will tell you how disappointed the 18-year olds like himself were to miss the battles because the felt they weren't being brave and heroic enough. Frank O'Hara, in the Pacific theatre at about the same time, writes the same thing in letters to his family. It may have been crazy, but there it is. As for the "good war" question, as someone who wouldn't be here today if the British and US had not fought, I find the question really creepy. Would you have liked to live under the Nazis? Not a hypothetical question for the British in 1939. Nothing like a lot of people who have never had to fight or indeed do anything on that order to sit around and discuss whether or not they would have gone, and yes, as we all know all wars are evil! IWhat else is new? It shows that it's time for a few history lessons for the kids. and, by the way, as endless letters in LA have been saying to Spielberg, who said there were no great war movies?? There have been dozens with amazing battle scenes but perhaps the greatest ever is the Bridge on the River Kwai. Not exactly a "recruiting" picture --it's very anti-war --but deals with real issues not, "Oh boy, war is hell." Isn't there something wrong with sitting comfortably in a theatre, warm enough, well-fed enough, eating popcorn and watching "War is hell" films? Well--I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I had to sound off a bit.... xxx Marjorie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:59:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: How Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark, despite it's being hard, can you give some specific examples? I'm most interested in where you say "Howe brings the ability of words to *frame silence* into play, and thus through sounds and visual text images actually brings the wounded violence from history onto the page..." Perhaps one luminous example of sounds and visual text images actually bringing the wounded violence from history onto the page. - db At 11:47 AM 7/28/98 -0400, Mark Prejsnar wrote: >It is hard to >convey how urgently her poetry grapples with the way gender and political >weights determine violence, and direct it toward those who have not gained >a measure of protection by becoming implicated in a violence of their own >(or who have not had any chance to do so). One of the problems with >gazing at history's violations and oppressions is, that they are too large >and also tangled, to easily discuss; Howe brings the ability of words to >*frame silence* into play, and thus through sounds and visual text images >actually brings the wounded violence from history onto the page... <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 28 Jul 1998 12:07:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Saving Matt Damon In-Reply-To: <35BCEC4C.C0F31F05@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I heard Tom Shales' review of _Saving Private Ryan_ on NPR, in which he concluded -- with the kind of original, stunning insight that earned him a Pulitzer -- that ultimately the film was no more than a bunch of actors playing with toy guns. So I guess the only way to make a truly convincing war movie -- which seems to be what everyone wants -- is to give the audience a 50/50 chance of getting out of the theater alive. Where is William Castle when we need him? As those of us old enough to remember "The Tingler" can attest, he wouldn't have been afraid to mine a few seats. But seriously, movies like "Ryan" and "Schindler's List" are inevitable victims of their own overblown marketing apparatus. Would those who found the latter to be slick and exploitive have felt the same way if they stumbled across it -- unheralded, unanticipated -- in some Village art house, as though it were an independent film about which one had few or no expectations? What if the director had been Hal Hartley or John Sayles? What if Steve Buscemi played Schindler? The marketplace has generally made it impossible to approach Hollywood product without prior knowledge or assumptions. Maybe this is a good thing, since yes we are less likely to be manipulated if we already know how many stars, thumbs, whatever, a film has collected on its way through the media's meta-gauntlet. But it also results in weird reverse-experiences. Example: I was bored to sleep by "Wag the Dog," which I'd already been advised by everyone from Dan Schorr to Saddam Hussein was a great film, but absolutely loved "Wild Things" -- about which I'd known nothing beforehand, and only later discovered was a cheap, crass, artless pseudo-noir. It was also great, quirky fun. I'll see "Private Ryan" all right, but in about 3 or 4 years when I've forgotten what everyone tells me what I should think of it. -- 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: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 12:51:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: saving public poets in a pentagon world In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just want to point out, re: Wizards book and other early sources I have here inc. some original papers, although the Net emerged out of the mil- itary, it very quickly developed a superstructure guided by computer scientists not particularly interested in such - news and telnet and email and a host of other directions developed in the first 3 years for example including the online eliza game, etc. It's to easy to jump into the mili- tary model, and any close reading of the texts/papers/rfcs will dispel that. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 12:52:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) In-Reply-To: <35BD8302.2C5195CD@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just out of curiosity, since you won't go see the film - and yet you blast it here - would you do the same for a book of poetry? It always bothers me when people critique something from a position of absent authority. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 12:58:52 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Saving Matt Damon In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 28 Jul 1998 12:07:07 -0400 from my favorite war movie was "The Mouse that Roared". - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:02:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: How In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19980728155954.006e8e50@po7.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII don't have time i think to manage a critical treatise on Howe. Most of Pythagorean Silence and The Defenestration of Prague (the first two of the the three long poems that make up Europe of Trusts) are examples. m. On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, daniel bouchard wrote: > Mark, > > despite it's being hard, can you give some specific examples? I'm most > interested in where you say "Howe brings the ability of words to > *frame silence* into play, and thus through sounds and visual text images > actually brings the wounded violence from history onto the page..." > > Perhaps one luminous example of sounds and visual text images actually > bringing the wounded violence from history onto the page. > > - db > > > > At 11:47 AM 7/28/98 -0400, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > >It is hard to > >convey how urgently her poetry grapples with the way gender and political > >weights determine violence, and direct it toward those who have not gained > >a measure of protection by becoming implicated in a violence of their own > >(or who have not had any chance to do so). One of the problems with > >gazing at history's violations and oppressions is, that they are too large > >and also tangled, to easily discuss; Howe brings the ability of words to > >*frame silence* into play, and thus through sounds and visual text images > >actually brings the wounded violence from history onto the page... > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > 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, 28 Jul 1998 13:27:28 -0400 Reply-To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: representations, 'just wars' MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Oppen: There is a simple ego in a lyric, A strange one in war. --and-- 'A zero, a nothing': Assassin. Not nothing. At nineteen Crossing frontiers, Rifleman of the suffering-- Irremediable suffering--of the not-great, Hero and anti hero Of our time Despite all he has cost us And he may have cost us very much --and, following his famous sections in "Route" about Alsace: Wars that are just? A simpler question: In the event, will you or will you not want to kill a German. Because, in the event, if you do not want to, you won't. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:44:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Saving Matt Damon In-Reply-To: from "Fred Muratori" at Jul 28, 98 12:07:07 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To Fred M's question, "What if Steve Buscemi played Schindler?" Buscemi (in imagined dialogue with Hitler): What, you think you're some kind of authority figure now? You get to punch tickets at every port in Europe? Big Man. You miserbale fuck. Hey, these are the boundaries of your world, man; you pathetic piece of shit. -m. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:51:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: postfeminist playground Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to Linda R. for mentioning my piece at Postfeminist Playground--particularly since I didn't know it was there! They wrote to me ages ago about posting it, and it was a busy period in my life and I kind of lost the message in the piles of e-mail that rush in, and then when I got one of those "Live Dangerously?" messages from Eudora and was cleaning out my mailboxes, I found it and wrote back to them eons later that they could use it. They never wrote back, so I assumed that my flakiness killed the idea. I like the site, and I like being published in non-avant-garde/poetry environs. The piece is also in the new/long-overdue Poetics Journal--it was a talk I gave at New Langton Arts years ago--for an evening on Eros and Writing (curated by Kevin K.), and it was purposely written for a non-intellectual audience. When, after the talk Barrett asked if they could use it for PJ, I was surprised, since the piece is so determininately non-high-fallutin'. Barrett was still living here in SF and David Wojnarowitz was still alive--that long ago. The only reason I said it was okay to post it at Postfeminist Playground was because I assumed there would never be a cross-over between its audience and the PJ audience, so it's a bit disconcerting to have seen it mentioned here. I guess this goes to show, you never know . . . Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:44:02 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hery gould Subject: the hostilities a poem by Edwin Honig from several yrs ago: STARTING THE HOSTILITIES We've cleared the wires where the hostages hung all night. Feeling is up, horses kick at the barn doors, youngsters in town round up the old pistols, some test improvised bombs, wives quietly clean rifles. This is no child's tourney, there'll be other casualties. The veterans are growling _We'll tear out their hearts..._ [Honig was a combat veteran in WW II] General Sherman said it best. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:48:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) In-Reply-To: <35BCEC4C.C0F31F05@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I will go see "Saving PR" as phony as it may be -- just as I saw Spielberg's list. The public discussion is crucial -- athough I'm afraid the end result will be to further undo the "Vietnam syndrome" and not etch more deeply the horrors of war. I haven't stopped fighting WW2, and I wasn't even born yet. I haven't stopped fighting against the Vietnam War either -- and I'm not entirely sure that one has ended either. The wars don't end -- they just pause. The problem has been trying to escape the war mentality as much as the bloodshed. Better flawed art -- and I do believe Spielberg keeps trying -- than none. There have been excellent war movies: The Power and the Glory, Platoon. Full-Metla Jacket, MASH. Here's a suggestion for the high-roller producers on this list for movies not yet made: how about a movie about the torment of pacificsts during WW2; how about a movie that genuinely depicts the chaos, rage, fear, and battle of anti-war organizers during Vietnam. Has any movie depicted the anti-War movement accurately? I rage about the depiction of the movement in Forest Gump, for example. "Medic! Medic! This soldier has been hit by lies!" Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 22:55:00 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: film and war: in Hollywood--isn't that like ... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit war movies? Kubrick's F.M. Jacket-- seems the only way to truly make a safe-distance piece of art--which all movies that attempt to make a war upon-- is to go inside the mind of those involved--which is a problem--seeing as they're actors by the time they hit the screen. I'd add--as a suggestion to explore--seeing again--(for me) the film MASH--wehich explores not only the "idea" of war and the lives it actually affects and effetcs--but the interior chaos that the film develops as a piece of art itself. WHich was Altman's response--from years of doing TV--such as COMBAT! Tb "suicide is painless,,, it brings on many changes..." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:31:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: saving public poets in a pentagon world MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan, You're right about the interests of the computer scientists who developed the net. But who gave them the money? The principal funding source behind the Stanford AI Lab, MIT AI Lab, SRI, CMU etc. was DARPA. Money coming from other sources, like the National Science Foundation, was much less significant. The odd collection of graduate students, researchers, hackers and hangers-on who worked on programs such as Eliza, Emacs, telnet, email, etc. were, for the most part, directly or indirectly supported by DARPA money--they may not have been paid by that agency (though many were, including many who did not agree with military goals), but they used facilities and machines purchased with DARPA funds. So while we might want to sanitize that history, the truth is that net pioneers took the money and ran. Rachel Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: > > Just want to point out, re: Wizards book and other early sources I have > here inc. some original papers, although the Net emerged out of the mil- > itary, it very quickly developed a superstructure guided by computer > scientists not particularly interested in such - news and telnet and email > and a host of other directions developed in the first 3 years for example > including the online eliza game, etc. It's to easy to jump into the mili- > tary model, and any close reading of the texts/papers/rfcs will dispel > that. > > Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 18:42:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: saving public poets in a pentagon world In-Reply-To: <35BE515E.2E53D4CB@concentric.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, Rachel Loden wrote: > funds. So while we might want to sanitize that history, the truth is > that net pioneers took the money and ran. > > Rachel > "sanitize"? Hardly. "ran"? as if they were getting away with something? That's not how the history went down. As far as the source of the money goes, yes, and there were additional funds from universities, etc. But that hardly made it a military enter- prise. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 17:21:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: saving public poets in a pentagon world MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: > "sanitize"? Hardly. "ran"? as if they were getting away with something? > That's not how the history went down. Alan, I admire you (as I think you know) and don't really want to be in a pitched battle here. But yes--exactly as if they were getting away with something. My husband was at the Stanford AI Lab and that is how the history "went down." Money for research had to be procured from funding agencies, each of which had its own agenda. A successful grant proposal appeared to address this agenda in some way, even while the applicant's interests might be elsewhere. > As far as the source of the money goes, yes, and there were additional > funds from universities, etc. Re: "additional funds from universities," Stanford (for example) was heavily dependent on federal research money, and in fact made a killing charging high overhead rates on grants--70% or more. In computer science there was no direct research support other than professorial salaries. > But that hardly made it a military enter- > prise. Not a military enterprise, when colonels were doing project reviews? Call it what you want but the military picked up the tab, and had they not done so we would not have the net today--Congress never would have funded pure computer science research at that scale. The power of Taoism in action, don't you think? Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 20:59:51 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris McCreary Subject: address query/Joseph Torra Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hello-- I'm in search of an address-- e or otherwise-- for Joseph Torra. Please backchannel any such info. Thanks much. --Chris McCreary ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 00:07:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: anglo-american poetic relations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thought I'd float a few reportage pixels concerning the Post-War Anglo-American Poetic Relations conference held at the University of London's Centre for English Studies July 9-11. Lots of good papers, though with so many good panels going on simultaneously it was impossible to catch all that I wanted to hear. There were readings by Bob Perelman and Jennifer Moxley as well, and to close out the conference James Tate and John Ashbery. Good talks by list-folks Bob Archambeau (on Donald Davie at Stanford), Romana Huk (on Black British poetry), Alan Golding (Susan Howe and Ireland/England), and Marjorie Perloff (on signature and subjectivity in Silliman, Howe, Palmer, Scalapino, etc.). Peter Barry argued the need for a pedagogically-friendly anthology of experimental British poetry. Geoff Ward spoke on recent Ashbery; David Trotter read Olson beside Robert Smithson in an effort to rescue a "minimal" Olson. Robert Hampson followed the wanderings of cris cheek across artforms and nations; Rod Mengham spoke on Moxley's work with the poet in the room and offered his view of the wrestling with Keats etc. in JM's poetry. The word "cartoon," I think, was used as he thought about references to Greek myth in the poems, and this became an issue, though the paper was thoughtful and ultimately flattering. Frank O'Hara now has some very good British critics and scholars, including (especially) Kevin Nolan, Shari Sabeti, and Graham MacPhee; absurdly enough, these people were scheduled against a panel on the New York School. I showed up for Alison Mark, Carol Watts, and Drew Milne on Veronica Forrest-Thomson (and also C. Bernstein in Milne's case) but refused to sit in the hallway to hear it. (No huge crowd, just a small room). Did get the core of it later from Milne. Fascinated to learn at a different panel that there is now a cult of O'Hara in Poland--the O'Hara-ists even. This information courtesy of Krystyna Mazur of the American Studies Center, Warsaw University, whose excellent paper included her translations of some of these poets. Here's the opening lines of her translation of "Why I'm not a Grave-digger" by Derek Foks: I am not a grave digger, I am a carpenter. Why? I think I would rather be a grave digger, but I am a carpenter. I work with grave diggers. I meet one: he is beginning to dig. I look at his shovel. "Sit down and have a drink" he says. I sit down and drink. We drink. I look at his shovel. "You have tons of mud on it." "I knew there's too much of something there." "Oh." I go and the days go by and I drop in again. And so on (and so on ). I will resist the temptation to comment on this phenomenon or the world-wide status of O'Hara and O'Hara-influence. Ists and isms also came up with the Scottish Informationists, briefly discussed by Robert Crawford as he took up the poet-in-the-academy question. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, the two papers I'll probably remember the best were ones that left me scratching and squirming. Edna Longley went on for an hour complaining that Ezra Pound and American Poundians (Kenner etc.) had effectively but unfairly written W B Yeats out of dominant versions of modernism. Lots of good old American-bashing there, which is always fun and probably even called for in some instances, but the sumo wrestling Longley was describing seemed a little dated or out of touch with the emerging and plural modernisms now alive in American literary history and criticism as well as in contemporary poetic practice here or anywhere. Asked a question by your reporter, she refused to take seriously the existence of traditions of Irish modernisms other than the Yeats line. ("These people are confused" is part of what she said in response to my question about Brian Coffey, Denis Devlin, Catherine Walsh, Trevor Joyce, etc.) And then there was Helen Vendler's talk, which immediately preceded the Tate-Ashbery reading (with no Q & A.). Vendler talked about Ashbery. She said she didn't like most of his followers because they have ideological or political or religious axes to grind. However, it turns out that there now is an Ashbery-esque (if that's the word) poet Vendler can admire, though in the end he's more narrative than JA, more concerned with the body, etc. His name is Mark Ford, author of a book I haven't read and thus can't comment on (_Landlocked_, Chatto & Windus, 1992). Grateful if somebody would fill me in a little more. But that's not all. Vendler also said that, before Mark Ford, England had had no good poet since World War II. Or so she has long thought, she said. Yowie. So much for Bunting or Prynne, Raworth or Roy Fisher, Alan Fisher or Denise Riley, Charles Tomlinson, Tom Leonard, Maggie O'Sullivan--even Philip Larkin or Geoffrey Hill or Lynette Roberts or Peter Redgrove or dozens and dozens of contenders. What a thing to say. Maybe it was honest. One wonders who or what she's read. So much for Anglo-American poetic relations. Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 00:08:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Shoemaker Subject: Re: Her Privates We Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" OK, i can't resist this thread no matter what horrible late-nite revelations it entails. I confess: i grew up in the sixties and seventies watching leftover WWII propaganda films on Saturday afternoon TV, trying to figure out what it mean to "be a man." My great-grandfather was a Marine, my grandfather was a Marine (and a boxer), my father merely served in Army, and i (the gradual de-generation shld be clear) am a vegetarian more-or-less-pacifist (tho, yes, i "would have gone"--interesting, since gender has so often, and recently, been a subject here that this is such a notable male response to the question of war and wars). Up until the age of 10 or 11 at least those explosive sacrifices and sacrificial explosions sure did make me tingle, and there is a lingering susceptibility. So one of my votes goes to a movie that manages to be both a war movie and an anti-war movie at the same time, Preminger's In Harm's Way. Yes, it features John Wayne strutting in his dress whites (opposite the stunningly down-to-earth Patricia Neal) but also glimpses him--hard to believe, even if it's brief--terrified and shell-shocked. Steve At 09:16 AM 7/28/98 -0500, you wrote: >When Sam Fuller's WWII film _The Big Red One_ came out in the early 80's, he >was asked the usual questions about the verisimilitude of war films and >responded by saying that the ony way to give an audience any idea of "what >it was like" would be to have rifllemen shoot into the audience. > >As far as great battle scenes go, it's hard to imagine anyone improving on >Welles's Battle of Shrewsbury in _Chimes at Midnight_, or Kurosawa's >storming of the Third Castle in _Ran_. The best war film I've ever seen, bar >none, and one that I'm not ashamed to say makes me weep unabashedly, is Kon >Ichikawa's _Harp of Burma_, also a WWII film, also "anti-war," and yet, so >much more, of course. (Also on WWII by Ichikawa and worth seeing: _Fires on >the Plain_). > >I look forward to the Spielberg, nevertheless. He's far too important a >cultural barometer to dismiss out of hand, regardless of what one may think >of him as a filmmaker. Besides which, teenage girls in LA used to mistake me >for him when I wore my baseball cap. And me, with such a humble schnozz! > >Patrick Pritchett > ---------- >From: Marjorie Perloff >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Jul 1998 to 27 Jul 1998 (#1998-14) >Date: Monday, July 27, 1998 4:09PM > >Re: Saving Private Ryan, which I haven't seen and don't intend to see, >having found SCHINDLER'S LIST quite phoney and manipulative: > >Kent, if you want to see what WWII "felt like," look at some of the >superb documentaries often shown on the History Channel. That was the >real thing. Spielberg's simulations, as a letter to the editor in the >LA Times pointed out today, are on the following order: in one battle >scene the officers were helmets with insignias that, acc. to this letter >writer who fought in the war, no officer ever would wear in battle >because it showed up too much. A small detail but typical. I >personally think the simulation of violent battle scenes is voyeuristic >and also false. It does NOT tell you what war felt like. My husband >Joe who was actually in WWII (tail end, missed the battles) in the >Pacific Theatre will tell you how disappointed the 18-year olds like >himself were to miss the battles because the felt they weren't being >brave and heroic enough. Frank O'Hara, in the Pacific theatre at about >the same time, writes the same thing in letters to his family. It may >have been crazy, but there it is. > >As for the "good war" question, as someone who wouldn't be here today if >the British and US had not fought, I find the question really creepy. >Would you have liked to live under the Nazis? Not a hypothetical >question for the British in 1939. Nothing like a lot of people who have >never had to fight or indeed do anything on that order to sit around and >discuss whether or not they would have gone, and yes, as we all know all >wars are evil! IWhat else is new? It shows that it's time for a few >history lessons for the kids. > >and, by the way, as endless letters in LA have been saying to Spielberg, >who said there were no great war movies?? There have been dozens with >amazing battle scenes but perhaps the greatest ever is the Bridge on the >River Kwai. Not exactly a "recruiting" picture --it's very anti-war > --but deals with real issues not, "Oh boy, war is hell." Isn't there >something wrong with sitting comfortably in a theatre, warm enough, >well-fed enough, eating popcorn and watching "War is hell" films? > >Well--I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I had to sound off a bit.... > >xxx >Marjorie > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 00:46:52 -0400 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: How In-Reply-To: <199807290404.AAA00296@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII daniel b, mark p -- short of a critical treatise, would love to hear more on howe, if only recommendations of some useful secondary-critical takes on or ways into her work. thanks, t. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 00:19:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS In-Reply-To: <35BD1905.42ADA7C8@bayarea.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This (the Yau) is shockingly cliched. At 05:19 PM 7/27/98 -0700, you wrote: >Hi Chris, > >Good call: it IS "Butcher, Baker..." > >"I'm a dancer who makes men spin in their graves, gets them to yell 'bay bee,' >whisper 'gosh' and 'honey,' and dream of 'whoopee.'" > >"Fate got warm with me, dealt me a flush. So I'm packaged right for the job. I have >an easygoing, cornstalk smile; I'm tall and tilted just enough so short guys don't >have to crane their little necks and hurt themselves. I can crouch and rise smooth as >a wave. Twist and twirl until their brains turn to jellyfish bobbing in a beer >bottle." > >"Early on I learned that men like to be swatted a little if you do it right and put >on your girl-next-door smile while shaking your assets just beyond reach. I had tits >and a smile that gave men cramps." > >This seems *extraordinarily* off-base as a representation of what a woman might think >when contemplating male reaction to her body. Admittedly I am *one* woman among many. >But I wonder if perhaps Yau isn't closer to what *men* *think* women think. > >When I first read the piece I felt guilty about finding it an amusing read when it >was so clearly a man's idea of a woman's feelings. And as someone who's held the same >job as the narrator, I'm aware of how routinely dancers are stereotyped. > >It sounds like you felt differently about the piece, Chris. C'mon, spill it. > >Karen > > >louis stroffolino wrote: > >> Dave Baratier asks what "cross-gendered identification" is. >> I guess I just meant the term simply (if loosely) to mean >> when someone of one gender and/or sex adopts or takes on >> the voice of someone of another gender and/or sex.... >> I didn't say that YAU was NEW for doing that.... >> but then "make it new" has never been much of a standard for me >> (see Mike Magee's intro to his mag COMBO for a view I largely share) >> >> Karen Kelley. COuld you tell me which particular piece of Yau's was >> in First Intensity? My hunch is you're talking about a piece called >> BUTCHER, BAKER, or CANDLESTICK MAKER, but I'd like to know more >> specifically before I respond....Because I'm curious about what >> you mean by "stereotypical" and why you think the piece you read is >> so..... >> Thanks, chris stroffolino >> >> On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: >> >> > I recently read something of Yau's in a mag--was it First Intensity? I'm >> > sorry--I can't recall, but it was perhaps from the new book & was the narrative >> > of a stripper & I found it rather disturbing in that the narrator was kind of >> > dumb & angry & thought highly of her breasts (no prob with that in & of itself) >> > & little of men in general--she was kind of a jaded line drawing of a >> > woman--with the interior monolog of a stereotype, which I suppose is okay, >> > though as this thread goes to show, the whole male/female or masc/fem question >> > is much more complex than Yau's piece implied, and I guess I just felt annoyed >> > that he was willing to throw another stereotype my way. >> > >> > >> > >> > louis stroffolino wrote: >> > >> > > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? >> > > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" >> > > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, >> > > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as >> > > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages >> > > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does >> > > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" >> > > and negotiating the representational anxieties that >> > > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... >> > > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... >> > > chris stroffolino >> > > >> > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: >> > > >> > > > Rah rah. >> > > > >> > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the >> > > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the >> > > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as >> > > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I >> > > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). >> > > > >> > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so >> > > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some >> > > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other >> > > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. >> > > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in >> > > > patriarchal biases. >> > > > >> > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting >> > > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing >> > > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what >> > > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist >> > > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that >> > > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the >> > > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop >> > > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the >> > > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! >> > > > >> > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going >> > > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) >> > > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it >> > > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it >> > > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) >> > > > >> > > > Todd's comeback: >> > > > >> > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) >> > > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role >> > > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and >> > > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or >> > > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that >> > > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or >> > > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in >> > > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male >> > > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their >> > > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that >> > > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are >> > > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist >> > > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power >> > > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are >> > > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- >> > > > > >> > > > > never impersonal. >> > > > > >> > > > > Tb >> > > > > >> > > > >> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 01:13:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Refresh my memory. Did the US army have integrated units in WW2? >I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard that there are no >African American or Chicano soldiers shown in any of the larger battle >scenes. Strange since Spielberg claimed to try and make this movie as >close to reality as possible and quite a large number of the soldiers that >fought in WWII were African American and Chicano or Latino. > >-Joanna Sondheim > > > >******************************************************************************* >"It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." >-Edith Sodergran >******************************************************************************* George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 01:13:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: FASTing on Oulipo In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Quite frankly, as the person who brought the gender-in-Oulipo question up: >i stick by what i felt to start with, that they have retained a strong >bias characteristic of the time and place in which the workshop was >founded: that most serious intellectuals most of the time, are going to be >men. I think that that use of the word "intellectuals" is not quite adequate here. The Oulipo founders were interested in mathematics, and I remember that during "that" time, for various reasons, not as many women as men were excited about mathematics. My first-year math prof was a woman, but there were not a lot of young women in my class, if I remember right. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 01:13:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: ww2) In-Reply-To: <35BD8302.2C5195CD@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Refusing to fight in the case of the Vietnam War was one thing; in the >case of WWII it was quite another. There really wasn't much choice >since the victory of the Germans was a very real possibility. And I can remember, I can tell you, that we were glad when the US finally got into it. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 09:26:24 +0100 Reply-To: suantrai@iol.ie Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: A Review of Trevor Joyce's Syzygy. Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The following review appeared in The Irish Times, Saturday July 25th. _Syzygy_ by Trevor Joyce is published by Wild Honey Press and is available from me for £3.50 sterling, or $5 currency or by the usual arrangement. It may also be purchased from Billy Mills (address below) or from Peter Riley. Apologies for cross posting. Randolph Healy ********************************************************** A Modernist Eye A Review Of Trevor Joyce's Syzygy By Michael Smith The term " Modernism", as applied to the arts, has become so problematic that one scarcely knows what it means any more. So far as literature is concerned, however, I am taking Modernism to mean the use of language that registers the uncertain status of common-sense reality or indeed of any reality. Put another way, it is the use of language that questions the referentiality of language, that no longer treats words as the unquestioned naming of things or actions that are definitely "out there". With that in mind, and allowing for some notable exceptions, one is forced to admit that not a great deal of contemporary Irish literature, and in particular Irish poetry, can lay claim to being Modernist. The general practice has been and continues to be an unthinking use of language, language as conditioned reflex, with the implicit assumption of an unequivocal reality accessible to agreed by all. An analogy for this literary condition might be painting that ignored the invention of the camera. Of course, the academics, or many of them, know what has been happening in our understanding of language. But by and large their knowledge stays in the lecture-rooms of academe; and for the purpose of "communicating" with the great uninitiated public, in newspaper reviews, for example, these academics are only too willing to fall back on the accepted "norms" of language and literary appreciation. Thus we still read about the "realistic grittiness" of novelist X or "the sombre portrayal" of Irish life by writer Y or "the sensuousness" of Z's poetry; and we are smugly back in the age of Victoria. Joyce and Beckett did their thing, and Bord Fáilte are truly grateful to them, but there are more important matters to think about, thank you very much, like selling the film rights and making lots of money and being quoted by politicians and appearing on chat shows and being relevant to the Northern situation, etc. It is not my intention to malign anyone. My purpose, rather, is to attempt to diagnose, or at least point to, an Irish cultural, specifically literary, condition: language as a quantifiable tribal property, to be bought and sold as any other commodity. This is a serious condition, well worth attention. If, as Auden once said, echoing Pound, poets are the antennae of their society, a society is ill-served by poets who give society what it wants and not what poets believe to be true. It may be that this linguistic conservatism is not unique to the Irish poetic situation, but many Irish poets have bough into the myth that the Irish are linguistically better endowed than other peoples, that poetry comes to them more "naturally", that they have simply to lay bare their soul in metaphorically neatly packaged, emotionally laden vignettes and, voilà! That magical object, the poem, makes its appearance. As a result of the dominance of this poetic conservatism, experimentation among Irish poets is indeed a rare thing. And this state of affairs is all the more regrettable when one considers that two of the greatest literary experimenters of the 20th century, Joyce and Beckett, were Irish. All of which brings me, albeit circuitously, to the latest work by the little-known (for commercial reasons but probably the most experimental of contemporary Irish poets - Trevor Joyce. Syzygy, Joyce's latest work, is presented as a text comprising three parts: the first two are verse, titled respectively "The Drift" and "The Net", while the third, two pages of prose, provides "Some Notes". "The Drift" is a sequence of a dozen brief poems, whose tone and manner are recognisably that of the traditional lyric, though here they are stripped down and intensified in passages of puzzling if fascinating density. This, for example, is the seventh of those lyric pieces, perhaps an elegy, perhaps not: in three quarters now you lie lacking a fourth of your voice that flew at once away not a tremor breeds with the marble orchard and is it that this simply is either finished or not or not yet begun perhaps truly not begun twig of bone empty still until there come the words now quite forgotten whats the air the sun leans down and lifts the sea "The Net" is a single, unpunctuated passage of twenty-four three-line verses from which this is a representative segment: squares mesh of close actions griefs are grounds the twig of bone of time and the sun sun where they sleep centuries new abstracts attentions of clocks so that eventually stay empty still tamed rage is heavy influence leaves howling as wood does not rise you attend and to the distracted mum unerringly elements turn the tempting until there come reduced broke sometimes fierce the dream on the grass hearing each hour and the child to the infinities metals in parks only perhaps along the words over and weary the shadow is mistaken disordered The relation between the first two parts is complex and rigorously worked. They are composed of the same phrases, identically, with the order of those phrases mapped between the two parts through an abstract symmetrical patterning, which is easier to sample than to describe. If you focus on the mid-lines of the verses quoted from "The Net" you will see familiar phrases from "The Drift" recur: "twig of bone empty still/until there come the words" intercut with phrases from adjacent sections of part one: "intelligence and griefs are tamed/rage is reduced in parks (#5), brief zones/of time and influence/the tasty metals of the air (#6), and fishing the empty grounds/the heavy elements/turn over in their sleep (#8)". The effect of this structuring is strange and, so far as I know, unique in poetry. "The Notes" refer the reader to the work of the 14th-century French poet and composer Machaut, but surely it is unnecessary to reach back in this manner to justify a contemporary poem, merely because it is so densely ordered. The gesture is required only because of the inertness and insensitivity to form of so much current work. But the invocation of musical analogues is suggestive, as "The Drift" and "The Net" pick up, interweave, drop and resume their themes, touching on love, death, time, chaos, order and dirt in the manner of a fugue. "There is nothing either finished or not yet begun", says "The Net", and this is borne out in Syzygy, which can never find a place of rest, apart from the dynamic of the poem. "The Notes" strain to bed the details of the lyrics in the facts of the world, granting them a stability at the cost of narrowing their reference, but "The Net" explodes this tendency, ripping the measured words from the territories they have ordered, where they are safe, and freeing them to the use of the imagination, at the cost of imperilling their familiar purchase on the world. And is it that this simply is words asks "The Net". It is not. You won't find this book in any Irish bookshop, but you can order it from Poetry Distributor, Billy Mills, 29 Grosvenor Court, Templeville Rd., Templeogue, Dublin 6W. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 06:48:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: from "George Bowering" at Jul 29, 98 01:13:26 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit No, they didn't - Truman integrated the troops, but did so either just before or during the Korean War. The fact that Speilberg didn't show ant minority soldiers crossed my mind too, but since he was basically showing one company getting crushed on D-Day I didn't consider it a malignantly ahistorical thing. As for the film in general, which I haven't yet chimed in on, I'll stand up for those first 25 minutes - Anthony Lane points out smartly in the new NYer that the power of that sequence stems not from its "realism" by from its stylized and rhetorical emphasis on the randomness and essential unknowability of war/violence: to wit: there is almost no dialogue for these 25 minutes, & as Lane points out, unlike Peckinpah, Speilberg doesn't fetishize the wound (I'm a big fan of The Wild Bunch but Lane is absolutely right about this) - Speilberg moves from shot to shot so quickly you don't have time as a viewer to admire the aesthetics of the good kill shot. So that sequence is to my mind damn good filmmaking with some real social value. Unfortunately, I though the rest pretty much sucked & agree with Lane that what would have been really striking (but, alas, from Speilberg impossible!) would have been a whole 2 hr movie based on the same style as that beginning, with some equally random and disjunctive down-time. For me the worst part of the film was the present-day sequence which bookends the WW2 story - sugary and silly, Speilberg can't help but hammer home a redemptive message which in light of the Normandy scene feels completely bogus. But that Normandy scene will stick with me. -m. According to George Bowering: > > Refresh my memory. Did the US army have integrated units in WW2? > > > >I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard that there are no > >African American or Chicano soldiers shown in any of the larger battle > >scenes. Strange since Spielberg claimed to try and make this movie as > >close to reality as possible and quite a large number of the soldiers that > >fought in WWII were African American and Chicano or Latino. > > > >-Joanna Sondheim > > > > > > > >******************************************************************************* > >"It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." > >-Edith Sodergran > >******************************************************************************* > > > > > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 07:31:17 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dee morris Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One person's experience: my father spend a part of WWII at Vancouver Barracks training "colored" officers to lead "colored" troops in the Quartermaster Corps. When these men were shipped out, their mission was to follow the white troops onto the beaches of Normandy and "clean up," meaning, it seems, bury people and get blown up by mines. >Refresh my memory. Did the US army have integrated units in WW2? > > >>I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard that there are no >>African American or Chicano soldiers shown in any of the larger battle >>scenes. Strange since Spielberg claimed to try and make this movie as >>close to reality as possible and quite a large number of the soldiers that >>fought in WWII were African American and Chicano or Latino. >> >>-Joanna Sondheim >> >> >> >>****************************************************************************** >>* >>"It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." >>-Edith Sodergran >>****************************************************************************** >>* > > > > > >George Bowering. > , >2499 West 37th Ave., >Vancouver, B.C., >Canada V6M 1P4 > >fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:10:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Kinsella on Prynne (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable __________________ For those interested I'll be placing the brief introductory article on J.H. Prynne by Rod Mengham and myself on my website tomorrow - it's from the forthcoming Bloodaxe catalogue and lists publication details for the forthcoming *Poems*, includes quotes, a Prynne poem, etc. J.H. Prynne *Poems* August 1998 234 x 156mm 432 pages 1 85224 492 5 =A325.00 cloth 1 85224 491 7 =A312.00 paper Bloodaxe/Folio (Salt) co-publication Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press Best, JK ____________________________________________________________________________ John Kinsella Churchill College Cambridge CB3 ODS England http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/8574/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:21:25 -0400 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: angling american poetic redactions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanx to Keith Tuma for a superb conference report... Are you sure the entire Polish Oharista movement isn't someone's idea of a joke? Sounds like it (fairly amusing one too) Maybe it's just that the work of Yasusada has badly destabilized the epistomology of improbable poetic identities...Or maybe i just feel defensive about the homeland of my parents' families! (Poland, i mean, not NYC...) The Vendler stuff is a stitch. She is truely the Ronnie Reagan of poetic reaction: no matter how much of a caricature people turn her into, she goes several steps further in banality and stupidity...I realize that by this point (as happened with that other great communicator) it has become tedious to point out how bankrupt her drivel is. But 1. like Ronnie, she holds enuff power that it's kinda hard to ignore her; 2. she really tends to sum up very well the most conservative trends in the literary establishment. As a huge McDiarmid fan, not in touch with the last couple of decades of Scottish work, i found the "informationist" tag intriguing.. Anyone know of a good anthology or other source to focus on recent Scottish work? ...have we really overthrown Yeats and cast him into the outer darkness, in favor of Pound? Has the treatment of Yeats in academe really changed so radically since i went to college in the seventies?? I realize many of us working poets are more likely to read Zuke or H.D., but has the establishment really dropped the adulation of WBY that i grew up with? (...that wouldn't be so bad a thing, not because i don't love much of Yeats, but because like TSE and others he had a cult stretching over quite a few decades in mid-20th century academe that was excessive, boring and used up more of students' energy than any single poet should..) tendentiously, mark ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:33:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: anglo-american poetic relations In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" That would be Allen (not Alan) Fisher, my now slighty less sleep-deprived eyes tell me as I look over the typing of my reportage. And I also forgot to mention a very useful, densely informing paper I heard given by Andrew Crozier on the virtually unknown 30s left poet Harry Roskolenko, called "(Fourth) International Modernism: The Case of Harry Rosolenko; or, Apocalyptic Transports of an Objectivist." Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:22:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: anglo-american poetic relations MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Thank you Keith Tuma for your news: how you could remember so much so vividly after three weeks is a wonder. I can't contribute much to your query about Mark Ford except to say that Ashbery read a few of his poems at MIT last fall (along with Holderlin, Moore, Bishop, and Tate) before getting to his own work. I vaguely remember there being murmurs of curiosity from the audience after the Ford poems, and Ashbery remarked at some point that his work was not available in the U.S., with the air of someone who had acquired a special treat and was obligingly sharing it with the rest of us. Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:38:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: S. Howe, or, they laffed when i sat down in the critics' chair Comments: To: Tom Orange In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Let's see...There are very good essays on her in John Taggart's book Songs of Degrees and in one (or more) of Perloff's books; and (i'm pretty sure) in Hank Lazer's Opposing Poetries. (As hank knows, i'm working my way thru OP, while immersed in about 10 other projects..And *everything* in it is well-focused and exceptionally useful and lucid, in a perloffian vein you might say; if i misremember about there being a howe essay, he or someone can correct me..As always the book is at home and i can't double-check it today...) I would just **read the stuff** ....i'm not sure you will see what i consider so remarkable in her work, if you need arguments to convince you. The important books are: The Europe of Trusts; Singularities; and The Non-Conformist's Memorial. Then you can go back to the early poetry collected in the recent book Frame Structures. Much of it is brilliant, some a bit apprentice. I reduced the atlanta poets group to raucous laughter one night by declaring that i considered Howe the most important living US poet. Not that they dislike her work: it was the idea that anyone thought he could make such a claim about any one poet, that had 'em rolling in the ailes. These pomo kids, what're'ya gonna do?? No respect for their elders like in my time... Jeeeez Anyway, she is that, and more. Mark Prejsnar On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Tom Orange wrote: > daniel b, mark p -- > > short of a critical treatise, would love to hear more on howe, if only > recommendations of some useful secondary-critical takes on or ways into > her work. > > thanks, > t. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 11:13:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kristen Gallagher Subject: address query In-Reply-To: from "Mark Prejsnar" at Jul 28, 98 11:47:29 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dear buffpoes, anyone know how to contact susan howe? please, thank you - in advance. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 09:19:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan Comments: To: Michael Magee MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Having seen the film last night, I pretty much concur with Michael's assessment. The opening set piece is a true tour de force. Unfortunately, it operates more or less independently of the rest of the film, which leads me to wonder if it was even a part of the original script. Spielberg afterall is somewhat obsessed with WWII ("1941," "Empire of the Sun," "Always" (remake of a Guy Named Joe), the first and third Indiana Jones films, and "Schindler." This obsession goes to the heart of his putative vision, as I read it, namely the longing for the restoration of a lost moral order. Unlike other filmmakers who have grappled with this same issue, though, this longing is unsupported by any intellectual toughness and inevitably decays into mushy nostalgia. After the opener, the film becomes a genre rehash, with on-the-nose squad hijinks, wisecracks and various perils. A few good scenes stand out; though the script is generally very weak, very broad. The acting, though, is superb (really, the best thing in the film). Except for Matt Damon, who is badly miscast - too iconic, as my wife remarked. And Spielberg does have a genius for framing the ideological moment in a very affecting way. The film is being trumpeted of course as non-ideological - though the opening and closing shots are of a backlit, sun-bleached US flag. So much for that. Really, the whole thing is a gigantic ghost story. Only it fails to engage the issues of memory and how the dead continue to exact a toll on the living. If it had ventured more deeply into that territory, it could have been quite good. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Michael Magee To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan Date: Wednesday, July 29, 1998 5:48AM No, they didn't - Truman integrated the troops, but did so either just before or during the Korean War. The fact that Speilberg didn't show ant minority soldiers crossed my mind too, but since he was basically showing one company getting crushed on D-Day I didn't consider it a malignantly ahistorical thing. As for the film in general, which I haven't yet chimed in on, I'll stand up for those first 25 minutes - Anthony Lane points out smartly in the new NYer that the power of that sequence stems not from its "realism" by from its stylized and rhetorical emphasis on the randomness and essential unknowability of war/violence: to wit: there is almost no dialogue for these 25 minutes, & as Lane points out, unlike Peckinpah, Speilberg doesn't fetishize the wound (I'm a big fan of The Wild Bunch but Lane is absolutely right about this) - Speilberg moves from shot to shot so quickly you don't have time as a viewer to admire the aesthetics of the good kill shot. So that sequence is to my mind damn good filmmaking with some real social value. Unfortunately, I though the rest pretty much sucked & agree with Lane that what would have been really striking (but, alas, from Speilberg impossible!) would have been a whole 2 hr movie based on the same style as that beginning, with some equally random and disjunctive down-time. For me the worst part of the film was the present-day sequence which bookends the WW2 story - sugary and silly, Speilberg can't help but hammer home a redemptive message which in light of the Normandy scene feels completely bogus. But that Normandy scene will stick with me. -m. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 08:25:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Saving Private Ryan In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" No. At 01:13 AM 7/29/98 -0700, you wrote: >Refresh my memory. Did the US army have integrated units in WW2? > > >>I haven't actually seen the movie, but I've heard that there are no >>African American or Chicano soldiers shown in any of the larger battle >>scenes. Strange since Spielberg claimed to try and make this movie as >>close to reality as possible and quite a large number of the soldiers that >>fought in WWII were African American and Chicano or Latino. >> >>-Joanna Sondheim >> >> >> >>************************************************************************** ***** >>"It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." >>-Edith Sodergran >>************************************************************************** ***** > > > > > >George Bowering. > , >2499 West 37th Ave., >Vancouver, B.C., >Canada V6M 1P4 > >fax: 1-604-266-9000 > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:35:56 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: anglo-american poetic relations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Ashbery read a few of his poems at MIT last fall (along with Holderlin, > Moore, Bishop, and Tate) Ah, I remember it well. Holderlin drank too much at the reception and started hitting on Elizabeth Bishop -- good think Marianne arrived with her impeccable manners and defused the situation. RA ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 09:32:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Zbigniew Herbert dies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Zbigniew Herbert, 73, a Poet Who Sought Moral Values By HARVEY SHAPIRO bigniew Herbert, the Polish poet and essayist who insisted that civilization depended on artists' staking out clear moral positions resistant to the winds of history and ideology, died yesterday in Warsaw. He was 73. The cause of death was not disclosed, but a longtime friend and fellow poet, Krzysztof Karasek, said Mr. Herbert had asthma and serious circulatory problems. The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, the 1996 Nobel laureate, told the PAP news agency that Mr. Herbert was a "great artist and thinker" and that he would have an eternal place in Polish literature. Mr. Herbert's poetry defied categorization. It spoke for no philosophy or school and favored no party or dogma. Although he was a political poet who explored the mechanisms of power and ideology, he resisted Fascism and Communism, nationalism and the church and was willing to pay the price of such moral independence. He gave the impression of being a man alone, answerable to no one except his own conscience. Place and history determined Mr. Herbert's career as a poet. He lived much of his adult life under the ideologies of National Socialism and Communism. The impingement of the political, the political becoming personal, informed all of his work. To the chaos of the 20th century, to which he was a personal witness, Mr. Herbert brought a mind trained in law and disciplined by classical literature. It was a mind that would not succumb to self-pity or nostalgia, a mind steeled against chaos. In "Pebble," one of his best-known poems, he wrote: Pebbles cannot be tamed to the end they will look at us with a calm and very clear eye Those lines could describe his stance as a writer. The poet Robert Hass once said that Mr. Herbert wrote as if it were "the task of the poet, in a world full of loud lies, to say what is irreducibly true in a level voice." Mr. Herbert was born in the city of Lvov, then part of Poland and now in Ukraine, in 1924. (The name Herbert is pronounced as in English; in fact, Mr. Herbert claimed the 17th-century English poet George Herbert as a distant relation.) In 1939, as a 15-year-old, he experienced the annexation of his hometown by the Soviet Union. When the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact collapsed, the city was then seized by the Germans. At the end of the war it was recaptured by the Soviet Union, which retained control over the Baltic republics. Mr. Herbert wrote his first poems during the Nazi occupation of Poland. As Stanislaw Baranczak, a critic who teaches at Harvard University, has observed, "The image of a city under siege, one of the several symbols that constantly recur in his work, has a historical poignancy that makes it much more than just a figure of speech." Mr. Herbert took part in the Polish resistance to the Nazi occupiers. When the war ended, he enrolled at the University of Cracow, where he received a master's degree in economics. Later he earned a law degree from Nicolas Copernicus University and a degree in philosophy from the University of Warsaw. Stalinist restrictions on writers after the war and Mr. Herbert's refusal to bend to Communist dogma and the party functionaries in the Writers' Union impeded the publication of his poetry for 15 years. During that period he developed his distinctive voice, a style, as the author Eva Hoffman has written, "that functions as a sort of antidote to the dangers of sentimentality or inflation -- restrained, ironic, stripped of punctuation, averse to 'tricks of the imagination' and passionate in its insistence on precision." His first three volumes of poetry, "A String of Light" (1956), "Hermes, a Dog and a Star" (1957) and "The Study of an Object" (1961), established him as a dominant figure in Polish literature. His search for moral and humanistic values would make a strong impression on his contemporaries and earn him an international audience. Many poems in those books also appear in the volumes of his poetry available in English: "Selected Poems," translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott (Ecco Press, 1986); "Selected Poems" (Oxford Press, 1977), translated by John and Bodgana Carpenter; "Report From the Besieged City," translated by the Carpenters (Ecco Press, 1985), and "Mr. Cogito," also translated by the Carpenters (Ecco Press, 1993). Mr. Herbert was a modernist in that he wrote in free form, without rhyme and meter. He was an antimodernist in that his work frequently jumped off from Greek myth, Shakespeare and the Latin poets, and in his refusal to ape chaos. In an essay in praise of the great Dutch painters of the 17th century, he explained, "A major part of contemporary art declares itself on the side of chaos, gesticulates in a void, or tells the story of its own barren soul." Against this attitude, he posed the painters of that period in the Netherlands, who "believed in the purposefulness of their work and the possibility of interhuman communication. They affirmed visible reality with an inspired scrupulousness." And they did that, he asserted, "as if the order of the world and the revolution of the stars, the permanence of the firmament, depended on it." Yet there is nothing in Mr. Herbert's poetry to suggest that a traditional, conventional art, one imitating the art of the past, could carry today's meanings. On the contrary, in one of his strongest poems, "Apollo and Marsyas," he describes how pain can dictate a new art. Marsyas, a mortal in the myth on which the poem is based, loses a musical contest to Apollo, the Greek god of beauty, who signifies classical control ("absolute ear/versus immense range"). Apollo punishes Marsyas for daring to challenge his authority by flaying him alive. Describing Marsyas's pain, Mr. Herbert writes: only seemingly is the voice of Marsyas monotonous and composed of a single vowel Aaa in reality Marsyas relates the inexhaustible wealth of his body bald mountains of liver white ravines of aliment As Apollo departs to that sound, he wonders "whether out of Marsyas's howling/there will not someday arise/a new kind/ of art . . . " And to describe the effect of that art, Mr. Herbert writes: suddenly at his feet falls a petrified nightingale he looks back and sees that the hair of the tree to which Marsyas was fastened is white completely And so the poem ends, moving the myth completely into the 20th century. The pared-down rhetoric, its terse description, is classical (seen with Apollo's eye) but the poem is savage, because it was written in a savage time and because its author believed that art must find a way to reconcile beauty with the reality of human suffering. Mr. Herbert's stark rhetoric is more than a stylistic characteristic. It signals a moral concern, openly stated in many of his poems, that the path to such reconciliation is to see the world clearly, steadily, with an eye toward understanding it and then writing about it truthfully. His poem "Mr. Cogito and the Imagination," for example, begins: Mr. Cogito never trusted tricks of the imagination the piano at the top of the Alps played false concerts for him (He took "the piano at the top of the Alps" from Rimbaud's "Illuminations," a source of the surreal in modern art.) Later in the poem Mr. Herbert focuses on his theme: he adored tautologies explanations idem per idem that a bird is a bird slavery means slavery a knife is a knife death remains death Mr. Cogito inhabits many of Mr. Herbert's poems, a character in search of moral certainties. He is an ordinary man who enjoys reading trashy newspaper stories and who fails when he tries transcendental meditation: "his stream of consciousness brings up detritus like a tin can." He is also Mr. Herbert's mouthpiece, a way of distancing himself from himself. In the Cogito poems Mr. Herbert became his own subject, but they are not confessional poems in the tradition of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. They do not dramatize the ego; they dramatize a mind and the way it looks at the world. Ultimately, they return us to the world, as do all of his poems, and the search for what is durable in our lives, for what is attainable. In "The Envoy of Mr. Cogito," he appears to be looking back on his life in Poland during the long years of war and repression. It begins: Go where those others went to the dark boundary for the golden fleece of nothing- ness your last prize go upright among those who are on their knees among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust you were saved not in order to live you have little time you must give testimony Mr. Herbert was co-editor of a poetry journal, Poezja, from 1965 to 1968 but resigned in protest of anti-Semitic policies. He traveled widely through the West and lived in Paris, Berlin and the United States, where he taught briefly at the University of California at Los Angeles. In one of his essay collections several years ago, "Still Life With a Bridle," translated by the Carpenters (Ecco Press, 1991) he goes in search of the Dutch bourgeois in the golden age of Dutch culture, the 17th century. After a break of several years from writing, Mr. Herbert, who is survived by his wife, Katarzyna, wrote new poems in 1997 when his health improved slightly. The result was "Storm's Epilogue," published this year. Mr. Herbert once gave this advice to younger writers: "Life is more complicated, more mysterious and more convoluted than the party, the army, the police. Let us detach ourselves a little from this truly horrible everyday reality and try to write about doubt, anxiety and despair." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 20:20:42 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: the war room MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I must say: the discussion on Spielberg seems way out of line for the list. Not that I'm suggesting a censor --or trying to stop the discussion--but the man as an artist isn't! He rewrites history in a clumsy albeit monetary way--see Schindler's List--see that he is in the habit of recreating a Heroic mythology--a cartoon strip--and has been quoted as saying that "the great war movies of the 40's inspired (him)" Let's see a film about a shark (which he had to be pushed into doing) a film about an alien (a boyhood idea stolen really from Geroge Lucas) another film about aliens (WOW!) a film about the ATlantic Slave Trade (he was SUED for this one!) a film a film a film? WHOOPS--I meant "movie"! Spillberg (no typo) HAS destroyed the film industry--he won that war! The great films of the 60s and 70s he single handedly destroyed when he found out he couldn't make one! (No "humanity" or "personality" in his films! Read RAGING BULLS and EASY RIDERS! His first film was THE SUGERLAND EXPRESS--trying to be Altman, trying to be Scorsessem etc!) He was raised on TV for god's sake! The big MACHINERY he p[roduced--the studio he saved (UNIVERSAL) they both overtook the great films of Hal Asbhy (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, etc--films that made money!), Altman, Scorsesee(his great films hardly were released! Yup--Taxi Driver did not make the man wealthy!) Even Coppola (and left him a rather commercial idiot I maight say--from Godfather and Apocylypse NOW (a GREAT "war" movie--a movie that took a war into the lens--to "Jack" and .........) Phew. Hey..I guess this is fun! Back to the poem......... What about poetic Heroes anyway--like Spicer? Todd Baron (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:37:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: angling american poetic redactions Comments: To: Mark Prejsnar In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Thanx to Keith Tuma for a superb conference report... > >Are you sure the entire Polish Oharista movement isn't someone's idea of >a joke? Sounds like it (fairly amusing one too) Maybe it's just that >the work of Yasusada has badly destabilized the epistomology of improbable >poetic identities...Or maybe i just feel defensive about the homeland of >my parents' families! (Poland, i mean, not NYC...) Mark, Thanks. No joke, unless it's on me. > >The Vendler stuff is a stitch. She is truely the Ronnie Reagan of poetic >reaction: no matter how much of a caricature people turn her into, she >goes several steps further in banality and stupidity...I realize that by >this point (as happened with that other great communicator) it has become >tedious to point out how bankrupt her drivel is. But 1. like Ronnie, she >holds enuff power that it's kinda hard to ignore her; 2. she really tends >to sum up very well the most conservative trends in the literary >establishment. Actually, I think that this is a little unfair. I hope I didn't caricature her, didn't mean to. However much I disagree with HV and her canons and/or methods, she's a passionate advocate of what she believes in. No doubting her influence and its consequences but even when she, say, dismisses Mina Loy she circulates discourse. My guess is that her politics are liberal, old-style humanist and all. Probably voted for Clinton. The case for her "Reaganism" would need to be argued. And I take it that her view/neglect of recent British poetries is symptomatic and partly the result of a lack of information for which the causes are many and complex. Which is not to say that after she notices--if she does--forthcoming anthologies like the Quartermain and Caddel she'll suddenly take up exegesis and critique of the poets included therein. I suppose that at her level of visibility one must expect criticism and like anybody else she should be called on her blindnesses but not via cheap shots. Not to single you out in this regard and of course somehow the big E seems to encourage these as if it were itself an agent of noise and effusive dialogue on the edges of spectacle. Long live its ephemeral blur. > >As a huge McDiarmid fan, not in touch with the last couple of decades of >Scottish work, i found the "informationist" tag intriguing.. Anyone know >of a good anthology or other source to focus on recent Scottish work? > Robert Crawford's scholarly books would be one place to start and he's edited a forthcoming penguin anthology which will have some of these folks in it and might even make it to the US. There's an anthology of younger Scots as well, though I don't have it in front of me and forget the title and like so much else it's unavailable in the US anyway. W. N. Herbert's work would be one place to start for this nexus though I'd go back and find Tom Leonard and others. >...have we really overthrown Yeats and cast him into the outer darkness, >in favor of Pound? Has the treatment of Yeats in academe really changed >so radically since i went to college in the seventies?? I realize many of >us working poets are more likely to read Zuke or H.D., but has the >establishment really dropped the adulation of WBY that i grew up with? >(...that wouldn't be so bad a thing, not because i don't love much of >Yeats, but because like TSE and others he had a cult stretching over quite >a few decades in mid-20th century academe that was excessive, boring and >used up more of students' energy than any single poet should..) > >tendentiously, > >mark all best and in haste, Keith ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:03:29 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: angling american poetic redactions Mark -- Not sure if you know this, but Vendler has been a champion of Yeats (over, indeed, Pound and Eliot) both in the classroom and in her published work. I spent a term studying WBY under her at Harvard. In general, before you start wrecking on a particular person, remember that, chances are, someone else on the list is going to know them; a lesson I learnt quickly (hi, Henry.) Interesting, right before I came to University, I read the APR article that went house on Vendler; when I studied under her, I was much impressed by the meanspiritedness of the assesment. Since when did we get the idea that professors in the academy should be responsible for keeping up with the Protean world of contemporary poetry? Isn't it enough for them to apply their knowledge and skill to the poets they like? We accept the academies as repositories of history, but I'm not sure I want to accept them as scribes of the "accepted" poetry, whether that be Zukofsky, Eliot or Keats. It was a monumental break in my own life when I realized that my poetic education has guided me down a very particular path, and that, from a height, one could look down and see thousands of different tracks through the wood; to criticize a particular critic for missing contemporary or near-contemporary trends seems to be akin to complaining that you want a better hand-holder. Certaintly, critics hold power over the NYT Sunday Book Review crowd, but, hell, they're the direct genetic descendents of the people who read Swinburne. best wishes, Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 13:17:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: chris alexander Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris Alexander, Can you back-channel me please? - db (sorry for the personal note on the list.) <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:26:39 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: angling american poetic redactions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Keith Tuma wrote: > There's an anthology of younger > Scots as well, though I don't have it in front of me and forget the title > and like so much else it's unavailable in the US anyway. Do you mean _Dream State_, published by Polygon? Hard to find in the States, but not impossible -- I ordered mine from that Orwellian-yet-useful behemoth, Amazon.com Bob Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 10:27:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: angling american poetic redactions In-Reply-To: <9807291703.AA10419@trabuco.naic.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" She didn't just miss the trends, she actively opposed them. But I'm glad she's a nice woman. At 01:03 PM 7/29/98 +0400, you wrote: >Mark -- > > Not sure if you know this, but Vendler has >been a champion of Yeats (over, indeed, Pound and >Eliot) both in the classroom and in her published >work. I spent a term studying WBY under her at Harvard. >In general, before you start wrecking on a particular >person, remember that, chances are, someone else on >the list is going to know them; a lesson I learnt >quickly (hi, Henry.) Interesting, right before I >came to University, I read the APR article that went >house on Vendler; when I studied under her, I was >much impressed by the meanspiritedness of the assesment. > > Since when did we get the idea that professors >in the academy should be responsible for keeping up >with the Protean world of contemporary poetry? Isn't >it enough for them to apply their knowledge and skill >to the poets they like? We accept the academies as >repositories of history, but I'm not sure I want to >accept them as scribes of the "accepted" poetry, >whether that be Zukofsky, Eliot or Keats. > >It was a monumental break in my own life when I realized >that my poetic education has guided me down a very >particular path, and that, from a height, one could >look down and see thousands of different tracks through >the wood; to criticize a particular critic for missing >contemporary or near-contemporary trends seems to be >akin to complaining that you want a better hand-holder. >Certaintly, critics hold power over the NYT Sunday Book >Review crowd, but, hell, they're the direct genetic >descendents of the people who read Swinburne. > >best wishes, > > Simon > >http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html >sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu >sdedeo@naic.edu >lydianmode@ucsd.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 14:00:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: anglo-american poetic relations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nice reading report from London. It reminds me that there is an anthology forthcoming from Weslayan in the fall--"OTHER." The complete Introduction is on-line at the JACKET website <> I read it and realized I know very few of the poets included. Obviously this is my own fault; or is it? Is it wrong to ask why "some fifty non-mainstream poets" writing in a language I "know" are so unfamiliar to me. The few that I know/have read are due, in part, to their work having been introduced to me by Keston Sutherland--an English poet. Is the world so big? Am I alone? Is anyone else looking forward to checking out this book? If "so much for anglo-americo relations," what about the rest of the planet? - daniel bouchard At 12:07 AM 7/29/98 -0600, Keith Tuma wrote: >So much for Bunting or Prynne, Raworth or Roy Fisher, Alan Fisher or Denise >Riley, Charles Tomlinson, Tom Leonard, Maggie O'Sullivan--even Philip >Larkin or Geoffrey Hill or Lynette Roberts or Peter Redgrove or dozens and >dozens of contenders. What a thing to say. Maybe it was honest. One >wonders who or what she's read. >So much for Anglo-American poetic relations. <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 14:07:25 -0400 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Coke from the Vendling machine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Let's see....i don't think i've used up my quota of posts yet.. Keith and Simon put me to shame with their generosity toward the infamous Vendler. (..especially Keith, who i think is somewhat closer to my own poetix...) No doubt i was being very cantankerous. But i really feel Mark Weiss was right to toss in the comment he did: Vendler is so actively clueless about poetic form and contemporary work, that she has a real impact on where resources go for poetry, in our society. No i don't think she is just a professor and scholar doing work on poets several generations back; she has strong (and laughable) opinions about the contemporary state of the art, and expresses 'em in reviews and articles and public statements and in her books. I think her conservatism is cartoonishly exaggerated and flat and not-thought-out....Very much like the great Rondini's. No the point of the comparison was not to suggest she has *right-wing beliefs* with regard to politix. I was talking about her esthetic hyperconservatism. And as i said, like Ron she has become *too easy* to laugh at, because of the clodish simplicity of her conservatism. But as Alex Cockburn pointed out about Reagan, a person with institutional power can work against you quite effectively, regardless of whether you perceive them as clownlike.. "what's expertly broken is not soon vendled".... mark p. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 15:00:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: request for info on cantaloupo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm wondering if anyone who has read Charles Cantaloupo would be willing to venture a few words about his work/context either on the list or to me backchannel. I would very much appreciate it. Thanks very much in advance. Louis ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:20:35 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: the war room (strange love?) Content-Type: text/plain Afraid I've got to agree w/ Todd here-- & was resisting my own impulses to say something similar. I've always hated Schpielberg's "art" (albeit cognizant of his craft, in both senses)-- & felt he at the time he was iconic of conservative cultural trends of the 80s. (C.f. what was just posted viz Ronnie Reagan & Helen Vendler, which also probably could've gone w/out saying, & which also was dead on).... --Mark DuCharme todd baron wrote: >I must say: the discussion on Spielberg seems way out of line for the >list. >Not that I'm suggesting a censor --or trying to stop the discussion--but >the man as an artist isn't! He rewrites history in a clumsy albeit >monetary way--see Schindler's List--see that he is in the habit of >recreating a Heroic mythology--a cartoon strip--and has been quoted as >saying that "the great war movies of the 40's inspired (him)" Let's see > >a film about a shark (which he had to be pushed into doing) >a film about an alien (a boyhood idea stolen really from Geroge Lucas) >another film about aliens (WOW!) >a film about the ATlantic Slave Trade (he was SUED for this one!) >a film > a film > a film? > >WHOOPS--I meant "movie"! > >Spillberg (no typo) HAS destroyed the film industry--he won that war! >The great films of the 60s and 70s he single handedly destroyed when he >found out he couldn't make one! (No "humanity" or "personality" in his >films! Read RAGING BULLS and EASY RIDERS! His first film was THE >SUGERLAND EXPRESS--trying to be Altman, trying to be Scorsessem etc!) He >was raised on TV for god's sake! The big MACHINERY he p[roduced--the >studio he saved (UNIVERSAL) they both overtook the great films of Hal >Asbhy (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, etc--films that made money!), Altman, >Scorsesee(his great films hardly were released! Yup--Taxi Driver did not >make the man wealthy!) Even Coppola (and left him a rather commercial >idiot I maight say--from Godfather and Apocylypse NOW (a GREAT "war" >movie--a movie that took a war into the lens--to "Jack" and >.........) > >Phew. > >Hey..I guess this is fun! > >Back to the poem......... > > >What about poetic Heroes anyway--like Spicer? > >Todd Baron >(ReMap) > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 12:51:56 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: (t)angling american poetic redactions Content-Type: text/plain I also wanted to thank you, Keith, for an engaging post, & postscripts. Re: the O'Harista thing-- if not a joke, shocking. What imitators, from the Lower East Side to Poland, always seem to me to miss-- & this is clearly brought out in the excerpt you quote-- is the social gesture integral to O'Hara's "personist" (i.e., less abstract, most famous) work. Style, thus-- in an irony apparently lost on the O'Harista-- becomes abstracted from the social, making the poem literally into an artifact, which is something that O'Hara clearly was trying to circumvent. The transposition of contexts from the 1950s NY art world of "Why I Am Not A Painter," to the 90s Polish laborer in the excerpt you quote, thus makes for unintentional parody, completely undermining what (one presumes) is the intended effect. (Though I'd be interested to read more on the poetics of this O'Harista movement). Re: Vendler-- I don't think it's unfair. Yes, she is probably a good left/liberal, but so is Speilberg (see my previous post). What is _conservative_ in both cases is not the espoused politics (though from an anarchist perspective one might argue differently), but the cultural politics: in Vendler's case as a critic, in Speilberg's case as a filmmaker. Vendler's project, it seems to me, is one of canon-making; if she dismisses Loy, for example, I'm sure that is her personal reaction, but it is also a public dismissal that (she realizes) will probably turn some readers away from Loy's work. Her totalizing (not even apologetic) dismissal of figures like Prynne & Raworth, among others, speaks for itself. It is not as if Vendler ever elevates a poet like Mac Low, for example. Her's is clearly a political project with regard to culture-- the reification of a singular aesthetic. I don't even think she would deny this. --Mark DuCharme Keith Tuma wrote: >>Thanx to Keith Tuma for a superb conference report... >> >>Are you sure the entire Polish Oharista movement isn't someone's idea of >>a joke? Sounds like it (fairly amusing one too) Maybe it's just that >>the work of Yasusada has badly destabilized the epistomology of improbable >>poetic identities...Or maybe i just feel defensive about the homeland of >>my parents' families! (Poland, i mean, not NYC...) > >Mark, > >Thanks. No joke, unless it's on me. > >> >>The Vendler stuff is a stitch. She is truely the Ronnie Reagan of poetic >>reaction: no matter how much of a caricature people turn her into, she >>goes several steps further in banality and stupidity...I realize that by >>this point (as happened with that other great communicator) it has become >>tedious to point out how bankrupt her drivel is. But 1. like Ronnie, she >>holds enuff power that it's kinda hard to ignore her; 2. she really tends >>to sum up very well the most conservative trends in the literary >>establishment. > >Actually, I think that this is a little unfair. I hope I didn't caricature >her, didn't mean to. However much I disagree with HV and her canons and/or >methods, she's a passionate advocate of what she believes in. No doubting >her influence and its consequences but even when she, say, dismisses Mina >Loy she circulates discourse. My guess is that her politics are liberal, >old-style humanist and all. Probably voted for Clinton. The case for her >"Reaganism" would need to be argued. And I take it that her view/neglect >of recent British poetries is symptomatic and partly the result of a lack >of information for which the causes are many and complex. Which is not to >say that after she notices--if she does--forthcoming anthologies like the >Quartermain and Caddel she'll suddenly take up exegesis and critique of the >poets included therein. > >I suppose that at her level of visibility one must expect criticism and >like anybody else she should be called on her blindnesses but not via cheap >shots. Not to single you out in this regard and of course somehow the big >E seems to encourage these as if it were itself an agent of noise and >effusive dialogue on the edges of spectacle. Long live its ephemeral blur. > >> >>As a huge McDiarmid fan, not in touch with the last couple of decades of >>Scottish work, i found the "informationist" tag intriguing.. Anyone know >>of a good anthology or other source to focus on recent Scottish work? >> > >Robert Crawford's scholarly books would be one place to start and he's >edited a forthcoming penguin anthology which will have some of these folks >in it and might even make it to the US. There's an anthology of younger >Scots as well, though I don't have it in front of me and forget the title >and like so much else it's unavailable in the US anyway. W. N. Herbert's >work would be one place to start for this nexus though I'd go back and find >Tom Leonard and others. > > >>...have we really overthrown Yeats and cast him into the outer darkness, >>in favor of Pound? Has the treatment of Yeats in academe really changed >>so radically since i went to college in the seventies?? I realize many of >>us working poets are more likely to read Zuke or H.D., but has the >>establishment really dropped the adulation of WBY that i grew up with? >>(...that wouldn't be so bad a thing, not because i don't love much of >>Yeats, but because like TSE and others he had a cult stretching over quite >>a few decades in mid-20th century academe that was excessive, boring and >>used up more of students' energy than any single poet should..) >> >>tendentiously, >> >>mark > >all best and in haste, > >Keith > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 16:20:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David Erben (Art)" Subject: Re: un petit pont de pierre (fwd) Comments: To: UB Poetics discussion group MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've only seen Saving Private Ryan once and so am hesitant to write anything critically about it. However, I have no intention of seeing it again and so offer these comments with the apology in advance that my memory of the film may at times be inaccurate. The ultimate failure of the film, it seems to me, rests not with the issue of "realism" or "history" or "morality" but with its failure to remain consistent with the logic it establishes for itself in the 25 minutes on Omaha Beach. The logic it seems to be establishing for itself in those 25 shocking minutes is somewhere around "War is Hell" and "The only glory in war is surviving" - the logic, as has been observed, of The Big Red One and All Quite on the Western Front. The Omaha Beach scenes establish war as messy, capricious, horrible, and chaotic: rank, class, religion, etc. all mean nothing in terms of who lives and who is wounded and who dies. The beach is the site of "chance. Once the film privileges the 8 man squad, however, the film radically alters its logic and therefore its attitude toward "war". The focus shifts from the countless men at the beach WHO WE KNOW AND LEARN NOTHING ABOUT (including the defenders, one of whom speaks in Czech, I believe, when he tries to surrender) to the 8 man squad and the obstacles they encounter and their fates. The film attempts to remain true to the logic established on the beach (in the interrogation of the Emerson quote about the nobility of war, the death of the soldier who tried to save the girl, etc) but slowly transforms itself from a D-Day film to a "platoon" film, to a "bridge" film and, ultimately, into a "last stand" film. The "war is hell logic" gives way to a "it's a good day to die" logic (the current, popular, heroic action adventure cliche, I believe) where the heroes get to choose when, where and largely how they die). The cavalry arrives just in the nick of time to save the bridge and the war if not quite all the characters we have been manipulated into knowing just enough to care about. The many deaths on the beach give way to the few significant deaths of the squad. The Germans start to look like Indians from countless westerns (notice how in Hollywood WWII films the Germans always manage to outnumber Americans) and the holding of the bridge becomes just one more fort the outnumbered Cavarly must defend "at all costs." Why? Because Rommel is on the way? Because "if we do this we earn the right to go home?" Because "somebody has to do it"? or because its a spectacular, sentimental way to end a film? As such, it seems to me, the film is best compared, if we are to stick to war films, not to the various films on D-Day or on WWII in general, or to the many "platoon" films, but instead, as Marjorie Perloff suggested, to "bridge" films: The Bridge at Remagen, The Bridge on the River Kwai, A Bridge too Far, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (also with William Holden), etc. I don't think it ranks very highly in this list because, in the simplest sense, the bridge just does not amount to much: it's an unimpressive stone bridge across a river you could throw a rock over. Visually, unlike the previous bridges mentioned, it is not interesting. More importantly, perhaps, by the time the squad reaches the bridge, all of the chaos of Omaha Beach and the absurd order to have 8 men try and save 1 and whatever pretense it has for being "historically" accurate and "realistic" is lost and the film becomes cliche driven - just exactly like the John Wayne film The Alamo (which is the name Capt Miller gives the building where they are supposed to retreat to). The issue at the bridge is not "war" or "anti war" or "WWII" but how most of the squad die and how their deaths are given transcendent meaning (and if we did not get the "meaning" of their deaths when the cavalry arrive, we better get it when grandfather Ryan and his children and grandchildren are at the cemetary at the end). Whereas, in the film, on Omaha Beach death could occur at any moment in the most dehumanizing way, at the bridge all of the remaining Rangers get their heroic moments - each dies after valiantly fighting and killing many Germans (remember the logic of the John Wayne film: for every hero that dies, before he dies, he has to kill 5 bad guys). None of the squad at the bridge die messy deaths and most of them get to say a word or two before they go (no images of Hanks with his guts spilling out, please). In other words, the film becomes exactly what it argues it is not - just another cliche (and, let me add,I think Schlinder's List becomes just exactly what it argues against as well...). ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 14:57:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: un petit pont de pierre (fwd) Comments: To: "David Erben (Art)" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Excellent analysis, David. And I'll shut up about it after this but just to add to your list of "Bridge films" (hadn't quite realized what a genre it was!) Frank Perry's WWII film called "The Bridge" from the early 60's. Depicts ragtag group of German boys, average age 12-14, Hitler Youth I guess, defending a bridge into Berlin. Haven't seen it in years, but I think they all get killed. Very bleak, bitter film. Richard Slotkin treats the ideology of The Alamo/Custer's Last Stand in American myth at length in the second volume of his Gunfighter Nation trilogy, _The Fatal Environment_. Well worth checking out. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 14:04:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Saving Private Ryan Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" KFI-AM radio out here in Southern California has a wonderful talk show on from 7-11pm called the Phil Hendrie Show. Phil was talking about Saving Private Ryan with Doug Dangur, an entertainment writer for the Orange County Courier. As a gay man, Dangur saw SPR as a metaphor for the struggle of Gays and Lesbians in America. Some of the connections he found between the film and the struggle for gay liberation: *Mussolini shaved his head so it would be a phallic symbol *D-Day is an obvious reference to Doris Day *The German goose step was developed by a dance instructor One of his final observations: *He hadn't actually seen the film, he had just seen clips and WWII newsreels. You can hear the phil hendrie show using Real Audio over the internet from the KFI webpage at: http://www.kfi640.com You can hear sound clips (mostly mp3 files) from the phil hendrie show on my own web page at: http://members.xoom.com/doncheney don cheney ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 17:56:04 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc Subject: Re: request for info on cantaloupo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Cantalupo has a sense of maximalism that fits with Sean Killian except the subject material is centered in the world instead of a non-descript setting bearing a comparable lattices with the mind. Cantalupo has an exquisite sense of journey throughout his best work, in the manner of the Blakean movement of Jerusalem or Patchen's Albion Moonlight. The movement rotates around the subject and is fairly difficult to keep track of but well worth the effort. I sincerely admire Joe Napora for dedicating over 20 pages to "Columba, The Dove" in Bullhead #5, there might even be a sample up on the website. While that action might have played a part in sinking the press, to have the honor of publishing a work such as Columba is worth it. I'd be interested in what others have to say, if there were any responses, backchannel. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 18:05:54 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc Subject: vietnam veteran poems vs. hollywood adaptation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit peer group me & the boys got the highest rate of alcoholism & drug abuse & divorce & mental illness & suicide than any other group in America It's good to see us win for a change --Bill Shields ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 17:56:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Was it a "good war"? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Marjorie: You mentioned that you found my question creepy. But I think you (along with David B, Alan S., and Maxine C.) misunderstood my intent: I was not asking whether or not it was a good thing to fight fascism! Actually, if I could choose my death (imagining myself for a moment with courage I probably don't have), I think it would be to travel in time to die on a barricade in Warsaw or Madrid. That would be, from my perspective, a "good" death. (Now here would be a "creepy" but fascinating thread for the List sometime: How would the different poets and critics here like to die?) Really, what I was pointing toward (obliquely, I admit) is the way "good war" has become a a kind of propaganda buzz-idea, ideologically loaded and mobilized in the construction of an official myth of national "goodness"-- a myth that Spielberg's film will powerfully contribute to shaping and strengthening. It's a myth that continues to help obscure the real history of U.S. deceit, aggression, and subversion of democracy around the world in the wake of WW2. It helps obscure the fact that WW2 was a conflict between rapacious imperialist states on _both_ sides. It was certainly good that the side that lost, lost. But the side that won was not good, nor was it "anti-fascist" in any principled sense, as Washington's and Wall Street's support of fascistic regimes in the post-war period makes perfectly clear. So the question I asked seems quite reasonable to me and also quite relevant to our current situation, for it won't likely be long before we have another Gulf War or worse, and we will all be asked to remember how the old Gulf War was a "good war", just as we were being asked to remember how WWII was a "good war" as we were being readied for the Gulf War. In other words, the enemy might be clear, but for the sake of the future it is good to know for whom one is fighting. This is some of what I had in the back of my mind when I asked my question. And by the way, David Erben, you should publish that fine analysis of the movie somewhere! Kent ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 15:56:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Amarnath V. Rauva" Subject: Re: POETICS Programs In-Reply-To: <199807180400.VAA10478@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was wondering if anyone would reply with a list of some MFA/Poetics programs that they considered good. I'm considering getting an MFA in writing or a PhD in Poetics after I graduate from Berkeley this year. One of the most problematic things is that there is no (at least I haven't found it yet) comprehensive list of MFA programs in the country and who teaches at those programs. thanks, Amar Ravva ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 19:11:33 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: Was it a "good war"? Regarding all these threads on different war movies and the "good versus bad" wars -- there still seems to me, as I wrote in a previous e-mail -- a fundamental difference between fictional recreations of war (or the semi-"documetary" versions that Speilberg churns out) and the "representation" of war itself. By the very virtue that you are watching something 'unreal', projected onto a screen or written in a poem, you are forced away from the political realities; how much difference is there, really, between a WWII movie and Lawerence of Arabia? Both depict the "horrors of war" -- people getting stuck with knives and shot with guns -- and both, it seems to me, are equally ineffective in making people dislike war any less. All the glossy weeklies are probably waxing elqouent about the horrors of war as depicted in "Saving Private Ryan"; these are the same people that got us all riled up for the Gulf. And the same audience that gets teary eyed in the movie house goes gungho for the video cameras on smart bombs. And while Kubrick certaintly made a good movie (Full Metal Jacket), I think the only lasting effect it's had has been to popularize a few choice phrases from the drill seargent. I'm not saying that war poetry is not "effective"; there is, of course, a lot of excellent work. Wilfred Owen, Benjamin Britten's _War Requiem_; but am I the only one who sees a fundamental split between people's aesthetic and ethical responses? I think I count Plato as company for starters, but anybody who reads the _Cantos_ probably recognizes the same kind of internal block. -- Simon http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu sdedeo@naic.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 20:44:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Settling New Scores Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If in New York, I recommend "Settling New Scores: Music Manuscripts from the Paul Sacher Foundation", with scores (and related items) by Nancarow, Boulez, Cage, Ferneyhough, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berio, Carter, Webern, and many others. The Pierpont Morgan Library 29 E. 36th Street 212-685-0008 Hours: Tues-Sat 10:30am-5pm Sun 1pm-5pm Closed Mon ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 13:38:48 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Symptoms of Oulipo women MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm not so ready to regard Harry Mathews' comment about hopscotch as "deliberately evasive and even meaningless", although of course there may have been some snideness in its delivery which doesn't come through. Although it might be read as being flip, I read it as rejecting the simplistically essentialist assumption that women are not interested in strict mathematical rules. Hopscotch might just be one example of a 'traditional women's activity' that relies upon "the strict application of rules and limitation". Knitting (and other fabric arts) and music are perhaps other examples of activities where explicit rules are used. Perhaps it is not the presence or absence of rules that discourages women, but the social context of the activity. In that case, might Mathews' comment not be seen as addressing the question rather than dismissing it? Henry says that "during 'that' time, for various reasons, not as many women as men were excited about mathematics". It's not just 'that' time: in my maths honours class (late 80s) there were 5 men and no women; and there was only one woman on the staff (a post-grad tutor). Things might have changed for the better even in the last decade: for the past few years our intakes of trainees at work (mostly maths or physics honours grads) have been about 50/50. Shifting to the discussion of Yau's stripper monologue, I'm not so sure that I'd dismiss it out of hand as being just "what men think women think". Although I'm on shaky ground even discussing this, might it be possible that the gulf between a woman who works in the sex industry and one who doesn't is at least as wide as that between men and women in general? Where Yau's monologue seems unrealistic is in its language rather than in its content: my female friends who put on low cut tops and go out to trashy bars to see what they can pull wouldn't use terms like "cornstalk smile" or "smooth as a wave", but otherwise their thoughts (or at least, the way that they present their thoughts to their male friends) seem not too different. Again, I may be way off base here too. A female friend of mine (_not_ one of those who go to sleazy bars, I must add, except for research purposes) had a story published a couple of years ago called "Striptease: or the butterfly, this other species", and from what I remember the female protagonist wasn't too far off Yau's. The combination of fierce pride in the powers of her body with total contempt for the subhuman punters seems very similar. I should re-read it. Can anyone suggest a female writer who writes of her own experiences in the sex industry? Annie Sprinkle? Raewyn Alexander? Xaviera Hollander?!?? And which if any of the many filmic presentations of the industry seems realistic and/or productive? "Exotica"? "Mona Lisa"? "Whore"? Tentatively, Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 22:51:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Writing.out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Writing.out Nikuko says she doesn't speak so much as try words out. And not just words, or not primarily words, but words in sequences, seeing if they fit together. There's always a question associated with her voice as it's written - her voice which is an inference or a dreaming. What is cyberspace. It is a dreaming. What kind of dreaming. The kind where there appear to be dominions and grids, always expanding, intersecting - who knows whether or not they're regular. You can see the fine wires. Nikuko says she doesn't mean fiber optic at all, she's talking about the wires laying across the ground as if they were attached to guided missiles. Someone wears goggles, Jennifer adds, and then she can see where the missile goes. You can see through the front-end television. The target gets closer and closer; you might imagine the pores of the skin and then, nothing. After the explosion, wires re- mained criss-crossing the desert. That's the kind of dream cyberspace is, says Nikuko, just exactly. In that, there are words which are targets, you can imagine the mis- sile heading towards _hunger._ It lands somewhere between the _u_ and _n_, she says, think of it as || || || || hu||nger breaking it in two, its connection with organism. Then there's no more hunger, Jennifer asks playfully? No, there's no more hunger, that is surely the truth, Nikuko "says." She has tried the word on, seen it fit to wear, to fail, to fall, to fulfill. She has tried it on, shot it down. In a dream, the word has appeared; it was at the bottom of a deep valley, in the midst of a deeper ocean. It was blank ink in dark- blue water, and as she watched it, it dissipated, and then later, there was a thread about it on an email list, and that was in her dream as well - writing a response to the list, cc: ing it to her con- scious - and here, Jennifer began to think, she was at last coming to grips with it, writing her hunger out. ______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 00:07:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: How Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit One of the first pieces I read was George Butterick's attempt to engage _Defenestration of Prague_ : "Endless Protean Linkage" (Hambone 3). Might be interesting to read again. --cs In a message dated 98-07-29 07:25:28 EDT, you write: << short of a critical treatise, would love to hear more on howe, if only recommendations of some useful secondary-critical takes on or ways into her work. >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 22:34:01 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc Subject: Re: Was it a "good war"? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit How would the different poets and critics here like to die? I would like to die like a certain semiotician who was hit one week by a mail truck while reading current philology. A week or so after recouperating, a laundry truck finished the job. I believe the 2nd book was by Vendler which stuck the reader as hilarious shortly before the laundry man, Pierre, went down in history. be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:14:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: fixing to die In-Reply-To: <35BFA329.58E2@megsinet.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I wanna be killed by Jennifer. I wanna be killed by Alan. I wanna be killed by Nikuko. - Julu On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, David Baratier wrote: > How would the different poets and critics here like to die? > > I would like to die like a certain semiotician who was hit one week by a > mail truck while reading current philology. A week or so after > recouperating, a laundry truck finished the job. I believe the 2nd book > was by Vendler which stuck the reader as hilarious shortly before the > laundry man, Pierre, went down in history. > > be well > > David Baratier > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 22:28:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: fixing to die Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If I am to die, I want to die as a well-dressed poet... but perhaps it is because I just saw this amazing film directed, written, and staring Yukio Mishima. It is basically a stylized setting for his future suicide. Mishima took death as an art form. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:40:39 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc Subject: [Fwd: fixing to die] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I wanna be killed by Myouka. Preferably a semi. Reading the IIS 4 Guide for Dummies. http://www.myouka.org/ Image: http://www.myouka.org/bin/Jennifer.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/POETS/ASondheim2.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/Nikuko.jpe Image: http://www.myouka.org/bin/poets/Rpinsky2.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/findfault.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/POETS/Julu2.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/Look at me! Do I want to say hello!.JPG Image: http://www.myouka.org/bin/Indentityless.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/POETS/instantpoem.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/WEAPON/used.jpe Image: http://www.myouka.org/bin/WEAPON/humerictype2.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/POETS/Ilovejennifer.jpg Image: http://www.myouka.org/BIN/surprise.JPG Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: > > I wanna be killed by Jennifer. > I wanna be killed by Alan. > I wanna be killed by Nikuko. > > - Julu > > On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, David Baratier wrote: > > > How would the different poets and critics here like to die? > > > > I would like to die like a certain semiotician who was hit one week by a > > mail truck while reading current philology. A week or so after > > recouperating, a laundry truck finished the job. I believe the 2nd book > > was by Vendler which stuck the reader as hilarious shortly before the > > laundry man, Pierre, went down in history. > > > > be well > > > > David Baratier > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 16:08:21 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anthony lawrence Subject: Re: fixing to die Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Tosh, what's the name of the film? The only one I've seen starred Ken Ogata ("Mishima") which was also highly stylised and combined theatre and film. Best, Anthony ************************************** Anthony Lawrence Po Box 75 Sandy Bay Tasmania 7006 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 02:34:11 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rodrigo Toscano Subject: Query: Robert Kocik Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hoping someone has R. Kocik's e or address....or info leading to... Please "backchannel"... Rodrigo Toscano ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:37:34 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Announcing Jacket # 4 Comments: To: Australian Book Review Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jacket magazine is a literary quarterly free on the Internet, edited from Sydney Australia by poet John Tranter. Issue # 4 is now fully fitted and stitched up, at this URL:=20 http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket04/index04.html Announcing Jacket=92s first QUIZ, with real prizes!=20 With a gallery of sparkling poems by :=20 Adam Aitken, Charles Alexander and Sheila Murphy - a collaboration, Gary Catalano, Maxine Chernoff, Bernard Cohen, M.T.C.Cronin, Elaine Equi, Coral Hull, David Lehman, Tony Lopez, Rod Mengham, Ian Patterson, Roger Pellett, Gig Ryan, Keston Sutherland, and Robert Vandermolen.=20 Articles to knock your socks off:=20 David Lehman - The Questions of Postmodernism,=20 Eliot Weinberger : on the strange ghosts of =CDsland,=20 Caddel and Quartermain : OTHER British and Irish Poetry since 1970,=20 Forrest Gander - review of Yasusada : DOUBLED FLOWERING,=20 A peculiar and perspicacious Portuguese perspective of the 1998 Cambridge (England) Conference of Contemporary Poetry,=20 H.M.Enzensberger's "KIOSK" reviewed by Lawrence Joseph,=20 Noel King interviews Pete Ayrton, publisher of Serpent's Tail books,=20 Mr Rubenking's "BREAKDOWN" - computers and writing (with a REAL AUDIO recording of ROBOT POET Joy H.Breshan reading a computer-generated poem in the mode of Mr Ashbery, and John Tranter=92s =93Carousel=94, a computer-assi= sted prose story),=20 Tom Clark's "White Thought" reviewed by Dale Smith,=20 Photography - art, fine art, or prostitution?,=20 Pet of the Month - the MEERKAT (very handy for poets - find out why),=20 Great Moments in Literature # 13 - Kleist=92s TWELVE-VOLUME OPUS reduced to haiku (!) ,=20 Dangerous Liaisons # 91 - Jo and Meg in Mexico.=20 . . . and, as usual, a lather of photographs and other visuals.=20 Drop by, try the fit of the Jacket, and if you like it, tell your friends! ( I understand that you may not wish to receive these notices.= =20 ( If so, please reply to this email to that effect, and=20 ( I'll take your name off the mailing list pronto. [ J.T.= ]=20 from John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/tranter/3poems-interview.html Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 01:01:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Symptoms of Oulipo women In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I'm not so ready to regard Harry Mathews' comment about hopscotch as >"deliberately evasive and even meaningless" > Might Mathews' comment not be seen as addressing the question >rather than dismissing it? Surely that would be the first interpretation most people would apply, wouldnt it? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 04:06:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aviva Vogel Subject: Re: Poetix programs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Precious. My experience and sentiments, almost exactly. In a message dated 98-07-17 16:34:54 EDT, you write: > So, why go to school? I did it because it was a way to focus for 2 years on > my > writing, and take my own work more seriously. A friend once said "I bought 2 > years > to write." Also, and more to the point, I had a blast. This was fun. I got > to read > and write and call it work. I once had a roommate who collected "useless > degrees" > -- he had an MA in theology and was working on one in psychology. He was a > lot of > fun to talk to, and he made a living as a carpenter. > Yours in impracticality, > Laura W(hy not) > -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 08:34:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics Agent 288793 Subject: Re: How (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII this was in poetics mailbox.. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 11:30:03 -0700 From: Peter Quartermain To: Tom Orange Cc: Poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: Re: How Tom: Excuse my butting in here, but there's a heck of a lot of stuff published about Susan Howe, if that's what you want. I think the best essays are still those by George Butterick (North Dakota Quarterly 55, Fall 1987) Rachel Blau DuPlessis ("Whowe", Sulfur 20, Fall 1987) and Marjorie Perloff (in, hmmm, _Poetic License_ 297-310). There's also a pretty good one by Gregory Dale Adamson in the Michel Serres issue of _Sub/Stance_ 83: 1997 ("Serres Translates Howe"); and I should also (of course!) mention my own essay in _Disjunctive Poetics: From Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky to Susan Howe_ (Cambridge UP 1992). John Taggart has a pretty good essay too, somewhere, but I can't remember where. Obviously the best entry to her work is her work. But read the first chapter of her brilliant prose book _The birthmark: Unsettling the wilderness in American literature_ -- or her more celebrated _My Emily Dickinson_. Peter At 12:46 AM 7/29/98 -0400, you wrote: >daniel b, mark p -- > >short of a critical treatise, would love to hear more on howe, if only >recommendations of some useful secondary-critical takes on or ways into >her work. > >thanks, >t. > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 846 Keefer Street Vancouver B.C. Canada V6A 1Y7 Voice : 604 255 8274 Fax: 255 8204 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:37:30 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Shoptaw's units of measurement MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reading John Shoptaw's "The Music of Construction - Measure and Polyphony in Ashbery and Bernstein" (in The Tribe of John) I'm just wondering who else has used these units of prosodic measurement - character, word, line, phrase, sentence, section. I'm aware of Silliman's use of sentence but not much else. Fred Hertzberg, Finland ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 09:31:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: Adverts Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >For those interested I'll be placing the brief introductory article on=20 >J.H. Prynne by Rod Mengham and myself on my website tomorrow - it's from=20 >the forthcoming Bloodaxe catalogue and lists publication details for the=20 >forthcoming *Poems*, includes quotes, a Prynne poem, etc. > >J.H. Prynne >*Poems* >August 1998 234 x 156mm 432 pages >1 85224 492 5 =A325.00 cloth >1 85224 491 7 =A312.00 paper >Bloodaxe/Folio (Salt) co-publication >Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press > >Best, >JK > > >___________________________________________________________________________= _ >John Kinsella >Churchill College >Cambridge CB3 ODS >England >http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/8574/ > > > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard =09 The MIT Press Journals =09 Five Cambridge Center =09 Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 >>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 09:59:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: anglo/amer yeatspound The idea of Yeats as a counter-exemplar to Pound is not anachronistic per se. American experiment from Pound to Stein to Zukofsky to Howe etc. has had a lot invested in the "disjunctive", as P. Quartermain's book title emphasizes. While Yeats is no more attractive than Pound on a political level, on an artistic level there is a clear alternative path. Both Pound & Yeats were trained or self-taught in both visual art & music; but they went in different directions with it. Pound's fascination with the image led a poetics of disjunction; Yeats moved toward synthesis - a synthesis of word, rhythm, and image. That approach is by no means played out, despite the experimental tribe's ideological attachment to disjunction as the insignia of political resistance & philosophical savoir-faire. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 10:23:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Symptoms of Oulipo women In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Tom Beard wrote: In > that case, might Mathews' comment not be seen as addressing the question > rather than dismissing it? > Mebbe.....But the point is, you really have ta work at the reply (as it was repeated on the List, certainly) to create on behalf of HM a good, well-intentioned "meaning." In the context of my original questions and concerns (which were *political* quite specifically, indeed: offensively P.C. i hope..) about the staggeringly stag character of the O'o, the hopscotch line didn't seem to get us much of anywhere... But he wasn't answering my question (quite); so no doubt i was being unfair. If it had been me in HM's shoes, i would have addressed the whole gender issue directly, even tho' the question was couched in terms of women and math, because i think gender-politix issues are crucial everywhere in our lives. But admittedly HM is not me (poor guy) and i wasn't there. But that's the source of my sounding overly impatient about the hopscotch comment. (an impatience i still think is pretty appropriate.) politically correctishly, mark p ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 17:42:53 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Shoptaw's units of measurement II MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII One clarification: what I meant to ask was who else (than Shoptaw) has used these measures in the context of discussing prosody, i.e. in a "critical" text. (Not of course which poets have used them in writing poetry.) : Reading John Shoptaw's "The Music of Construction - Measure and Polyphony : in Ashbery and Bernstein" (in The Tribe of John) I'm just wondering who : else has used these units of prosodic measurement - character, word, : line, phrase, sentence, section. I'm aware of Silliman's use of : sentence but not much else. Fred Hertzberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 10:24:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: L Emerson Subject: Re: POETICS Programs In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I too would be interested in knowing who offers MA or PhD programs in poetics--if the person(s) kind enough to know and respond could back-channel me too I would be _grateful_! Thanks much, Lori Emerson On Wed, 29 Jul 1998, Amarnath V. Rauva wrote: > I was wondering if anyone would reply with a list of some MFA/Poetics > programs that they considered good. I'm considering getting an MFA in > writing or a PhD in Poetics after I graduate from Berkeley this year. One > of the most problematic things is that there is no (at least I haven't > found it yet) comprehensive list of MFA programs in the country and who > teaches at those programs. > > thanks, > Amar Ravva > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 12:46:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Erik Sweet Subject: "Tool a Magazine" Party 8/14!!!!NYC Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit "Tool a Magazine" is having a party on August 14th to celebrate the premier Issue! It will be in New York City at 5 Union Square West at "Teachers and Writers Collaborative" ....5th Floor (above Staples) "So Mark Your Calenders" "Pals" "Get Ready" There will be drinks, food, a pinata, and readings by: "Pierre Joris" "Eleni Sikelianos" Anselm Berrigan" and "Jordan Davis" Beginning at 6pm. Please come and introduce yourself... thanks, erik sweet and lori quillen co-editors "Tool a Magazine" the first issue.." ready August 14th!!!!" any questions backchannel me....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:23:42 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Corey McLeod Subject: Re: POETICS Programs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit i too am intersted in poetics programs. back-channel me as well. thanks, corey s mcleod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:44:54 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Smith Subject: Re: POETICS Programs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit me, too. actually, why doesn't everyone just post their individual lists (as, since there is no comprehensive list, i assume that everyone will have personal suggestions) on the listserv? then we won't have to deal with backchanneling everyone. Jessica Smith jss13@acsu.buffalo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:38:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: d.a.levy / call for papers, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello Everyone: David Kirschenbaum asked me to post this: BOOGLIT #6 Call for submissions and papers for: 1) Booglit #6 d.a.levy issue pub date Dec 1, 1998 edit & art deadline Oct 1, 1998 poems, prose, memories, artwork are all welcome 2) d.a.levy conference We are in the planning stages of putting together a two-day levy conference in NYC Fri-Sat Dec 11-12, 1998, with readings, talks and panel discussions, including a reading on Fri night Dec 11, at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. We are looking for papers relating to the following topics (although any and all papers and proposals will be considered): a) Mimeo revolution b) 1968 in American c) Cleveland poetry scene in the 60s Please send papers with a one page abstract. Please send all submissions, when possible, on disc in a word processing program, preferably Microsoft Word. All submissions should be sent to: David Kirschenbaum BOOGLIT P.O. Box 20531 New York, NY 10011 attn: d.a.levy issue (or conference) If you have any inquiries, contact BOOGLIT levy@booglit.com or (212) 330-7840 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:55:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: poetix programs In-Reply-To: from "joel lewis" at Jul 15, 98 11:29:44 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just a thought for those asking about poetics programs etc which I thought I'd share since it may not occur to others: Penn's Ph.D. program in English has been a damn good place for me to be as a poet. With Bob Perelman a tenured member of the faculty and with the perpetually active Writers House bringing in many writers dear to this list (Silliman, Hejinian, Bernstein, Lauterbach, Waldrop, Mackey and seemingly a zillion others since I've been here) its become, I think an ideal place to work on contemporary poetics (there are other fine professors working on poetics generally who can discuss more or less everything up to and including the 1st generation New American Poetry, and Al Filreis is as schooled in his own way in the current scene as Bob P is). So, if you're thinking PHDeees, Penn might be something to look into. It's not a poetics program per se but I've essentially turned it into one for myself as have other members of this list like Louis Cabri & Matt Hart. -m. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 13:12:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: d.a.levy / call for papers, etc. In-Reply-To: <01BDBBD0.27248B60@gps12@columbia.edu> from "Gary Sullivan" at Jul 30, 98 03:38:50 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit this post makes my day! makes my semester! makes my year! it's great news to hear! fantastic! d.a. levy is a great poet, and needs our attention. i am currently working on a piece entitled _d.a. levy's influence on bpNichol's science of the "pataphysical_, which i will present at the Nichol conference this September. in Vancouver. so a little bit of a plug on my part but what th hell. a d.a. levy conference is just a wonderful idea, and it's very exciting. all th best, carl p.s. i'm still searching for levy sources, and a few of you on this list have already been very helpful. if anyone can name any further sources or current work on levy i wld be very grateful. th doors r open, c. > Hello Everyone: > > David Kirschenbaum asked me to post this: > > BOOGLIT #6 > Call for submissions and papers for: > > 1) Booglit #6 d.a.levy issue > pub date Dec 1, 1998 > edit & art deadline Oct 1, 1998 > poems, prose, memories, artwork are all welcome > > 2) d.a.levy conference > We are in the planning stages of putting together a two-day levy conference in > NYC Fri-Sat Dec 11-12, 1998, with readings, talks and panel discussions, > including a reading on Fri night Dec 11, at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's > Church. We are looking for papers relating to the following topics (although > any and all papers and proposals will be considered): > > a) Mimeo revolution > b) 1968 in American > c) Cleveland poetry scene in the 60s > > Please send papers with a one page abstract. > Please send all submissions, when possible, on disc in a word processing > program, preferably Microsoft Word. > All submissions should be sent to: > > David Kirschenbaum BOOGLIT > P.O. Box 20531 New York, NY 10011 > attn: d.a.levy issue (or conference) > If you have any inquiries, contact BOOGLIT > levy@booglit.com or (212) 330-7840 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 16:41:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: the war room Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Todd, yes, but you left out his best film. Starring Dennis Weaver. I'll send anyone a pineapple who can come up with the title. I've always wanted to write a treatise about that movie and Killdozer. Bill Luoma << -------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 20:20:42 +0000 From: toddbaron Subject: the war room I must say: the discussion on Spielberg seems way out of line for the list. Not that I'm suggesting a censor --or trying to stop the discussion--but the man as an artist isn't! He rewrites history in a clumsy albeit monetary way--see Schindler's List--see that he is in the habit of recreating a Heroic mythology--a cartoon strip--and has been quoted as saying that "the great war movies of the 40's inspired (him)" Let's see a film about a shark (which he had to be pushed into doing) a film about an alien (a boyhood idea stolen really from Geroge Lucas) another film about aliens (WOW!) a film about the ATlantic Slave Trade (he was SUED for this one!) a film a film a film? WHOOPS--I meant "movie"! Spillberg (no typo) HAS destroyed the film industry--he won that war! The great films of the 60s and 70s he single handedly destroyed when he found out he couldn't make one! (No "humanity" or "personality" in his films! Read RAGING BULLS and EASY RIDERS! His first film was THE SUGERLAND EXPRESS--trying to be Altman, trying to be Scorsessem etc!) He was raised on TV for god's sake! The big MACHINERY he p[roduced--the studio he saved (UNIVERSAL) they both overtook the great films of Hal Asbhy (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, etc--films that made money!), Altman, Scorsesee(his great films hardly were released! Yup--Taxi Driver did not make the man wealthy!) Even Coppola (and left him a rather commercial idiot I maight say--from Godfather and Apocylypse NOW (a GREAT "war" movie--a movie that took a war into the lens--to "Jack" and .........) Phew. Hey..I guess this is fun! Back to the poem......... What about poetic Heroes anyway--like Spicer? Todd Baron (ReMap)>> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 16:36:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: some levy sites MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey, Carl & anyone else interested in levy: http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/Lists/LevyWorks.html http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/People/DALevy.html http://138.87.36.239/text_only_html/ghostponycatalogue.html http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/levy-l2.htm http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/levy-l1.htm http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/dal-ts00.htm http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalm00.htm http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/dalevy.htm http://www.theroc.org/roc-mag/textarch/roc-15/roc1519c.htm Happy surfin'! Gary ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:57:33 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: POETICS Programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New College of California and NAROPA outside of the"academy" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 13:58:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: the war room MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit That would be _Duel_, about a truck as I recall. Thanks for the pineapple. Maz881@AOL.COM wrote: > > Todd, yes, but you left out his best film. Starring Dennis Weaver. > > I'll send anyone a pineapple who can come up with the title. > > I've always wanted to write a treatise about that movie and Killdozer. > > Bill Luoma ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 01:02:41 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: the war room MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit DUEL (Can I have mine cut up?) Todd Baron ps: TV movie--and the prequel to JAWS ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 17:05:05 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: anglo-american poetic relations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit <> While it is true that JM trained her parakeet to say Poor John Keats, I think that is the extent of the connection. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:54:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Oh Henry! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Oh Henry! What is this silly little black and white thing about Yeats contra Pound, as if that is really the point anymore? Such silliness is as vulgar as the anti-reference stuff during Langpo's youthful, heroic days. Who doesn't think Yeats was a great poet? And Mandelstam, who in your hands has become something like a stick you pretend is a sword-- yes, alright already. He is a great poet and no one ever said he wasn't. Stevens is very "synthetic" but also quite conceptually "disjunctive," not in the Yeats "alternate path" at all, eventhough he loved the symbolists too. Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno" is a thoroughly paratactic poem that is deeply moving and overflowing with spirit. God dictated it. Renga is a centuries old tradition which continues, into the present, to be at service of a refined and "non-logical" exploration of emotional and perceptual dimensions. Word, rhythm, and image, as you put it, can be fused in this poetry in ways Yeats would have died for. (come to think of it, what, more exactly, do you mean by "synthetic"? In what way can you argue that Pound did not "move toward a synthesis of word, rhythm, and image"? Really, Henry, it's like you're just throwing words around because you think you are a bull. Here, at least _so far_, the word 'synthetic' is just a pile of you know what.) Celan doesn't make any sense like Yeats and those of his "path," but he makes people weep. Have you read the work of Donald Revell, C.D. Wright, or Duncan McNaughton? These three contemporaries, off the top and among many, are disjunctive as all get out, but their emotional and musical and intellectual complexity is far beyond what you or I can manage. And so on... In fact, what about that Jennifer Moxley you wrote a review on? You were so enthralled you couldn't even bring yourself to explain what it was that was so great about her work. I don't know her work well, but I know it's really quite "disjunctive." My point is that you apparently found "disjunctiveness" in this case to be one path into the poetic values you have been so insistently trying to instruct the list about. Why is Pound "the path" the "disjunctive" poets have followed? Some have followed Dickinson just as much as Pound. That poet is really weird, and she wasn't even into Theosophy. Whitman was really weird too. Sometimes it was like one thought just didn't connect to another. Oh Henry. There is strong poetry and there is not-so-strong poetry and there is fake poetry and so on. But value has little to do with syntax or form. Some smart things you've said that I've seen point to this truth, but often you sound like someone who just got kicked out of the MA program at SUNY-Buffalo and is really pissed. In good humor, Captain Miller ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 21:51:14 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Smith Subject: Re: POETICS Programs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit what about poetics programs abroad? are there schools in Europe or Australia that anyone can recommend? what can be said about Johns Hopkins' program? Jessica Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:25:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: izak Subject: Re: POETICS Programs Comments: To: L Emerson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, I'd be interested in finding out about programs as well.... -Joanna Sondheim ******************************************************************************* "It does not behoove me to make myself smaller than I am." -Edith Sodergran ******************************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:21:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: ONE NIGHT STAND MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII does anyone know of any interesting reviews of ONE NIGHT STAND, the posthumous collection of Spicer poems edited by Allen, 1980? Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:45:22 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: linda russo Organization: University of Utah Subject: postfeminist POETICS JOURNAL? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [the subject line is purely whimsical] hey Dodie or someone -- could you clarify? What is this new PJ? what's the story? > . . . the new/long-overdue Poetics Journal [which features] a talk > [Dodie Bellamy] > gave at New Langton Arts years ago--for an evening on Eros and Writing > (curated by Kevin K.) . . . purposely written for a non-intellectual > audience. . . . thanks. lvr ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:52:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: thanks on howe In-Reply-To: <199807310401.AAA02763@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII thanks to all those who responded with suggestions on susan howe criticism. and yes, i did start with some of the primary texts but felt, more so than with other quote-unquote difficult texts, that i was more or less missing the boat. would be interested to others' take on criticism as an heuristic. e.g. the first coolidge book i ever got was solution passage which on first glance left me largely disinterested. but upon some of watten's essays in total syntax, plus a good look at as much of the early stuff as i could find, solution passage became a whole new world... bests, t. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 22:05:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Poetics programs, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This may just be my beef, but I get a little annoyed with anyone who has an MFA, MA, PHd in poetry (of whatever version) claiming to be "outside the academy." I, for one, believe this is a dated notion that no longer applies. Experimental writers ARE in the "academy." Susan Howe at Buffalo, Nathaniel Mackey at Santa Cruz, Myung Mi Kim at San Francisco State, Bob Perelman at U Penn, and etc. and etc. So you wanna be in the "academy"? Can't say that I would necessary "recommend" San Francisco State University's MFA (having gotten it myself) but it's worth checking out for those who want the degree/experience. Besides the aforementioned Myung, Bob Gluck is a new tenure track professor there starting this fall (after having taught part-time for eons, but that's another story, actually not, it has to do with opposing political forces in the dept.). Aaron Shurin has taught part-time for quite a while also. And Maxine Chernoff is a good new leadership force as chair of the dept. (We couldda used her while I was there!) One HUGE caveat: SFSU has no money for fellowships, so either be prepared to work a lot (SF being a notoriously expensive place to live) or be wealthy. Both types, the working & the wealthy, co-mingle there. Plus SF is home to great writing community. Sure we're a little cranky, and a whole lot gossipy, but we've got energy! We've got readings! We've got magazines! All in all, there's enough to love. Kathy Lou Schultz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 23:23:56 +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: POETICS Programs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT There is in fact a comprehensive list, put out by the AWP called . . . called . . ._the AWP Guide to Writing Programs_ -- Though they probably don't list "poetics" among their genres, some reading between the lines may prove illuminating and will certainly get you a list of all MFA/PhD's with a focus on writing, who teaches there, what special programs or perks they offer . . . I'm also available for personal e-consultations. I've done extensive research over the past few years. Did you know that UNLV GIVES their students money to leave Las Vegas & go abroad? Did you know that Jorie Graham lives on a ranch in North Dakota and they heli-port her in for office hours? Did you know that Kathleen Fraser will be teaching a course on mixed-genre type "poetry" at the New College this fall? Did you know that Derek Walcott often takes his entire workshop out for lunch ON HIM (literally!! lookout girls!)? I'll tell you which schools accepted me, which rejected (don't bother with those losers!) and on what terms. > > I was wondering if anyone would reply with a list of some MFA/Poetics > > programs that they considered good. I'm considering getting an MFA in > > writing or a PhD in Poetics after I graduate from Berkeley this year. One > > of the most problematic things is that there is no (at least I haven't > > found it yet) comprehensive list of MFA programs in the country and who > > teaches at those programs. > > > > thanks, > > Amar Ravva > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:24:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: trbell Subject: Re: anglo/amer yeatspound Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry, Thought-provoking thesis, but I'm not sure how there can be disjunction without synthesis and vice-versa or maybe verse-vica squad: _Lettre-Ocean_ QQQQQQQQQQ Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q ---> Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q <--- Q Q Q Q Q Q there would then be two sides to one coin? tom bell At 09:59 AM 7/30/98 EDT, you wrote: >The idea of Yeats as a counter-exemplar to Pound is not anachronistic per >se. American experiment from Pound to Stein to Zukofsky to Howe etc. has >had a lot invested in the "disjunctive", as P. Quartermain's book title >emphasizes. While Yeats is no more attractive than Pound on a political >level, on an artistic level there is a clear alternative path. Both Pound >& Yeats were trained or self-taught in both visual art & music; but they >went in different directions with it. Pound's fascination with the image >led a poetics of disjunction; Yeats moved toward synthesis - a synthesis of >word, rhythm, and image. That approach is by no means played out, despite >the experimental tribe's ideological attachment to disjunction as the >insignia of political resistance & philosophical savoir-faire. >- Henry Gould > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:55:34 +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: BeeHive #2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT BEEHIVE is definitely worth checking out for those of us who know nothing or something about hypertext. I got lost (or did I wander?) for hours in CAROLYN GUERTIN's super piece QUEEN BEES AND THE HUM OF THE HIVE. As well as dancing beautifully and graphically with the hive metaphor, it traces lineages to hypertext pioneers, esp. to QUEEN BEES (women), across borders and into Canada (or into the US?) and with femininst and postmodernist theories . It's loaded with info, texts & links (both Canadian and American). A few of Guertin's essays have interesting analogues to the recent postfeminist thread on POETICS. See esp "Breaking Down Walls: experimental women's fiction" and "Honeycombing: open forms in hypertext and women's writing" > BeeHive #2 features; > > QUEEN BEES AND THE HUM OF THE HIVE : Carolyn Guertin > a critical overview of feminist hypertext's subversive honeycombings > > > THE RED SPIDER and RAZORBURN : Brian Pritchett > 2 short stories > > > 5 NEW POEMS : David Hunter Sutherland > > > 6 POEMS : Janet I. Buck > _________ > > You may also revisit BeeHive #1 in the newly added ArcHive > > ___________________________________________________ > Carolyn Guertin, Department of English, University of Alberta > E-Mail: cguertin@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca; Tel/FAX: 403-432-2735 > Website: > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 03:47:07 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Oliver Subject: Re: anglo-american literary relations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Suj : Re: anglo-american poetic relations Date : 30/07/98 A : kwtuma@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu (Keith Tuma) Felt a leap in spirit when I read Keith Tuma's fascinating report on this London conference a day ago. There have been several signs recently that the old friendly and knowledgeable relationship between British and US non- mainstream writing -- the one I'd known in my earlier days -- is in process of revival. As I dislike poetic nationalisms, even British ones, this delights me. Bit of history. When I lived in New York for nearly five years in 1987-8/92, apart from Tom Raworth, I couldn't have been asked about all other British poets more than six times altogether. Round about then, Greg Masters lent me Hugh Kenner's "The Sinking Island", an analysis of why British poetry had gone down the tubes . . . except for a few poets who had been influenced by the Americans. Since I've always had close friendships with US poets I'd do my best to spread more news. Even when helping to sum up a St Mark's symposium where Amiri Baraka had trounced not just the European-based literary syllabuses in the American academy but also British literature in particular (it's all Irish), I didn't go hostile because I can well see the necessities out of which he was speaking. Helen Vendler and Edna Longley are perhaps easy targets, since they seem generally hostile to the experimental as this list might think of it. However, Vendler's reported belief that, before Mark Ford, Britain has had no good poet since WWII would reinforce my point that it's easier for Americans to appreciate Brit poets who have been strongly influenced by Americans (apparently Ford by Ashbery -- I don't know Ford's work). As for Ireland, didn't Oxford prof John Bayley declare in the Times or the NY Review of books about 1990 that the only good poetry currently being written in our isles was, indeed, Irish? Since I haven't myself gone the way of cloning my poetry off the States, I could get accosted after a reading in SF and asked, "Why is your poetry so Eurocentric?" "Because I live in Europe?" During the 80s and early 90s Britain had become a difficult country to write from (even if, like me, you lived abroad). One slight ray in the transatlantic darkness came with a Charles Bernstein article in Sulfur, where Charles went to Britain and sort of "rediscovered" us -- at least, he mainly rediscovered the poets closest to the language schools. So be it. For us who had been toiling away, it was rather like Louise Bennett's old phrase, "Colonisation in reverse". But it was a useful start. Recent transatlantic conferences like the one Keith has reported are another flicker of awakening, especially if they keep their terms of reference generous and avoid coterie. At the conf., Peter Barry asked for a pedagogically-friendly anthology of experimental British poetry. May I appeal to readers of this list to check out the introduction by Ric Caddel and Peter Quartermain to their new anthology, "Other British and Irish Poetry Since 1970" shortly to appear from Wesleyan? No one has yet been able to inspect the contents, but the book shows every hope of answering at least part of Peter Barry's requirements. "Other", as I fondly call it, has already been cited on the Buffalo list: I'd like to re-emphasise that it's the first anthology of British and Irish experimental writing to be published in the States for decades. The introduction presents a particular view of British experimental poetry, one that I've already said I don't always agree with: but there's lots to chew on; and it is unremittingly intelligent. It's on John Tranter's Jacket mag webp at: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket04/otherbrit.html Can we now look forward to more of this genuine dialogue, US-British? I mean, just check out authors like Denise Riley, Allen Fisher, Bill Griffiths, Andrew Duncan, Grace Lake, Helen Macdonald, the Londoners, the Northerners, the Scots and Irish, the austere Mr Prynne, the Cambridge Circus, Rod Menghem's praiseworthy Equipage enterprises, Nicholas Johnson's Etruscan Readers, Ken Edwards Reality Street press, Lawrence Upton and the Subvoicive series in London, sparky Glasgow, the signifying North of England, Ireland's buried experimenters! There's very little spare cash in Britain for readings and almost none for the kinds of grants poets pick up in the States -- much more difficult to mount activities -- but there's a very sharp energy. Also, Britain is newly receptive to American poetry as a recent conference I attended in Exmouth, Devon, made obvious to me. The younger writers on both sides are fast coming up. The time is ripe. Any suggestions for more contact, more mutual spreading of knowledge? Any comments about US perceptions of the current state of British poetry. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 06:51:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Question of a "good war" Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I would never make light of the decision to participate in WW2. I don't think that stopping Hitler was optional. But having seen the photos my own father took in Nagasaki one month after the bombing there (though never having spoken with him about this), And thinking not just of Lowell, but of Creeley choosing to drive an ambulance in Burma, and of Whalen, Rexroth and others in the C.O. camp in Oregon, it certainly does seem that it was possible to step back and decide, for perfectly good reason, to say no. None of these people (not even Lowell) was an idiot. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 08:12:16 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Oh Henry! In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:54:35 -0500 from On Thu, 30 Jul 1998 19:54:35 -0500 KENT JOHNSON said: >Oh Henry! > >What is this silly little black and white thing about Yeats contra >Pound, as if that is really the point anymore? > >Such silliness is as vulgar as the anti-reference stuff during >Langpo's youthful, heroic days. > >Who doesn't think Yeats was a great poet? And Mandelstam, who in >your hands has become something like a stick you pretend is a sword-- >yes, alright already. He is a great poet and no one ever said he >wasn't. > >Stevens is very "synthetic" but also quite conceptually >"disjunctive," not in the Yeats "alternate path" at all, eventhough >he loved the symbolists too. Oh Kent! Thanks for waking me up this jelly-beaned Friday morning! Sure, disjunction isn't bad in itself... can't have poetry without leaps. But sometimes the simple observation isn't necessarily vulgar. There's a book out there [forget title as usual] that frames 20th-century modernism as the discovery of disjunction on many levels. Probably lots of books on that. But we're talking trends. Trends don't last forever. Open up any magazine advertised on this list. You will find poems made up of inchoate jumbles of broken syntax. I call this obscurity in a negative sense. By synthesis I mean the combination of syntactic rhythm - beautiful in itself ["good prose", as Ez put it in his early days] - the rhythm of sentences, phrases, lines - with imagery: concrete, conceptual. "Song" is a synthesis of music and vision. I don't think you can disagree that synthesis so defined, on both an artistic & an ideological level, has been devalued by the postmodernist/experimental movements in poetry. > >Celan doesn't make any sense like Yeats and those of his "path," but >he makes people weep. > >Have you read the work of Donald Revell, C.D. Wright, or Duncan >McNaughton? These three contemporaries, off the top and among many, >are disjunctive as all get out, but their emotional and musical and >intellectual complexity is far beyond what you or I can manage. > >And so on... > >In fact, what about that Jennifer Moxley you wrote a review on? You >were so enthralled you couldn't even bring yourself to explain what >it was that was so great about her work. I don't know her work well, >but I know it's really quite "disjunctive." My point is that you >apparently found "disjunctiveness" in this case to be one path into >the poetic values you have been so insistently trying to instruct the >list about. I repeat, I'm not against disjunctive leaps per se. I'm just having fun suggesting that there are alternatives to the alternative, there are counters- to the counter-. In fact when I sent the message I was thinking of some of the Moxley I had read (in the Tender Buttons book) as an example of the counter-counter tendency toward complete sentences and synthetic structure. > >Oh Henry. There is strong poetry and there is not-so-strong poetry >and there is fake poetry and so on. But value has little to do with >syntax or form. Some smart things you've said that I've seen point to >this truth, but often you sound like someone who just got kicked >out of the MA program at SUNY-Buffalo and is really pissed. I think syntax has a lot to do with the pleasure & beauty of poetry. - W.B. [white bull] Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 08:29:51 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: anglo/amer yeatspound In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:24:28 -0500 from On Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:24:28 -0500 trbell said: >Henry, > > Thought-provoking thesis, but I'm not sure how there can be disjunction >without synthesis and vice-versa > > or maybe verse-vica squad: > > _Lettre-Ocean_ > QQQQQQQQQQ > Q Q > Q Q > Q Q Q Q > Q Q ---> Q Q Q > Q Q Q Q Q > Q Q <--- Q Q Q > Q Q Q > > >there would then be two sides to one coin? Absolutely right, Tom. I'm just reminding the list that there ARE 2 sides. - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 07:57:05 EST5EDT4,M4.1.0,M10.5.0 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Reinfeld, Linda" Subject: Susan Howe Don't forget the issue of *The Difficulties* on Susan Howe, the (more recent) issue of *Talisman* -- and my book, *Language Poetry: Writing As Rescue*(LSU Press, 1992), which includes a chapter on Howe's work (chapters on Berstein and Palmer as well). Linda Reinfeld Rochester, NY ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 09:33:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: POETICS Programs In-Reply-To: <199807310514.XAA07300@cor.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The /AWP Guide/ does indeed list those things, but precious few PhD programs, many more MA/MFA--and one does have to do a good bit of reading between the lines to determine what congenial or gnarly attributes each program "really" has. (North Dakota? I thought the former Marjorie Pepper lived in Tie Siding, Wyoming when not in Iowa class, and I remember that only because I liked the name Tie Siding.) pls add me to the list of those interested--I am actively seeking a good phud program in which to turn an idee fixe into a dissertation. Gwyn McVay ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 09:43:16 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: crabby bull the insipid artiness of the NY poets the vulgar elitism of the language poets the boring conventions of MFA programs the elite vulgarity of the beat poets the preppy blandness of the New Formalists the genteel neatness of the old formalists the good intentions of the new American poets the ego-noise of the slam poets the professional antics of professional poets the tribalism of the in-groups the identity crises of identity groups I don't fit into any of these groups I read Nabokov (in high school) & Mandelstam (in my 20s) just for relief - crabby bull ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:04:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS In-Reply-To: <35BD1905.42ADA7C8@bayarea.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks, Karen Kelley, for your reponse....Well, spilling it (or stripping it--since strippers are artists), I have many responses-- only some of which I can touch on here. One would be to ask you how YOU would represent what goes on in the mind of a stripper (or to direct me to work of yours that deals with this).... Another response would be to agree with you (up to a point): Let's say that--in the particular passages you quote--that Yau is probably closer to what men think women are than to the actuality of a woman who may strip her clothes but yet not "Spill it" (her mind). But, if you look at the entire book (in which there are a variety of female characters, some as "I" and some as "she"), or even if you look at this particular piece in question IN ITS ENTIRETY, you might find that at least Yau is self-conscious (and meta) enough to admit this possibility (even the choice of title of the book, MY SYMPTOMS, calls attention to the possibility that the female speaker is a "masked male" etc... (a la Shakespeare).... I wonder if women who represent male characters in ways that might seem "stereotypical" or "derogatory" (or "positively" even) have the same problem (I'm not saying that I don't like reading such writing by the way: I learn much from it). Certainly not every woman writer is as extreme as Jane Austen who never had a scene in which two male characters appear without any women in the the scene (because she only wrote "what she knew"), nor am I suggesting they should do so.... I don't know enough about how dancers are "stereotyped" to comment on whether Yau is, in fact, doing it. In my experience (admittedly little) with strippers, the "stereotype about strippers" is "we only do it for the money. We get little or no intrinsic thrill out of exhibitionism, and we certainly see it more as humiliation than as any kind of 'grrrl power' over men." And in this particular story (which is good, but not--in my opinion, one of the best pieces in MY SYMPTOMS--I say this by way of "sales pitch" I guess), Yau goes very much against THAT stereotype, and yet elsewhere in MY SYMPTOMS he sympathetically portrays a woman who "had been a model, it was her boyfriend's idea. He brought her to New York when she was 17 and finally pushed her up the stairs the agency, even though she had been crying non-stop for two days."(120). So, I think we see a range here of attitudes towards female exhibitionism rather than an AGENDA proferring "proper" female roles. And if both these characters-- taken alone--may run the risk of becoming "stereotypes," I believe that by offering a range, these "stereotypes" cancel each other out (again, like Shakespeare presenting both a Beatrice and a Hero in the same play for instance--so the "truth" can be somewhere "in between" for a wider range of readers...)... Besides, you take OUT OF CONTEXT a few quotes that all occur near the beginning (in the first 2 pages) of an 8 page story. In "Butcher, Baker..." the woman is only a stripper for the first two pages. Later on, the woman character, an EX-stripper, single-mother, is expressing her attraction to firemen, and raises all these doubts about her motivations: "i don't know why I have this thing about firemen, but I do...maybe it's because I think in metaphors and I should learn to think some other way..." (Yau himself a metaphorical thinker, going against the traditional anti-metaphorical prejudice that linked metaphor and women, in Locke, in Renaissance Rhetoricians like Puttenham, etc., though nowadays some claim it's a feminist argument to argue AGAINST metaphor....blah blah). Now, I see what happens here as an inversion of an "archetypal" stereotype here....the traditional linkage of women with water and men with fire (as in LYSISTRATA, another man putting words in the mouth of a woman, or in Jagger's "She's So Cold" for instance) and then, and I think this also goes beyond stereotype, the female character starts expressing a desire for a FIREWOMAN. There's both an unstereotypical lesbian dimension here, as well a desire on the character's part to BECOME a firewoman ("a woman who fights fires. They have to give her her due and treat her like a man. She's on the line with them..."), so this woman character tries on quite a few "non-traditional" roles in the course of this piece. This piece is --on one level--about whether identity is contingent not only on gender (or sex), but also one ones choice of profession (a la Harryman). And I am curious what you, Karen kelley, have to say about this (though I do not grant Mark Weiss the authority I grant you in this matter, since I am more suspicious of a male judging another male as sexist,) and I have more to say on this (but will save it for the longish essay I want to write on this book--if I can find a publisher who will make room for my logorrhea), but wanted to express some of these points here in this forum, in the interest of dialogue.... Again, thanks, for responding....... Chris Stroffolino On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: > Hi Chris, > > Good call: it IS "Butcher, Baker..." > > "I'm a dancer who makes men spin in their graves, gets them to yell 'bay bee,' > whisper 'gosh' and 'honey,' and dream of 'whoopee.'" > > "Fate got warm with me, dealt me a flush. So I'm packaged right for the job. I have > an easygoing, cornstalk smile; I'm tall and tilted just enough so short guys don't > have to crane their little necks and hurt themselves. I can crouch and rise smooth as > a wave. Twist and twirl until their brains turn to jellyfish bobbing in a beer > bottle." > > "Early on I learned that men like to be swatted a little if you do it right and put > on your girl-next-door smile while shaking your assets just beyond reach. I had tits > and a smile that gave men cramps." > > This seems *extraordinarily* off-base as a representation of what a woman might think > when contemplating male reaction to her body. Admittedly I am *one* woman among many. > But I wonder if perhaps Yau isn't closer to what *men* *think* women think. > > When I first read the piece I felt guilty about finding it an amusing read when it > was so clearly a man's idea of a woman's feelings. And as someone who's held the same > job as the narrator, I'm aware of how routinely dancers are stereotyped. > > It sounds like you felt differently about the piece, Chris. C'mon, spill it. > > Karen > > > louis stroffolino wrote: > > > Dave Baratier asks what "cross-gendered identification" is. > > I guess I just meant the term simply (if loosely) to mean > > when someone of one gender and/or sex adopts or takes on > > the voice of someone of another gender and/or sex.... > > I didn't say that YAU was NEW for doing that.... > > but then "make it new" has never been much of a standard for me > > (see Mike Magee's intro to his mag COMBO for a view I largely share) > > > > Karen Kelley. COuld you tell me which particular piece of Yau's was > > in First Intensity? My hunch is you're talking about a piece called > > BUTCHER, BAKER, or CANDLESTICK MAKER, but I'd like to know more > > specifically before I respond....Because I'm curious about what > > you mean by "stereotypical" and why you think the piece you read is > > so..... > > Thanks, chris stroffolino > > > > On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: > > > > > I recently read something of Yau's in a mag--was it First Intensity? I'm > > > sorry--I can't recall, but it was perhaps from the new book & was the narrative > > > of a stripper & I found it rather disturbing in that the narrator was kind of > > > dumb & angry & thought highly of her breasts (no prob with that in & of itself) > > > & little of men in general--she was kind of a jaded line drawing of a > > > woman--with the interior monolog of a stereotype, which I suppose is okay, > > > though as this thread goes to show, the whole male/female or masc/fem question > > > is much more complex than Yau's piece implied, and I guess I just felt annoyed > > > that he was willing to throw another stereotype my way. > > > > > > > > > > > > louis stroffolino wrote: > > > > > > > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? > > > > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" > > > > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, > > > > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as > > > > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages > > > > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does > > > > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" > > > > and negotiating the representational anxieties that > > > > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... > > > > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... > > > > chris stroffolino > > > > > > > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > > > > > > > > > Rah rah. > > > > > > > > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > > > > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > > > > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > > > > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > > > > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > > > > > > > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > > > > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > > > > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > > > > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > > > > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > > > > > patriarchal biases. > > > > > > > > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > > > > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > > > > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > > > > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > > > > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > > > > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > > > > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > > > > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > > > > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > > > > > > > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > > > > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > > > > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > > > > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > > > > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > > > > > > > > > Todd's comeback: > > > > > > > > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > > > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > > > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > > > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > > > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > > > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > > > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > > > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > > > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > > > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > > > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > > > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > > > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > > > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > > > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > > > > > > > > > never impersonal. > > > > > > > > > > > > Tb > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:14:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Question of a "good war" In-Reply-To: <19987317336626962@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks Ron Silliman--I didn't mean to "make light" of it either with my reference to Lowell.... I am definitely aware of speaking as one who was "socialized" by a vietnam-era anti-war attitude..... yet to what extent america helped create (fertile ground for) Hitler (humiliation of germany after ww1,"our own" fledgling imperial desires, the support then given germany as against communism, etc. etc.) would probably need to be addressed-- (and by one with the pull of spielberg!) ........cs On Fri, 31 Jul 1998 rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > I would never make light of the decision to participate in WW2. I don't think > that stopping Hitler was optional. > > But having seen the photos my own father took in Nagasaki one month after the > bombing there (though never having spoken with him about this), > > And thinking not just of Lowell, but of Creeley choosing to drive an ambulance > in Burma, and of Whalen, Rexroth and others in the C.O. camp in Oregon, it > certainly does seem that it was possible to step back and decide, for > perfectly good reason, to say no. None of these people (not even Lowell) was > an idiot. > > Ron Silliman > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:37:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. In-Reply-To: <35C15097.28A1@worldnet.att.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Kathy Lou Schultz wrote: > This may just be my beef, but I get a little annoyed with anyone who has > an MFA, MA, PHd in poetry (of whatever version) claiming to be "outside > the academy." I, for one, believe this is a dated notion that no longer > applies. Experimental writers ARE in the "academy." Susan Howe at > Buffalo, Nathaniel Mackey at Santa Cruz, Myung Mi Kim at San Francisco > State, Bob Perelman at U Penn, and etc. and etc. > Er, who precisely makes this claim, who has a degree?? any of these folks (Howe, Mackey, etc...?) They do indeed teach, and i don't know as i have ever heard/read any of 'em claim to be "outside the academy"... Of course, some of us are, in many important senses. (OK i am clerical support-staff at a university, but like most support-staff, i'm way outside the academics that go on there..This just for clarification..Since i have no graduate degrees i realize the above couldn't have been aimed at me, even if you knew me from adam, which i suspect you don't...) Whence this little tirade?? mark @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 10:45:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: anglo-american literary relations In-Reply-To: <9204278a.35c1767c@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Douglas Oliver wrote: > > "Other", as I fondly call it, has already been cited on the Buffalo list: I'd > like to re-emphasise that it's the first anthology of British and Irish > experimental writing to be published in the States for decades. The No!! The Potes & Poets anthology Floating Capital : New Poets from London (1991) is superb. And there was a special fat issue of New American Writing, which (despite the mag's title) was a similar anthology of non-mainstream Brits. It isn't in my humble opinion as good as Floating Capital, but it is good. (Came out 1989-1992, somewhere in there...) mark prejsnar @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 19:32:17 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kathy Lou Schultz wrote: > > This may just be my beef, but I get a little annoyed with anyone who has > an MFA, MA, PHd in poetry (of whatever version) claiming to be "outside > the academy." I, for one, believe this is a dated notion that no longer > applies. Experimental writers ARE in the "academy." Susan Howe at > Buffalo, Nathaniel Mackey at Santa Cruz, Myung Mi Kim at San Francisco > State, Bob Perelman at U Penn, and etc. and etc. > > So you wanna be in the "academy"? Can't say that I would necessary > "recommend" San Francisco State University's MFA (having gotten it > myself) but it's worth checking out for those who want the > degree/experience. Besides the aforementioned Myung, Bob Gluck is a new > tenure track professor there starting this fall (after having taught > part-time for eons, but that's another story, actually not, it has to do > with opposing political forces in the dept.). Aaron Shurin has taught > part-time for quite a while also. And Maxine Chernoff is a good new > leadership force as chair of the dept. (We couldda used her while I was > there!) > well--I hold an MA in Poetics--have taught at the Community College level--and at the Otis Art Institutte--then made a shift to middle school (7th grade) and certainly am "outside" both the academy and much else. It is possible to hold those degrees and not join up. I would add, too, that "outside" don't mean much--BUT--that often the "academy" has focused on poets and poetics that don't address what is being read or written by "innovative" (er, experimental?) er--poets. Todd Baron (ReMap) ps: odd to say, but even at an Art school--Williams was news, Olson was a shock, Dickinson scared them--and Ashbery, O'Hara, Spicer--Hejinian, Scalapino--etc...were all revelations--and I was one of 5 teachers who focused on literature and poetry! I have friends who teach inside the "academy walls"--and they do amazing work--but each and everyone say it is a struggle to persuade dept. heads to change coursework..to have readings..to get work done that follows the course of late-20th century poetics! Imagine that problem in an art dept.! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 19:44:44 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: toddbaron Subject: PS: THE LAW MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit KATHY: ps: one reason--to be addressed I hope--that many of the poets you mention are inside the academy--is work. Plain and simple. I know they are great teachers--but boy did they spend years fighting to get in--and they/we all need the damn steadiness of the work. I chose to teach Middle School becauseI love kids--and the steady check--my summers off simply allow me to remind myself how much joy there is in the serios work of a poet--but that--hereabouts--frightens my 40 year old mind and body--and no-one I know who writes can really afford not to work at all. Tho--of course--there are some--and they teach out of the joy and conflict teaching allows. What would happen tho if all these poets--if all these writers--had the choice to collect their checks and not teach? Many would stay where they are--they are often doing the amazing work of keeping students readings and thinking! The academy ain't evil--but it does have an evil face! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 09:36:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: creeley and WW2; s. howe, writings about Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron, Creeley, with only one eye, would not have qualified for the army. I believe he joined the ambulance corps as the next best thing he could do to take part in the war. Your list today seems to lump him together with C.O.s. For those who want to read about Susan Howe, I'd like to add to Peter Quartermain's list my own article, published in Magill's Literary Ecnyclopedia, which category and issue I dont now recall, but there'll be an index. Vtw, speaking of Silliman and Literary Ebcyclopediae, Volume 29 of the Gale Research Autobiography Series has a wonderful piece done by Ron, in a volume that also contains good articles by Ann Ericksaon and Gerald Rosen and Stephen Sandy. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 19:43:03 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Shoptaw III MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for many helpful backchannel tips on what poets have used prosodic measures such as the charecter, word, phrase, etc. But again, I ws hoping to hear about _critical/ theoretical_ texts in which such measures are introduced/ used/ discussed. Or where prosody or the poem's soundscape is discussed in terms of syntax, grammar, instead of meter or phonology. :: Reading John Shoptaw's "The Music of Construction - Measure and Polyphony :: in Ashbery and Bernstein" (in The Tribe of John) I'm just wondering who :: else has used these units of prosodic measurement - character, word, :: line, phrase, sentence, section. I'm aware of Silliman's use of :: sentence but not much else. Fred Hertzberg ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:02:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII years ago, when susan howe was at temple, she accussed a certain poet (i mean 'dismissed' a certain poet--who will remain nameless--) as an "academic".... i don't know if she still does this, and i certainly don't hold it against her (she wasn't as far "in" the academy then as now), but it did resonate strongly with some fellow students of mine.... anyway, just to answer.....cs On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, Kathy Lou Schultz wrote: > > > This may just be my beef, but I get a little annoyed with anyone who has > > an MFA, MA, PHd in poetry (of whatever version) claiming to be "outside > > the academy." I, for one, believe this is a dated notion that no longer > > applies. Experimental writers ARE in the "academy." Susan Howe at > > Buffalo, Nathaniel Mackey at Santa Cruz, Myung Mi Kim at San Francisco > > State, Bob Perelman at U Penn, and etc. and etc. > > > > > Er, who precisely makes this claim, who has a degree?? any of these folks > (Howe, Mackey, etc...?) They do indeed teach, and i don't know as i have > ever heard/read any of 'em claim to be "outside the academy"... > > Of course, some of us are, in many important senses. (OK i am clerical > support-staff at a university, but like most support-staff, i'm way > outside the academics that go on there..This just for clarification..Since > i have no graduate degrees i realize the above couldn't have been aimed at > me, even if you knew me from adam, which i suspect you don't...) > > Whence this little tirade?? > > mark > @lanta > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:44:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. Comments: To: toddbaron In-Reply-To: <35C21BC1.6FFD@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, toddbaron wrote: > > ps: odd to say, but even at an Art school--Williams was news, Olson was > a shock, Dickinson scared them--and Ashbery, O'Hara, Spicer--Hejinian, > Scalapino--etc...were all revelations--and I was one of 5 teachers who > focused on literature and poetry! I have friends who teach inside the > "academy walls"--and they do amazing work--but each and everyone say it > is a struggle to persuade dept. heads to change coursework..to have > readings..to get work done that follows the course of late-20th century > poetics! Imagine that problem in an art dept.! > This is germane to the interesting reflections by Bruce Andrews (somewhere in Paradise and Method), about the disparity he found, in the mid-, late-sixties, when starting out as a poet, between how much modernism "the establishment" accepted and understood in classical music, painting, dance, film, jazz, etc. and how much modernism was accepted or understood in the world of poetry (i.e., zilch). Leading him to look to other arts primarily for contemporary inspiration and example... mark p. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:47:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Byrd Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:02 PM 7/31/1998 -0400, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > years ago, when susan howe was at temple, she accussed a > certain poet (i mean 'dismissed' a certain poet--who will > remain nameless--) as an "academic".... > i don't know if she still does this, and i certainly > don't hold it against her (she wasn't as far "in" > the academy then as now), but it did resonate strongly > with some fellow students of mine.... > anyway, just to answer.....cs Being an "academic poet" has little to do with having an academic address and the notion of an academic art arose long before poets were notably teaching in universities. In "Composition as Explanation" (1926), Gertrude Stein wrote: "Lord Grey remarked that when the generals before the war talked about the war they talked about it as a nineteenth-century war although to be fought with twenieth-century weapons. That is because war is a thing that decides how it is to be done when it is to be done. It is prepared and to that degree IT IS LIKE ALL ACADEMIES it is not a thing made it is a thing prepared.Writing and painting and all that, for those who occupy themselves with it and don't make it as it is made." In some sense most poetry and art are academic; it has nothing to do with whether its can be stylistically identified as "avant-garde" or "traditional." The Workshops at St. Mark's may in this sense be as academic as the Iowa Writer's Workshop. db db ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:00:24 +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: Poetics programs, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT i feel even slightly so silly saying this but "being an academic" is more a frame of mind than a matter of degrees. Sometimes I sigh and say "so I'm an academic poet" (MFA, forthcoming PhD) -- but I absolutely AM NOT. "Academic" rings to me of "New Critical" -- viewing a certain set or relations between the establishement and poetry (establishment -- academic journals, first book prizes, homage to Laureate type gods and goddesses -- that whole rap). Perhaps todd hit it on the head: > It is possible to hold those degrees and not join up. I would add, > too, that "outside" don't mean much--BUT--that often the "academy" has > focused on poets and poetics that don't address what is being read or > written by "innovative" (er, experimental?) er--poets. The Question to Ask Now is: has bringing "innovative" poetics, poets and poetries into the academy -- _taking_ the there (and off the streets?) -- MADE them academic/exclusive/closed/deadened them somehow? I wonder what people think? Personally, it's made it a possibility -- though I had to sit out many years with Academic academics until I got wind of the innovative ones -- but that now has changed; many "entering" the academy -- undergrads thinking of going on, as recent postings in this thread prove, know what's there. > Kathy Lou Schultz wrote: > > > > This may just be my beef, but I get a little annoyed with anyone > > who has an MFA, MA, PHd in poetry (of whatever version) claiming > > to be "outside the academy." I, for one, believe this is a dated > > notion that no longer applies. Experimental writers ARE in the > > "academy." Susan Howe at Buffalo, Nathaniel Mackey at Santa Cruz, > > Myung Mi Kim at San Francisco State, Bob Perelman at U Penn, and > > etc. and etc. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:50:44 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maryrose Larkin Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I do not wish to get involved with the inside/outside the academy argument, but I can say that, for me, getting an MFA was invaluable. I received my degree from Bard College. At the time of my application, I had lived in a small (>10,000) town in upstate New York for over ten years. I applied to Bard because a) I knew where it was and b) I respected Robert Kelly. I wanted to go to school, any school, because I was desperately sick of my own writing and my own ignorance, and did not know how to fix either one. At Bard, I got to work with some really wonderful people. At first, they just gave me a lot to read, which was mind blowing. It was beyond imaging what poetry could do. It blew the top of my head off. Then they started taking my writing apart, which was wonderful too. I learn to think about writing in a new way, and to acknowledge its enormity. I have no idea why they admitted me to Bard. My writing was terrible and I knew nothing. I do know that most of the people who go through that particular MFA program feel their writing improves, no matter where they started. Of the people I keep track of, one is working in a liquor store, one lives in New Orleans, one is a literacy coordinator & one lives at home. None of them are employed as teachers. They are all still writing. If anything, getting an MFA has decreased my chances for material success in this world. When I go on job interviews, people either think I am overqualified or under qualified. While I was going to school, a lot of people asked me what I was going to do with this degree, and I said that one doesn't necessary do anything with it. One might become a better writer. A while back, there was a comment that people should use the money they spend on school and go live in New York or San Francisco instead. In some ways, that is true. I would have had a lot more exposure to different writings and individuals. I am a very shy person (for example, I have been on this list for over 2 years, and this is my second post, I think). I don't think I would have been able to talk to people about writing from just living in a city. It is possible now that I might be able to live in a city and talk to strangers, but I couldn't then. For me, meeting other people who really cared about writing, having a mixed community of peers and teachers, having my writing improve and having poetry and poetics become so much larger was well worth the cost of admission. Maryrose Larkin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:00:29 -0400 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. In-Reply-To: <199807311746.NAA05457@mail-atm.nycap.rr.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think your reflections on this are highly interesting, Don...But i don't believe Kathy's original point, or what most of us have been saying, is about people being "academic poets." Rather it's about a *socioideological location* Being an academic poet is another matter. While Bob Gruman (inventor of "acadominant" as a label for langpots) and other will disagree, i consider the *work* of Howe and Perelman and our distinguished ListHoncho to be about as far from "academic poetry" as any i've ever seen. But they are the ones who've (correctly) been enumerated as otherstream poets teaching in the academy...Now Chris has also pointed out, in response to my challenge, that some of 'em are (or have been) capable of dismissing other poets as "academics.." Which i agree is very interesting and enlightening indeed... mp On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Don Byrd wrote: > At 01:02 PM 7/31/1998 -0400, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > > years ago, when susan howe was at temple, she accussed a > > certain poet (i mean 'dismissed' a certain poet--who will > > remain nameless--) as an "academic".... > > i don't know if she still does this, and i certainly > > don't hold it against her (she wasn't as far "in" > > the academy then as now), but it did resonate strongly > > with some fellow students of mine.... > > anyway, just to answer.....cs > > > Being an "academic poet" has little to do with having an > academic address and the notion of an academic art arose long > before poets were notably teaching in universities. > > In "Composition as Explanation" (1926), Gertrude Stein wrote: > > "Lord Grey remarked that when the generals before the war talked > about the war they talked about it as a nineteenth-century war > although to be fought with twenieth-century weapons. That is > because war is a thing that decides how it is to be done when it > is to be done. It is prepared and to that degree IT IS LIKE ALL > ACADEMIES it is not a thing made it is a thing prepared.Writing > and painting and all that, for those who occupy themselves > with it and don't make it as it is made." > > In some sense most poetry and art are academic; it has nothing to > do with whether its can be stylistically identified as "avant-garde" > or "traditional." The Workshops at St. Mark's may in this sense be > as academic as the Iowa Writer's Workshop. > > db > > > db > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:01:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Groovy Stein Collaborator on "Academic" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "I call them academic because I think the composer's interest in the musical devices he was employing was greater than his effort toward a direct ... expression of anything in particular." --Virgil Thompson Also, my Nordic American e-friend Erik "Ice" Belgum sent me the paragraph which follows. Anyone have any responses they'd like to backchanel? --Gary I'm working out a new theory about the jacket design of New Directions books. Basically, I'm claiming that they are designed to look like they already smell like cigarette smoke. That way when they do smell that way, after years of reading while smoking, no one is surprised. A corollary of this theory then is that smokers buy more New Directions books than non-smokers and that's why Laughlin designed them this way. Did Laughlin smoke? (As if I didn't know!) Your thoughts... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:08:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: My Definition of Academic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Arguing about the word/status "academic." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 11:47:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christine Palma Subject: Your contact information, please. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello Friends, Because of a SCSI termination problem I've lost all of the files on my computer. Among other things - my eudora folder with various saved e-mail from over the past four years, all of my e-mail addresses, and it also zapped my regular address book. Data recovery attempts have failed. I don't have a hard copy of anything and I didn't back up... Yes, I was cocky to think it wouldn't happen to me, and even I don't feel sorry for myself. Today a friend reinstalled a bunch of apps to get me up and running. All I can think about right now is that I would sure like to rebuild my address book and e-mail list. If you gave me your contact info in the past, please send it again. Sorry for this form letter (I am sending it to my various lists), but it seems like the most efficient way to ask. *name/nickname* *e-mail* *phone number* *mailing address* *date of birth* I'm sad :-(, Christine ............................... Christine Palma KXLU Los Angeles - 88.9 FM "Echo in the Sense" Countemporary Writers, Artists, and Performers. Saturday Evenings, 8 to 9 PM take a step into the sublime... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 12:14:39 -0700 Reply-To: Robert Corbett Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Corbett Subject: Re: anglo/amer yeatspound In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry- Aren't there more than two side? Where are the sides exactly? Are they the sides of the same coin. I would ask ask who side you are on, but I know which one. Modernism/Postmodernism are not "trends" -- they are the air we breathe. Anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight. I don't know about Mandelstam, but Nabokov would be unreadable before modernism, counting our interest in the abject and the hyperironic. Of course, some of us find him unreadable anyway. And he was a crank so perhaps there is yet another side to join. Robert Purveyor of Poetry Siding On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, henry wrote: > On Fri, 31 Jul 1998 00:24:28 -0500 trbell said: > >Henry, > > > > Thought-provoking thesis, but I'm not sure how there can be disjunction > >without synthesis and vice-versa > > > > or maybe verse-vica squad: > > > > _Lettre-Ocean_ > > QQQQQQQQQQ > > Q Q > > Q Q > > Q Q Q Q > > Q Q ---> Q Q Q > > Q Q Q Q Q > > Q Q <--- Q Q Q > > Q Q Q > > > > > >there would then be two sides to one coin? > > Absolutely right, Tom. I'm just reminding the list that there ARE 2 sides. > - Henry > Robert Corbett "you are there beyond/ tracings flesh can rcor@u.washington.edu take,/ and farther away surrounding and University of Washington informing the systems" - A.R. Ammons ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:17:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Huranku Ohara MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Frank O'Hara also has some disciples in Japan, I believe: I am not a sushi-chef, I am a noodle maker, why? I think I would rather be a sushi-chef, but I am not. For example, I go to my friend's restaurant, he is making some nori, there is a sardine in it. "Ano, sono sakana ga nan-desuka?" I ask him. It needed something there, he explained. But I, I am a noodle maker... With greatest apologies, Jonathan Mayhew, academic poet Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:22:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Enigmatic Listmember on "Academic" In-Reply-To: <01BDBC8B.B5EBD6D0@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Gary Sullivan wrote: > "I call them academic because I think the composer's interest in the musical > devices he was employing was greater than his effort toward a direct ... > expression of anything in particular." --Virgil Thompson > Hmmmmmm...GS seems to be more interested in the device he's employing (the pithy but accusatory quote) than in direct expression of anthing in particular (..such as, who he thinks Thompson's groovy dictum referes to, among poets).... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:13:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: VACATION! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm off for two weeks, everyone! Yay! Now, I know full well I owe at least a couple people on this list responses, readings, e-mails & god knows what else, I hope not money. Soon! I swear! Whatever it is! It's yours! I'm just too exhuasted! To deal! Now! Anyway. Anyone who has any "must have Gary's attention" needs (or if you just wanna chat endlessly about afro-cuban music or Chantal Akerman's underarms [as seen in je tu il elle]) may please-to-dial (718) 965-1285 or write me write me write me Gary Sullivan, 331 - 13th Street, #4L, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Also, I don't mean to use this list to, like, "score drugs" or anything, but ... especially please-to-call me if you ... how can I say this ... & make it PoeticsList relevant? ... oh, okay, I have a question for everyone was it laudanum or opium that coleridge used? ... personally, I've always preferred XTC ... (wink, wink) ... cough ... cough-cough ... "nonsense filter"?!? ... puh-LEEZE ... when I git back I wanna see 4,000 derisive posts arguing for & against an "esperanto para poesia!" ciao for niao, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:36:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Yeatpound MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I read Yeats now as a sort of bizarre oddball, rather than as a high-modernist, an official role that sort of trapped him. In "a prayer for old age" he wanted to eschew respectability in favor of madness. Is Yeatsianism played out? Yes, to the extent he is identified with a particular sort of aesthetic conservatism that has passed its prime. No, if we read him somewhat differently. I love parts of Yeats and would not oppose him to Pound completely. There are more than two sides--modernism is more like a twelve or thirteen sided figure. To paraprhase Perloff, Pound/Stevens/Stein/Yeats/Williams/Maiakovsky/Vallejo... whose period? Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 15:32:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Latta Subject: Re: My Definition of Academic In-Reply-To: <01BDBC8C.B27BE7F0@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Exactly. What I notice is how academics of all stripes (like prisoners of yore) must needs scramble always to the margins, those now fashionable outposts. Those everywhere in the thickest of the thick of it claiming they ain't. Reminds me of Walker Percy's image of the man on the crosstown bus reading about alienation: he ain't no way so alienated as the alienated man who can't even conceive of reading about alienation. For the record: solidly clerical (library); MFA (mainstream); PhD (on the edge of the backwash or, switching metaphors, neglected sibling to one of the big poetics programs). I have taken to identifying with Akaky Akakievich, academically so. We're all academics. (Echo of Mai 68.) John Latta On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Gary Sullivan wrote: > Arguing about the word/status "academic." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:42:56 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: anglo-american literary relations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Any suggestions for more > contact, more mutual spreading of knowledge? My only suggestion is the obvious: get your hands on the British and Irish books. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done from this side of the Atlantic. The best way to get the Irish "buried experiment" is through Billy Mills' latest catalog, available at this address: Alternative Irish Poetries Distribution List c/o Billy Mills 37 Grosvenor Court Templeville Road Dublin 6W Eire If you just can't wait a minute longer, call: 353 1 456 3112 Loads of good stuff, from the 30s to last week. Bob Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:10:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: John Yau's MY SYMPTOMS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi Chris, It's true, I've not read all of _My Symptoms_, and I didn't at all mean to dismiss the book. The idea of the title suggesting a masked male is quite interesting. You also note: "This piece is--on one level--about whether identity is contingent not only on gender (or sex), but also on one's choice of profession." We all choose & choose not to buy into our socially constructed gender identities, and choose & choose not to buy into our identities as contingent upon our professions. I've done/been lots of things, but try not to get too attached: overidentifying myself as a *poet* is as irritating to me as overidentifying myself as an ex-stripper. Interestingly, though, the stripper portion of my experience, which took up only 2 years of my 40, is the one that people focus on most & draw the largest number of conclusions about. The fact that I taught adult ed during that same time is, apparently, neither here nor there. The fact that I was a dancer is a strange demerit mark, dark & irreversible. I got a tattoo when I was 17: back then, it was viewed by peers & parents as something irrevocable, signifying wantonness (esp. for a woman) & transgression. Getting a bachelors degree during that time, by contrast, was socially transparent. It was okay for me to be college-educated, and it even faded the intensity of the tattoo. Now, of course, tattoos come & go with the swipe of a laser & are even trendy, so the tattoo has turned into something else again. Dancing, while *in part* a survival move in the transition from housewife to divorced single-parent-with-no-child-support & degrees in sculpture & writing (contemplate *that* earning power), was also a fascinating experience in what I could absorb identity-wise. I suspect it is something that will *not* fade socially, as the tattoo did. It's an experience I still haven't fully digested, and perhaps will never be able to, but I am reluctant to over-intellectualize it, because I don't want to tidily categorize my own experience. I've written about dancing once, as portion of a larger poem & include it (since our subject *is* , after all, immodesty): _That’s me, displaying._ movable dream lab. inside the lid: something long buried: subdued light, carpeted floors, stairs, bird beak, a couch of some kind, forgotten books, stones, dirt, water, beautiful illegible scribbles, voices down the hall narrating as if a whole new continent I have been listening to all my life passing under the roof of my mouth, inwards. _during her time on stage green envelops her, at other times other hues, notably deep blue._ wedding rings and husbands and wives rise urgently, sometimes turning into a cry. _I work with a small stash of movements and gestures, the meaning of which is fluid._ there are several other styles of walking which accentuate gait or pace. a suggestive movement pierces through the relatively smooth surface. at this moment she is low on the ground. the deceptive nature of the dance glides slowly towards shape—is it an arm or wing?--that comes down from the ceiling and fits into her chest. the shape now appears to be one hand pointing downward to great advantage when she takes off an article of clothing in front of spectators. the actions of dressing and undressing are far from natural, a facet of the teasing process—now you see me, now you don’t. just before the show ends and you think you might have got it, the beautiful dress has come off some time before. I am alone. Vast views and the feeling of being forever and ever alone. My secret hiding places are woven around my body, shortcuts known only to me when I sink upon my knees. _Stiletto_—is that a curse, is that a whisper? Eyes, mouth, breasts, hips, hands. Nothing after that is denied me: birds freeze in midair and fall like stones to the ground. And widow’s weeds, bridal veils, bassinets, memorial wreaths, trousers, whiskers, wedding cakes, maps. My costume hides the fact, the great fact, the only fact. Faithless, fickle, whore, deceiver. Now I have the queerest sensation in my thighs. There’s washing and powdering and lies in my teeth like ghosts within me, a covey of swans, undulant and florid. Somehow I still don’t know how I do it. The men’s faces are a thin gauze rising and falling, turning like a slow arrow. _What’s in there?_ I have a variety of selves who have forgotten my name, as happens when one wishes to be nothing but one self. Corners of streets, bowls, bodies, windows and apples travel the immensely long tunnel of real things. Pictures should somehow be suspended between you and me, between the spectator and the dancer, equidistant from both. This promise is a glass of wine, an arm, it changes, it shapes itself differently, the one I need most keeps aloof, I fling after my name a little breath of crying and dancing. I see it falling and there it is, alone on the stage as if my life does in fact run or hurry before me, picking out one particular thing, the thing that matters, is it good, is it bad, is it right or wrong? _I have looked upon the aesthetic as the ethical._ I waver about in an air of secrecy. The heels make my weight fall in different directions, the looks over my shoulder help to stabilize my position. How nice it would be to marry a man—oh no, that idea someone else invented, raising her hand to her brow—it is not so. Instead of saying anything I turn, holding my stocking, and look at you. louis stroffolino wrote: > Thanks, Karen Kelley, for your reponse....Well, spilling it (or > stripping it--since strippers are artists), I have many responses-- > only some of which I can touch on here. One would be to ask you how > YOU would represent what goes on in the mind of a stripper (or > to direct me to work of yours that deals with this).... > Another response would be to agree with you (up to a point): > Let's say that--in the particular passages you quote--that Yau > is probably closer to what men think women are than to the > actuality of a woman who may strip her clothes but yet not > "Spill it" (her mind). But, if you look at the entire book > (in which there are a variety of female characters, some as "I" > and some as "she"), or even if you look at this particular piece > in question IN ITS ENTIRETY, you might find that at least Yau is > self-conscious (and meta) enough to admit this possibility (even > the choice of title of the book, MY SYMPTOMS, calls attention to > the possibility that the female speaker is a "masked male" etc... > (a la Shakespeare).... > I wonder if women who represent male characters in ways that might > seem "stereotypical" or "derogatory" (or "positively" even) have the > same problem (I'm not saying that I don't like reading such writing > by the way: I learn much from it). Certainly not every woman writer > is as extreme as Jane Austen who never had a scene in which two male > characters appear without any women in the the scene (because she > only wrote "what she knew"), nor am I suggesting they should do so.... > > I don't know enough about how dancers are "stereotyped" to comment > on whether Yau is, in fact, doing it. In my experience (admittedly > little) with strippers, the "stereotype about strippers" is "we only > do it for the money. We get little or no intrinsic thrill out of > exhibitionism, and we certainly see it more as humiliation than as > any kind of 'grrrl power' over men." And in this particular story > (which is good, but not--in my opinion, one of the best pieces in > MY SYMPTOMS--I say this by way of "sales pitch" I guess), Yau goes > very much against THAT stereotype, and yet elsewhere in MY SYMPTOMS > he sympathetically portrays a woman who "had been a model, it was > her boyfriend's idea. He brought her to New York when she was 17 > and finally pushed her up the stairs the agency, even though she had > been crying non-stop for two days."(120). So, I think we see a range > here of attitudes towards female exhibitionism rather than an AGENDA > proferring "proper" female roles. And if both these characters-- > taken alone--may run the risk of becoming "stereotypes," I believe > that by offering a range, these "stereotypes" cancel each other out > (again, like Shakespeare presenting both a Beatrice and a Hero in > the same play for instance--so the "truth" can be somewhere "in > between" for a wider range of readers...)... > > Besides, you take OUT OF CONTEXT a few quotes that all occur near > the beginning (in the first 2 pages) of an 8 page story. In "Butcher, > Baker..." the woman is only a stripper for the first two pages. Later > on, the woman character, an EX-stripper, single-mother, is expressing > her attraction to firemen, and raises all these doubts about her > motivations: "i don't know why I have this thing about firemen, but > I do...maybe it's because I think in metaphors and I should learn to > think some other way..." (Yau himself a metaphorical thinker, going > against the traditional anti-metaphorical prejudice that linked > metaphor and women, in Locke, in Renaissance Rhetoricians like > Puttenham, etc., though nowadays some claim it's a feminist argument > to argue AGAINST metaphor....blah blah). > Now, I see what happens here as an inversion of an "archetypal" > stereotype here....the traditional linkage of women with water > and men with fire (as in LYSISTRATA, another man putting words in > the mouth of a woman, or in Jagger's "She's So Cold" for instance) > and then, and I think this also goes beyond stereotype, the female > character starts expressing a desire for a FIREWOMAN. There's both > an unstereotypical lesbian dimension here, as well a desire on the > character's part to BECOME a firewoman ("a woman who fights fires. > They have to give her her due and treat her like a man. She's on > the line with them..."), > so this woman character tries on quite a few "non-traditional" roles > in the course of this piece. This piece is --on one level--about > whether identity is contingent not only on gender (or sex), but also > one ones choice of profession (a la Harryman). And I am curious what > you, Karen kelley, have to say about this (though I do not grant Mark > Weiss the authority I grant you in this matter, since I am more > suspicious of a male judging another male as sexist,) and I have more > to say on this (but will save it for the longish essay I want to > write on this book--if I can find a publisher who will make room > for my logorrhea), but wanted to express some of these points here > in this forum, in the interest of dialogue.... > Again, thanks, for responding....... > Chris Stroffolino > > On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: > > > Hi Chris, > > > > Good call: it IS "Butcher, Baker..." > > > > "I'm a dancer who makes men spin in their graves, gets them to yell 'bay bee,' > > whisper 'gosh' and 'honey,' and dream of 'whoopee.'" > > > > "Fate got warm with me, dealt me a flush. So I'm packaged right for the job. I have > > an easygoing, cornstalk smile; I'm tall and tilted just enough so short guys don't > > have to crane their little necks and hurt themselves. I can crouch and rise smooth as > > a wave. Twist and twirl until their brains turn to jellyfish bobbing in a beer > > bottle." > > > > "Early on I learned that men like to be swatted a little if you do it right and put > > on your girl-next-door smile while shaking your assets just beyond reach. I had tits > > and a smile that gave men cramps." > > > > This seems *extraordinarily* off-base as a representation of what a woman might think > > when contemplating male reaction to her body. Admittedly I am *one* woman among many. > > But I wonder if perhaps Yau isn't closer to what *men* *think* women think. > > > > When I first read the piece I felt guilty about finding it an amusing read when it > > was so clearly a man's idea of a woman's feelings. And as someone who's held the same > > job as the narrator, I'm aware of how routinely dancers are stereotyped. > > > > It sounds like you felt differently about the piece, Chris. C'mon, spill it. > > > > Karen > > > > > > louis stroffolino wrote: > > > > > Dave Baratier asks what "cross-gendered identification" is. > > > I guess I just meant the term simply (if loosely) to mean > > > when someone of one gender and/or sex adopts or takes on > > > the voice of someone of another gender and/or sex.... > > > I didn't say that YAU was NEW for doing that.... > > > but then "make it new" has never been much of a standard for me > > > (see Mike Magee's intro to his mag COMBO for a view I largely share) > > > > > > Karen Kelley. COuld you tell me which particular piece of Yau's was > > > in First Intensity? My hunch is you're talking about a piece called > > > BUTCHER, BAKER, or CANDLESTICK MAKER, but I'd like to know more > > > specifically before I respond....Because I'm curious about what > > > you mean by "stereotypical" and why you think the piece you read is > > > so..... > > > Thanks, chris stroffolino > > > > > > On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Karen Kelley wrote: > > > > > > > I recently read something of Yau's in a mag--was it First Intensity? I'm > > > > sorry--I can't recall, but it was perhaps from the new book & was the narrative > > > > of a stripper & I found it rather disturbing in that the narrator was kind of > > > > dumb & angry & thought highly of her breasts (no prob with that in & of itself) > > > > & little of men in general--she was kind of a jaded line drawing of a > > > > woman--with the interior monolog of a stereotype, which I suppose is okay, > > > > though as this thread goes to show, the whole male/female or masc/fem question > > > > is much more complex than Yau's piece implied, and I guess I just felt annoyed > > > > that he was willing to throw another stereotype my way. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > louis stroffolino wrote: > > > > > > > > > Has anybody here read Yau's new Black Sparrow book? > > > > > In it, there is much "cross-gendered identification" > > > > > that---though it is written by a male--seems to, er, > > > > > "rupture patriarchal discourse" and could serve as > > > > > a complement to, say, Carla Harryman who also engages > > > > > in "cross-gendered" identification. I think Yau does > > > > > a very good job at trying to speak AS woman "other" > > > > > and negotiating the representational anxieties that > > > > > might attend the "presumption" of such a task..... > > > > > but would be very interested to hear opposing views.... > > > > > chris stroffolino > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Linda Russo wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > Rah rah. > > > > > > > > > > > > I'm glad to see Safdie Joseph annoyed with the > > > > > > "position" that feminism had seemed to put Todd in (in reading the > > > > > > original post, before Todd's brilliant comeback) -- as > > > > > > an apologist. Elizabeth Treadwell makes the same point as well (though I > > > > > > have definite issues with Postfeminist Playground, for another post). > > > > > > > > > > > > I wish we could just do away with the gender essentialism which causes so > > > > > > many with physical bodies to feel they have to apologize for some > > > > > > appendage or other. I'm intrigued by the problems women (and other > > > > > > 'others') face in trying to enter the current the forums/debates etc. > > > > > > -- very material problems (as Woolf pointed out early on) rooted in > > > > > > patriarchal biases. > > > > > > > > > > > > But it's more fruitful to continue mucking things up, to keep getting > > > > > > more and more challenging writing published, to continue framing > > > > > > experiment as a rupture of "patriarchal laws" (Kristeva's argument; what > > > > > > Woolf recognized as "convention," what Bernstein has called "populist > > > > > > realism" etc) -- to recognized that oppression is at work, even that > > > > > > gender oppression is at work, but to quite calling the > > > > > > counter/re/active strategies "feminine"! or to call it feminine and stop > > > > > > stop linking this to (women's) biology! Or we all really do have the > > > > > > Anxiety of Influence -- we're all a bundle of nerves! > > > > > > > > > > > > Until we get some intelligent conversation going > > > > > > to reframe the issues (and reframe them for feminist literary scholarship) > > > > > > we're going to be beaten over the heads with said appendages. (Not that it > > > > > > isn't out there -- Judith Butler, for example -- But to what extent has it > > > > > > made its way into contemporary poetics discussions?) > > > > > > > > > > > > Todd's comeback: > > > > > > > > > > > > > being "stuck' has to do with our discussion of (bad spelling...er..) > > > > > > > gender roles and structures in poetics. If one is aware of a gender role > > > > > > > or gender model--then I believe on is "stuck" within the defintion and > > > > > > > confinement of terminology. I do not believe tho that one is punished or > > > > > > > "jailed" as in "stuck in prision..stuck in my room". The thing is that > > > > > > > "stuck" is structure--if one identifies patterns as either male or > > > > > > > female--but I agree with others when they notice that structures in > > > > > > > poetics are male--in that they derive from male poets and male > > > > > > > narratives--how else would the Epic, the sonnet, etc. have found their > > > > > > > way here--now--in their forms. Your Marxist response negates that > > > > > > > economics is gender and age (and race) based also. Very much so--are > > > > > > > structures of Marxism (poor ms. marx and his daughters) and Capitalist > > > > > > > Democracy/etc ("Free Market") based on a male pattern (baldness?) power > > > > > > > elite-thus yes economics determine us--BUT--those economics are not--are > > > > > > > not ---"impersonal economic forces..." -- > > > > > > > > > > > > > > never impersonal. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Tb > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:28:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: L Emerson Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. In-Reply-To: <199807311750.LAA26347@yoop.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, linda russo wrote: > The Question to Ask Now is: has bringing "innovative" poetics, poets > and poetries into the academy -- _taking_ the there (and off the > streets?) -- MADE them academic/exclusive/closed/deadened them > somehow? I wonder what people think? Personally, it's made it a > possibility -- though I had to sit out many years with Academic > academics until I got wind of the innovative ones -- but that now has > changed; many "entering" the academy -- undergrads thinking of > going on, as recent postings in this thread prove, know what's there. > Thankyou to all who have suggested programs, gives me something to think about. In response to Linda Russo's Question...I'm about to begin my MA in English this fall on Canadian sound poetry and I'm bursting at the seams with excitement--excitement to be finally done with what the academy considers necessary, which is (more often than not) "mainstream." It's not 'mainstreamedness' that I have minded, but the drab and absolutely deadening, unvital way in which the mainstream folk are approached. Fortunately, a little over halfway through my degree, with the help of a few great profs here, I _did_ catch wind of the more innovative poets and from then on studying and aspiring within an academic environment has become a joy. Flakey-sounding perhaps, but I think what I think _now_ is that yes, the mainstreamed folk cherished by the academy have been _ made_ dead by the normal academic machinery (which is why, as my sessional friends teaching English 101 tell me, when given the choice to skip the poetry unit altogether most happily vote to do so); so given that they were all, at one time, as innovative and "on the street" (?) as the innovators of today, how have I had such good luck? Maybe it's not only the rigid way in which institutions have in the past approached poetry, but the poetry itself was well-suited to being studied in an institutional setting (I'm thinking of Eliot--is this unfair of me?). SO, maybe all this is to say that it's the rigidity of institutions that makes them yucky and that does violence to the vital elasticity of a lot of great art/poetry; and since--as far as I know!--I'm "inside" academia and been able to have enough room to do explore the margins, maybe the academic environment is becoming more conducive to the study of innovative poetry/poetics and more flexible in its ranges of possible approaches. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 16:41:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Zinc Bar Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Special NY appearance: MICHAEL TURNER JUDY RADUL Zinc Bar, Sunday August 2nd {1998} 6:30 pm / 90 West Houston St. (just west of Laguardia Place) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:03:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Poetix programs/my little tirade MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Oh, my little tirade, I remember it well. . . I was thinking about the fact that I no longer think it's historically accurate to say that "experimental" poetry, or language poetry for that matter, is a project "opposed" to the academy. It is opposed to traditional/conservative forces within the academy that have dug their heals in, ready to defend what(?) their position, what they see as a (their) "tradition." But most often those folks are ahistorical themselves, not understanding the longstanding traditions of what is called "experiment." I weathered vicious "poetry wars" while a grad student at San Francisco State, so am particularly aware of these factions. My point came up in the context of someone (Todd B.?) recommending grad programs and then saying that these were "outside of the academy" and this just does not make sense. Certain programs may embrace more radicalizing traditions, but that doesn't make them "outside" the "academy." I agree with this point: Mark Prejsnar wrote: I think your reflections on this are highly interesting, Don...But i don't believe Kathy's original point, or what most of us have been saying, is about people being "academic poets." Rather it's about a *socioideological location* Being an academic poet is another matter. And find this interesting: John Latta wrote: Exactly. What I notice is how academics of all stripes (like prisoners of yore) must needs scramble always to the margins, those now fashionable outposts. Those everywhere in the thickest of the thick of it claiming they ain't. Thanks all. Kathy Lou ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 17:11:58 -0400 Reply-To: mgk3k@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matt Kirschenbaum Subject: Re: My Definition of Academic In-Reply-To: from "John Latta" at Jul 31, 98 03:32:13 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The current insider/outsider discussion re the academy recalls the "poets vs. critics" thread (and yes, if memory serves, that was one of the actual subject lines) played out on Poetics a year or two ago. Perhaps the cyclical resurrection of the topic is invetiable given the proximity (or, if you excuse the academically fashionable pluralization, the multiple proximities) this list and many of its constituents bear towards academic institutions. But still, the appearance of this topic always depresses me for its unavoidable ressonance with broader strains of public anti-intellectualism: the conservative attack on the professoriate, media attacks on the "ivory tower" (what is the origin of that epithet, anyway?). (Nor are these topics of only "academic" interest given that the budgets of public universities like SUNY Buffalo or the U. of Virginia (where I am) are functions of state legislatures and public policy -- and thus, in some ultimate sense, public opinion.) Academic self-hatred of the kind sometimes seen here strikes me as a nostalgic gesture, nostalgia for a time when academics could still afford the luxury of their identity. John Latta wrote: > We're all academics. (Echo of Mai 68.) Will the real world please stand up. Matt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:12:34 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: "a great Peeeeacock" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Indeed, there was a great artistic mutuality between Yeats and Pound to the benefit of both, and to the reader. Pound had his egoistic fascism and Yeats had his post-Raphaelite automatic writing and these and many other differences surfaced e.g. over Joyce, over how to attack middle-class values etc. But to understand the depth and quality of the intellectual exchange, as well as mutual affection, just listen to Pound from Pisa: The Kakemono grows in a flat land out of mist sun rises lop-sided over the mountain so that I recalled the noise in the chimney as it were the wind in the chimney but was in reality Uncle William downstairs composing that had made a great Peeeeacock in the proide ov his oiye had made a great Peeeeeeecock in the... made a great peacock in the proide of his oyyee proide ov his oy-ee as indeed he had, and perdurable a great peacock aere perennius. Yeats, the older poet, maintained the "I" ("eye" or "oy-ee") as the fixed center of observation. Pound, through the sheer material ambitions of his poetry culminating in the Cantos, shattered that assumption of the center ("I cannot make it cohere") attributing the subsequent fragmentation and dislocation as symptomatic of the modernist dilemma but not of 'the world' itself. The reorganization of culture occurred around the systems of quantification that elaborated or mimicked the success of technological science-- an historical condition that had been set in motion in the late Renaissance. Pound's modernism like all poetry, even work operating in bounded randomness such as Cage's composition, relies ultimately on its 'qualitates' not on any statistical efficacy. The Cantos' huge and largely failed ambitions opened the way for an understanding of the failure & fragmentation that poetry has experienced in this century in its attempt to assert itself in a world that largely dismisses it or requires a squeaky sentimentality in tone, form, and content which, for its meager existence, must contract to remain bereft of the critical capacity to address culture's central paradigms of science and technology. (Please excuse the sweeping generalizations and elisions that this form of communication (e.g. email) demands.)---Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 14:44:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: fixing to die Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Anthony and list, The Mishima film was filmed in the mid or late 60's. I can't remember the name. There's no dialogue or sound except for Wagner's music. It is a weird beautiful, odd, narcissistic film by Mishima himself. It is about 20 minutes long, and basically it is based on his short story "Patriotism." Mishima plays a soldier who has been dishonored, and therefore, along with his wife, commits suicide, . Basically a little warm up to his final performance.' After his death, Mishima's wife tried to destroy all prints, including the negatives. What I saw was pretty much a bootleg video - and the print wasn't that hot. So the film is sort of between Cocteau, Genet's prison film, and Kenneth Anger. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 20:06:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Katherine Lederer Subject: Re: Poetics programs, etc. In-Reply-To: <199807311750.LAA26347@yoop.oz.cc.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've always thought of "academic" as a term denoting a certain form of cultural entrenchment. As in: "the academy" functions as a sort of cultural repository--and as such it is by definition conservative. I have never understood the claim that "avant-garde" poets are in any way less academic than "mainstream" poets. Both (ostensible) camps guard their traditions and canons jealously... both harbor various means of garnering prestige (mags, prizes--c'mon that the avant-garde doesn't have lots of book prizes and awards...).... both maintain a capacity for dogma. Best, Katy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 18:10:28 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: the end of the Hilbertian experiment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "At the end of the Hilbertian experiment, Davis and Hersh assert, 'The actual experience of all schools--and the actual daily experience of mathematicians--shows that mathematical truth, is fallible and corrigible....It is reasonable to propose a different task for mathematical philosophy, not to seek indubitable truth, but to give an account of mathematical knowledge as it really is--fallible, corrigible, tentative, and evolving, as is every other kind of human knowledge.' Not much in this line has been done, though one astounding book has shown what can be: Imre Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery (1976) gives a detailed account of the rhetoric of the Descartes-Euler theorem on polyhedra...."---from The Rhetoric of Economics by Donald N. McCloskey---Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 18:18:47 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Question of a "good war" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit louis stroffolino wrote: > > Thanks Ron Silliman--I didn't mean to "make light" of it either > with my reference to Lowell.... > I am definitely aware of speaking as one who was "socialized" > by a vietnam-era anti-war attitude..... > yet to what extent america helped create (fertile ground for) > Hitler (humiliation of germany after ww1,"our own" fledgling > imperial desires, the support then given germany as against > communism, etc. etc.) would probably need to be addressed-- > (and by one with the pull of spielberg!) > ........cs > On Fri, 31 Jul 1998 rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > > > I would never make light of the decision to participate in WW2. I don't think > > that stopping Hitler was optional. > > > > But having seen the photos my own father took in Nagasaki one month after the > > bombing there (though never having spoken with him about this), > > > > And thinking not just of Lowell, but of Creeley choosing to drive an ambulance > > in Burma, and of Whalen, Rexroth and others in the C.O. camp in Oregon, it > > certainly does seem that it was possible to step back and decide, for > > perfectly good reason, to say no. None of these people (not even Lowell) was > > an idiot. > > > > Ron Silliman > > Stroffolino's points are extremely important as they are context by which we avoid sentimentality and error.---Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 23:39:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: My Definition of Academic In-Reply-To: <01BDBC8C.B27BE7F0@gps12@columbia.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'd join the academy if I could. I'm tired of never having any money. I'm tired of the stress always looking for the next little job. I'm tired of being an outsider. I'm tired of no health insurance book/travel/conference perks. I'm tired of begging. I'm tired of insomnia. I'm tired of no furniture, eating poorly. I'm tired of the whole fucking thing. I'd join in a second. I'd join for free. Alan's Gang, wondering who's in and who's out at the moment. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 22:49:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: Question of a "good war" In-Reply-To: <19987317336626962@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On 31 July, Ron Silliman wrote: > I would never make light of the decision to participate in WW2. I don't think > that stopping Hitler was optional. > > But having seen the photos my own father took in Nagasaki one month after the > bombing there (though never having spoken with him about this), > > And thinking not just of Lowell, but of Creeley choosing to drive an ambulance > in Burma, and of Whalen, Rexroth and others in the C.O. camp in Oregon, it > certainly does seem that it was possible to step back and decide, for > perfectly good reason, to say no. None of these people (not even Lowell) was > an idiot. Worth remembering too, whatever one might think of it, that there were a number of U.S. anti-Stalinist socialists (none of them idiots, either) who followed in the tradition of Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, and Eugene Debs, and said: This is a capitalist war; workers should refuse to fight for the armed forces of capital and organize, through the newly won unions, their own military contingents to fight fascism. Most of them went to jail under the Sedition Act. The U.S. Communist Party (which had significant influence in the CIO) publicly cheered, calling them Nazi agents. Kent