========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 23:51:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Corbett Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII as a non-poet, with opinions about poetry (what i want to know is how good a poet you have to be to have opinions about poems or poems about opinions) here is my reading list of the moment che - a life of che guevara (everybody needs a little revolution) james tate - distance from loved ones (i know the subject says non-poetry, but . . .) operation shylock - philip roth (because sometimes you have to read to someone whose voice starts at their heels) ursula k. leguin - klatsland origins reconsidered - richard leakey robert 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: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 00:30:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) In-Reply-To: <002701be1c50$854055e0$8415fea9@oemcomputer> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just finished reading Spider Robinson's _Lifehouse_, the usual Spider stuff, but a very intricate plot involving three very different couples, and best of all set in Vancouver. Am half way thru Timothy Findley's most recent book of stories, _Dust to Dust_, stories about people getting old and closer to death, half Gay half not. Everyone drinks a lot of wine and smokes a lot of cigarettes. Also reading Carl Hiaasen's _Double Whammy_ to my wife Angela in the hospital. She is a Hiaasen fam. I am getting a little enjoyment from it. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 09:58:22 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Day Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii At 30/11/98 19:20:50, Mark DuCharme wrote: # Roger day wrote: # >"The Last Of the Mohicans" William Fenimore Cooper. Better than # expected, # >but not surprised they left the bear - and a lot else - out of the # Michael # >Mann film. You're right: I looked at the cover this morning and, *blush* it was "James Fenimore Cooper" staring out at me. Ah well. Just one of those email days. Prior to this, in another email, I'd managed to subtract a minute off of Cage's (John or Ben?) 3'33". Maybe there's a name for this malaise. It only ever seems to happen in emails... Roger ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 06:15:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit." 1). Having punched my screen before completely reading Bernstein's message Saturday, I am now writing this without the aid of a functioning monitor, and am in effect blind above my keyboard Stevie Wonder. 2). I have received two very pointy backchannels from Charles Bernstein informing me to clarify my position or else, also informing me I am to write no more than "a few" posts a week. CB's been nice enough to share with me his opinion that I am not thinking clearly (what's Haldol?) and really I ought for everyone's sake clarify my position regarding slapstick in poetry. Hence this post. Clarify clarify. I will try to write as clearly as he does. 3). Roman Jakobson had it that "poetics deals primarily with the question, _what_ makes a verbal message a work of art?" 4). In my case, I'm interested in how slapstick, humor, antic mood, and yes insults make "a verbal message a work of art," ie a poem. Poetry and slapstick figured interestingly in much modernist work, and slapstick is still an important if not prominent element of much contemporary poetry. Poetry and insults go way back. (Many of you know, for instance, there is a long tradition in Irish poetry of the insulting poem.) But what makes a great insult? What makes an insult funny? How does it lighten rather than darken the mood of the "verbal message" -- that is, the poem (or sometimes the post)? What, furthermore, is the social role of insult, of humor, of the antic taboo-defying impulse? how does it Work, where does it Fail, and how, ultimately, does poetry include these elements? Let me demonstrate. [One caveat please: I have NOTHING against any of the people in number 5: I read their criticism avidly and admiringly]. Now to demonstrate: 5). If I were to write that **Listening to Perloff, Vogler, and Bernstein discuss poetics is like listening to a boil, a blister, and a tumor discuss the importance of the body,** I would be breaking taboos of politeness and hence I would never write that -- even as a demonstrative quote to illustrate a point. But if I WERE to write this, would it not be funny, and would it not add to a poem's (or a post's) mood? -- ie, would it be comedic or even poetically comic art? Of course it would. But why? 6). Furthermore, is it possible to use verbal slapstick without making an effigy, without, that is, socially injuring a particular person and without hurting someone's feelings? For instance, I have recently in the spirit of good fun "insulted" Mark DuCharme [Nov 6, "My Discoball of Wrath"] and Eliza McGrand [Nov 13, "Re: Free reading..."] (and hope to get around to Henry Gould soon), and of the two of them Mark DuCharme, I think, took it personally: I have NO hard feelings about this or toward him at all (antic antic). I am in fact a pacifist and rather mousey. So the question becomes: how do we avoid effigies? 7). First, the insult and the humor must be "over the top," it must be VERY wonked. Why?: Two reasons: It is important that the person attacked first be turned into a caricature, lest he/she be mistaken for an effigy; but it is also important that the person attacking first turn himself into a caricature, lest the insult, after all is said and done, be thought to be truly meant and later held against one. 8). Thus, MP is an elitist critic yadayada: NOT! Thus, CB is a controlling prig: NOT! Thus, MD is a sycophantic wuss: NOT! 9). The challenge of slapstick poetry (or in some cases posts) is not to make effigies, as I have just done with Perloff, DuCharme, and Bernstein. Such utterances are boorish and hence not slapstick. (So please don't hit me on #8: I was trying to illustrate a point.) 10). This is one beauty of slapstick: it provides the delight of sin without its presence. Quite a trick. It is one of the great kathartic inventions of performative art. 11). SO, what, if anything, can anyone out there tell me about slapstick poetics, insultive poetry/letters, bibs (Byron, Pope, etc), etc. Must I write another book! 12). George Thompson: how heavily does insult, mockery, slapstickery play in the old Indo-European poetics? I can read ancient Pali, but as you would suspect there is very little insulting done in the Dhammapada. The closest portrayal of insult in the Pali is a nameless king hires a beggar to throw goat dung in the mouth of the king's overly talkative priest (CB's ears pricking here). 13). Henry Gould: what about contemporary Russian poetry? much insulting htere? I am aware of Victor Raskin's journal about humor, but could anyone point me to particular articles either in this journal or elsewhere. 14). In case any of you are wondering who the heck I am and if in fact I'm an actual boor or if I'm just pretending not to be, here's a statement of "my" sentiment: 15). These inspired cliches: to insist along with Patrick Kavanagh that we aren't alone in our loneliness; to second Bill Knott's opinion that a portrait of Marcheta Casati would look beautiful even if hung improbably and inappropriately upon a man's forehead; to write upon my own forehead, as Tully wished citizens might, what I think of the republic; to insist that we are all bookmarks in a holy anthology; that though each of us is a nobody, we are together consequential; that those among us of greater consequence never forget the ache in their forearms; that all anger is unjust; that Jesus and Lenny Bruce spoke the same language; that Janis Joplin could out-sing Maria Callas and Buster Keaton out-talk Christopher Lyden; that buffo, not rage, that inanity, not reason, are the only viable means of wresting dignity from the hands of bureaucrats and professionals; that the ready ease with which an academic will assume someone to be stupid is more repugnant than a barfight; that yodelling at a plate of eggs can satisfy one's curiosity for a better life; that underdogs can be jerks too; and finally to concur loudly, like a car horn with lips, with Henry James when he said that three things in human life are important: being kind, being kind, and being kind. 16). It is the thought of Tully's that gets me: to write upon my own forehead what I think of the republic: 17). Prose is when you write in sentences. Poetry is when you write on your own forehead. Slapstick poetry is when you write on your own forehead and then head-butt someone. 18). SO, HENRY GOULD, to end with reference to a question you posed the list last week: it is precisely BECAUSE so many of us have such an anemic political and public life that it is imperative our Poetics List and our poetries not be devoid of humor and good-natured insults, that our aggression be sublimated in humor and for the sake of humor, and that utterances pertinently nonsensical and pointlessly adamant not be banished from discussion. PS, I HOPE TO BE ALLOWED TO JOIN THE RANKS OF THE OTHER CHILDREN SOON, IN TERMS OF THE FREQUENCY OF MY POSTING, NOW THAT I HAVE EXPLAINED MYSELF. --Gabriel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 07:40:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: dare the air sweet child Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this up pills t' be the caves inner hitch-vined mince play station the hiss 'n' hot seething the rue 'n' ruin lieumenation in the mid-stuff may raise points honor front plate guard her delivery techsome time offer hands open peace 'n' air nothin' tear but the breeze sound o' dim breathin' full focus in the foggy distance this dance the old glassy gull flyin' hen over herd her orders trance apparent a parent of wakefulness in stark contrast t' mediatistic expectation t' the gone tray ray a platter of general splatter shatter matter put before during and after you in the dark rain ran the haunting seance 'n' infizzibility the latter term as a pose up on the ladder firm of another germ multi-ply multi-ploy multi-play all 'n' pleat the fold won't hold but spill the pills all loud upon the ground itself in turn grave way write out from endure reverie one of money who buy in the hem-cells tethered dear but disrespeculated bets own the table as swell t' swollen spectra with all o' y'all's blood is the game luck stuck in the stocks 'n' payroll of a barrel bond of mono-keys in pleasant tents mass crass class disease own dawn the load 'tis heavenly endure the influence two eyes d' use t' demon-strayed its intended actions in the plays of underneath the down too often sweat in the nun-descript night with insults results thus pay her wants newly tear-eyed pride open t' the day-write stride-wheel yeast as in her unwitting lies 'n' ties t' rise just enough deriving striving de-rivering her fairy very vest t' kid along within the mess at hand she was dealt though this never be the broach that high eye would re-commend with hen the generative matrix there for her may tricks defend without real harm to anyone indeed and in seed disquiet the contrary/counter-rarity of manyfistation in a moneural hoof's peeking peaking agloss the port abrim expanse a clause the desert of time's illusion born of illusion born of tool-making fool awakening alas than never (in love) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 08:43:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Currently still recovering from a recent saturday in a library at which, for (pseudo)scholarly purposes, I read all three of Robert Lowell's 1973 sonnet volumes, _{Avoiding}History_, {A Big Fuck You}For Lizzie and Harriet_, and {Flogging}The Dolphin_. Still, recent read/am reading Eugenia Semyonovna's Ginzburg's _Journey Into the Whirlwind_ (a memoir of her years in Stalin's camps), a novel: The Burn by Vasily Askyanov (finished it thanksgiving morning and found out that afternoon he is E. Ginburg's son), Jung's _Synchronicity_ (well not really but I should have been all things considered), Hugo Ball's _Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary_, and Larry River's _What Have I Done_ (from which, I'm convinced, David Lehman cliffed his entire chapter on the New York painters in his The Last Avant Garde), and I'm w/in striking distance of finishing _English,August_ by Indian novelist Upamanyu Chatterjee. On deck for the holiday break: Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby (about his life and times as a soccer fan) and whatever I find in a various public libraries to which I have access. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago "And I remember somebody leaning up against the dirt wall of the hillside, deriding William Carlos Williams, when suddenly there was a loud roaring, crunching noise and a chunk of the hill fell off and covered the person up to his neck. The person, being a young classical poet fresh from NYU, begun screaming that he was being buried alive. Fortunately, the landslide stopped and we dug him out and dusted him off. That was the last time he said anything against William Carlos Williams. The next day he began reading _Journey to Love_ rather feverishly." --Richard Brautigan. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:49:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Welcome to Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable A reminder (and as stated below): *Do not send attachments to the list *Do not include the whole text of the post to which you are responding *Notices of new publications are welcome.=20 Note that this welcome message has been revised 12/1/98. **** (This message is sent out to all new and renewing subscribers and it is sent out to the list at the beginning of every month) ____________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Poetics List & The Electronic Poetry Center sponsored by The Poetics Program, Department of English, College of Arts & Science, the State University of New York, Buffalo Postal Address: Poetics Program, 438 Clemens Hall, SUNY, Buffalo, NY 14260 inquiries: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu __________________________________________________________ http://writing.upenn.edu/epc __________________________________________________________ _______Contents___________ 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! [This document was prepared by Charles Bernstein= (bernstei@acsu.buffalo.edu), with the participation of Loss Peque=F1o Glazier (glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu),= and Joel Kuszai (poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu). ___________________________________________________________ Above the world-weary horizons=20 New obstacles for exchange arise=20 Or unfold, O ye postmasters! 1. About the Poetics List The Poetics List was founded in late 1993 with the epigraph above. There are presently almost 700 subscribers, though all of these subscribers= do not necessarily receive messages at any given time. Please note that this is a private list and information about the list= should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. The idea is to keep= the list to those with specific rather than general interests, and also to keep the scale of the list relatively small and the volume manageable. The Poetics List, in order to maintain openness, is moderated. We remain committed to promoting the editorial function of this project in= all ways available to us. The definition of that project, while provisional, and while open to continual redefinition by list participants, is nonetheless aversive to a generalized discussion of poetry or other topics. 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. While individual posts of participants are generally sent directly to all subscribers, we reserve the right to review posts before distribution. We 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). Such announcements constitute a core function of this= list. Please keep in mind that all posts become part of an on-line archive.= *Posting to Poetics is a form of publication, not personal communication.*= Participants are asked to exercise caution before posting messages! While spontaneity of response may seem the very heart of the list at its best, it also has the darker side of circulating ideas that have not been well considered (or considered by another reader -- editor or friend). Given the nature of the medium, subscribers do well to maintain some skepticism when reading the= list and, where possible, to try to avoid taking what may be something close to a spontaneous comment made in the heat of exchange as if it were a revised or edited essay ("Let the Reader Beware!"). We recognize that other lists may sponsor other possibilities for exchange= in this still-new medium. We request that those participating in this forum= keep in mind the specialized and focussed nature of this project.=20 The "list owner" of Poetics is Charles Bernstein. Joel Kuszai is list manager.=20 For subscription information contact us at POETICS@acsu.buffalo.edu. ___________________________________________________________ 2. Subscriptions Subscriptions to Poetics are free of charge, but formal registration is required. We ask that when you subscribe you provide your real name, street address, and phone number. All posts to the list must provide real name, as registered. All subscription-related information and correspondence remains confidential. You can subscribe (sub) or unsubscribe (unsub) by sending a one-line= message, with no subject line, to: listserv@listserv.buffalo.edu the one-line message should say: unsub poetics {or} sub poetics Phill Phillway (replacing Phill Phillway with your own name; but note: do not use your name to unsub) We will be sent a notice of all subscription activity. Please allow several days for your new or re-subscription to take effect. * If you are having difficulty unsubscribing, please note: Sometimes your e-mail address may be changed slightly by your system administrator. If this happens you will not be able to send messages to Poetics or to unsubscribe, although you will continue to get your Poetics mail. To avoid this, unsub from the old address and resub from the new address. If you can no longer do this there is a solution if you use Eudora (an e-mail program that is available free at shareware sites): from the= Tools menu select "Options" and then select set-up for "Sending Mail": you may be able to substitute your old address here and send the unsub message. The most frequent problem with subscriptions is bounced messages. If your system is often down or if you have a low disk quota, Poetics messages may= get bounced. Please try avoid having messages from the list returned to us. If the problem is low disk quota, you may wish to request an increase from your system administrator. (You may wish to argue that this subscription is part of your scholarly communication!) You may also wish to consider obtaining a= commercial account. In general, if a Poetics message is bounced from your account, your subscription to Poetics will be temporarily suspended. If this happens,= simply resubscribe to the list in the normal manner, once your account problem has been resolved. All questions about subscriptions, whether about an individual subscription= or subscription policy, should be addressed to the list's administrative= address: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu. Please note that it may take up to ten days, or more, for us to reply to messages. ____________________________________________________________________ 3. Cautions Please do not post to the list personal or backchannel correspondence, or other unpublished material, without the express permission of the author.= Copyright for all material posted on Poetics remains with the author; material from= this list and its archive may not be reproduced without the author's permission, beyond the standard rights accorded by "fair use". The Poetics List has a 50 message daily limit. If more than 50 messages are received, the listserver will automatically hold those additional messages until the list is manually unlocked, usually the following day. While it is difficult to prescribe a set limit on the number of daily, weekly, or= monthly posts for any subscriber, please keep this limit in mind. If you plan to respond to multiple threads, it is generally preferable to consolidate your reply into one message. Subscribers who, in the judgment of the editors, overpost to the list will be asked to limit the number of posts they send. While relevant excerpts from a post to which you are responding may usefully be appended to your reply, *please do not include in your new post the whole= text of a long previously posted message*. As an outside maximum, the listserv is set to accept no more than 5 messages a day from any one subscriber. Participants who post more frequently than these parameters suggest will receive a reminder asking them to limit the volume of their posts. Please do not send attachments or include extremely long documents in a= post, since this may make it difficult for those who get the list via "digest" or who cannot decode attached or specially formatted files. The use of "styled"= text or HTML formatting in the body of email posts to the list appears not to be compatible with the the list's automatic digest program and as result such messages disrupt the format of the Digest, even though this coding is= readable for some subscribers who do not use the digest option. When sending to the list, please send only "plain text". Note, however, there is no problem with sending clickable URLs in HTML format In addition to being archived at the EPC, some posts to Poetics (especially reviews, obituary notices, announcements, etc.) may also become part of specific EPC subject areas. Brief reviews of poetry events and publications are always welcome. (See section 7.) Please do not send inquiries to the list to get an individual subscribers address. To get this information, see section 6. If you want someone to send out information to the list as a whole, or= supply information missing from an post, or thank someone for posting something you requested, please send the request or comment to the individual backchannel, not to the whole list. ____________________________________________________________________ 4. Digest Option The Listserve program gives you he option to receive all the posted Poetics message each day as a single message. If you would prefer to receive ONE message each day, which would include all messages posted to the list for= that day, you can use the digest option. Send this one-line message (no subject line) to listserv@listserv.buffalo.edu set poetics digest NOTE:!! Send this message to "listserv" not to Poetics or as a reply to this message!! You can switch back to individual messages by sending this message: set poetics mail ____________________________________________________________________ 5. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail Do not leave your Poetics subscription "active" if you are going to be away for any extended period of time! Your account may become flooded and you may= lose not only Poetics messages but other important mail. You can temporarily turn off your Poetics subscription by sending a message to "listserv@listserv.buffalo.edu" set poetics nomail & turn it on again with: set poetics mail When you return you can check or download missed postings from the Poetics archive. (See 8 below.) ____________________________________________________________________ 6. Who's Subscribed To see who is subscribed to Poetics, send an e-mail message to listserv@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu; leave the "Subject" line of the e-mail message blank. In the body of your e-mail message type: review poetics You will be sent within a reasonable amount of time (by return e-mail) a rather long list containing the names and e-mail addresses of Poetics subscribers.= =20 This list is alphabetized by server not name. or try: review POETICS by name review POETICS by country which will give you the list alphabetically by name or a flawed list by country (since all ".com" and ".net"s are counted as US) *Please do not send a message to the list asking for the address of a= specific subscriber.* ____________________________________________________________________ 7. What is the Electronic Poetry Center? our URL is http://writing.upenn.edu/epc The mission of this World-Wide Web based electronic poetry center is to= serve as a hypertextual gateway to the extraordinary range of activity in formally innovative writing in the United States and the world. The Center provides access to the burgeoning number of electronic resources in the new poetries including RIF/T and other electronic poetry journals, the POETICS List archives, an AUTHOR library of electronic poetic texts, and direct= connections to numerous related electronic RESOURCES. The Center also provides= information about contemporary print little magazines and SMALL PRESSES engaged in= poetry and poetics. And we have an extensive collection of soundfiles of poets' reading their work, as well as the archive of LINEbreak, the radio interview series. The EPC is directed by Loss Peque=F1o Glazier. ____________________________________________________________________ 8. Poetics Archives via EPC Go to the EPC and select Poetics from the opening screen. Follow the links= to Poetics Archives. You may browse the archives by month and year or search= them for specific information. Your interface will allow you to print or download any of these files. Or set your browser to go directly to: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics/archive ____________________________________________________________________ 9. Publishers & Editors Read This! PUBLISHERS & EDITORS: Our listings of poetry and poetics information is open and available to you. We are trying to make access to printed publications= as easy as possible to our users and ENCOURAGE you to participate! Send a list= of your press/publications to glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu with the words EPC Press Listing in the subject line. You may also send materials on disk. (Write= file name, word processing program, and Mac or PC on disk.) Send an e-mail= message to the address above to obtain a mailing address to which to send your disk. Though files marked up with html are our goal, ascii files are perfectly acceptable. If your word processor will save files in Rich Text Format= (.rtf) this is also highly desirable Send us extended information on new publications (including any back cover copy and sample poems) as well as complete catalogs/backlists (including excerpts from reviews, sample poems, etc.). Be sure to include full information for ordering--including prices and addresses and phone numbers both of the press and any distributors. Initially, you might want to send short 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. Some announcements circulated through Poetics and the EPC have received a noticeable responses; it may be an effective way to promote your publication and we are glad to facilitate information about interesting publications. ____________________________________________________________________ END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 09:57:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" gg: that's all well & good... but if you wish to play the part of court jester, i suggest you have a good long look, again, at the danny kaye flick... ok, now i'm being a shit... but part of the problem with what you're advocating is that you don't account for the recent failure, as some of us would have it, of your slapstickery (or whatever)... you find that some of us "don't get" your humor, hence you imagine the need to "explain" effigies & the like to us (which is something a bit different from clarifying your position)... it *is* possible, old salt, that some of us just don't appreciate the peculiar attributes of *your* mocking sensibility---by which i mean to aver that we just don't find it esp. funny, however clever... this is not to say we (some of us) don't have a sense of humor... but there is something oddly condescending at times about your post(ition)---odd too, b/c in general i would assume (self-)mockery could be a great aid in debugging pretentiousness... but then, right along with your remarks on the history of comedic form, you slip into your roll-call of little chestnuts, from celebrating janis (and who among us would not do so?) to the old sympathy ploy of evoking the loneliness of the long distance runner... sorry for the contra & quasi-moral tone of this post, gabe... but mightn't you simply go back to the drawing board & find a way to evoke falstaff & co. w/o (as i read you) the latent, sometimes blatant, acrimony?... after all, this list is not *simply* a performative domain... mself, i feel on some occasions that you're just goofing off, but on others it seems to me you're using the semblance of same as a mask to get in some real digs... & please---please don't try to persuade me that the "gap" or some such between these two impressions is the very reality you wish to exploit (not least b/c this would clearly constitute protesting too much)... finally, gabe: if everyone's bark is not all that hard, nor should we ask it to be, man... best, really joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 08:14:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: my reading list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" READING The Gods Arrive (Edith Wharton) The Making of Americans (Gertrude Stein) Don Quixote (Kathy Acker) The Writings of Medieval Women (An anthology trans by Marcelle Thiebaux) The Fashion System (Roland Barthes) Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women (Michael Gross) (those last 2 are skimmers!) several dictionaries the Bible Don't make fun of people for reading their old diaries!! You BOYS! Genderly tenderly, Eliz. Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:22:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Brook Subject: current reading (cont.) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A raft of divers things-- Jean-Francois Martos, Correspondance avec Guy Debord (just out--and rumored to be unobtainable already because of legal action re copyright infringement), which includes the kitchen sink. Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, La Marge (done into English 30 yrs ago by Richard Howard as The Margin, from Grove Press); Barcelona before the Olympics and the sad triumph of right-wing Catalanism. Phillips et al., Beat Culture and the New America (the catalog to the show) Ernst Toller, I Was a German: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary; an Expressionist and revolutionary made proud by Hitler's burning of his books. on deck but unread is Richard Lehan, The City in Literature, which beckons, beckons from that deck chair dappled with spray in the hot sun which doesn't shine here, in San Francisco, does it? and even though it's poetry and not to be counted, Ron Padgett's New & Selected Poems, a friendly flashlight in the gloom of business. . . . ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 13:12:33 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I for one am glad to see in Gab Gudding's post that I didn't kill off a certain vitality by naming it. I think Gab has made his position clear. His posts are intended to be considered as rancid fumistiere. He just ain't no Alphonse Allais and that's why his posts are rancid. To the degree with which your penetrating counter-post exposes inconsistencies and paradoxes in his approach, you simultaneously address why his posts fail. He himself exposes the vulnerability of his style by declaring his own vulnerability e.g. as "a pacifist and somewhat mousey." Until this assertion has been tested empirically, it has no force as satire. It's pathetic. Personally, I think Gab is too much bluff and not enough substance. Names can be manipulated ironically; but content even more so with much richer results. But the requirements are more severe. He and I have discussed this. As for Perloff, damned if Gab et al didn't seem to be fulfilling in their own way exactly what she was calling for in her original posts. She just couldn't handle the heat. And substance wouldn't matter here. It, more than likely, would just have been ignored. No one on this list could be blamed for interpreting General Bernstein's actions as the establishment not being able to take the heat when in this case it was the establishment that called for the heat and is fond of criticising, however politely, those other establishments for things such as censorship. Bernstein has used that very word. Has he not? Unlike some people on this list, I can say whatever I like precisely because I have nothing at stake except my own sense of integrity and I can take that on down the road. Folks like me develop good ears. Perhaps you should not allow us on the list in the first place because, from my experience mastery of a subject or set of ideas has little to do with 'belonging.' Given these circumstances, to my mind, Gab's responses were legitimate, appropriate if not quite artistic triumphs and should be addressed as you did, in the open but on a level playing field.---Carlo Parcelli Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > > gg: that's all well & good... but if you wish to play the part of court > jester, i suggest you have a good long look, again, at the danny kaye > flick... > > ok, now i'm being a shit... > > but part of the problem with what you're advocating is that you don't > account for the recent failure, as some of us would have it, of your > slapstickery (or whatever)... you find that some of us "don't get" your > humor, hence you imagine the need to "explain" effigies & the like to us > (which is something a bit different from clarifying your position)... > > it *is* possible, old salt, that some of us just don't appreciate the > peculiar attributes of *your* mocking sensibility---by which i mean to aver > that we just don't find it esp. funny, however clever... this is not to say > we (some of us) don't have a sense of humor... but there is something oddly > condescending at times about your post(ition)---odd too, b/c in general i > would assume (self-)mockery could be a great aid in debugging > pretentiousness... but then, right along with your remarks on the history > of comedic form, you slip into your roll-call of little chestnuts, from > celebrating janis (and who among us would not do so?) to the old sympathy > ploy of evoking the loneliness of the long distance runner... > > sorry for the contra & quasi-moral tone of this post, gabe... but mightn't > you simply go back to the drawing board & find a way to evoke falstaff & > co. w/o (as i read you) the latent, sometimes blatant, acrimony?... after > all, this list is not *simply* a performative domain... mself, i feel on > some occasions that you're just goofing off, but on others it seems to me > you're using the semblance of same as a mask to get in some real digs... & > please---please don't try to persuade me that the "gap" or some such > between these two impressions is the very reality you wish to exploit (not > least b/c this would clearly constitute protesting too much)... > > finally, gabe: if everyone's bark is not all that hard, nor should we ask > it to be, man... > > best, really > > joe -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 13:34:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: failure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Moved by Carlo's suggestion that G Gudding's posts "fail" to note the assertion I forget whence originating that Hart Crane's "The Bridge" "failed" -- but wouldn't failure imply something was being attempted? something measurable, something outside parties could agree on? Criticism can't really be building a consensus all over again, can it? I like the differences I have with you all, they mean something, though I don't like it when they're mysterious or when they divide attention unjustly -- and no offense to the Anti-Hegemony People, but Gudding's pretty close to Poe, no? all right, enough questions -- too many questions implies not enough answers and I prefer to protect myself from the discourse here, too -- Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:01:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Some of "A Cry" by Sara Teasdale, Some of Other Words MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII == Some of "A Cry" by Sara Teasdale, Some of Other Words Oh, there are eyes that she can see, And hands to make her hands rejoice, But to my lover I must be Only a voice. Oh, there are breasts to bear her head, And lips whereon her lips can lie, But I must be till I am dead Only a cry. Oh, there are words that she can hear, And words that she returns to me, But I must be for lock and weir Only a key. Only a key, a voice, at night, For my life goes locked across the wires, And I have neither sound nor sight And he is there, and there are pyres Burning brilliantly my bones, And there are fires out of sight, And I will die on these dark stones, My words are lost against his light. And she shall never hear from me, Through bridge and router, eternally. _________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:29:20 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: failure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Crane's The Bridge fails as done Pound's Canto's and Duncan's Groundwork. But there are failures and then there are failures e.g. Williams' Paterson where the good doctor is decidedly out of his depth, so to speak. Gab's failure is however of a different order of all those above. But I don't care. In my book, he should be given every opportunity to fail/succeed/engage/disengage. And then there is success, which doesn't imply superiority to failure. But when huge artistic ambition and success, call it completion perhaps, conflate---Oh, Joyce! Oh, Wake!---Carlo Parcelli By the Bo-. Did you folks know that our managing editor of FlashPoint, Jack Foley, wrote a book length unpublished study of Crane? Since there's so much interest in Crane, maybe I can convince him to publish it (or at least a piece of it) in an upcoming issue. Jordan Davis wrote: > > Moved by Carlo's suggestion that G Gudding's posts "fail" to note the > assertion I forget whence originating that Hart Crane's "The Bridge" > "failed" -- > > but wouldn't failure imply something was being attempted? something > measurable, something outside parties could agree on? > > Criticism can't really be building a consensus all over again, can it? I > like the differences I have with you all, they mean something, though I > don't like it > > when they're mysterious or when they divide attention unjustly -- and no > offense to the Anti-Hegemony People, but Gudding's pretty close to Poe, no? > > all right, enough questions -- too many questions implies not enough answers > and I prefer to protect myself from the discourse here, too -- Jordan -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:44:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Superior people Comments: To: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" In-Reply-To: <36643191.4D88@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, R.Gancie/C.Parcelli wrote: > Unlike some people on this list, I can say whatever I like precisely > because I have nothing at stake except my own sense of integrity and I > can take that on down the road. > Folks like me develop good ears. Perhaps you should not allow us on the > list in the first place because, from my experience mastery of a subject > or set of ideas has little to do with 'belonging.' What are "folks" like Carlo like? How did they get to be so much better than ordinary mortals, and to have such a sense of integrity? It must be great to have all that impressive mastery. Perhaps, far from not allowing 'em on the List, we should hand it over to them! from the above passage it would appear that they're the only ones with sufficient "mastery" to run things!! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:19:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Kane Subject: Rae Armantrout interview MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There is an interview with Rae Armantrout up on the Teachers & Writers Collaborative "WriteNet" web site. Since the page is devoted to issues specific to teaching poetry to students in grades K-12, Rae talks about ways one can teach the prose poem, and suggests methods for introducing avant-garde work to students (and teachers) that are not fraught with anxiety. Poems Rae talks about include "The Mix Up" and "Wake Up," both from her book _Necromance_. --daniel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 14:29:18 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chicago Review Subject: Chicago Review Poetry Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chicago Review is hosting a poetry reading by Peter Dale Scott Monday December 7 at 4:30 pm Classics 10 1010 E. 59th St. on the University of Chicago campus. The reading will be followed by a reception. Scott has recently completed a remarkable trilogy--Coming to Jakarta, Listening to the Candle, and Minding the Darkness--which mixes politics and autobiography, beginning with the 1965 slaughter of more than a half million Indionesians. His brilliant use of collage in the composition of a long poem is clearly in the tradition of Pound, if to very different ends. James Laughlin has said of the first volume in the trilogy: "Not since Robert Duncan's Groundwork and before that William Carlos Williams' Paterson has New Directions published a long poem as important as Coming to Jakarta." The most recent issue of Chicago Review (44:3 & 4) features a special section on Scott's poem. If anyone needs directions, more information, etc. feel free to e-mail me. Devin Johnston ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Chicago Review The University of Chicago 5801 South Kenwood Avenue Chicago IL 60637 ph/fax: (773) 702-0887 e-mail: chicago-review@uchicago.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 05:50:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Rae Armantrout interview In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, thank you for this. I searched it out. The URL to go directly to the interview with Rae Armantrout is http://www.twc.org/forums/poetschat/poetschat_ra1198.html charles At 03:19 PM 12/1/98 -0500, you wrote: >There is an interview with Rae Armantrout up on the Teachers & Writers >Collaborative "WriteNet" web site. Since the page is devoted to issues >specific to teaching poetry to students in grades K-12, Rae talks about >ways one can teach the prose poem, and suggests methods for introducing >avant-garde work to students (and teachers) that are not fraught with >anxiety. Poems Rae talks about include "The Mix Up" and "Wake Up," both >from her book _Necromance_. > > >--daniel > > 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: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:18:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: stein quite quote Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. reference. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:19:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: hejinian query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" today in class someone asked how hejinian composed My Life. did she write it sequentially, did she collect sentences from all over and then compile them in an "order," etc? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:30:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone have e-mail adress for Michael Davidson? Please back-channel. Thanks in advance. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:50:43 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: a measure of peace... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" or perhaps, as k burke once inscribed it, ad bellum purificandum... it's probably best (as gabe just advised backchan) for *me* to post this exchange... first gabe (in response to my post to poetix, which was in response to *his* long post), then my response to gabe... hope we can all move on now... best, joe //////// GABE TO ME, backchannel Dear Joe, I'm afraid that I can't respond frontchannel for a few days but I'd like to reply now so i do so privately. First, thanks, as always, for your gentle replies. I'm well aware, to my chagrin,t hat much of my humor falls short and that i'm in many eyes nothing more than a boor, and I am also aware that many think i'm just being "performative," (showing off). But that is far from the case: i'm interested, as i've always been, in finding the new, the disturbing, and the unappreciated in poetry, and my interests have long lay in humor. My posts DO have an inquiring purpose: I am indeed mocking myself constantly in my posts: the whole ridiculous posture is MEANT to be self-parody, which, I see you feel, falls short: okay, it falls short: I intend NO slight whatsoever to CB or MP or MD: people expect me to and that's precisely why I wrote #8. Sometimes,yes, I know my posts "fail," sometimes, though, they do not: I have it on good faith that my posts are welcome by many on the list. More below. On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > humor, hence you imagine the need to "explain" effigies & the like to us > (which is something a bit different from clarifying your position)... when i'm tlaking of effigies there I'm thinking aloud, making a query of the list, trying to elicit addenda or embellishments to these first ideas I've had about all this: look I took CB at his word, to clarify, and I'm trying my best, Joe, I am: I'm not just messing around, but am trying to think here,to do so openly, WHILE attempting (and, I see, often failing) to embody what I'm writing about. > it *is* possible, old salt, that some of us just don't appreciate the > peculiar attributes of *your* mocking sensibility---by which i mean to aver absolutely absolutely: but coudl you tell me WHY??? I -really-really- want to know, Joe. > we (some of us) don't have a sense of humor... but there is something oddly > condescending at times about your post(ition)---odd too, b/c in general i > would assume (self-)mockery could be a great aid in debugging > pretentiousness... the whole point is that the pretentiousness is meant to be so darn ridiculous that it's laughable -- in a way that the garden-variety pretension of hte list isnt. I do mean to mock myself first of any. but then, right along with your remarks on the history > of comedic form, you slip into your roll-call of little chestnuts, from > celebrating janis (and who among us would not do so?) to the old sympathy > ploy of evoking the loneliness of the long distance runner... None of it's meant to be a ploy: that's who I am, thank you very much. > sorry for the contra & quasi-moral tone of this post, gabe... but mightn't > you simply go back to the drawing board & find a way to evoke falstaff & > co. w/o (as i read you) the latent, sometimes blatant, acrimony?... after That acrimony is in MANY MANY of the comments of people on this list to begin with: it's just directed outward at "them." I'm directing it inward at us, via schlocky and often raunchy bad humor. Look, my affiliations are with experimental poetics and poets, with decency in general: when I say I love and admire and read Perloff, Bernstein and Vogel avidly, I MEAN IT!: I DO. I have stated clearly what I don't like about Perloff's work and I have stated clearly, with a tiny history to back it up, why I think it's important she not center much of her criticism around the terms IMportant, Bad Good, Lasting etc. but that's neither here nor there, no sense rehashing same stuff > all, this list is not *simply* a performative domain... mself, i feel on I, as I just mentioned, give Many reasons, thumbnail sketches of whole critical milieus, quotes, reasoned argument -- many many many more, in most cases, than those who simply pipe up with Poo-poos -- AND, yes, I also "goof off" -- but I never goof off without a point. I disagree with you there: never without a point (except for the insults to MD and McGrand, but those too I was writing with prose poems in mind: i'm trying recently to work in slapstick elements into my own work,a nd much of that ducharme post has worked its way into a poem of mine "Tippetycanoe Delendum Est," about going postal. > some occasions that you're just goofing off, but on others it seems to me > you're using the semblance of same as a mask to get in some real digs... & I intend in those moments to caricature myself by "going over the top,' indeed if I in fact use negative energy to place that in the reader's mind I also pull it out and call myself a boor, and if that fails, as you say it does, I'll work on it, I hear you. > please---please don't try to persuade me that the "gap" or some such > between these two impressions is the very reality you wish to exploit (not > least b/c this would clearly constitute protesting too much)... > well I spose in places i did just that. > finally, gabe: if everyone's bark is not all that hard, nor should we ask > it to be, man... i think you think i'm some kind of vicious putz: i'm not in the least: i MEAN IT when I say that insult fascinates me: i'm a young guy with a tiny baby daughter a wife a step-child and am in love with life, poetry, and being good: am also, however, fascinated by slapstick. i think i said elsewhere that i don't have a mean bone or ligament in my body: my only problem, joe, and i htink you've pointed this out, is that i think i'm damn funny. good lord. pray for me, joe. i will write that book: seeif you can't help me with it than!! with every warm and kind wish, gabe ------------------ ME TO GABE, backchannel gabe, thanx for your kind post... no---sweet post, really... now it seems to me---but i can't be sure, b/c it's only me---that if you were to have posted to poetix *anything* like what you've just posted me bc (please don't ask me to explain), nobody would take offense, and not a few folks would think much more highly of you, as i do now... perhaps this is b/c i'm not nearly, mself, as forgiving or as generous as i imply in my various urgings... hell, i'm a LOT less likable in person, if i do say so, have long enjoyed the benefit of email filtering out my more talky, aggressive qualities... if you like, append this post of mine to your bc post to me, and post the result to poetix as a "dialogue" twixt the two of us... this should help relieve the stress/strain factor on poetix of late, and perhaps do everyone a bit o good... on the other hand, i'll understand entirely if you choose not to... in any case peace, best--- joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 13:51:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Sad News Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 10:49:41 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) >Reply-To: deeranu@email.unc.edu >Sender: owner-horton@listserv.oit.unc.edu >From: deeranu@email.unc.edu (Trudier Harris) >To: Horton@listserv.oit.unc.edu (Horton Society) >Subject: Sad News >X-Sender: deeranu@imap.unc.edu >X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN > >Dear Horton Society Members: > > I write to inform you that Margaret Walker died this morning in >Chicago. I am told that services will probably be in Jackson, >Mississippi. I hope some of us can go. Her appearance with us at the >Horton Society Conference in Chapel Hill in April was apparently her >last stellar performance, which she *thoroughly" enjoyed. Thank you for >being a part of that experience. > > Please pass along this news to Society members who may not yet >have email. > > Thank you. > >Trudier Harris > >P.S. When I receive more details about the service, I will pass them >along. > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 18:08:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: stein quite quote In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In the piece "Sacred Emily," which is in one of the Catharine Stimpson -edited (Library of America) volumes--_Gertrude Stein: Writings 1903-1932_ or _Gertrude Stein: Writings 1932-1946_. Don't know which vol., though--my copy of "Sacred E." having been kindly xeroxed for me by Gwyn McVay... mostly secular emily On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a > rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. > reference. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 17:21:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: Free Poetices & A self examination Comments: To: Charles Bernstein In-Reply-To: <199811282159.QAA04942@nico.bway.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (This is dave baptiste chirot)-- (Apologies for the length--) (Please note, if you are interested in the BLACKBIRD anthology mentioned below, which is visual poetry, essays, poetry, reviews and Holocaust memoirs from artists and poets around the world--all based on one four line poem by Paul Celan--feel free ro ask for more information . . . . ) I've been away from this list for several days now. My two younger children were ill and then out of the blue the Ukrainian visualpoet Rafael Livshin and his wife Lilia stopped by for a visit, to exchange news of friends, to share works in various media and exchange addresses of places to send the works to in countries around the globe. This time away from the list (and I often am, not having email at home) gave me time to reflect on what I had written regarding Dr. Perloff and the issues she raised. In the first place, I'm appalled at the post I sent--there are a few interesting points, good ones hopefully, but they are buried beneath a refuse heap of mean sp[irited, ignorant invective--a kind of grand guignol caricature of hooliganism, ignorance and mob noise--there's no clarity, no reason, no sense of exchnage as in an open discusssion-- I'm not writing to apologize or to defend myself and those words. This isn't self criticism in the truly grand manner of the Stalinist Purges nor the Maoist Cultural Revolution. I've seen and heard and studied about enough of these--and they are always present with us--to have no taste at all for such. Self examination however does seem worthwhile, if one is to have any self respect and to be of use through one's life and work in the community of peoples.. That being the case--how did such an appalling bit of malarkey emerge? It might be easy to attribute it to the unconscious, a sudden flowing forth of carefully concealed invective and venom, beneath the "cultivated" surface. No, on reflection I realized that I had fallen for the bait, "seen red" as they say, and like the bull to the cape had charged full force forward . .. The reason I was so angered by Dr. Perloff's post was three simple words: Intolerance, multiculturism, discrimination. I undersdtand Dr. Perloff's points re close reading and (I hope) a literary and critical sense of discrimination (which is sometimes allied to the concept and practice of taste as the work of Bourdieu has demonstrated), I understand these and many of the High Modernist and Formalist issues of critique that Dr. Perloff is invoking. The problem for me, and what made me see red at the time (don't worry, I calmed down . . . ) is that by throwing in the word and issue of multiculturalism (implicity perhaps as a lowering of standards, in the face of which a more rigorous critique is needed)--this linking of the three words made me deeply uneasy. It's very disturbing and needs a far more reasoned and thought out approach than that which I employed in the heat of the moment. (I recall ruefully Tom Mandel's comments re wanting to punch Ed Dorn--and Tom's amnger at Adorno--the difference is Tom expressed himself well . . . was not only passioante but thinking . . . ) I'll try to explain as brtiefly as I can my seeing red--to give it a context and to explain my own being appalled at what I wrote within that context, which context includes Dr. Perloff and this list but as well many many other things-- First--at the end of my post I did make one point which is worth thinking about: intolerance/tolerance not as either/or but as both/and. As a mixed race person I encounter this both/and every day of my life--and in dreams and works as well. One is the living presence of one's ancestors' warring with and loving each other. In an odd way just to look into the mirror or see which way you are accepted one way or another--it's an interesting living out of Heraclitus' assertion that strife is the source of what is created, over and over again--an ancient yet living companion to Foucault's posing of power as productive and not solely destructive at the end of the first section of Discipline and Punish. So--this idea of intolerance versus tolerance, to me, is far more complex. And it is an important issue to think on as more and more people living in the USA--the future, really, to be through all these children--are mixed race. This mixing causes as is well known a good deal of "mixing" up so to speak in the canon--and I understood a good deal of Dr. Perloff's post to really be concerned with this issue, hence her argument for a High Modernist intolerance versus the muddied and at times mushy waters of the pc contingent--however, Perloff included multiculturism. This is a not an uncommon argument. (The lowering of standards . . . the need for rigorous readings . . . )I understand the reasons for all this--until they come to intolerance being extended to includes forms of discrimination (in it's doubled sense). One can't but feel the hair rise on the back of oone's neck . . . As to this issue of the canon--intolerance and discrimation at times is a kind of "revolutionary" act--an act of purification (whether a form of militant Puritanism or a Purge is always the danger . . . ) I think the arguement is to forward the cause of the poets Perloff steadfastedly has for quite some time. Bob Grumman had at one time called Language centered works "aco-dominant"--and many on this list disagreed. I do as well--I think that the writing Perloff is attempting to advocate is what Raymond Williams would call "emergent" (or Bob might want to call "aco-emergo--dominant")--that is, work which is not yet dominant in the academy, but is steadily working its way toward being so. In this case, Dr. Perloff's intolerance of certain works and types of work, constitutes a very real and very powerful (in the sense that what she says and thinks and writes have had and do have immense consequences in the academic world--and by extension, to what is known and studied by students around the usa, and to what is considered worthy of being published, anthologized and the like . . .)--constitutes a very real and powerful force, a force whose effects are extensive, yet radiate from one center, and one alone. So--my two main points, buried in the rubbish heap of cheap vitiriol and disturbing (above all to oneself) attitude --are the issues of intolerance and its extension into and being allied with the canon. As to the context of my seeing red--I thought that over a good deal. There is a context for it, not an excuse nor an apology, but a context, which by my post I contradicted--and that is what does appall and disgust me--not that I acted towards others as I did, but that that the action countermanded much long and hard work of my own. In the last months I have been involved with various mail art and visual poetry exhibitions, demonstrations and activities--now the catalogues and various other related materials are arriving, bringing with them new invites and so on. One of the packages which arrived about ten days ago was the first printing of BLACKBIRD, edited by David Stone and available from Phoenix Press in Berkeley. (The first pressing of which I have a contributor's copy, is in black and white, the second printing will be in color. For those interested, I will supply the addresss, etc)-- BLACKBIRD iis an anthology of visual poetry, poetry and Holocaust memoirs and essays and reviews based on a poem of four lines by Paul Celan. The idea of the anthologfy is to demonstrate the ungoing presence of poetry despite those who asserted (as did Adorno, though he's not mentioned) that poetry could not be written after the Holocaust. Artists and poets from around the world contributed--there is an extensivce amount of visual poetry--here showing that visual poetry plays an integral part in the poetic continuance of the voices and images of the Holocaust--that there is no end . . . As well, by dedicating the anthology not soley to "THE Holocaust" alone but to a poet and the Holocaust, this demonstartes the value of poetry in its historical and human rights opposition to intolerance. At the same as BLACKBIRD arrived, I was finishing works for an exhibition for Human Rights in Argentina, had sent statements to accompany works in an exhibition Against Racisme in Vienna and received catalogues of the Chiapas Exhibit organized by Clemente Padin and recieved more news regarding the events in the aftermath of the February exhibit in Santiago, CHILE called STOP (the theme of the exhibit; FREEDOM--DIVERSITY--PLURALISM IN THE TEACHING OF ART) --the show resulted in the firing of the head of the art department and curator of the museum, Dr. Humberto Nilo, not only one of the foremost academics and critics in Chile but as well a great visual poet. Many others involved with the show were thrown out of their jobs and many of the Chilean artists now are in dangers from the government--and to make matters worse there is the issue of Pinochet . .. Now new petitions are ebeing distriubuted, new works asked for to fight this, to support Dr. Nilo . . . So--these are all activities allying poetry nd the public sphere, in an international setting . . . the consequnces for these actions can at times be very dangerous--not only intolerance of them, but discrimation against them-- In this context I was in the midst of reading Mort a credit by Celine (Death on the Installment Plan)--Celine is one of my favorite writers. Yet reading his work, lurking there, is as well the knowledge of his anti-semiticism, his alliance with the nazis . . I was trying to resolve some of this in relation to my own works against all that Celine stood for in the realm of politics and race--and my own being mixed race . . . So, to see Dr. Perloff's post, instead of continuing with thinking, I just exploded. I would note that I am very familiar with Dr. Perloff's works, not only five of her books but many of her essays as well--those in Sulfar, APR, at the EPC and elsewhere. Being a bibliography nut, I have made much use of Dr. Perloff's valuabale bibliographies, what ever I disagreed with in a text of hers. For my own part, I spent five years being a film, book and music reviewer, regular and freelance, for many papers in Boston. I have been in academia-taught five years altogether, etc and have degrees to tack on after my name when I hang out my shingle . . . I've written critical essays that have been and are to be published--two of them papers given at academic conferences-- This to say, I understand the complexities and issues from not a poet vs. critic stand point--again, I'm both-- A long time ago, around 1911 or so, Marinetti attempted to put forward a critical system of weights and measures. One could say in its own way it was a precursor to Bill James' Sabremetrical ananlyses and abstracts regarding baseball statistics. (A friend of mine and I once thought of trying to apply this to poetry, as a kind of Rube Goldberg experiment . . . ) In the end, what disturbs me is not only this issue of intolernace, of the canon, of racism, of discrimation, of the academy, of poets and non -poets--but the most truly frightening thing of all--that after working so hard and much against all such, one fell immediately into the trap, took up the bait and ran headlong into the burning fire, burning oneself, with indignation and all--yet completley unaware that one was not attacking well armed or with a plan, but filled onself with the bile one was abhorred by . . . The burning question, then . . . ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 18:23:20 -0600 Reply-To: MAYHEW Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Re: Free Poetices & A self examination In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A few suggestions for listafarians: posts should be at least as well written as prose; to use no solecism, typo, or misspelling that is not necessary to the presentation; to read what you are responding to; to come to the point in the first five pages of a post; to accuse noone of racism or crimes against humanity gratuitously; to compose in the sequence of a musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome... Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 19:22:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Haynes Subject: Re: Sad News Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This was posted on the news wire for those interested: JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Margaret Walker Alexander, who wrote poignantly in poems and the novel ``Jubilee'' about life as a black woman in the Deep South, has died. She was 83. Ms. Alexander died Monday after battling breast cancer for months. Her 1942 poem ``For My People'' won the Yale Award for young poets. She wrote: ``Let a new earth rise, Let another world be born, Let a bloody peace be written in the sky, Let a second generation full of courage issue forth, Let a people loving freedom come to growth.'' ``Jubilee,'' published in 1966, told the story of the daughter of a slave and a white plantation owner. The New York Times Book Review said it ``chronicled the triumph of a free spirit over many kinds of bondage.'' ``Margaret Walker Alexander was a woman for all seasons,'' said Clarence Hunter, a Tougaloo College archivist. ``She was a poet, a novelist, a teacher, a mentor, a scholar, a humanitarian, an activist, a fighter for rights of people. She was everything you can expect of a great woman.'' Ms. Alexander was born in Birmingham, Ala., on July 27, 1915, the daughter of a college professor. She moved at age 10 to New Orleans and left the South for college. She graduated from Northwestern University in 1935 and received master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Iowa. In 1949 she became a professor at Jackson State University, where she founded the Institute for the Study of the History, Life and Culture of Black People in 1968. She served as its director 11 years, and the center was later renamed in her honor. ``I don't know anybody who has captured the heart and soul of black people any more than she did,'' said Alferdteen Harrison, director of the institute. In all, she spent the past five decades in teaching and writing in Mississippi. ``She could have been in New York and been a big, big name,'' said Wanda Macon, a professor of English at Jackson State University. ``She stayed connected to the soil, stayed connected to the voices she heard and the voices she wrote about. That was just as important to her as the fame.'' Ms. Alexander sued author Alex Haley in 1988, alleging his book ``Roots'' infringed on her copyright for ``Jubilee.'' The case was thrown out of court. Ms. Alexander, who was a widow, died in Chicago, where she was visiting one of her four children. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 21:12:02 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: WENDY KRAMER Organization: N/A Subject: check it out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hello, it's wendy kramer. i work as a librarian in the branches of the new york public library, and thot i'd post titles ordered by the branch libraries that might be of interest to listmembers. as someone who used to have access to a university library but has it no longer, i've become more adamant in my advocacy for poem-holdings and related materials in public libraries. i'd like to make the standard disclaimer that my posts do not reflect the interests, policies, opinions, etc. of the new york public library-- i post as an off-hours listmember and as myself, so to speak. or, i speak as a public library user who works in a public library system, a _large_ public library system--there are at least 87 branches to the new york public library (and i've lost count since), in the boroughs of manhattan, the bronx, and staten island. there are also 4 research libraries (some differences between "research" and "branches" being purpose, types, scope, depth, & focus of collections & whether items can be checked out (no for research libraries, yes for circulating items in the branches). i restrict my posts to the branch libraries. i think these postings might be useful for a number of reasons. First, many people on this list live in the area, and as i've remarked in a former post, the more the public library materials get used and requested, the more likely such materials will be ordered. But besides the local interest, there is the broader issue of availability that these postings advocate. there was a thread a few weeks ago about archiving small press and avant-garde poems. and someone posted something about not just the occasional sun& moon press book being represented. in the branch libraries, i'm happy to get that sun & moon, and dream of a public _circulating_ library for chapbooks, visual poetry, artists books, and other hard-to-buy-at-barnes-and-noble materials. (this morning on the way to the subway b&n had a huge banner in the window that said if barnes & noble doesn't have the books you read, nobody does--- cringe hiss & boo! is that a threat!?) meanwhile, there's quite a bit of material coming into the branches. sun & moon's come up for order regularly, as does other small press material, and spd as a distributor shows up on book order lists. (also, i noticed that spd started a sort of outreach to librarians newsletter and program). so, all this to say, books are out there for the borrowing. and for those of us without much cash, it's a way to read stuff we wouldn't otherwise manage to see. a final note, if you're a new york public library user: you can reserve circulating books from any branch and have them sent to any branch, at no charge. however, brooklyn and queens each have separate library systems and are not part of new york public library, so you can't reserve a book belonging to a staten island branch and have it sent to, say, flushing. you can have up to 15 reserves at a time. hope i haven't left out anything crucial or said anything grievously incorrect--anyone with additions or questions, please post. so, tonight's posted title is: Penelope Rosemont. _Surrealist Women_ published by University of Texas this title a tip from nancy burr--suggested it in backchannel, & a couple weeks later i noticed it on an order list. now it's in the catalog! thanks, burr! gotta go collage--- so, for now wendy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 17:58:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" OK i'm a geezer, i drank too much w/oppenheimer, smoked too much w/olson, being old fashioned i believe that poetry requires nurturing irreverence/questioning authority. The corollary of Pound's notion that everyone deserves to have their ideas considered one at a time, is that if somebody has a great idea once doesn't mean their next idea isn't ridiculous, witness pound. so everyone, even the buddha, may be, should be, will be challenged. The challenge should be anticipated in the emotional budget, appreciated as a negative praise(you're important enough to be challenged in the first place, you're worth the effort) and maybe, if you're old enough or important enough or published enough you'll actually be stirred by the opposition to outdo yourself to disprove the rude upstart's ridiculous assertions. Duncan used to say if you haven't published a new masterpiece for six months in San Francisco they come around banging on your door hollaring Robert, you're all washed up, you phony phruitcake, you couldn't write your way out of a lemon meringue pie. Is that Joanne Kyger knocking? Or George Stanley? So all this to say I think Gabriel Gudding should be unleashed, i don't expect i'll ever agree with everything he has to say, but i appreciate his risk, and when i double click on his message among my morning 35 i'm prepared to be astonished, i suspect he's young, and nervous to be playing in the same pen with the demi-gods, and trying to do the same thing that Bromige and Johnson and McGrand do so well, parrying and exasperating the opponent, but being less sure(or experienced) he's gotta go one better and actually tweek the nose or pinch the cheek. It may be excessive but excess and poetry are like a hoarse and carriage. Wieners screaming at Creeley in the bars of buffalo, cackling at Al Poulin's reading. Corso heckling Ginsberg in Vancouver. Opera is one of the necessary correctives for a language polluted by journalists superlatives, politician's pieties, and psychophants hipocrisy. irrepressibilly, billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 poemz@mars.ark.com Go ahead and say something true before the big turd eats You You can say any last thing in Your poem. -Alice Notley ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 18:05:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: LIPSTICK ELEVEN: It's a party! It's a reading! Comments: cc: brash@well.com, robintm@traumafdn.org, locsokei@cats.ucsc.edu, blaise@redherring.com, niall@wired.com, sean_dugan@infoworld.com, shanley_rhodes@infoworld.com, dylan_tweney@infoworld.com, kristin_kueter@infoworld.com, rod4rigo@aol.com, sweat@sfo.com, jays@sirius.com, mike_thomas@infoworld.com, terryw@cnet.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Friday, December 4, 7:30 p.m. Small Press Traffic New College Cultural Center, 766 Valencia, San Francisco $5 Featuring LIVE THEATRE Luminaries Kevin Killian, Wayne Smith, Rex Ray, Clifford Hengst, and Scott Hewicker in a scene from Killian's and Smith's "Diamonds and Rust." Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Norma Cole as Isabella Rossellini! FICTION (etc) Mike Amnasan Dodie Bellamy Robert Gluck Camille Roy POETRY (etc) Norma Cole Jocelyn Saidenberg Brian Strang Rodrigo Toscano Truong Tran Robin Tremblay-McGaw PLUS: Fabulous, FREE raffle prizes! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 22:25:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ike/clare Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) In-Reply-To: <36636549.4CCE5D19@bayarea.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" _Speed Tribes: days and nights with japan's next generation_ Karl Taro Greenfeld very entertaining-from money drinkers to porn actors to foreign hostesses and back. _City of Life_ Witold Rybczynski fun to read, though i'd recommend _Looking Around_ before this one. _The Poet_ Yi Mun-yol fictionalized biography of my poet ancestor, Kim Sakkat, who now, dubiously, has a traditional korean alcoholic beverage named after him. I've only found a handful of his poems translated into english, but have found several copies of this book secondhand (boo hoo). _Hi-Fidelity_ Nick Hornsby recently finished this one-sure to be a hit movie starring the candy-bar-eating-security-guard guy from "The Full Monty" Ike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 18:30:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Scott Walker: Another Tear Falls by Jeremy Reed The Glamour Chase: The Maverick Life of Billy MacKenzie You Don't Have To Say You Love Me by Simon Napier-Bell Starmaker & Svengalis by Johnny Rogan One Thousand and One-Second Stories by Inagaki Taruho I Spit on Your Graves by Boris Vian (a TamTam project) ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 18:42:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: Current reading (non poetry) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for the tip--I love books like this! There was an amazing article on Ernest Henry Shackleton's Antarctic shipwreck in a recent national Geographic. And lots of books on the disastrous Everest expedition of a few years back--John Krakauer's _Into Thin Air_ and Anatoli Boukreev's _The Climb_ being fascinating accounts (and rather remarkably *different* accounts) of the same events. I love these stories of extreme experiences, and I love Kafka, but I've never thought to think of them together---- But I love these horrifying stories that take place in frozen environments, and my favorite Kafka story is "A Country Doctor"--hmmm, maybe not a coincident... > Alone -- Admiral Richard E. Byrd -- an account of his solo expedition > during the Antarctic night in the interior of that continent. What's > fascinating about the book is that the very technology that allows him to > inhabit his small cabin in -70 degree weather is the same technology that > is slowly killing him. Carbon monoxide poisoning from an oil stove and a > hand-cranked radio (connecting him to the hq at Little America) which saps > what little strength he has left. This book led me to reread Kafka's short > story, "The Burrow." > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 20:08:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: reading list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality, ed. by Susan Aiken, Ann Brigham, Sallie A. Marston, Penny Waterstone Small Sculptures of the 70's, Richard Tuttle (this one is amazing) several issues of The Journal of Artists' Books, ed. Brad Freeman Bolinas Journal, by Joe Brainard (not poetry, although there are a couple of poems in here) canadas (there's a little more to the title, but it seems only reproducible in its own typography, which my email program will not emulate) -- this is also Semiotext(e) #17, 1994 -- just sent to me by a friend, thank you very much and some html and web graphics books charles ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1998 22:13:51 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: stein quite quote MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a >rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. >reference. I believe it's in _Four Saints in Three Acts_, her play which was set to music by Virgil Thompson. I'm not sure where in that text it appears, nor do I know in which of her collections the complete text appears. It's _not_ in _The Yale Gertrude Stein_. An excerpt from it appears in _Selected Writings_ edited by Carl Van Vechten. Mark DuCharme ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 00:34:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: stein quite quote In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a >rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. >reference. The World is Round George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 18:16:36 +0900 Reply-To: kimball@post.miyazaki-med.ac.jp Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kimball Subject: Nonpoetry reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Deviant children grown up. L. Robins Joan of Arc. M. Warner Art and beauty in the Middles Ages. U. Eco. Stituational Chinese. Beverly Hong The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas, an American slave, written by himself. Aviation English. Shozo Yokoyama Animal sounds and communication. W. Lanyon & W. Tavolga (Eds.) How to do things with words. J. L. Austin Building a winning strategy. Pharmacia & Upjohn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 04:32:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: PhillyTalks 8 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm currently reading the next installment in the PhillyTalks newsletter project, #8, which is now available, featuring "dialogue" between Rod Smith and Bruce Andrews, prelude to their live encounter Dec. 10 in the Philadelphia Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, at 6pm, (215-573-writ). PhillyTalks is available from: Louis Cabri 4331 Pine St., #1R Philadelphia, PA 19104 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:25:29 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Help Hello listies I have been collecting information about PAUL AUSTER for a paper about his work esp his poetry. I obviously have the books and translations which he has written, but I would be grateful to make contact with anyone who knows him, knew him or has any information which may be of use. (I have tried to contact him direct but I think I have an old address). I am still in the collation phase at the moment and am looking for a direction from which to approach the subject. His early struggles strike me as poignant, and the story of the manuscript of "The Chronicles of the Guayaki Indians. All very interesting esp in the light of his piece "Why Write?" from "The Art of Hunger". Thanks Jim ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:32:32 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: reading list Dear all, Here are my offerings. The Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians. by pierre Clastres (trans, Auster) Highly recommended, a wonderfully evocative story of an amazing people. The Art Of Hunger, Paul Auster Some great writing (and some not so great) The Birth of the Beat Generation, Steven Watson. One of those I just keep going back to. Love and lots of it Jim Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 Click on this link to visit my site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner (after Basho) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 09:34:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 12/1/98 9:02:18 PM Eastern Standard Time, poemz@MARS.ARK.COM writes: << I think Gabriel Gudding should be unleashed, i don't expect i'll ever agree with everything he has to say, but i appreciate his risk, >> amen to this.... jb... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 06:36:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: reading list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Will you say more about the Chronicle? Is it a field study? When was it written? Jim Bennett wrote: > Dear all, > > Here are my offerings. > > The Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians. by pierre Clastres (trans, Auster) > Highly recommended, a wonderfully evocative story of an amazing people. > > The Art Of Hunger, Paul Auster > Some great writing (and some not so great) > > The Birth of the Beat Generation, Steven Watson. > One of those I just keep going back to. > > Love and lots of it > > Jim > > Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 > > Click on this link to visit my site. > http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ > > "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner (after Basho) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 09:13:51 -0600 Reply-To: ken|n|ing Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: WWW LITPRESS COM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Has anyone out there been checking the listings at www.litpress.com lately? They seem to have fallen behind, which is reasonable considering the amount of material they likely must sift through each week. At any rate, I'm posting my query to the list so as to alert you all to their service, a valuable one I think. Are they still up and running? 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, 2 Dec 1998 10:39:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jasper Bernes Subject: Re: stein quite quote In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Maria Damon: yes, it's in TENDER BUTTONS. I don't know who publishes it. Jasper Bernes On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a > rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. > reference. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:52:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: stein quite quote In-Reply-To: from "Jasper Bernes" at Dec 2, 98 10:39:20 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit TB is from Sun & Moon Classics -m. According to Jasper Bernes: > > Maria Damon: > > yes, it's in TENDER BUTTONS. I don't know who publishes it. > > > Jasper Bernes > > On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > > can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a > > rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. > > reference. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:51:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Cameron Subject: poetics list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I received a message asking for my name, address & telephone number. Before I give out this information, why do you need to have it? Your message states that you need it for your records, but why do you need my phone number? Please reply with the insurance that you will not be giving out my personal information to any phone/mail solicitors, and that you will not be calling to solicit me. David Cameron ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 11:18:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: that dreary nonpoetry stuff MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 1. Bookend : anatomies of a virtual self. Joe Amato. **Well, this has to be called "sort of non-poetry;" out of control and a wild ride. i'll post something on it when i feel able to cope. But *should not* be missed. 2. Many thousands gone : the first two centuries of slavery in North America. Ira Berlin. **Strong emphasis on the ways African Americans fought within slave-society for areas of autonomy, as well as for complete freedom. 3. Early downhome blues : a musical and cultural analysis. Jeff Todd Titon. **There are two books that should be read to begin to learn about blues (by which i mean the country blues, the real stuff): the first is David Evans' Big Road Blues. This (which i've just discovered) is the only study that comes close to Evans'. And the 1994 2nd edition comes with a fabulous 19-track CD. 4. Mapping the West European left. ed. Perry Anderson. **A bit dated but solid. 5. Tula : the Toltec capital of ancient Mexico (Diehl) and Chalcatzingo : excavations on the Olmec frontier (Grove). **i'm a mesoamerica nut (i think Olson got me started in that direction when i was about 15, but i seem to have repressed this, and only recently recalled that that was how it happened..) These are a little dry if you don't share my obsession but accessible, and cool for anyone who likes archeology. 6. Seven faces : Brazilian poetry since modernism. Charles Perrone. I think *everyone* should read this!! It's a great discussion of "my other country's" poetic development from 1930 to the present. Perrone is very sharp and political and always makes the right call in juding the importance and success of different poets and movements (which is to say, i always agree with him). Style is a sort of dryly idiosyncratic post-Derrida academicspeak, influenced rather a lot by Portuguese and French theoretical prose. But substance-wise this is super. prosily, mark ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 10:54:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? In-Reply-To: <39f6481d.36654ff8@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" that was a great post by dave chirot... let me offer a few more thoughts, and i apologize once again for any hint of self-righteousness: if anyone should think it impossible to destroy a list "community" forever and ever, think again... it's happened, i've seen it happen, and it ain't a pretty sight (and this has been said around here before)... this is a region of our own doing, as tentative and perishable as anything else human... so while i'm all for letting folks do what they do, so to say, i'm also for some working sense of self-restraint (modulations as implied in what follows)... charles b. is trying to use what tools the establishment has given him in order to help make this place livable for 700+ subscribers---no easy task... which is to say, he has a certain responsibility as list moderator to *everyone* on the list---much as we have a responsibility to one another [he sez]... after all, this *is* a moderated list, whatever one thinks of same---and there are reasons why it's moderated (which we can discuss at length)... but those of you who have served (even as) listowners, like me, will no doubt be able to address the difficulties of keeping such a list going in productive directions w/o the potentially damaging fall-out of nastier exchange... (((and yes, i'm using what amounts to media-ecology language here, and i think it appropriate)))... and to reiterate: it's simply not the case that everyone --more specifically, every so identified grouping -- feels equally "at home" hereabouts, for all sortsa reasons (i might mention gender as an operating construct, but wish to avoid another jihad)... and it's simply not a matter of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" (this should be self-evident)... so the way i see it, folks should be attentive to the list environs as such, whatever their intentions or motivations, and stop to consider whether they really wish merely to alienate, or insult, or offend, or silence, or drive away (all as opposed, say, to raising anxieties)... i don't say we should in any sense aim to please -- and i understand only too well the necessary risks that come of pushing those envelopes -- but i *do* say that, however outlandish or unorthodox our sentiments, we should find a way to respond to what's coming *back to us* via the list, and not continue as though "no harm could possibly be done"... assuming we value a diverse list population, we can prove our commitment to same only through our actions---which around here = words... finally: i regard this medium we're all busy exploiting as still quite new, despite how tried & true it often seems... it allows for more performative posts, near-synchronous exchange, fairly deliberate exposition, quick procedural communique, tones of moral indignation [mea culpa], on and on and on... over time i suspect we'll all learn better how to tickle these keys, to offer up our wildest dreams in ways that won't give offense (thoug of course we'll no doubt give offense too, being only human)... but folks, we often don't know one another all that well---e.g., despite the incredible rhetorical skills that so many of you possess, you can't really see/hear me winking at you right *now*, saying in so many words "but you don't need me to tell you this, right?"... ----- and if all of this sounds impossible, well that's something worth aiming for i think... /// joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:21:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: This week-end in New York In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Friday, December 2nd Talisman benefit reading by Lyman Gilmore (_Don't Touch the Poet: The Life and Times of Joel Oppenheimer_) Joel Lewis (ed. _Reality Prime: Selected Poems_ by Walter Lowenfels) Maureen Owen (_American Rush: Selected Poems_) Ed Roberson (_Just In: Word of Navigational Challenges: Selected Poems_) Terrific refreshments, wonderful conversation, great poems Denise Bibro Gallery 429 W. 20th Street, 4th floor 7:00 p.m. (Copies of Ed Roberson's _Just In_ and the new edition of William Bronk's _Some Words_ arrived at Talisman Central from the printer yesterday and will be unveiled at the reading.) AND: Saturday, December 3rd: Goats & Compasses benefit reading by Zhang Er Ed Foster Anne Mette Lundofte Eleni Sikelianos Together with an exhibit of _beautifully_ designed books. Just when you thought everything would soon be on a computer screen, Goats & Compasses arrived to prove that paper and ink are still provide the best way to read poems. Trans Hudson Gallery 416 West 13th Street 6:30 P.M. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 11:16:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: that dreary nonpoetry stuff MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I hardily concur with Mark Prejsnar's endorsement of Joe Amato's _Bookend: Anatomies of the Virtual Self_. There _is_ a method to the madness, but I'm having too much fun with it to say yet just what that might be. Also reading: Marvelous Possessions by Stephen Greenblatt. The Recognitions by William Gaddis. Gravity & Grace by Simone Weil. The Sin of the Book: Edmond Jabes, edited by Eric Gould. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 09:28:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Carpenter Subject: non-po reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII my captivating list... -- Hayden White, Metahistory: the historical imagination of ninteenth centuty europe -- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie (reread), trans. daniel russell (i think) -- Greg Bear, Anvil of Stars (aliens! exploding planets! starship intrigue!) -- Carl Sauer, Land & Life: collected essays -- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (ever so slowly...) phew! BC ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:30:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: performance Comments: To: cybermind@panix.com, fop-l@panix.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This Sunday at PS122 I think at 4 or thereabouts, Foofwa d'Immobilite (dancer Freddie Gaffner who worked with Merce Cunningham for years, still stars in Ocean) and myself (shamisen) will be doing a performance as part of an improvisational series; I'm slightly hazy on this, but you might enjoy it, even if the shamisen gives out... PS122 is on the corner of 9th and 1st Ave in NYC. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 13:14:17 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: An error in my interview with... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all- Apparently, I said at least one silly thing in my interview with Teachers and Writers Collab (www.writenet.org). Apparently, though I can't bring myself to check, I claimed that Ron Silliman once read aloud from his work on a bus. Of course, I should have said that he and 26 other people read from Tjanting in various public sites, including (I think) a Bart station. I knew that, but I find that almost anything can pop out of one's (my) mouth during a taped conversation. Pretty alarming. I only looked at the site myself long enough to determine that I was having a very bad hair day. Sorry Ron. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 13:27:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > > let me offer a few more thoughts, and i apologize once again for any hint > of self-righteousness: > It's not so much the self-righteousness as the overweening earnestness. > > charles b. is trying to use what tools the establishment has given him in > order to help make this place livable for 700+ subscribers---no easy > task... which is to say, he has a certain responsibility as list moderator > to *everyone* on the list---much as we have a responsibility to one another > [he sez]... after all, this *is* a moderated list, whatever one thinks of > same---and there are reasons why it's moderated (which we can discuss at > length)... but those of you who have served (even as) listowners, like me, > will no doubt be able to address the difficulties of keeping such a list > going in productive directions w/o the potentially damaging fall-out of > nastier exchange... (((and yes, i'm using what amounts to media-ecology > language here, and i think it appropriate)))... > > and to reiterate: it's simply not the case that everyone --more > specifically, every so identified grouping -- feels equally "at home" > hereabouts, for all sortsa reasons (i might mention gender as an operating > construct, but wish to avoid another jihad)... and it's simply not a matter > of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" (this should be > self-evident)... so the way i see it, folks should be attentive to the list > environs as such, whatever their intentions or motivations, and stop to > consider whether they really wish merely to alienate, or insult, or offend, > or silence, or drive away (all as opposed, say, to raising anxieties)... i > don't say we should in any sense aim to please -- and i understand only too > well the necessary risks that come of pushing those envelopes -- but i *do* > say that, however outlandish or unorthodox our sentiments, we should find a > way to respond to what's coming *back to us* via the list, and not continue > as though "no harm could possibly be done"... assuming we value a diverse > list population, we can prove our commitment to same only through our > actions---which around here = words... > > finally: i regard this medium we're all busy exploiting as still quite > new, despite how tried & true it often seems... it allows for more > performative posts, near-synchronous exchange, fairly deliberate > exposition, quick procedural communique, tones of moral indignation [mea > culpa], on and on and on... over time i suspect we'll all learn better how > to tickle these keys, to offer up our wildest dreams in ways that won't > give offense (thoug of course we'll no doubt give offense too, being only > human)... but folks, we often don't know one another all that well---e.g., > despite the incredible rhetorical skills that so many of you possess, you > can't really see/hear me winking at you right *now*, saying in so many > words "but you don't need me to tell you this, right?"... > > ----- > > and if all of this sounds impossible, well that's something worth aiming > for i think... > > /// > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 13:37:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Sorry Joe, I was just rolling up my sleeves to reply at more length to your post when I was overcome by irresistible ennui, decided to leave it till later, and pushed the wrong button by mistake: another factor of exhaustion, I'm afraid. So I didn't intend to dismiss your whole post with one aside. I suppose what I was shaping up to say was that I like the short, the sharp, the funny. I find much of the posting here exclusive: I think it was David Bromige who posted Thanksgiving greetings to nine or ten of his list-mates, exclusively male. Maybe the way discourse unfolds, and between whom, and in response to whom, is less noticeable than gg's jigging around. If one has to be reasonable all the time, posts get very opaque and tedious. As far as moderation is concerned, I'm somewhat at a loss. Since I moved to New York state, I have noticed a desperate belief in rules and control: maybe it's just a bad run of luck. But are the ravening hordes of Poetics folk, all 700 of them, champing at the bit and in need of regular settling down lest they turn into crazed beasts? They seem pretty quiet to me; even gg confesses to being mousey. Anyway, I'm glad when posts are open enough to let me squeak in: vivas for those who have "failed"! Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 13:03:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mairead, yes, i'm being 'overweeningly earnest,' i think you're right... i apologize for that too, but am willing to venture same to help settle things down.. i really don't know WHAT the lurkers on this list are thinking---but i'll say again that i've found that flames of the sort experienced here of late CAN in effect shut a list down, simply by silencing and/or chasing away otherwise interested parties... anyway, that said, and to pick up on two other items: (1) i'm anything but mousy, and (2) re new yorkers and rules: i hail from syracuse mself so WHAT'S IT TO YA?!... just kidding/// best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:08:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: free (speech, typos and all) poetics Comments: To: jmayhew@eagle.cc.ukans.edu jonathan i know you mean well, and so forth. but do you know what i am reminded of? more than once, i've gotten a badly spelled, cliched, boring, banal, self- contradictory (in a stupid way, i.e. "she pursed her cherry red lips with pain/ and yearned after his tender kiss again/ and then her pale face and lips withdrew/ to the lonely aching sorrow she did so knew") poem, have sent back crits that were fairly blunt and pointed out tired images, contradictions (i.e. pale lips and cherry lips, so which is it?), made suggestion that poet write POETS words, not borrow others. and gotten back some silly, spiteful bit of junk complaining because i don't use uppercase letters in the email and there was a typo. listen, all day, all bloody day and weekend and many a night i sit about picking and picking and particularizing -- my words, other people's words, picking and picking fo r typos, slurring of logic/intent/word meaning, and i am simply sick and tired of it. there has to be a place in my life, writing, where i do not have to be so painfully painstakingly careful but can be relaxed. now, i claim email for this. i'm not the only one -- one of the charms of email, and net, has been the "quick" nature, and the funny typos. it is also one of the dangers, witness painful nature of "flames." none of this is particularly original -- there is lots of lit. on subject of email/net writing. i would rather pay attention to the content of posts, ideas, analysis, than waste my time picking and spitting over typos, demanding things be polished and pretty and spare. we all do enough of that elsewhere. so no, i don't have a problem with misspells, typos, etc. unless they are in a citation and cause me to spend more time finding something, or unless the typo/misspell distorts one's words. i would take time to de-typo a quote, that seems only fair. but i will not stop being comfortable and quick on posts when i feel like it and i for one would not want anyone else to. e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:19:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: free (speech, typos and all) poetics i don't mean to compare you, by the way, to the Awful Writer. but what i do want to bring to earth is that Awful Writer writes me back rude silly responses completely discounting pretty good crit on writing because i am not rolling on my back salivating, i.e. giving AW the response they want. and rather than consider my content, he/she picks on my form. it is sad, a little funny, a lot pathetic, and a terible waste of time, theirs and mine. you request that psots be perfectly spelled, etc. and i do not doubt that part of that arises from a finely tuned "reading" ear. but there is fun in cacophany. and i think you are wasting your time in form at the expense of content, and even, missing an integral aspect of this email "form" -- its spontaneity. huzzah for the quick, huzzah for the spontaneous. but also, huzzah for those posts which one thingks about a bit, rereads, proofs -- i "tolerate" those as well! am catholic in my tastes! (which is, by the by, a very odd turn of phrase. it means open to many things, but one would think a person "catholic" in their tastes would be exceedingly jesuitical and particular. i know the religeuses in charge of my early indoctrination never struck me, then or now, as open to many things!). e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:54:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Clay Subject: Announcing 'Figuring the Word' by Johanna Drucker Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable GenevaFiguring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing and Visual Poetics collects diverse writings by Johanna Drucker previously published in literary and scholarly journals. Topics include: "The Word Made Flesh," "Writing as Artifact," "Visual Poetics," "Artists' Books Past and Future," "The Future of Writing," & "Personal Writing." The book also includes an anecdotal checklist of Drucker's artists' books and an informative introduction by poet Charles Bernstein. "Figuring the Word is a work of poetics rather than criticism or theory in that these essays are the products of doing as much as thinking, of printing as much as writing, of designing as much as researching, of typography as much as composition, of autobiography as much as theory. The mark of the practitioner-critic is everywhere present in these pieces=8AFiguring the Word is a wide-ranging collection of Drucker's essays from the early-80's to the present. Written in a variety of styles and presented in a variety of formats, the book reflects many divergent aspects of her work and thinking, while at the same time demonstrating how cohesive her project has been. Drucker begins with a wonderfully digressive discussion of her work as a book artist in which she gives an account of what lead her not only to her book art, but also to her related scholarly investigations. She then provides a series of close readings of the work of a number of contemporary language artists, providing in other essays overviews of the historical precedents for this work. The book includes not only a perceptive essay about the use of language in the landscape but also a prescient essay about the use of language in the new electronic frontier of cyberspace." -from the introduction by Charles Bernstein, Poet, Editor and David Gray Professor of Poetry and Poetics at SUNY-Buffalo. Johanna Drucker has been making books since 1972. Her recent critical publications include The Century of Artists Books (Granary Books, 1995), The Alphabetic Labyrinth (Thames and Hudson, 1995), Theorizing Modernism (Columbia University Press, 1994) and The Visible Word (University of Chicago Press, 1994); creative titles include: Prove Before Laying (Druckwerk, 1997) and Narratology (Druckwerk, 1994). Paperback original. ISBN 1-887123-23-7 $24.95 300 pages; illustrated throughout. Available at better bookstores, our primary distributor D. A. P. (1-800-338-BOOK); Small Press Distribution (1-800-869-7553), or direct from the publisher: Granary Books 568 Broadway #403 New York, NY 10012 (1-212-226-5462; sclay@interport.net) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 13:29:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: Reads On Busses Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Listfolk, I dont think Rae should have to apologize for alleging Ron Silliman read his poetry out loud on a bus, do you? It's certainly time for the apocrypha of Language Writing to commence, non? If Ron didnt read out loud on a bus, well he ought to have, and it fits in with Barrett Watten's remark re most non-Ron poetry : "A bus ride is better than most art." While it is true that Ron and 26 or 46 of us read Ketjak (or Tjanting) aloud in a Bart station, I would rather hear of the events that never happened, but should have. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 06:28:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Reads On Busses In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I know I read Tjanting on a bus. And that ride WAS better than most art. charles At 01:29 PM 12/2/98 -0800, you wrote: >Listfolk, I dont think Rae should have to apologize for alleging Ron >Silliman read his poetry out loud on a bus, do you? It's certainly time for >the apocrypha of Language Writing to commence, non? If Ron didnt read out >loud on a bus, well he ought to have, and it fits in with Barrett Watten's >remark re most non-Ron poetry : "A bus ride is better than most art." While >it is true that Ron and 26 or 46 of us read Ketjak (or Tjanting) aloud in a >Bart station, I would rather hear of the events that never happened, but >should have. David > > 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: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 13:57:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: setting the record straight Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Happy Thanxgvng everybody! By 'everybody,' I meant women as well as men, and you, Mairead, for your pithy posts, especially. That I had named 7 men (not 9 or 10, though a line always seems longer when you're waiting to hear your name called) before my general greeting, was down to it being a 'men's group energy morning' for yours truly. When the vibes are turned towards the female, the balance will be restored. What goes around, comes around. As my ex-wife, who had already quit, said when she looked in my car ashtray and saw all the Vantage butts on my side, and all the True Menthol 100 butts my girlfriend smoked on the other, "Kharma." I havent the faintest idea why she said that then. Because the car was a Kharman-Ghia? Anyway, be that as it may, I feel discomfort at the beam Political Rectitude turned my way by Mairead's post. Is this how it has to be, equal gender time in all of one's posts? Gee, it's like when the kids were real young, and you had to be extra-careful when handing out candy in case there were tears before bedtime. Has anyone done a count to see which males and females of us frequent posters respond more often to male than female posts, or vice versa? And then there is the problem of cross-dressers, like George Bowering. Or Rachel Loden. Or...................David. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 15:51:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: Reads On Busses In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19981127062831.006d045c@theriver.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 27 Nov 1998, Charles Alexander wrote: > I know I read Tjanting on a bus. And that ride WAS better than most art. > > charles Once read Ted Berrigan's _Train Ride_ going from Kingston RI (not quite Providence) to Boston. . . And last March read most of Johnson's ARK on a weather-delayed Amtrak surrounded by whispering Amish and passing Ohio/Pennsylvania countryside. DZ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 17:01:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: setting the record straight i HAVE done a count. in fact. ehr hum.... here is MY count, by ME, that is my very OWN count... male posters, featuring explicitly male anatomy, have been banned in fifteen states along with assault rifles. 9 out of 10 doctors assure us there is a corollary, which could require an emergency bypass. that is why the male posters do not speak from their mouths. ten out of nine posts are by women over the age. they did not consent to this posting, and all acts that are non consensual are deplorable and should be banned. if ron silliman tries to read on a bus, he should be banned, unless he has a poster featuring explicit anatomy (exquisite, male, or female) in which case he should be banned twice and his assault rifle should be taken aaway. nor is smoking allowed. rachel loden and rachel lewinsky both are to be allowed to post, but must wear their explicitly female outfits before posting. this could include (but is not limited to) the domestic, the maternal, or anything drip dry with pleats. if george bowering appears in pleats everyone must turn in their assault rifles and then bowering should be made to sit down. he may post female posters but not post female posts. bully for george, huzzah. huzzah. david bromige always wears white suits, ice cream suits, rather like colonel sanders. if he exists (bromige OR sanders, there is controversy regarding both). numerous people have sighted him, in white suits. so he can post either as a male or as a female, just not after memorial day. gaga, well, we'll draw a vail over poor gaga except to say that he and kent, well, it wasn't pretty, that's all, it just wasn't pretty and neither of them is female, or a poster, no matter what they might claim. and i think they should give bowering back his raincoat -- the longer they wait, the more money bowering will borrow from the rest of us on the strength of it ("hey, got a dollar, i need a raincoat...") queen of posting protocal elliza ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 17:10:49 -0500 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: fail safe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jordan Davis wrote: > Moved > that Hart Crane's "The Bridge" > "failed" -- > david bromige wrote: > > aloud in a > Bart station, > > "they called to the streets, and the streets killed them". Weber, on Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht. Its not just a vertigo of modernity, I think, to be undone by this built environment. Yes, Yes, it is postmodern bricolage. Architecture. But what I'm confronted with is the concrete mixer. Dump truck. And those ubiquitous stanchions or tapered dividers that they put out at the construction sites, road repair, infrastructure development. Or more, scaffolding. Pinned up against the building. Rising up. Or those cranes they must deploy at the construction site, for the high-rise or sky-scraper. Signs everywhere. "Sidewalk Closed/Please Cross Street." "Bus No Longer Stops Here." "Board Bus On Mt. Pleasant Street". What did Schumpter call capitalism? "Creative destruction"? I don't know. Just destruction. He was wrong. But, but the building seems to go on and on and on. Cities become ugly in there inhumanity. Or even ugly in their humanism. And the fragility of 700+ (sic) is no more than the fragility of walking across, through, various engineered behemoths, believing they will hold our weight, with moderators, and moderation, Believing, That, engineering and maybe even physics are on our side. mc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 18:31:08 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: interactive geographies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit on another channel, John Kinsella has initiated a writing project among the poetry etc listees, writing a paragraph of prose about their locality, everything submitted to the list to be coagulated & re ordered & released as a Salt chapbook....just to show that real work is possible in the email environment-- poetry etc - a list administered by John Kinsella - http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/8574/ miekal sorry I havent jumped into the various frays, tho I feel disappointed that the real issues of media ecology, sustainability & community are not discussed with the same passion & investment that perloff & the listbrats are. its quite obvious that one wouldnt spend the time to fire off elaborate quips if they didnt really feel like they were part of something worth being part of. (speaking of interactive geographies.... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 19:45:18 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: schuchat Subject: two or three things MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 1. I noticed in some post or another a reference to Charles Bernstein as the "gray professor of poetry" at SUNY Buffalo. Say it ain't so! I do not recall Charles as gray in any sense. 2. Non-non poetry reading: DARK -- Hoa Hyugen -- I strongly recommend this book. CLINCH -- selected poems of Michael Scholnick, just published by Coffee House. Wonderful works, some echoes of Reznikoff, Denby and Hart Crane. I strongly recommend this as well. ROOTS AND BRANCHES -- my favorite Duncan, often to which I permitted to return, etc. LIFE & DEATH, Robt. Creeley MYSTERIES OF SMALL HOUSES, A Notley WORKS & DAYS, Bill Luoma all recommended, actually. 3. So what about translation. American into other languages, that is. My Russian vocabulary is probably already adequate to translate some Stein into Russian, but would it sound like Stein in Russian? How to translate Ashbery into another language -- other than French, of course. (I prefer "you" in the plural. -- how do you do that without our unique second person?) Go for texture? Would reproducing the sensory surface have the same effect in Swedish or Japanese? What about Clark Coolidge or Bob Grenier? If you were translating WCWilliams into a rhyme-rich language, would you go out of your way to avoid rhymes or what? I recall that one among we listniks has translated THE PISAN CANTOS into Chinese, what a wonderful idea, I need to read this version. Anyone read any other current American poetry in other languages? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 20:13:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Haynes Subject: Re: setting the record straight Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 12/2/98 2:03:40 PM, elliza@AI.MIT.EDU writes: << queen of posting protocal >> wow! what a great post. I don't know who some of the people are yet, but I think this is why I want to. bully for elliza, huzzah, huzzah. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 22:28:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: two or three things MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit schuchat wrote: > 1. I noticed in some post or another a reference to Charles Bernstein > as the "gray professor of poetry" at SUNY Buffalo. Say it ain't so! I > do not recall Charles as gray in any sense. I'll vouch for that -- it's only the Chair he inhabits at Beau Fleuve that is Gray. The man hisself and the work is anything but that. > > > 2. Non-non poetry reading: > > DARK -- Hoa Hyugen -- I strongly recommend this book. Am reading it just now -- excellent work, highly recommended. > 3. So what about translation. ... Anyone > read any other current American poetry in other languages? Just read (aloud even, at Beaubourg, in gay Paree last month) translations into French of Ken Irby and Robert Kelly. Wouldn't want to comment on their quality as I did the translations myself. The same evening heard Jean Daive read his Robert Creeley versions. French is a tough language for to put amerikan over and into, it tends to flatten the lines. impose melody on what was rhythm and dull the _arete_, the sharpness, especially in as tight and chiselled a syntax as Creeley's. But Daive has been slaving over these for many years and has come up with creditable versions. Wish I were in Berlin where Jerome Rothenberg is reading tonight no doubt with his German translator by his side. "Cockboy" and "that dada strain" in Hölderlinisch would be quite interesting to hear. Come to think of it, this very afternoon I was zu Gast at Skidmore College in a French class to talk about my work, questions of translations, and the poetry of Henri Michaux -- and wound up at one point reading one of my poems as translated into French by Michel Maire. Whenever -- rarely -- I have done this -- always more or less forced -- it has made me feel strange and uneasy -- an uncanny experience, completely dissimilar from reading either my own work in the original English or that of another poet, be it in English or in translation. -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Through the living the road of the dead — Ungaretti ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 22:30:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: setting the record straight In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Okay okay. I don't like candy but I'm whirling in rapid regression through teenagerhood all the way back to babyness. With a bit of luck I'll become embryonic. So bond away you great hunks -- and that goes for you too O far from mousey Joe Amato. I know this post does not concern poetics so I'm keeping it short so I won't be banished but is there a tiredness and a crotchetiness that's affecting a lot of folks at this tailend of the year? Especially as the weather round these parts is anticipating both Christmas AND summer holidays. Roll on this very last year of the century that still thinks it's new: hey, by the time the REAL new century comes I'll probably be a little scrap of genetic material, or at least back in God's pocket as we used to say. Mairead On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, david bromige wrote: > >Happy Thanxgvng everybody! > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 20:40:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: two or three things In-Reply-To: <3665F759.54D6FCAC@csc.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable but I have a photo of him he was making a sandwich and a few hairs a gray or was it grey poupon? At 10:28 PM 12/2/98 -0400, you wrote: >schuchat wrote: > >> 1. I noticed in some post or another a reference to Charles Bernstein >> as the "gray professor of poetry" at SUNY Buffalo. Say it ain't so! I >> do not recall Charles as gray in any sense. > >I'll vouch for that -- it's only the Chair he inhabits at Beau Fleuve that >is Gray. The man hisself and the work is anything but that. > >> >> >> 2. Non-non poetry reading: >> >> DARK -- Hoa Hyugen -- I strongly recommend this book. > >Am reading it just now -- excellent work, highly recommended. > >> 3. So what about translation. ... Anyone >> read any other current American poetry in other languages? > >Just read (aloud even, at Beaubourg, in gay Paree last month) translations >into French of Ken Irby and Robert Kelly. Wouldn't want to comment on their >quality as I did the translations myself. The same evening heard Jean Daive >read his Robert Creeley versions. French is a tough language for to put >amerikan over and into, it tends to flatten the lines. impose melody on >what was rhythm and dull the _arete_, the sharpness, especially in as tight >and chiselled a syntax as Creeley's. But Daive has been slaving over these >for many years and has come up with creditable versions. > Wish I were in Berlin where Jerome Rothenberg is reading tonight no >doubt with his German translator by his side. "Cockboy" and "that dada >strain" in H=F6lderlinisch would be quite interesting to hear. > Come to think of it, this very afternoon I was zu Gast at Skidmore >College in a French class to talk about my work, questions of translations, >and the poetry of Henri Michaux -- and wound up at one point reading one >of my poems as translated into French by Michel Maire. Whenever -- rarely >-- I have done this -- always more or less forced -- it has made me feel >strange and uneasy -- an uncanny experience, completely dissimilar from >reading either my own work in the original English or that of another poet, >be it in English or in translation. > > > >-- >=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D >Pierre Joris >joris@csc.albany.edu >http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ >6 Madison Place >Albany NY 12202 >tel: 518 426 0433 >fax: 518 426 3722 >=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D >Through the living the road of the dead >=97 Ungaretti >=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 19:40:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: pig wars and other truffle-snuffling battles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I see that my name is being taken in vain again on this list. Eliza refers to "rachel loden and rachel lewinsky." I knew that GB was having one of his backstreet flings with Rachel *Levitsky*, or maybe just stepped on his eyeglasses and couldn't tell us apart, but if Monica L. has a sister in these climes I really don't want to know. Why can't she earn her poet laureate kneepads somewhere else, maybe on Robert Pinsky? But anyway. Re: the recent mishegoss, I like what Charles Mingus wrote on a record he sold me (and many others, no doubt) through the mail: "Thank you in this, your DISCRIMINATING purchase." Check out Susan Wheeler's excellent "What Outside?" in the latest _Talisman_ for more light on turf battles. She quotes Auden's "rebuke to Spender when Spender, flitting through the issue of a new journal, came across a poem it pained him to envy, 'Yay! More to raid!'" And later: " . . . the problem is not what happens with assimilation, a trope that still depends upon opposition, it is rather how do we acknowledge and yet ignore, move through, not so much to accrue the goods (as the elect angels) but to develop the work . . . What is the result of the *action* of inserting more interesting work into less interesting work, or vice versa? . . . How does the culture alter by interbreeding? . . . Now, consider the result of this codification, this self-definition *against* an Other. Less to raid. Less to read. A snugger rug. New-found affinities. And a border to protect. An economy to support. A kind of nationalism complete with colonizing outposts in the classroom . . . " I might add that Susan's own SMOKES (Four Way Books, 1998) is one of the strongest arguments I've seen for this freedom to raid and read. In other bits of random business, David Bromige addresses > George Bowering, Bowering Manor, 29 The Winch, Grimsby : Now you're to > be Poet Laureate of Canada and the Orcas Islands Now, when you talk about Orcas, you're talking about the trees some of my ancestors fell out of. The San Juan islands haven't been Brit since the resolution of the Pig War (an altercation worthy of the POETICS list) in 1872. My great-grandparents, John Loudon Gow and Emilie Harding, both of Orcas, would have looked unkindly on any suggestion that they curtsy before Lord Bow'ring. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 20:40:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Antidote to Rae Armantrout's bad hair day MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit HAIR-DO DOLLS with clothes and 31 different hair-dos! By Queen Holden "Queen Holden is the most famous paper doll artist in the U.S. Her paper doll booksales exceeded 28,000,000 copies and are highly collectible. She was first published in the 1920's." This and other FABULOUS prizes can be yours at the Lipstick Eleven reading and party this Friday, December 4, 7:30 p.m., at 766 Valencia in San Francisco. What has this to do with poetics? Oh, everything darlings, everything. Just ask Elizabeth Treadwell about her upcoming Outlet issue on "ornament." Kathy "How Shall I Wear My Hair" Lou (proud purveyour of the Crass Lecherous Guy Reading Series) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 23:52:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: favor (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Poetics List, Some of you may have wondered at the unusual blissful non-clutter of your Poetics List mail lately without any Henry postings. I have been put on "review" status by the list manager for "overposting". I'm not sure if this is a first - is Kent here somewhere? - but I thought people might like to know. I'm writing to say that I understand the list manager's exasperation & desire to have more diversity of messages posted. And that it's been an enlightening experience to be in the doghouse, on mandatory fast. Once many years ago, when I thought God had appeared to me & I needed to get closer to Him, I fasted for 13 days. I remember the lightness, the heightened awareness, and riding around on my bike observing the tinkling circus atmosphere that emanated from the rows of commercial food establishments & shops in the neighborhood. The Poetics List now seems to emanate the same atmosphere for me. Once I was part of it. Now I am on mandatory fast. It feels good. Poetry is neither a product of serious-minded scholarship nor an expression of stylish "fumiste" joie-de-vivre. Or perhaps it CAN be these things, but in my current hungry state I'm interested in something else. Poetry is part of the seriousness of life in a deeper sense that scholarship or reasoning can bear. It's linked with those words & expressions that transform us. I am not thinking of the velvet metamorphoses of an Ovid or a Rilke or even a Shakespeare, but of those words - those few words - that make a path into and through the depths of experience. We inhabit a reality of heavens and hells which is moving inexorably toward either disaster or joy, and is climaxed for each of us & for those we love by a terrifying unknown - or at least a suspenseful unknown. We are possessed by love which overtakes us & transfigures everything. These are the things that a poet tries to become worthy to express. The world is large & poetry is deep, sublime and profound. We should be careful we don't deaden the awareness of its presence with our tinkling cymbals. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 21:05:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: non-po reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit _Beneath The Underdog: His World As Composed by Mingus_ by Charles Mingus Now, the middle can be a bit slow-going. But the beginning and the end have brilliant moments including "Why this is not as good as being treated privately by my own psychologist, or HELLVIEW OF BELLEVUE." Also of note are the sections in which great live jazz performances are enacted in the text via conversations between the players, giving rise to some interesting possibilities for examining the relationship of jazz rhythms to "vernacular" speech. Mandatory listening while reading this book: "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady." Kathy Lou Schultz (with special thanks to Louis Chude-Sokei) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 22:49:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: SPT: Lipstick 11 Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Small Press Traffic presents A bookparty for Lipstick Eleven Friday, December 4, 7:30 p.m. New College Cultural Center 766 Valencia Street $5 Come celebrate the long-awaited publication of Lipstick Eleven, an annual multi-genre journal of experimental writing. Sexy, smart, socially-aware texts--along with a generous helping of irreverence. Get your dose at the publication party for Lipstick Eleven No. 1, edited by Jim Brashear, Catalina Cariaga, Roxane Marini, and Kathy Lou Schultz. All attendees will receive a free raffle ticket for o-o-h, a-h-h fabulous prizes. Readers will include Mike Amnasan, Dodie Bellamy, Norma Cole, Robert Gluck, Kevin Killian, Camille Roy, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Wayne Smith, Brian Strang, Rodrigo Toscano, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, and Truong Tran. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 23:12:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Reads On Buses In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >it is true that Ron and 26 or 46 of us read Ketjak (or Tjanting) aloud in a >Bart station Several years ago a bunch of the young Montreal poets were videotaped while reading in a Station of the Metro. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 23:13:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: setting the record straight In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> And then there is the problem of >cross-dressers, like George Bowering. Or Rachel Loden. >Or...................David. I want to go on record as saying this: I dont WEAR the cross; i BEAR the cross. Bromige should know this, because every time he gives me a kiss, I give him 30 pieces of silver. That's $7.50 US. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 23:26:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: two or three things In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981202204057.007b1300@theriver.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I love Bernstein. And I happen to know that he wears gray underwear. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:35:27 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michel Delville Subject: Stein's Rose w or w/o indefinite article Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >can anyone tell me where i can find stein's famous "a rose is a rose is a >rose is a rose"? i know it's several places, i just need one bibl. >reference. Stein coined the phrase "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" in "Sacred Emily." The phrase reappeared, preceded by the indefinite article, in a later prose sketch entitled "Objects Lie on the Table": "Do we suppose that all she knows is that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" (*Operas and Plays*; 1932). --------------------------- Michel Delville English Department University of Li=E8ge 3 Place Cockerill 4000 Li=E8ge BELGIUM fax: ++ 32 4 366 57 21 e-mail: mdelville@ulg.ac.be ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 00:59:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Stein's Rose w or w/o indefinite article In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19981203093527.007b8590@pop3.mailbc.ulg.ac.be> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Stein coined the phrase "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" in "Sacred >Emily." The phrase reappeared, preceded by the indefinite article, in a >later prose sketch entitled "Objects Lie on the Table": "Do we suppose that >all she knows is that a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" (*Operas and >Plays*; 1932). She also used it as a circular device on her stationary for a while. The circular version also happens, if i remember aright, in The World is Round. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 00:51:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Infoanimism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A short essay entitled "Infoanimism" that grew out of Enigma n awaits you at http://speakeasy.org/~jandrews/vispo/EnigmanInfoanimism.html An excerpt: ...conceive of a word that appears on the screen as being an object with its own properties and behaviors. W.H. Auden once said that he'd give less chance of success to a young writer who said he had something to say than he would to a writer who said he liked to watch the way words hang around together. DHTML allows writers to make documents in which words hang around together and interact with each other and with the reader and possibly with other documents and readers on the Web in ways that can be relevant to what Auden said but in radically different ways than he had in mind. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 05:56:46 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ramez Qureshi Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: "Hell no, we won't grade" (Salon)] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_912682721_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_912682721_boundary Content-ID: <0_912682721@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII some interesting news (just made my non-poetry reading list) --part0_912682721_boundary Content-ID: <0_912682721@inet_out.mail.SPECTRA.NET.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from rly-zd01.mx.aol.com (rly-zd01.mail.aol.com [172.31.33.225]) by air-zd01.mail.aol.com (v51.29) with SMTP; Wed, 02 Dec 1998 07:26:16 -0500 Received: from LIME.EASE.LSOFT.COM (lime.ease.lsoft.com [209.119.1.41]) by rly-zd01.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id HAA29654 for ; Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:26:15 -0500 (EST) Received: from PEAR.EASE.LSOFT.COM (206.241.12.19) by LIME.EASE.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for Digital Unix v1.1b) with SMTP id <0.000AB47A@LIME.EASE.LSOFT.COM>; Wed, 2 Dec 1998 7:25:23 -0500 Received: from BINGVMB.BITNET by BINGVMB.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU (LISTSERV release 1.8a) with NJE id 5772 for ENGGRAD@BINGVMB.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU; Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:26:07 +0000 X-Delivery-Notice: SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender. Received: from BINGVMB (SMTP) by BINGVMB (Mailer R2.10 ptf000) with BSMTP id 1796; Wed, 02 Dec 98 07:24:10 ECT Received: from blue.spectra.net by BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Wed, 02 Dec 98 07:24:08 ECT Received: from carlos (pm3177.spectra.net [204.177.130.177]) by blue.spectra.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id HAA31539 for ; Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:26:10 -0500 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.01 [en] (Win95; I) X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <36653106.4802D59C@spectra.net> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.enggrad Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:22:30 -0500 Reply-To: English Graduate Students Sender: English Graduate Students From: "J. Elizabeth Clark" Subject: [Fwd: "Hell no, we won't grade" (Salon)] X-To: English Graduate Students To: Ramex Qureshi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Thought you all might be interested in this... Liz -------------------- X-POP3-Rcpt: liz@blue Return-Path: Received: from mail.binghamton.edu (mailbox.adm.binghamton.edu [128.226.10.60]) by blue.spectra.net (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id PAA16637 for ; Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:16:41 -0500 Received: from davis.cc.binghamton.edu (bing246.net108.binghamton.edu [128.226.108.246]) by mail.binghamton.edu (8.8.7/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA24933; Tue, 1 Dec 1998 15:11:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19981201100545.006a0058@mail.binghamton.edu> X-Sender: davis@mail.binghamton.edu X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Tue, 01 Dec 1998 10:05:45 -0500 To: bf22899@binghamton.edu, cpotter@wesleyan.edu, Deborah_ROSENFELT@umail.umd.edu, erand@bates.edu, fmaher@wheatonma.edu, frankie@umbsky.cc.umb.edu, jmelnick@mail.cc.trincoll.edu, joseph.entin@yale.edu, kateh@alpha.Lehman.cuny.edu, liz@spectra.net, bella.mirabella@nyu.edu, Paul.Lauter@mail.cc.trincoll.edu, rcrosen@email.njin.net, sslapikoff@infonet.tufts.edu, stankarp@aol.com, suokb@cunyvm.cuny.edu, vicinus@umich.edu, voglg@cunyvm.cuny.edu From: Wayne Ross (by way of Lennard Davis ) Subject: "Hell no, we won't grade" (Salon) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>HELL NO! WE WON'T GRADE! >> >> [SALON , Nov. 30] -- this is an on-line magazine. >> >> Will the upcoming strike by University of California graduate >>teaching assistants raise them from their serflike status -- or spell >>their eventual doom? >> >> BY SEAN McMEEKIN This week, graduate students employed as >>teaching assistants in the massive University of California system >>plan to kick off the holiday season by going on strike. California's >>graduate TAs have clashed with university administrators frequently in >>the past decade over such matters as health insurance benefits and >>tuition fee remissions, but this will be the first time they have >>walked out simultaneously on all eight U.C. campuses. Never before >>have the graduate student teachers of U.C. been so well organized, or >>so unanimously focused on one goal: collective bargaining rights. >>Union recognition of TAs is the bjte noire of the U.C. Regents, the >>university's conservative governing board, and of the individual >>chancellors who carry out their policies. So far, the Regents have >>stubbornly resisted the drive for TA recognition in the courts, and >>university administrators have survived brief, largely uncoordinated >>strikes for union recognition staged at individual U.C. campuses each >>of the last three years. >> >> But the December action promises to be different. Rather than >>try, somewhat quixotically, to shut down enormous public research >>universities, TA strikers will deploy a "porous" picket line and even >>encourage their undergraduate students to continue attending classes. >>Having learned from the notorious public relations failure of a >>semester-end strike at Yale three years ago -- when TAs graded >>assignments but refused to release their grades, thus incurring the >>wrath of undergraduate students and their parents -- California's >>striking TAs will simply withdraw their labor for the month of >>December, in effect daring their universities to hire scabs to grade >>finals. The December walkout, which is organized and underwritten by >>the United Auto Workers (which has branched out deeply into the >>clerical and educational fields), may turn out to be, in the words of >>Christian Sweeney, a leading TA organizer at UC-Berkeley, "the largest >>graduate student labor action ever." >> >> Although it has carried a lower media profile than the curriculum >>wars and the ongoing struggle over affirmative action, the >>ever-tightening academic labor crunch is unquestionably the central >>issue facing higher education in America. The underemployed Ph.D. has >>become a clichi in a job market that has seen the number of annual >>tenure-track job openings decline for most of this decade, even as >>undergraduate enrollments boom and class sizes inexorably rise. As >>universities have struggled to scale back budget outlays in response >>to decreasing public investment in higher education, they have >>increasingly filled classrooms with cheap, temporary labor. Large >>state schools such as the University of California have primarily done >>this by using a surplus pool of graduate students, whose numbers have >>exploded in the 1990s despite diminishing prospects in the academic >>job market. Smaller universities and community colleges, lacking >>extensive graduate programs, have largely relied on non-tenure-track >>"adjunct" professors, who now make up well over 40 percent of the >>academic labor force nationally, and are expected to outnumber >>full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty by 2001. >> >> The lot of the adjuncts is not a happy one. Spin magazine >>recently published an exposi by ex-doctoral student Eric Weisband on >>"Sucker Ph.D.s," who were gulled by a now infamous 1989 Mellon >>Foundation report into believing "that an expected wave of faculty >>retirements beginning in the mid-'90s would threaten the health of >>higher education unless more college students could be persuaded to >>apply for doctoral degrees." Professors have, as expected, retired in >>great numbers in the 1990s, but their tenured positions have been >>retired along with them. Because they constitute an amorphous, >>transient and migratory work force, adjuncts have no unions and are >>consequently even more poorly compensated, on an hourly basis, than >>most of the unionized clerical and custodial employees of the schools >>where they work. Even graduate TAs, such as the U.C. strikers, make a >>better wage than adjuncts -- although adjuncts have Ph.D.s and >>graduate students do not. Alarmed that once-full-time faculty >>positions have been downsized into cheaper, part-time teaching >>junkets, the Higher Education Department of the American Federation of >>Teachers has issued a special report on "The Vanishing Professor." >> >> A labor conference held at the Graduate Center of the City >>University of New York in April 1998 has raised limited hopes that >>adjuncts in the nation's largest urban college system might win >>recognition through CUNY's faculty union, the Professional Staff >>Congress. But adjuncts are still outnumbered 9-1 by full-timers on the >>Staff Congress -- although they make up nearly 60 percent of the CUNY >>faculty. The prospect of collective bargaining rights for adjunct >>professors remains, for most, a laughable pipe dream. >> >> With adjuncts largely powerless, the only effective resistance >>offered to the forces transforming the academic labor market has come >>from graduate students at large state research universities, where >>their numbers have reached critical mass. The universities of Oregon, >>Wisconsin and Michigan, long heavily dependent on graduate teaching >>assistants, have already been forced to recognize TA unions. Trends in >>the teaching demographics of the University of California seem to >>point in a similar direction. After a decade-long boom in doctoral >>program enrollments, graduate students now make up nearly 60 percent >>of U.C.'s instructional staff; full-time tenured or tenure-track >>professors account for 20 percent; the remaining fifth are adjuncts. >>And these TAs do not merely lead discussion sections of large lecture >>classes. Graduate students teach first-year foreign language classes, >>freshman English seminars and even many advanced colloquia devoted to >>undergraduate honors research. In light of these facts, it is hard to >>argue with the motto of U.C.'s TA unions: "The University Works >>Because We Do." By refusing to work this December, TAs are putting >>their slogan to the test: Will the university work without them? >> >> After being flooded with e-mails from undergraduates concerned >>that their university will, indeed, not "work" without the services of >>its graduate TAs, UC-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl called a >>special meeting with TAs from Berkeley's top-ranked history department >>to discuss the upcoming strike. Himself a history Ph.D., Berdahl hoped >>to defuse pre-strike tensions by exchanging views with graduate >>students he regarded as future colleagues, in their own department, in >>a setting geared toward the "collegiality" of academic discourse. >> >> Berdahl, a Midwesterner of imposing size but extremely congenial >>temperament, is only in his second year at Berkeley, and is still >>anxious to make a good impression on students who feel they barely >>known him. His gesture of solidarity with history doctoral students >>was not, however, received cordially. E-mails flew among history grads >>after his Oct. 28 invitation, accusing Berdahl of "scare-tactics and >>intimidation" among other things. But Sweeney, a second-year American >>history grad and TA union leader, convinced his colleagues that >>meeting with the chancellor of U.C.'s "flagship campus" offered an >>"opportunity to communicate why we want a union with collective >>bargaining rights and what we're willing to do to achieve that goal." >>Two brainstorming sessions followed, in which the graduate students >>worked out a strategy of rhetorical attack. >> >> When Berdahl arrived in the conference room of the history >>department on Nov. 12, the stage was set for an ambush. Although more >>than half of Berkeley's current history TAs have declined, for one >>reason or another, to walk out in December, not a single TA spoke out >>against the strike in front of Berdahl. Galvanized by Sweeney's >>strategic bull sessions, graduate students attending the meeting spoke >>as one, letting forth an eloquent cascade of grievances against >>Berkeley's academic labor practices. Unlike unionized employees of the >>University of California, TAs do not receive regular cost-of-living >>increases in their wages; they bore the brunt of state budget cuts on >>higher education enacted under Gov. Pete Wilson. >> >> Berkeley's graduate students, Monica Rico pointed out, won >>limited health coverage and tuition-fee remissions in previous strike >>actions, but these gains were granted by the university "on an ad-hoc >>basis," and could easily be revoked in the absence of permanent, >>union-negotiated contracts. Without collective bargaining recognition >>for TAs, the university could, in Rico's view, continue to take >>advantage of graduate students with impunity. After all, she >>complained, as a TA, her "$13,000-a-year voice [doesn't] have much >>chance of being heard." Only a union would give Rico and other TAs a >>fair chance for "redress of grievances." Graduate students with >>children, Vera Candiani explained to the chancellor, desperately >>needed a certain level of "predictability": They must be able to plan >>for future expenses without worrying about a possible revocation of >>health benefits or a reinstitution of fees. It was in order to lock in >>guaranteed compensation levels, Candiani declared, that "we have >>chosen a union to represent us, [and] that is our right." >> >> Against a chorus of hostile voices committed to TA unionization, >>Chancellor Berdahl struggled to uphold an idealistic view of the >>university as a haven of "collegial" discourse where the adversarial >>model of the shop floor had no place. Citing his prior experience as a >>member of the American Federation of Teachers union, and as a >>negotiator with TA unions at the University of Oregon, where he had >>been associate dean of undergraduate education, Berdahl argued that >>"collective bargaining isn't a dialogue." Because each group involved >>employs agents, "professional negotiators ... whose purpose is to win >>a point," the upshot of unionization was, in Berdahl's estimation, "to >>utterly destroy hope ... of collective conversations on either side of >>the table." Because of their devotion to "collegiality" and >>constructive "dialogue," universities were in the chancellor's view >>"not factories ... not like any other industry." And yet, when pressed >>by one graduate student to explain the ongoing "outsourcing" of >>academic labor in the 1990s -- the employment of adjuncts -- Berdahl >>tacitly admitted that in this instance, the factory model may have >>invaded the academy. This did not mean, however, that unionization was >>the answer. >> >> "Unions," Berdahl reminded the history TAs ominously, "have not >>prevented [corporate] downsizing." Nor would recognition of TAs' right >>to bargain collectively, he warned, necessarily "lead to different >>decisions by the university" on employment practices than would >>otherwise be made. Even while declaring allegiance to the lofty ideals >>of academia, Berdahl hinted, none too subtly, that he was willing to >>bow to the bottom line if necessary. >> >> The hidden subtext of Berdahl's warning was this: Graduate >>students are expendable. At an elite university like Berkeley >>especially, TAs are an expensive commodity. Permanent faculty members >>may love to have graduate students around who share a passion for >>scholarship, who provide cheap research assistance and who are, almost >>by definition, eager to please professor-mentors who act as >>all-powerful gatekeepers to academic success. >> >> But from the standpoint of university administration, graduate >>students are a luxury. They are not merely paid more than adjuncts >>when they teach; they also drain university resources with their >>fellowships, research and travel grants, and by tying up significant >>quantities of professors' own teaching time and office hours. Compared >>to the undergraduates whose tuition underwrites their paychecks, >>graduate students are indeed a privileged lot. Even the opportunity >>enjoyed by graduate students to teach undergrads, in many cases with >>little or no prior experience -- and of course, without the Ph.D. >>degree that ostensibly qualifies them for such teaching -- could >>arguably be considered a privilege, a valuable apprenticeship. TAs >>receive a salary, which currently includes health coverage, for what >>is, in effect, on-the-job training. Not everyone outside the academy >>is so lucky. >> >> Of course, the chance afforded graduate students to teach is not >>merely a privilege, but also a serious responsibility. And many TAs, >>unwilling to abdicate their duties to their students at a critical >>time of year, have opted out of the December strike, regardless of >>their personal views on unionization. Graduate students were, after >>all, once undergraduates themselves, and most of them do not take >>lightly the prospect of walking out on their students. >> >> Lisa Swartout, the head TA of Berkeley's core European history >>survey course this fall, was herself an undergraduate at Berkeley, and >>knows how crucial a role graduate TAs play in large lecture courses. >>As an undergrad, Swartout recalls, "I really had to fight for any >>attention that I got"; as a graduate TA, she now feels a reciprocal >>obligation to her undergraduate students, recognizing that she >>represents "one of their lifelines to the university." To cut off this >>lifeline is not an easy decision to make, and even many dues-paying TA >>union members are hesitating before making it. >> >> When the University of California reinforces the ranks of these >>non-striking TAs with recruits from the vast statewide pool of >>underemployed Ph.D.s -- all potential scabs, on the cheap -- the >>expendability of graduate teaching assistants may be rudely exposed. >>If graduate students continue the national trend of striking for union >>recognition, Chancellor Berdahl admonished Berkeley's history TAs in a >>barely veiled threat, "universities will shift resources towards >>[adjuncts]." After all, doing so would be both "cheaper" and "easier" >>than dealing with militant union representatives. What's more, Berdahl >>concluded, the inevitable result of more adjunct hiring would be a >>"shrinking of graduate programs." By demanding to be treated as union >>labor, strikers may indeed win the right to be treated as union labor, >>and see most of their jobs taken over by non-union adjuncts -- who >>will actually be more qualified and more experienced than the >>unionized employees they are replacing. Those few TAs still hired each >>semester may enjoy "predictability," with full knowledge of their >>rights and benefits; but the mushrooming ranks of graduate students >>turned down for teaching positions would enjoy no benefits, no >>compensation, at all. The strikers may, in short, be punished by their >>success. >> >> By diverting attention away from the desperate plight of the >>adjuncts, graduate student strikers may also have unwittingly played >>right into the hands of the cost-cutting university administrators who >>are their true adversaries. In California, the TA strikes have >>mobilized the university's legal department in a concerted, and very >>expensive, effort to block unionization. After their battles with >>striking graduate students, U.C. administrators are not likely to >>suffer kindly any future unionization drives by adjuncts; and without >>the eventual organization of adjuncts, it is hard to imagine that the >>tenured academic labor squeeze -- the vanishing professor problem -- >>will disappear. The frustrating experience with TA unions may instead >>teach universities that exploiting adjuncts is the ideal way to toe >>the bottom line and accelerate the process of academic corporatization >>already under way. Graduate students are, ideally, future professors >>in the making, but in practice most of them will end up, sooner or >>later, as adjuncts. Many of these unlucky adjuncts may come to regret >>the way they abused the privileges they once enjoyed as graduate >>students, when they bit the hand that was still feeding them >>generously even while those less fortunate fought desperately for any >>scraps thrown their way. SALON | Nov. 30, 1998 >> >> Sean McMeekin is a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC-Berkeley. He >>is not currently teaching and does not belong to the union. E. Wayne Ross SUNY Binghamton "Ain't it sad when your only friend is the blues You can't keep your love afloat on a sea of fools." -Rod & Honey Piazza --part0_912682721_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 05:38:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: A bus ride is better than most art Comments: To: Poetics List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Actually, it was a solo reading of the whole of Ketjak, in September 1978 (20 years ago!), at the original branch of the Bank of America, #1 Powell Street, directly in front of the cable car turnaround, and then, several years later (1982 or 83), a reading of the whole of Tjanting at the Church Street Muni Metro station with some 26 odd (some very odd) people assisting. The latter would have been in a BART station if I could have gotten permission to do so, but I was able to wrangle it from Muni because I knew two members of the Public Utilities Commission, one from my work as a political organizer and the other being John Sanger, whom the sharp-eyed on this list will recognize as having been (1) the producer of the David Lynch film _The Elephant Man_; (2) Michael Palmer's upstairs neighbor during much of the 1970s; (3) the director of the very last TV episode of Twin Peaks. I have written books on public transit, but never given a reading on same. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 07:11:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: I Will Irony No More Forever In-Reply-To: <199812022201.RAA00444@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Eliza McGrand wrote: > gaga, well, we'll draw a vail over poor gaga except to say that he and > kent, well, it wasn't pretty, that's all, it just wasn't pretty and > neither of them is female, or a poster, no matter what they might A). Because I am dumb and cannot defend myself, I try to ignore those who slight me. When I am at my best, and my being is working like a glinty and powerful bike, I do not even notice it when people slight me, for I am as the spiff pedals pumping over the leaves. B). And yes in deference to Henry Gould's recently smuggled and very wise words about poetry and despite them furthermore I would like to say the following to Elliza McGrand, and then get on to one or two points regarding this holy order that is our Poetry: Dear Impostor: I like it best when you are mute. It is fundamentally important you understand at least 3 (three) of the 5 (five) reasons I have attested in court to your derangment: The First: You remind me of a dog hurled over a roof: yapping to no effect. The Second: Yes I WAS the disturbed looking individual over there shouldering a rifle with one arm and a shovel with the other. My intention? To dig myself to hell where I planned to find and threaten the mud-mouthed beast who wrote "as for gaga let us put a veil over him." For Third: Though I have been accused of infliction with Halitosis of The Keyboard, it is my fundamental impression, poetry can survive even the holy art of insult hence I insult you. May you bang into the roost of an eagle. An hungry eagle. An hungry angry people-hater of an eagle who cannot be suade by the cheap talk of which you are so overfond dear manic impostor. yrs, gaga ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Henry Gould: On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Henry Gould wrote: > The world is large & poetry is deep, sublime and profound. We should > be careful we don't deaden the awareness of its presence with our > tinkling cymbals. "Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely: to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with: and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and villify...." Mercy on us, indeed. We can give words, I think, Henry, but Mercy comes from elsewhere, maybe from the big G (not me), maybe from Poetry, who knows: but thank you (and this from a profaning person) for reminding us. gg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 08:52:12 -500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg Subject: Re: Stein's Rose w or w/o indefinite article In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19981203093527.007b8590@pop3.mailbc.ulg.ac.be> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Michel Delville writes: > Stein coined the phrase "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" in "Sacred > Emily." It's been a lot of years now, but as I recall I read somewhere (sorry, can't remember the source) there was speculation that the first 'Rose' in this phrase in fact was a person's *name*. If this is true it gives the phrase an entirely different shading. --- Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ CIS: 71515,124 WELL: jer Internet: jr@amanue.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 06:43:34 +0000 Reply-To: arshile@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Salerno Organization: Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts Subject: THE LAST AVANT-GARDE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kevin: The next issue of Arshile will feature a special project on Frank O'Hara, and for this we would like to run a review of the new Lehman book THE LAST AVANT-GARDE. Would you have an interest in writing such a review? I think you could do a wonderful job on it. Let me know. Mark P.S. I'm finally getting around to your Spicer book. And enjoying it immensely! Thanks for writing it. (And thanks for the mention on your acknowledgements page). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 06:45:35 +0000 Reply-To: arshile@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Salerno Organization: Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts Subject: THE LAST AVANT-GARDE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Colleagues: My apologies for the accidental front channel of an intended back channel. Mark Salerno ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:09:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: quick history MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit wondering if someone could give me a quick history lesson, when was the atom first split, Im guessing around 1937-38... I miss henry miekal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:16:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Day Subject: Re: quick history Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Theres' a timeline of events at Atoms were first smashed in 1932, Cockcroft and Watson, Cavendish Laboratory. "Splitting the atom" - detecting subatomic particles - was in 1911, Rutherford At 03/12/98 09:09:23, miekal and wrote: # wondering if someone could give me a quick history lesson, when was the # atom first split, Im guessing around 1937-38... # # # I miss henry # # # # miekal # Roger ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 11:17:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: Re: reading/2 or 3 things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Been reading Richard Holmes bio Shelley The Pursuit, which, along with his bio of Coleridge's early life, is some of the best biography I've ever dragged my eyes across. I've been hearing that the second part of Holmes' Coleridge bio is out or out in England or about to come out & wonder if anyone can verify this. I'd third or fourth the recommendation of Hoa Nguyen's Dark, & say as well that eyes can be kept out for another collection of Nguyen's, Hood, which ought to be out some time in 1999 from Buck Downs' Books. Last week staying in my cousin's room for a couple nights I read four or five Calvin & Hobbes books & remembered that that's where I got my poetics from, along with Dickinson & the New York Post. Plus a creepy Children's Bible to rid myself of some plague pictures that have haunted me worse than the albino roach families on St. Mark's Place; & flipped through Hakeem Olajuwon's autobiography which gave me a feeling inside. One other thing, a book by Sparrow called Republican Like Me, a diary/account/poetry boke of Sparrow's 1996 campaign against Dole for the repub. presidential nomination, is one of the funniest things I've read all year. It's from Soft Skull Press. Anselm Berrigan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 11:21:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: quick history In-Reply-To: <3666553F.2408@mwt.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Free Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 08:18:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Carl Subject: stein pedantics In-Reply-To: <199812030502.VAA12556@franc.ucdavis.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII yes but it's "rose is a rose is a rose" no first 'a' ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 11:38:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: stein pedantics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, David Carl wrote: > > yes but it's "rose is a rose is a rose" no first 'a' Somewhere in Finnegans Wake, I recall reading eros is eros is eros 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, 3 Dec 1998 09:03:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: My 2 cents (.94 due to inflation) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry's recent use of another person's account to send messages to to the list will only aggravate an already difficult situation, I assure you. And for what it is worth, I have long advocated that this list become a MODERATED list, even while mostly maintaining an atmosphere of an open forum (not free). Charles has resisted this, though I think he is being principled, stubborn. I realize that this is an unpopular position, and I am used to taking unpopular positions. Most of the people who were on this list when it began are now long gone. Some of them have started lists deriving their interests from the original intention of this one, while maintaining a limited scope and a limited "membership." For me, this list has always been an extension of the poetry and poetics community constituted around certain ideolologies and circumstances, whether poetix communities, graduate school programs, etc. It isn't about VIRTUAL anything--that is a bunch of cosmic cyber hype. The emphases reflected here, it seems to me, are related to these interests as expressed in the Welcome Message, which is reiterated monthly. Charles has never apologized for the intended focus of this list, nor should he. There are plenty of other lists, with differnt interests, foci, and rules of conduct. This list has to be run by someone, and only recently has the notion of pulling the plug on this forum become something resembling a real possiblity. Most of the people that I know who have left the list usually indicate that the low-quality of the conversation, the incessant chat-like behavior, etc., as the major reasons for their departure. Many of them have mentioned Henry (and others) as reasons for their departure. For what it's worth, if this list were moderated (and I was the moderator), most of what Henry has written would be fine with me. Always at issue (at least as far as I can tell) has been the sheer number of posts, the insistence that every post must be replied to, even if with a one-liner. (which isn't to say anything about the nastiness--even my post about my trip to LA was met publicly with scorn and derision--and there many subtle things in there that I was trying to indicate were missed completely, cast off as being ass-kissing &whatnot. Certainly not the kind of response that has me wanting to participate. In any event, it doesn't really matter what I think) But on that note, I think it is time to end this list as it is presently known. Charles probably does not agree with me, and he has he reasons, I am sure. Perhaps one of the disaffected here will rise to run their own listserv program, listbot (like Kinsella's succssful PoetryEtc list). And it isn't that I wish to become the moderator. I am tired of being demonized for doing my job and I think that the next poetics list manager will want to take a more proactive role. There is no reason that this list has to mimic the worst aspects of l.f. capitalism or the fantasy of free speech. I think this list has become too large to hear everyone. Too few people dominate an increasingly paranoid conversation. UNSUB TODAY! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:37:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Farr Subject: the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ... >UNSUB TODAY! You first. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 12:42:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: contributed to poetics list navelgazing (del. if bored wi/) Comments: To: kuszai@earthlink.net joel et alia (including absent henry): do we, picking up ELF, or Lipstick, or Nedge, expect every single article, each sentence of every article, to be wildly interesting and germaine? i do not. expect that there will be a few poems, maybe an article or two, that i will have been glad to have read. perhaps there will be a poem that will really break into me, or a short story, that i'll think about for a long time. maybe an idea in an essay, or maybe a review that makes me go read something new. that is an even better thing. poetics list... i feel as if i have a very primitive awful mail handler, but maybe i'm better off than many? except most people here seem to have eudora. in my program messages come with sender and header. if header is on topic i'm not interested in, i delete. ditto, if sender annoys me. poetics list... every day, there is at least one new idea. several message that amuse. suggestions to read things that i tuck away and try and follow up on. new places to send work. poetics list... i get in a stupid argument with a neighbor who thinks monica lewinsky was a whore and should be arrested and its her fault clinton fooled around anyway, or another real life example, god sent AIDS to kill gay people because they are evil. and i get home, or terminal at work, plug into poetics, and read about... use of spaces in poem. quote from zukofsky. new magazine from toledo ohio. an argument on whether a writer writes for audience, and should she/he. a report from a conference on laura riding. yes, there is dreck, but there is also lots of gold. now joel, you say people complain and de-sub. that is part of net space, lists, in general. i'm on an outing club list, and every year, freshman join the list, then bumble around and flood list with requests to unsubscribe. people join lists thinking they are going to be one thing and they turn out to be another. you seem to be forgetting something -- the list has 700 subscribers. 700 people who joined and stayed on. that is pretty unbelievable. to complain on the one hand that people are quitting, while complaining that list is too big?... see a contradiction? tone. i liked your report from la. earmarked it and meant to write you a note welcoming you back. lost it in my savage email program. one of my profs once said, about class reviews, you can get 26 glowing ones, but what you'll remember and brood about is the one that panned you. i recall people enjoying report from la. there were surely lots of people like me who meant to write and didn't, but would have written warm and happy-to-hear-from-you notes. tone in general. yes, poetics in general can be bitchy, snipping, mean-spirited. even, at times, downright ugly. welcom to cyberspace. i've never yet seen a list without flames, and poetics has had fewer than any other i've been on or read from. henry. this whole thing puzzles me. there were posts in the last round that sucked -- mean, careless, sweeping and silly. but henry? he has consistently fought to bring up "poetics" questions, has asked those wild interesting abstract questions, included a scintillating corruscory of wordplay, wit, erudition. and calm. even his irritated posts are informed. so, like you, i would keep his posts. frequency? there are days he is about the only one posting. frequency. easier solution -- programmers out there, i know this can be done in pascal. we can ask that it be done by conscience. suppose we set number, say, 3 posts per day max. if you want to post more than 3, you wait till end of day and if total posts < 50, you post your >3 post(s). or could be set into programming -- each sub gets n=3 posts accepted, >3 posts get sent into queue. if total number (N) of posts N =< 35, say, then queue released. moderator: should utterly foolish flame posts be deleted? on the one hand, we don't have to read, or get het up about them. on the other hand, maybe foolish flame poster can learn from seeing response to post? on other hand, are we here to teach. on other, why not screen the worst? final thought: comparatively speaking, very few flames overall, and large number of happy subscribers (or reasonably so, remember, you can vote with your feet). why fix what ain't broke. as a community, i think people know how to punish those perceived as out of line. and if you are bored with a line of inquiry, indicate same backchannel and delete front channel. easy, n'est ce pas? final: with every post, i see people in sturdy tweed suits bearing down upon me ready to slap me silent with their mortarboards. that is my problem. i can imagine people such as would (and doubtless do) loath everything i say -- i've had roomates like that. does that mean i cease to speak? i also get backchannel and frontchannel posts thanking me for posts about every time i post. have to figure it evens out. in my paranoia, i can easily now imagine i am one of the ones "frequently complained about." does that mean i hoard up each congratulatory post, canvass friends to post "Great Post" posts, so that i have ammunition against the complainers? wouldn't that generate an awful lot of boring trash? why not just stopcomplaining to list moderators and take matters into our own individual, honest, taking responsibility, saying to face anything we have to say and not sneaking around behind people, etc. selves and write anyone we think is posting inappropriately, or in mean way, etc. ourselves BACKCHANNEL. and leave poor charles/joel/list/etc. out of it? people getting enough complaints probably would, i would think, do something about it themselves. i hope none of the 700 (including you, joel, whose warm, funny, explorative posts i have always enjoyed) unsub, and that lots of the silent 700 pipe up. if you hate me, my posts, the horse i rode in on, write me and leave charles/joel/etc. alone. maybe we can figure out something together. if you like me, my posts, my horse, write me if you feel like it. sez i. e ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:04:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: I'll cc' Joel's 2 cents, raise him 5 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joel, I agree with a lot of what you said. Personally, I think this List has become an enormous drag: the goading and near-flames only somewhat less annoying than the nice-nice posts that could better be back-channeled and other things that are probably intended to be witty comments that don't quite cut it on e-mail. But I stay for two reasons: 1) vulnerability to the definition of the List made in last year's ILS Dictionary: "inane chatter; check constantly," and 2) inane as it is, it is read at work where my e-mail access is, and breaks up the day. And then posts announcing new publications, readings, reading reports, trip reports, and reading lists make it worthwhile. I have little sympathy for the people too delicate to participate. This list is anarchy; everyone can type and send a message from a level ground. Everyone can read each post in turn. No post is louder than another or arrives with greater authority than another. Maybe this list is boring as a result, but there is little or no flaming and that has been due either to peer pressure or mutual respect, whichever you prefer. You can delete posts wholesale; I do this regularly. But I really meant to say something in defense of Henry Gould. His posts may outnumber anyone else's but I have never read them as being malicious or mean-spirited. There are many other over-chatty people too. Why not censor (or moderate) them too? Why not limit posts to one per-person each day? That ought to make one think before one writes. Also, anyone who follows up a mistakenly-sent post to this List with an apology for doing so should be immediately reprimanded (via back-channel). I know of a Listserv organized as an alternative this one. It's closed (or restricted) to prevent it from turning into this one. It's riddled with its own problems as a result. having no answers to anything, <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 3 Dec 1998 11:55:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: My 2 cents (.94 due to inflation) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Joel's judicious post raises some disturbing issues. Is it really apocalypse time for the venerable List? I for one would miss it terribly. And yet, my participation in the conversation has gone - over the course of three years - from timidly lurking to avidly active to overwhelmed by it all. Has the list become a victim of its own success? Or am I just busier than I used to be and suffering from List fatigue? I'm not sure I agree with Joel that the quality of the talk has waned all that significantly. Sure, there's a lot of happy gabbing that goes on - some of it rather amusing, some of it not - but I still find much here that is absorbing, instructive or provocative. If I had the time, I'd give a rundown of my own personal highlights from the past 3 months or so. One that does come to mind was the animated dialogue around issues of teaching "racist" texts in the classroom that Aldon Nielsen and others vigorously pursued. Another would be the issue of the legacy of Language Poetry that was taken up by Mark DuCharme, Mike Magee and many others. Of course the very form of this List militates against consensus - rightly so, I think, however frustrating that may be - and unfortunately, it also amplifies silliness into plain nastiness. But beyond the intrigue of debating various poetics issues, the List has great value for me in two of the things Charles designed it for: the announcements of readings and events; and the announcement of new publications. This may strike many as banal, but by performing this quotidian service the List provides a sense of continuum or environment where information about "fellow travelers" and their activities is no longer fated to wither away on some local vine, but enjoys a kind of second bloom through its dissemination here. The number (and quality) of poetic and critical texts I've learned of here is simply staggering and I'm very grateful for the opportunity they've given me to delve more deeply into poetics. Where else can one find about these things? Rather than impeach the List, ought we not to censure and move on? Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:15:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: numerology MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Not to interrupt the end of the world, but where'd anybody get this "700" club idea of the list? Looking at the subscriber list, I see 668 names, -- with RON SILLIMAN SUBSCRIBED THREE TIMES!!! I mean you know what this means don't you???????? J ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 14:40:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: WENDY KRAMER Organization: N/A Subject: raddle moon MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit could you backchannel with subscription address again please? i lost it thanks, wendy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:24:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Mina Loy/Woman & Poet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At long last, the National Poetry Foundation title _Mina Loy, Woman and Poet_, ed. Maeera Shreiber & Keith Tuma, has arrived. 640 pages, $24.95 paper, $49.95 cloth. Full description on NPF website, http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ SPECIAL POETICS LIST OFFER!!! PAPER $20., CLOTH $40., NO SHIPPING CHARGE (USA). Contributors include Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Peter Quartermain, Marjorie Perloff, Roger Conover, Carolyn Burke, Ellen Keck Stauder, Kathleen Fraser, Barbara Guest, Anne Waldman, both editors, and quite a few others. There's a Mina Loy Interview by Paul Blackburn & Robert Vas Dias, and an annotated bibliography by Marisa Januzzi. Photographs, etc. etc. Order by e-mail to Gail Sapiel Ask her about postage for non-USA. We can ship and bill, or take a card #, or you can send a check. National Poetry Foundation Room 302 5752 Neville Hall University of Maine Orono Maine 04469-5752 (p.s. Without the Poetics List, where would I post this? Let's all calm down here. Pax, Sylvester) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:29:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: 666 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 700 Club debunked. 668- (minus) 3 Ron Sillimans ( plus one RS) = the Buffalo List, or Satan. It means the Poetics list is The Beast, and Henry is the whore of Babylon. ha. ha. (This is the kind of stupid e-mail that I should have back-channeled to Jordan, but send here to prove a point. It is called fluff. Or fluff-E. Now do as I say, not as I do-- no more fluff-E. Jordan wrote: > Not to interrupt the end of the world, but where'd anybody get this "700" > club idea of the list? Looking at the subscriber list, I see 668 names, -- > with RON SILLIMAN SUBSCRIBED THREE TIMES!!! > I mean you know what this means don't you???????? > J <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 3 Dec 1998 10:41:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: A bus ride is better than most art Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" actually, Ron read BART on BART, but since he doesn't move his lips when he reads his writing in progress nobody heard it -- I tried using the chapbook cover as a BART ticket and almost got away with it, but the other pages kept getting stuck in the machine -- I used to practice bus riding as a mode of performance art when I still lived in DC -- but then they started putting poems on the bus and my team of lawyers advised me that my work violated fair use by this incorporation of copyrighted materials -- (nearly all of _Evacuation Routes_ was written on the bus that runs between Georgetown and Howard University -- the drivers used to cut me some slack on the fare if I read to them en route) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:51:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Haynes Subject: Re: My 2 cents Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Not that anyone here will care, but having just gotten on this list, I am dismayed about talk of its apocalypse. Some of the ideas regarding limiting the number of posts may be useful, but for me the list is wonderfully fulfilling in its grandeur as well as allowing me the pleasure of rubbing my pixels next to the high-profile individuals who frequent here. The publications and urls for webpages and magazines have been a blessing... Trying to use Yahoo or other search engines just doesn't cut it. So, I'd rather spend my hours wading through the bickering and bitchiness of the poets here to find even one impressive site than to wallow in impersonal boolean searches. It seems the personalities here are strong, and egoes even stronger, but thank god for the smuggled-in Henry Gould email. His comment about "Poetry is part of the seriousness of life" makes me glad. I miss him and wish he were back. Henry said it so well in that message: "We are possessed by love which overtakes us & transfigures everything. These are the things that a poet tries to become worthy to express." And it seems to me this is what Henry has been attempting (for the most part) with most of his messages. A humorous nudge here, a dialectic tug there, back toward the direction/discussion of poetry. --bob ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 10:51:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: My 2 cents (.94 due to inflation) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as an early adopter who has come and gone from the list at varied times I'd just like to say that I still find it immensely valuable -- As long as I have a delete button, I have no real concern about some of our sillier moments -- when people get too insulting I just absent myself for a few days -- But I can attest to the fact that this list has made my life and my work go better -- I remember the day some years ago when I posted a question about a name that appears in Bob Kaufman's work -- Ron Silliman shot back with an answer for me almost immediately -- It would have taken me weeks to track down the information on my own -- and I have enjoyed running into people from the list at different meetings and readings around the country -- Unsub if you must this old, gray list but, If Charles is taking suggestions, I'm in favor of his current, minimal moderation -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 14:26:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: My 2 cents (.94 due to inflation) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19981203105117.0075f4e0@popmail.lmu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well if it's come to a vote then: henry's posts are usually a scream... so free hg, yes, but by all means FREE LEONARD PELTIER the list, all said and done, is quite valuable to me, if not quite a blessing... i am grateful for it... i would preach (as you all know by now) self-policing rather than moderation... (i know this may not always work, and i'm not aligning mself with/against anyone here, and i don't mean to sound panoptical... but i think joel's "unsub" was sent in the spirit of trying to get folks to listen to themselves)... db: no hard feelings, but i DO have sympathy, not for "delicate" ears (fuck that), but for those who feel attacked/excluded... this is a judgment call, of course, and i won't rehearse what i've already writ re same... but sometimes it's downright clear to me when someone/some group is feeling attacked/excluded... and though i can certainly hit the key quick as anyone (to eliminate some of the godawful trivia that floats by my eyes, e.g.) i don't think that's the whole answer to things getting nasty... btw, so far i've enjoyed some of the posts writ in order to defend the list (as it were) than a lot of what i've seen prior (incl. of course my own volumes)... make of it what you will, i'm trying to mself... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 14:28:08 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: My 2 cents (.94 due to inflation) I second Aldon's views. Sure, there are times when this List gets tedious. But those times, no doubt, are different for each of us. There will be stretches of more delete, and stretches of more rapt engaged attention. I, too, have found the list to be very informative. I hope the list continues in its somewhat anarchice current manner. Hank Laer ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 14:35:11 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Re: I'll cc' Joel's 2 cents, raise him 5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit daniel bouchard wrote: I know of a Listserv organized as an alternative this one. It's closed (or restricted) to prevent it from turning into this one. It's riddled with its own problems as a result. ?which one might that be? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 14:33:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: raddle moon In-Reply-To: <36655157.7E04@erols.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >could you backchannel with subscription address again please? i lost it >thanks, > >wendy Maybe frontchannel too. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 14:37:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: My 2 cents (.94 due to inflation) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19981203105117.0075f4e0@popmail.lmu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >as an early adopter who has come and gone from the list at varied times I'd >just like to say that I still find it immensely valuable -- As long as I >have a delete button, I have no real concern about some of our sillier >moments -- when people get too insulting I just absent myself for a few >days -- But I can attest to the fact that this list has made my life and my >work go better -- I remember the day some years ago when I posted a >question about a name that appears in Bob Kaufman's work -- Ron Silliman >shot back with an answer for me almost immediately -- It would have taken >me weeks to track down the information on my own -- > >and I have enjoyed running into people from the list at different meetings >and readings around the country -- > >Unsub if you must this old, gray list > > >but, If Charles is taking suggestions, I'm in favor of his current, minimal >moderation -- And if we're taking a vote: me too. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:35:44 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Response to Bernstein: What is a Discoball of Wrath? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I don't know what all this "handwringing" is about and I don't paticularly relish sounding like an ACLU lawyer defending the Neo-Nazi's right to march in Skokee, but yesterday in the throws of a three day migraine that's rolled into four, I reread issues of the Lewis/Pound mag, Blast. It occurred to me that Lewis and Pound would have definitely been scoured from this list or would have faced a lesser punishment if they had brought to the list the prestige of their historical reputations. I won't go into the irony of Gab's wack at Pound in an earlier post and the decided similarity between his post and Blast's visceral postions. A passionate tactic, perhaps. Opportunity here is open ended. Blast! Dammit! Joe! This is our roots. No wonder we come off as a marginalized group of fops. What's the difference between moderation and censorship? This is how the academy/nonacademy shit gets started. I hope this post meets the content requirement. Now, I'm going to lapse back into the delicious nausea and pain of the four day migraine. Free Henry!---Carlo Parcelli > that was a great post by dave chirot... > > let me offer a few more thoughts, and i apologize once again for any hint > of self-righteousness: > > if anyone should think it impossible to destroy a list "community" forever > and ever, think again... it's happened, i've seen it happen, and it ain't a > pretty sight (and this has been said around here before)... this is a > region of our own doing, as tentative and perishable as anything else > human... > > so while i'm all for letting folks do what they do, so to say, i'm also for > some working sense of self-restraint (modulations as implied in what > follows)... > > charles b. is trying to use what tools the establishment has given him in > order to help make this place livable for 700+ subscribers---no easy > task... which is to say, he has a certain responsibility as list moderator > to *everyone* on the list---much as we have a responsibility to one another > [he sez]... after all, this *is* a moderated list, whatever one thinks of > same---and there are reasons why it's moderated (which we can discuss at > length)... but those of you who have served (even as) listowners, like me, > will no doubt be able to address the difficulties of keeping such a list > going in productive directions w/o the potentially damaging fall-out of > nastier exchange... (((and yes, i'm using what amounts to media-ecology > language here, and i think it appropriate)))... > > and to reiterate: it's simply not the case that everyone --more > specifically, every so identified grouping -- feels equally "at home" > hereabouts, for all sortsa reasons (i might mention gender as an operating > construct, but wish to avoid another jihad)... and it's simply not a matter > of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" (this should be > self-evident)... so the way i see it, folks should be attentive to the list > environs as such, whatever their intentions or motivations, and stop to > consider whether they really wish merely to alienate, or insult, or offend, > or silence, or drive away (all as opposed, say, to raising anxieties)... i > don't say we should in any sense aim to please -- and i understand only too > well the necessary risks that come of pushing those envelopes -- but i *do* > say that, however outlandish or unorthodox our sentiments, we should find a > way to respond to what's coming *back to us* via the list, and not continue > as though "no harm could possibly be done"... assuming we value a diverse > list population, we can prove our commitment to same only through our > actions---which around here = words... > > finally: i regard this medium we're all busy exploiting as still quite > new, despite how tried & true it often seems... it allows for more > performative posts, near-synchronous exchange, fairly deliberate > exposition, quick procedural communique, tones of moral indignation [mea > culpa], on and on and on... over time i suspect we'll all learn better how > to tickle these keys, to offer up our wildest dreams in ways that won't > give offense (thoug of course we'll no doubt give offense too, being only > human)... but folks, we often don't know one another all that well---e.g., > despite the incredible rhetorical skills that so many of you possess, you > can't really see/hear me winking at you right *now*, saying in so many > words "but you don't need me to tell you this, right?"... > > ----- > > and if all of this sounds impossible, well that's something worth aiming > for i think... > > /// > > joe -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:54:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Campaign finance reform and the moderated list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit no no no! vote NO on Proposition Moderation! Moderate language poets? Zoiks Decenter'd narrative, the author's dead, yada yada ... Free Henry! J ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:09:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: one post per day, and a chicken in every pot In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII s I've already said recently, I'm one of those who have been frustrated with the quality of discussion on the list. But I also hate the idea of some sort of strict control being imposed, and I'm not crazy about the idea of policing particular people either. What I'd *like* to see happen is for people to exercise greater self-control on their own, but I guess it's unlikely that this will happen. I'm coming around, then, to the idea that a single post per day limit might be a very good compromise. No particular person's posts would have to be restricted; everyone would operate under the same limitation. The abuse of the list by over-posters like Henry would be eliminated (and I see this as a major problem--though I read many of Henry's posts--perhaps even as much as a tenth or a twentieth of them--with great interest). It would also be much more difficult for flurries of sniping and obstreperous back-and-forth exchanges to dominate any given day. When tempers flared there would be a built-in cool-off period, etc. I still like too much about the list to want to see it come to an end, so maybe we can do something to make it work better. steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:16:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: skewer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII See at Poetics List, ey in a purple twist, ey gotta aggravate before de dudes dilate, or else ey confiscate ya motha's condoMINium - yo - ya wi me - talkin thu MINimum - a no dim sum - cause when de keys is hot, you betta watch ya shot, ya make a baby slip ya boody gonna drip - yo - talkin to ya - sayin - a Fatmouth Ghouley-boy he some winduppity-puppity-lovey-dovey-talkin toy - he smooth it ova nice a then he ice you twice, he gotsa snakey mouth you better go back south, he shoot you down right NOW wid all his cockabull Po-po - SHO! hea come da Language Pos, he shoot em in da toes, hea come da bureaucrats, he gonna burn em cats, hea come da high-strut Johns, he make em look like clowns, he gotsa witchy voice, he gonna tail yo noise, yo - betta lookout now! watch ya keyboard, dahlin! - Jack Spandrift ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 15:33:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: one post per day, and a chicken in every pot In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >s I've already said recently, I'm one of those who have been frustrated >with the quality of discussion on the list. But I also hate the idea of >some sort of strict control being imposed, and I'm not crazy about the >idea of policing particular people either. What I'd *like* to see happen >is for people to exercise greater self-control on their own, but I guess >it's unlikely that this will happen. >I'm coming around, then, to the idea that a single post per day limit >might be a very good compromise. No particular person's posts would have >to be restricted; everyone would operate under the same limitation. The >abuse of the list by over-posters like Henry would be eliminated (and I >see this as a major problem--though I read many of Henry's posts--perhaps >even as much as a tenth or a twentieth of them--with great interest). It >would also be much more difficult for flurries of sniping and obstreperous >back-and-forth exchanges to dominate any given day. When tempers flared >there would be a built-in cool-off period, etc. > >I still like too much about the list to want to see it come to an end, >so maybe we can do something to make it work better. steve Once a day? Cheez. Back-and-forth is _fun_. I mean here I am grading a stack of papers or something and I turn on the list and there is db flirting with db and what could be lovelier? Just try to keep it short folks... More seriously, I think a lot of the tiresomeness is people trying to tell us what they meant to say or how somebody didn't understand what they said or justifying what they've already said or etc. Here are Judy's Simple E-Rules for E-Etiquette: 1. Never defend. 2. If you've said it once don't say it again. And of course there is the every-important 3. Never attack. These work pretty good at meetings too. But hey I wouldn't shut anyone up for not sticking to what are, after all, just my own personal rules. Cheers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:41:04 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: one post per day, and a chicken in every pot MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On the contrary. I think the number, tenor, quality, wit, wisdom, inanity etc. of the posts should be entirely open ended. Remember Wabash.---Carlo Parcelli P.S. Blast! is great to read when your suffering double vision from a migraine---the prints so large. Steven Shoemaker wrote: > > s I've already said recently, I'm one of those who have been frustrated > with the quality of discussion on the list. But I also hate the idea of > some sort of strict control being imposed, and I'm not crazy about the > idea of policing particular people either. What I'd *like* to see happen > is for people to exercise greater self-control on their own, but I guess > it's unlikely that this will happen. > I'm coming around, then, to the idea that a single post per day limit > might be a very good compromise. No particular person's posts would have > to be restricted; everyone would operate under the same limitation. The > abuse of the list by over-posters like Henry would be eliminated (and I > see this as a major problem--though I read many of Henry's posts--perhaps > even as much as a tenth or a twentieth of them--with great interest). It > would also be much more difficult for flurries of sniping and obstreperous > back-and-forth exchanges to dominate any given day. When tempers flared > there would be a built-in cool-off period, etc. > > I still like too much about the list to want to see it come to an end, > so maybe we can do something to make it work better. steve -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 10:29:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: Re: Infoanimism In-Reply-To: <366650F4.997EEDCC@speakeasy.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jim you're interesting article speaks to issues that make for a tough poetics, particularly in the way your explanations and definitions re DHTML suggest distinct but somehow integrated layers of text / i've chatted with 'coder' friends about the idea of 'hidden languages' -- akin i think to your 'neath text' -- and like to think sometimes that poetry writes a hidden text, ie, 'neath' the popular languages of commerce and company xmas parties / i'm troubled i guess by the way items start to stack up though when we venture into this layering mode -- one passage in your essay in particular i kept coming back to: "When we look at documents on the Web, we see text and graphics and controls and so forth. But upon understanding the basics of DHTML, we begin to see the 'neath text, what's unseen but present in the source code and begin to reconceptualize the document as a collection of objects with properties that can be changed in real-time. The objects can also respond to changes in the other objects or initiate changes in the other objects. And changes can be caused either by the underlying logic of the neath text or be caused by the reader's responses to the visible manifestation of the document." "understanding the basics of DHTML" i guess is similar to knowing the sacred code / or for me at least the quasi-mysticism of the 'neath' text or the "unseen but present" in the source code brings up a lot of questions about the user-devotee's relation to this code, degrees of understanding, etc. / i read the above as a statement regarding in fact your reconceptualization of the document after experimenting with Dhtml, rather than what is necessarily a reader-viewer's response -- it then dovetails into a description i think of general DHTML functions, ie, what can be done with it in composing a document, and this i think is a different issue altogether -- a craft thing comparable to discussing pigment in relation to color, or instrumental timbre in relation to orchestral sound when i look at "enigma n" (http://speakeasy.org/~jandrews/vispo/enigmanie.htm) i see an animated anagram (a good one), and the chaotic cycling of the letters puts some thoughts in motion regarding letters-in-relation, meaning, and 'meaning' as a composite of letters "signifying nothing" -- a fun puzzle indeed / i'm intrigued by this because it enters into a long tradition of word art centering on the anagram (reading lately the Ren. philosopher Bruno who saw in the arrangement of letters the "potential elements of new worlds") / while i know your discussion of document 'objects' above is from a coder-writer's perspective, here and elsewhere in your essay the determinism of the language bothers me a bit / later you write that viewing a doc in DHTML "allows us to conceive of a word that appears on the screen as being an object with its own properties and behaviors." -- i don't think DHTML allows this so much as it and other languages and applications provide interesting tools for formalizing practices long in development and which hardly "begin" with DHTML / i grant there are differences, but i'd rather call them differences of degree not kind and spend time clarifying those degrees languages neath languages concealing languages is an interesting idea but in definite need of some crisper articulations of exactly what gets revealed and concealed and who and by what mechanisms the concealed gets revealed / otherwise i'd like to know more about how DHtml creates a "document as a collection of objects with properties that can be changed in real-time." a lot of loose questions and concerns hidden right here / thanks for pointing to your article all best, bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh | PBrain | http://bmarsh.dtai.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:53:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Please backchannel In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am looking for an e-mail or phone address for Joseph Lease. Please backchannel Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:38:37 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: (Fwd) Re: fail safe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT michael corbin wrote: > Jordan Davis wrote: > > > Moved > > that Hart Crane's "The Bridge" > > "failed" -- > Hart's Failed? > > > > david bromige wrote: > > > > aloud in a > > Bart station, > > > > Farts are out in a art station > > "they called to the streets, and the streets killed them". Weber, on Rosa > Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht. > > Its not just a vertigo of modernity, I think, to be undone by this built > environment. Yes, Yes, it is postmodern bricolage. Architecture. But what I'm > confronted with is the concrete mixer. Dump truck. And those ubiquitous > stanchions or tapered dividers that they put out at the construction sites, road > repair, infrastructure development. Or more, scaffolding. Pinned up against the > building. Rising up. Or those cranes they must deploy at the construction site, > for the high-rise or sky-scraper. Signs everywhere. "Sidewalk Closed/Please > Cross Street." "Bus No Longer Stops Here." "Board Bus On Mt. Pleasant Street". > > > What did Schumpter call capitalism? "Creative destruction"? I don't know. Just > destruction. He was wrong. But, but the building seems to go on and on and on. > Cities become ugly in there inhumanity. Or even ugly in their humanism. And the > fragility of 700+ (sic) is no more than the fragility of walking across, > through, various engineered behemoths, believing they will hold our weight, with > moderators, and moderation, Believing, That, engineering and maybe even physics > are on our side. > > mc > In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Ron Silliman, David Bromige, Rae Armantrout. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 18:07:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Hickman Subject: Troubling Posts, Insults, and Childishness Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Speaking as one of the (usually) silent listoids riding into the valley with the rest of the 600 +,I'm surprised at the surprise expressed over the recent flap concerning troubling posts, insults, and childishness. Poets are, after all, human beings. Why would anyone be surprised when they act like it? Notions of civility are perhaps the real trouble here, not because civility is not useful when actually achieved, but because it is less than civil to expect others to achieve such behviors consistently, or some to achieve it more than occasionally. After all, sublimation is not easy, and one of the things poets often like to do is allow the unconcious and see where it leads. Something I have very much liked about the list is the level of tolerance that has been afforded those who do not necessarily subscribe to the "norms" of it's behavior. Certainly it is sometimes annoying to me to read through posts I'm not interested in or have significant problems with. ( I occasionally delete those I know I'm not interested in, though I usually remember that if I have a problem with something, the problem is at least as much mine as it is the sender's). But I would rather have the posts there to read through or delete than to think that people were not allowed their voice because there is a clash around the notion of what polite behavior is. David Hickman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:44:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: 666 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I rather like this sort of post; it's like listening to your friends when they're feeling silly. Of course, if you're in a bad mood, they seem irritating, but then, if you're in a bad mood, you probably shouldn't have come to the party (so just delete). And I have never heard Henry say anything mean-spirited, nor do I think his silence will induce lurkers to come forward. daniel bouchard wrote: > 700 Club debunked. > > 668- (minus) 3 Ron Sillimans ( plus one RS) = the Buffalo List, or Satan. > > It means the Poetics list is The Beast, and Henry is the whore of Babylon. > > ha. ha. > > (This is the kind of stupid e-mail that I should have back-channeled to > Jordan, but send here > to prove a point. It is called fluff. > > Or fluff-E. > > Now do as I say, not as I do-- no more fluff-E. > > Jordan wrote: > > > Not to interrupt the end of the world, but where'd anybody get this "700" > > club idea of the list? Looking at the subscriber list, I see 668 names, -- > > > with RON SILLIMAN SUBSCRIBED THREE TIMES!!! > > > I mean you know what this means don't you???????? > > > J > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > 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, 3 Dec 1998 21:17:10 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: Fwd: New Fraentzki Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_912737831_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_912737831_boundary Content-ID: <0_912737831@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part0_912737831_boundary Content-ID: <0_912737831@inet_out.mail.t-online.de.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from rly-zb03.mx.aol.com (rly-zb03.mail.aol.com [172.31.41.3]) by air-zb01.mail.aol.com (v53.17) with SMTP; Thu, 03 Dec 1998 14:05:11 -0500 Received: from lists.village.virginia.edu (lists.village.Virginia.EDU [128.143.200.198]) by rly-zb03.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id OAA29083; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 14:05:07 -0500 (EST) Received: (from domo@localhost) by lists.village.virginia.edu (8.8.5/8.6.6) id NAA44949 for heidegger-outgoing; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:53:48 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: lists.village.virginia.edu: domo set sender to owner-heidegger@localhost using -f Received: from mailout05.btx.dtag.de (mailout05.btx.dtag.de [194.25.2.153]) by lists.village.virginia.edu (8.8.5/8.6.6) with SMTP id NAA76433 for ; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:53:43 -0500 Received: from fwd02.btx.dtag.de (fwd02.btx.dtag.de [194.25.2.162]) by mailout05.btx.dtag.de with smtp id 0zlc9K-0000Am-00; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 18:02:42 +0100 Received: (02219520333-0001(btxid)@[193.159.138.85]) by fwd02.btx.dtag.de id ; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 18:02:22 +0100 Message-Id: Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 18:02:22 +0100 To: heidegger@lists.village.virginia.edu References: <4$LpcHApnLZ2Ew80@dasein.demon.co.uk> <3.0.5.32.19981202122053.007ea260@mail.teleport.com> Subject: New Fraentzki X-Mailer: T-Online eMail 2.2 X-Sender: 02219520333-0001@t-online.de From: artefact@t-online.de (Michael Eldred) Sender: owner-heidegger@lists.village.virginia.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: heidegger@lists.village.virginia.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Cologne, 03 December 1998 Something for readers of German (in particular, Henk): The second part of Fraentzki's magnum opus is now out and available from Verlag J.H. Roell (e-mail: JH-Roell-Verlag@t-online.de) or via the book tr= ade. =09Ekkehard Fraentzki =09Daseinsontologie =09Zweites Hauptstueck: Vom Wesen der Wahrheit =091998 166 pp. =09ISBN 3-89754-130-0 Another characteristic examplar of inimitable Fraentzkian lucidity and Ger= man Bierernst. Michael _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- http://www.webcom.com/artefact/ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ artefact@t-online.de-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred -_-_-_ _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- --- from list heidegger@lists.village.virginia.edu --- --part0_912737831_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 21:39:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Troubling Posts, Insults, and Childishness In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, David Hickman wrote: > Speaking as one of the (usually) silent listoids riding into the valley with > the rest of the 600 +,I'm surprised at the surprise expressed over the recent > flap concerning troubling posts, insults, and childishness. Poets are, after > all, human beings. Why would anyone be surprised when they act like it? It seems to me that a lot of the current problems on this list are caused by those very same poets whom you indulgently call human beings. Do they know the difference between poetry and poetics, I ask myself. Would it be possible, in the interests of moderation, to ask subscribers to identify themselves, to the closest possible denominator, as either poets or poeticists: or at least to make a confirmed choice. I for one would be all for gagging the poets. Troublemakers. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 18:59:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: fuck guns & where to go from here [long post] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Listers, as many of you know, I have been researching in the Archive for New Poetry, and I am preparing number of projects out of material stored there. As I am doing this, I have treated myself to reading around in various archives, including Lyn Hejinian's, Mac Low, and the papers and recordings of Paul Blackburn. The recently acquired Bernadette Mayer papers are still in-cataloging (or so Stephen Cope tells me), but I can't wait to look at what is there, and to read the many years of dedicated writerly (& teacherly)-ness that her archive represents. [ pardon the long digression : there will be some reward at the end ] What I am getting to is somewhat complicated, and is bound-up in my own sense of the troublesome nature of this list, my relationship to it (as lurker, sometimes contributor, and as "burrocrat" in the unfortunate position of managing the daily comings and going--and on that note, Michael Coffey, your server is bouncing every poetics list message and you may want to review the poetics archive to see the hoopula of the last 24 hours or so)))ANYHOW((( my point, if I can return to it is that I do as well infact appreciate the dynamic nature of this list, even as down low as it may at times go. If I get frustrated about that, it may be due to the deterioriating quality of my own life, living so far from the civilization I once knew. The arguments for "sorting through and deleting at will the inanity of the list" to find the nuggets of golden bedraggled friendliness, sharp-witted argumentativeness, yaYaYa, this argument falls on partially deafened ears. It comes down for me to the question, what kind of world do I want to live in, what kind of world do I want to help make, and what can I do to advance the goodness that I need to see in the world in order to continue in it. You may snicker and think that I am being all peachy, preachy, or cheeky. I'm not. Yesterday I asked my classes if they had ever killed anyone. (We had been talking about gun control laws--most of my students, even the ones I like and think to be "progressive" are ardent gun freaks, not to mention the kid who raises chickens to fight, a real-live cockfighter, if you will pardon the expression) I was surprised in one class when a vietnam veteran rose his hand and mentioned that he had served. While I have many vets at the CCs where I teach, he is the only one to have seen active combat. After discussing what it was like to live in combat--and the students were never more attentive than when this man spoke. He later told me that he had never told anyone what he had told the class, and he seemed amazed at having done so. Then, after a 20 minute commute, fighting the "inanity" of freeway traffic, etc., I asked another class of somewhat younger students the same question. Here I learned that one boy had held a friend who died quaking in his arms after a drive-by; another guy (active Navy) described two shooting incidents where he was the shooter (on the so-called streets). When reminded by a classmate that the question was whether or not he had killed anyone, he finished one of the stories with an "I don't know" if any the bullets he had sprayed the playground with had inflicted deadly damage. Rather than do time for the first story's offense, (the second in terms of chronology), this guy was given the opportunity to enlist, and he now serves at the North Island Naval Facility in San Diego. The point of this story--which has to be told if anyone is to understand my growing impatience with this list (an impatience, it seems, that few people share)--is that even after hearing of these incidents, many of the students, including the lovely boy who held his friend as he died, many, nay, nearly all of them were in unanimous support of the RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS and they all, the faithful servants of the constitution that they are, recited some talk-show version of the 2nd Amendment. They told me that you had to have protection. Anyhow- the conversation went on. We talked about many things. Many of their arguments were like arguments for the "self-moderation" many people want to see on this list. If everyone is packing, and we're all coming to the table free & equal, then the sense that we'll all control ourselves will win out. I can accept this vision of things-- and I admire the good-natured vision of the world it promotes. But I am not sure if this is a world I can live in, finally. Perhaps my complex emotional state makes any coherent conversation about these issues more difficult than I had first thought. And unlike many people on this list, I prefer longer, more developed and sustained "arguments" rather than little lunchtime quips. While both are easily deleted with equal force, the sustained attention required by longer posts and more complex argumentation (even if flawed, or failed), this attention is the activity that draws me to the list. Granted there is much information that is exchanged--and it is my lifeline. What are people doing? what do they want to know? what is happening?. I have several research questions I would like to ask the group, and if I can ever get out of these paragraphs, I will. But for me, and perhaps it is only me (I can no longer see the trees for the forest)--I need the more developed exchange of essayistic presentation. Is there another list out there with similar interests requiring that kind of level of participation? It seems that this list is for many people a kind of infotainment. While I don't want to take that away from anyone, as Roger Farr so eloquently entreated me earlier, I think it may be time for me to move on and look for other pastures to graze in, other cows with which to chew and moo. So, on that note, if someone could privately (backchannel) me with information about other poetics lists (and I am always surprised to hear about the number of limited,private ones out there) I would be eternally grateful. If you have made it this far, I am sorry to have victimized you with the above melancholy meandering, you are in it for the whole-hog haul. [the 5th caller to send a note with the words "happy new year bubby & moby" in the subject line to kuszai@earthlink.net will receive a Meow Press luv-pak of newerish books] It seems to me that much of what this list can achive has been alluded to by people earlier today, so I won't reiterate that here. But I must say that I think that it can be an extension of the real, and as has been suggested privately, perhaps there should be some kind of meeting of this particular tribe. I look forward to the Page Mothers conference to discuss some very important writers, such as Rae, Fanny, Lyn and Leslie, Laura, and Bernadette, among others, I think (sorry if I'm leaving anyone out). And I think that this space can act as a kind of electronic (not virtual) conference space. Like Kinsella's featuring of poets at his poetryetc list, I suggest that we begin a series of discussions in advance of the conference scheduled for March 1999 dedicated to those writers. I don't know if Linda Russo is still on this list: her name appears in the review-list, but like many of th 666 people on this list, I would suuspect that she is actually set to nomail. In any case, Linda's research into women editors of poetry magazines is one of the more exciting projects I can think of and I would love to hear a status report if possible. I mention the possible "conference effect" of this list to suggest A) something for us to talk about in a constructive way (and given that, in my opinion, women writers have produced some of the most important writing and community development actions since 1968--including the recent Bay Area magazines Lipstick and Outlet which I just received--such a discussion of these writers and editors could bear importantly on what sense we make of this current climate of which the p-list is only a small part) and B) such a discussion could provide for a model of civic/list behavior. And if we think of the list as a conference, someone grabbing the mic (whether it is coolio hipster Rbt Duncan, or coolio hpster Henry G) would be completely scandalous and inappropriate. So-- that is my suggestion. And my suggestion, that we discuss these writers--in advance of an already scheduled conference here at UCSD-- is only one suggestion. The subject line could be used to announce the writer under discussion & whether it is a reply or an advancing of a "reading" or whatnot. Ok, that's it. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 22:33:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Haynes Subject: Re: Infoanimism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit It's a fascinating idea that this DHTML is a language we can somehow read and understand. I don't know how this is possible, but nonetheless find it intriguing. Since HTML does not talk to humans but rather to the objects it manipulates via its attributies (usually aspects of another language, either texual or graphical), it seems to me of service namely as a metalanguage. Metalanguages, however, are an exciting possibility (or even existing component) in poetry. HTML and by extension DHTML are subsets of an even more heinous beast: SGML. The idea of SGML was to break down the "objects" of a typical published work and identify them so they could be manipulated individually. Such identification is accomplished by surrounding the "object" (say a title, chapter head, or footnote) with code. The code itself is further defined by "attributes" that affect the direction, positioning, size, orientation, etc., of the objects they define. In SGML a separate document (sometimes called a program) is required to hold the attributes of the objects. When the coded document is put through the seive of the attributes document/program, voila! a formatted text appears. Now in HTML and DHTML the attributes are themselves part of the identification process and thus a part of the code. A browser such as Netscape is used to parse the codes, apply the attributes, and assemble the objects. The D in front of HTML simply stands for "dynamic." You can make things ("objects") move. Of course, with AOL (which doesn't yet understand version 4.0 of the HTML international standard) you can't view the "D" in the DHTML (unfortunately my current version of Netscape doesn't seem to understand it either). The enigma n site also uses another language Javascript (not to be confused with Java, which is full-fledged programming language). The Javascript, which incidentally has errors in it, speaks back and forth with (D)HTML and provides additional functionality to a browser (such as Netscape.) The proliferation of languages and scripts goes on and on. If there is a microkernel of truth in all of it for use in poetry...again, I think it boils down to a metalanguage in a language. These are clearly examples in our real world now. What if anything can be made of this? Bob ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 01:12:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: Infoanimism In-Reply-To: <240359b5.36675800@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There are a lot of javascript texts online at this point; it's useful, be- cause it doesn't depend on the downloading of applets. And the older ver- sions of html are in some ways more advanced/interesting than the newer ones, since it was billed as a _semantic_ markup language that would med- iate between your browser/window/computer properties and the page itself - type occupying different widths and styles depending on the window size you've set, etc. It was fluid. The recent html versions and the use of style sheets transform the page more into an _object,_ dynamic or not, controlled by the author (push technology in a way). What's interesting about javascript is that it lives in the page that's delivered, unlike perl or java. You generally can see the script itself with the view option in the browser. It's very difficult to talk of languages/metalanguages or form/content, I think with all of this. I've written about this a lot - what I call on occasion the porousness of languages. For example, perl can run at a shell prompt, call up shell programs, write or read shell programs - all of the languages including scripting languages can reference each other, pass information back and forth. What's base and what's meta is problematic. There are markers you can use, for example saying that everything between < and > is meta, and that will hold for the most part - at least the browser will try and interpret it. But when you get into more elaborate areas, the distinction blurs - look at www.jodi.org which places some of the 'relevant' (my word) content as invisible comments - you've got to use the view command to see it. (That's also true of some of my black on black pages.) Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 22:18:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: fuck guns Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I am here to respond to Joel publickly! I too have felt frustrated with the list, too frustrated to say anything, in fact (I appreciate Joe's comments about people who don't speak, not that I'm yr cybervictim, no way in hell, thank you). Time feels very precious and easily wasted, and I don't want to spend it at a party with all these boys who like to talk a LOT. (You know who you are.) Excuse my extreme left handed feminist pull on the carstool. Though that said I certainly have appreciated mentions here of my work writing and editing, which have been made by two of the male persuasion, Joel and Standard Schaefer. I would especially like the conversation to be more thoughtful, essayish, and most importantly about topics that feel IMPORTANT (compelling, generative ? -- oh excuse me!) to me. Such as occurs in my small reading/writing group here in the Bay Area, where we read a book superclosely, and yes, sometimes get in entanglements. I am hungry for places to discuss writing, but much of what happens here is to me a mess. I have had many a backchannel complaint from gal pals as well as guy pals. I don't like to listen to anyone who talks as much as Henry. Sorry to be honest. Perhaps I'll go curl up with Vogue and my dear sig other, Elizabeth Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 09:19:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: reading treats Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm still reading kimball and bromige's poetries of canada, each click opens another morsel, collections of this strength are rare and to have it all at the beck of your cursor tripley so. two of the reasons i like it this morning are 1. George Stanley ------------------------- The Power of the Unhappy People The unhappy people have great power. They invest in the unhappiness of others. Not generic unhappiness, the kind of unhappiness anyone could feel, but designer unhappiness, the exact shape of the hole in your heart. These are dreams without doors. Let the blonde demonstrator slip one around your feelings. As it goes on, it clings like shrink-wrap. Now the birds can cry in the night, and you won't hear them. Or your ancestors. Or jazz. The image of your death will dance for you with as many veils as you please. In your fog-coloured room, in your Queen Anne chair, you may wish you were dead, but be glad of that wish since it sets you above the common sort inured to ordinary unhappiness. And we, the investment community, will grin. (Though like you, we cannot feel the sun or hear the rain. Or jazz.) We will grin at the thought of you dreaming. More & more people must become rich & unhappy, so the original unhappy people can die rich. and 2 Meredith Quartermain ------------------------- Prayer for Geography To all who fall to matter write the earth a space of white break of bread plates break in relief write stones cocks cry to collected waters or hollow fire of iron. Eat atmosphere, a garland sift on a drift post out the earth's hearth to horizon and swallow heat of antipodes plants ride out in leaves to mirror oceans to finger rivers tribulations smooth away our tombs. Figures of earth, press out our bodies. Strange our urge into that which takes stand. Distribute our loom work through the scape the seek of air each ear our forgotten art. For these are our herdsmen and without this earth as risk we have no right of river hear our three yonders a sphere of being of geography to the ring of ocean above them the maps antipodean tenderness in all who fall to matter who come simply to throw shadows on the moon's shifting horizon who devote constellations to the ends of the earth wide from the road of symmetry. Colin Smith's Multiple Poses from Tsunami is a scream and cheaper than a roller coaster and you can go back ad eternatum for the same low price. A Frank O'Hara for the 21st century? these words seem to careen from the epiglottis, his tongue twisting makes a resonance with gerry gilbert and dotty lusk and gerry creede and renee rodin for that matter, very vancouver? quel marrant, seriously funny, manick soars/fissionary elucidations, in the fewchair they'll say his spew flew, spitterature is one of the strong points of the KSW/downtown Vancouver praxis, Kevin Davies and Jeff Derksen being exemplar. You don't have to take my word for it you can check out in The New Raddle Moon which features a strong selection of vancouver writers with naturally some overlapping with poetries of canada, more Meredith Quartermain, more Melissa Wolsak, Lisa Robertson, Lary Timewell, Kevin Davies, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Jeff Derksen, even the brainwashed bagdaddy, the sweetheart of sebastapol, the romeo of the russian river hisself, and more Marie Anneharte Baker, the star of the bp conference reclaiming coyote. Susan Clark has done another marvelous job with Raddle Moon's issue 17 also includes some new quebecois poets selected by Nicole Brossard, some new poems by Jackson Mac Low, Rae Armantrout, in the classiest package all for merely $10, or two issue subscriptions for $15, billy little 4 song st. nowhere, b.c. V0R1Z0 poemz@mars.ark.com Go ahead and say something true before the big turd eats You You can say any last thing in Your poem. -Alice Notley ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 23:35:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Infoanimism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bill, I’m told that W.C. Williams said something like ‘A poem is a machine made out of words.’ It’s odd to think it so, given the utterly human nature of many poems. Yet there is a sense in which it’s true: language itself is surely a technology insofar as it is a tool made by people; our tools and technologies are not dumb and lifeless externalities that we pick up at need to do a job; instead, they often are truly extensions of ourselves: extensions of our minds and feelings and imaginations (language); extensions of our eyes (electron and radio telescopes); extensions of our memory (books); extensions of our voices (telephones); etc. Poets are familiar with the odd feeling of seeing their poems in type, particularly in something as apparently external as a book or magazine; it’s as though a part of themselves had somehow been transferred by machines to the external and other. There they are, our silent running soul devices. In a sense, I have just rewritten my little essay Infoanimism in a different context. Even the nature of the printed document needs re-examination. We freak out about machines and say they are no part of us but the truth of the matter is quite different. It is apparently ironic that we use machines to convey our humanity, but the irony is only apparent when we acknowledge the ghost in the machine and acknowledge also that we made the machine for the ghost to travel in. Subtle ghost in there with “the popular languages of commerce and company xmas parties” you mention, lovely graceful ghost. Whether a poem is spoken or written or uses dhtml, as I am amused to do these days, it is, in the above way, a machine made out of words. Dhtml poems highlight this dramatically. The neath text is to some forbiddingly technical and automated. Yet the ghostie may appreciate it, the ghostie neath and above and around the neath text. Infoanimism is at http://speakeasy.org/~jandrews/vispo/EnigmanInfoanimism.html and links to Enigma n. The link you provided to Enigma n is actually a link to only the Internet Explorer version, Bill, but thank you anyway. :) Jim ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 01:10:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: quick history In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Free Henry Gould Oh, bad timing! I paid $25 just a month ago. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 01:18:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: pig wars and other truffle-snuffling battles In-Reply-To: <36660826.F77D87F9@concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Now, when you talk about Orcas, you're talking about the trees some of >my ancestors fell out of. The San Juan islands haven't been Brit since >the resolution of the Pig War (an altercation worthy of the POETICS >list) in 1872. My great-grandparents, John Loudon Gow and Emilie >Harding, both of Orcas, would have looked unkindly on any suggestion >that they curtsy before Lord Bow'ring. > >Rachel Loden That is a little odd, that coincidence. Happens that I gave a swift and sure account of the Pig War in my book _Bowering's B.C._ , Viking 1996, Penguin 1997. But it took place just on San Juan Island. Some crummy Kraut was the arbitrator and gave the island to the Yanks years later. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 03:57:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: delete if not interested in arcane arguments re: pig wars and other truffle-snuffling battles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George, just to defend my honor, since it is clearly under siege (I guess Brom was right when he said your dad was a schoolteacher). If you'll reread my post you'll notice I do not say that the Pig War took place on Orcas Island. I don't say where it *did* take place, sensing somehow that this is not a matter of great fascination for the P-list. There are 172 named islands in the San Juan archipelago, San Juan and Orcas being two of the largest. The point is that the line drawn by Kaiser Willie gave all of them to the US (thus my statement that they haven't been British since the *resolution* of the war in 1872). Kapish? I don't say it was right but that's how the colonial cookie crumbles. The war itself took place in 1859. Witnesses to all this stupidity were the Lummi Indians, some of whom were still living traditionally on Orcas when my mother grew up. Sorry to bore everyone, and slipping into deep lurk, Rachel George Bowering wrote: > > >Now, when you talk about Orcas, you're talking about the trees some of > >my ancestors fell out of. The San Juan islands haven't been Brit since > >the resolution of the Pig War (an altercation worthy of the POETICS > >list) in 1872. My great-grandparents, John Loudon Gow and Emilie > >Harding, both of Orcas, would have looked unkindly on any suggestion > >that they curtsy before Lord Bow'ring. > > > >Rachel Loden > > That is a little odd, that coincidence. Happens that I gave a swift and > sure account of the Pig War in my book _Bowering's B.C._ , Viking 1996, > Penguin 1997. But it took place just on San Juan Island. Some crummy Kraut > was the arbitrator and gave the island to the Yanks years later. > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:22:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: David Todd and Dirigible Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit anybody know what's up with the mag Dirigible? anybody have a current address for David Todd? email or snail ok. please back channel Randy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:24:26 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: Troubling Posts, Insults, and Childishness Mairead Byrne wrote; It seems to me that a lot of the current problems on this list are caused by those very same poets whom you indulgently call human beings. Do they know the difference between poetry and poetics, I ask myself. Would it be possible, in the interests of moderation, to ask subscribers to identify themselves, to the closest possible denominator, as either poets or poeticists: or at least to make a confirmed choice. I for one would be all for gagging the poets. Troublemakers. I agree with the sentiments expressed - but could we add editors to the list as a sub (human) group (species) together with agents and critics - perhaps they could be placed in a special list of their own while the nice poets discuss (or argue) in peace about important maters of poetry which editors especially would have no interest or specialist knowledge. (Only problem I suppose is that most poets at some point get to do some editing or write criticisms) Oh well its a nice thought. Jim Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 Click on this link to visit my site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 09:35:50 -0500 Reply-To: gps12@columbia.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Rain Taxi Vol. 3 No. 4 In-Reply-To: <199811171908.OAA11957@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The new issue's available Featuring: Interview with Anne Waldman by Eric Lorberer; an essay on Mary Butts by Carolyn Kuebler; interview with Harry Mathews (attributed to "Rain Taxi," so probably eds. Kuebler, Lorberer & Randall Heath); essay on the Oulipo by Marc Lowenthal; a profile on Nazraeli Press by Eric Lorberer; "Sortilege: On Mary Caponegro" by Rikki Ducornet; Samuel Delany on Vincent Czyz's _Adrift in a Vanishing City_; "Colin Wilson Watch," by Kelly Everding; reviews of new books by William Gass (David Auerbach), Ellen Gilghrist & June Spence (Lucinda Ebersole), Umberto Eco (Jason Kuykendall), Franz Wright (Brett Ralph), Kenward Elmslie (Gary Sullivan), Donald Revell (Brian Beatty), Susan Wheeler (Juliet Patterson), Joshua Beckman (S.P. Healey), Lorca (Frank Johnson), David Lehman (Chris Fischbach), R. Crumb (Chase Madar), Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno (Mark Terrill, Merrill Gilfillan (Paul Bogard), Gerald Vizenor, Paula Gunn Allen and Diane Glancy (Heid Erdrich), Brian Evenson (Xandra Coe); the next "New Life" cartoon installment by yours truly . . . and much, much more. Subscribe already! 'Scheap! $10 (domestic), $20 (international) for four issues! Rain Taxi P.O. Box 3840 Minneapolis, MN 55403 As per usual, I have copies I'd be glad to send out to those of you who can't afford subscriptions. Just lemme know (backchannel, please, I'm on "nomail" for a bit). Thanks, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 08:55:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: poets/troublemakers/Chile (a fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE =09(from dave baptiste chirot) =09on 3 december 98 Mairead Byrne ended a post by demanding identification as poet or poeticist and noted: "I for one would be all for gagging the poets. Troublemakers." =09This made me think of a brief autobiographical poem by the great English visual/sound poet and performer Bob Cobbing (who does indeed go about "sockless in sandals"): =09IF HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING, HE WOULD DO IT BETTER ! =09Sockless in sandals, =09gibbering his wares =09in unintelligible shrieks and hisses, =09a 'poet' merely disrupts =09the solid, sensible business =09of the night. =09the people hear gibberish; =09Poets! how can nothing be said =09with all that noise? below a post re activites regarding the intertwined cases of Humberto Nilo and Pincohet. Included are email addresses to send in your support. =09Those interested may backchannel--or I cd fwd to the list if so invited--an day-by-day update of all the activities since this particular post, as well as what the now second stage projects are for AU MA + GOM UA+MA URGENT ACTION OF MAIL ART GOM@ (Global Organization of Mail Artists) November, 26, 1998 Pinochet, the justice and Humberto Nilo Approximately a year ago, the Director and Academic of the Arts School of the University from Chile, Humberto Nilo Saavedra, promoted a Mail Art call to please the freedom in education for the arts. Months later, he was expelled from his chair. The dictatorship continued operating. Now, the ex-dictator and Chilean life senator, Augusto Pinochet, has been arrested . In such an unexpected way, he is in the custody of the court in England as = a result of the request for extradition from a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garz= =C3=B3n. The charges are for more than 90 crimes of genocide, international terroris= m and tortures. Faced with the danger that the process can be stopped by Spanish reactionary forces, we asked for solidarity to all the mail artists for justice to be strictly applied. The group AU MA+gom@ (Urgent Action =E2=80=93 Mail Art), consider the first= stage of this project to be closed, once achieved that both Spanish and English Cour= t sentenced the ex-dictator and Chilean life senator, Augusto Pinochet, must to be put in trial for crimes of genocide, international terrorism and torture. For these crimes, Pinochet was requested by the laws of several countries (Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland...and others). The extradition proceedings will take time. However, we consider the precedent established will make possible to be optimists about the make up of an International Court to fight the crimes against humanity. On the other hand, our campaign was mainly aimed at Mail Art world, even thought a lot of people from another circles did identify with our call. In that respect, we want to declare that our report of the case of Humberto Nilo -ex Director of the University of Chile=E2=80=99s Fine Art School, who= was dimissed from his position after the organization of the Mail Art exhibitio= n "Stop: liberty, diversity and pluralism"- is still not solved. Because this reason, we will continue making all efforts to give him back his position. Adhesion to the list: tartarug@teleline.es subject: adhesion Participate in future actions of GOM@ : gom@crosses.net subject: member Pinochet, la justicia y Humberto Nilo Hace aproximadamente un a=C3=B1o, el profesor de BB.AA. de la Universidad d= e Chile, Humberto Nilo Saavedra, promov=C3=ADa una convocatoria de Mail Art e= n favor de la libertad de ense=C3=B1anza para las artes. Unos meses despu=C3= =A9s, era expulsado de su c=C3=A1tedra. La dictadura segu=C3=ADa operando. Ahora ha s= ido detenido el ex-dictador y senador vitalicio chileno, Augusto Pinochet. De l= a manera m=C3=A1s insospechada ha quedado bajo custodia en Inglaterra ante la petici=C3=B3n de extradici=C3=B3n de un juez espa=C3=B1ol, Baltasar Garz=C3= =B3n. La acusaci=C3=B3n es de m=C3=A1s de 90 delitos por genocidio, terrorismo internacional y tortura= =2E Ante el peligro de que el proceso sea detenido por fuerzas reaccionarias espa=C3=B1olas, solicitamos a todos los mail artistas su solidaridad para q= ue la justicia se aplique con todo rigor. EL COLECTIVO AU MA+gom@ (Acci=C3=B3n Urgente - Organizaci=C3=B3n Mundial de= l Mail Art), da por concluida la primera etapa de este proceso, una vez conseguido que tanto los tribunales espa=C3=B1oles como los ingleses hayan sentenciado= que el ex-dictador Chileno y senador vitalicio Augusto Pinochet, debe ser juzgado por los m=C3=BAltiples crimenes de genocidio, terrorismo internacio= nal y tortura. Delitos cuyo procesamiento ha sido solicitado por diversos pa=C3=ADses.(Esp= a=C3=B1a, Francia, Alemania, Suiza...) El proceso de extradici=C3=B3n, probablemente = ser=C3=A1 largo. Pero consideramos que a partir de estos momentos, el precedente sentado permitir=C3=A1 contemplar con nuevas perspectivas la formaci=C3=B3n= de un Tribunal Internacional para combatir los cr=C3=ADmenes contra la humanidad. Por otro lado, nuestro manifiesto iba dirigido al universo del Mail Art, qu= e es donde nos movemos. Bien es cierto que al mismo se han sumado otras personas y colectivos que se han identificado con nuestro llamamiento. En este sentido, queremos dejar constancia de que nuestra denuncia por el caso del ex-Director de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de Chile, Humberto Nilo, expulsado de su c=C3=A1tedra despu=C3=A9s de organizar una covocatoria de M= ail Art por "La Libertad en la Ense=C3=B1anza de las Artes", no ha sido solucionado. Es= por ello que proseguiremos en nuestro esfuerzo para que le sea restituido su cargo. Adhesiones a la lista a: tartarug@teleline.es subject: adhesion Participa en futuras acciones de GOM@: gom@crosses.net subject: member More than 300 Signatures/Firmas until/hasta 25 November 1998: A Cova da Terra Abel Figueras Abraham Vecina Guti=C3=A9rrez AG(+A)e-1 Agurrak Aiolidiggi Alberto Duarte Alberto Gonz=C3=A1lez Alejandra Sequeira Alejandro Beltr=C3=A1n Alfons Herraiz Alfonso Sorribes Alicia Bay Laurell Alicia Gil Aljosa Abrahamsberg Amir Brito Cador Amoniako-Markt Amy Baylaurel Casey Ana Tiscornia Ana-Aj Anabel Vanoni Anah=C3=AD Caceres Anah=C3=AD Flores Anchi Andrea C=C3=A1rdenas Andr=C3=A9s Burbano Anna Banana Anna M P=C3=A0mies Annie Wallois Antonio Lirio Barajas Archivo Situacionista Arenaton-Docks Armando P=C3=A9rez Artur Matuck Ateneu Gastron=C3=B3mico Restaurant Enoteca Culture Beatriz Cilleruelo Beatriz Ram=C3=ADrez Beatriz Silva Bod Grumman BOEK 861 Boog Bora Balar Bora Ercan Bruno Pollacci Btmadra Cabrespina Calen Rsign Carla Sala Carles Canetti Carlos =C3=81ngel S=C3=A1nchez Carlos Garc=C3=ADa Tomillero Carlos Red=C3=B3n Pastor Carlos Romano Garc=C3=ADa Carlos Vaz Ferreira Carmen Cilleruelo Carmen Delgado Carmen Garc=C3=ADa Carmen Patricio Centro de Iniciativas Culturales y de Comunicaci=C3=B3n (CICC) C=C3=A9sar Espinosa C=C3=A9sar Reglero Charles Francois CGT (Tarragona) Clara Gari Claudia Castelo Claudia Liekam Clemente Padin Colectivo Cine Delirio Colectivo Stidna Concha J=C3=A9rez Cracker Jack Kid Cristiane Neder Cristina Mart=C3=ADnez Dan Ferdinande Daniel Barrachina Sala Daniel Daligand Daniel Quiroga Daniele Gardiol David Batista Chirot Denis J. Highberger Dinka Todorovick Dolores Abrahamsberg Dolores May Dorren Borrow Dr. Olu. Oguibe Dulcimira Capisani Editorial Pix Eduardo D=C3=ADaz Espinosa Eduardo Lara Ejs Kapretz Elias Adasme El=C3=ADas Levin Emanuela Carone Emmanuel Ayah Okwabi Encuadernaciones El Pavo Real Enrique Aguelo Ernest N=C3=BA=C3=B1ez Esteban =C3=81lvarez Esteban Tranche Estefano Pasquini Ettienne Christiaens Eugeni Bonet Eugeni Guell Ever Arts Fabio Doctorovich Felix Duque Fernando Garc=C3=ADa Delgado/V=C3=B3rtice Argentina Fernando Reglero Campos Festival Atl=C3=A1ntico de Lisboa Florencia Crescimbeni Francesca Maniaci Francisca Salvador Francisco Arias Sol=C3=ADs Francisco Felipe Gabriel Villota Gabriela Rangel Mantilla Galer=C3=ADa Ze dos Bois (Lisboa) GB - Debora Gavensky Geert De Decker Gerhard Ostfalk Ghe Schmidt Gianni Broi Gilbertto Prado Giovanni Strada Giovanni Tessicini Group Public Projects Gue Schimdt Gu=C3=ADa Cultural Flirt de Lisboa Guido Vermandel Guillermo Mar=C3=ADn Guy Bleus Guy Ferdinande Gy=C3=B6rgy Galantai Hale Tenger Hans Braumueller Harry Polkinhorn Helen Karasavidou Hilda Paz Hugo Pontes Hugo Sil Humberto Nilo Ina Blom Irving Weiss Isabel Gonz=C3=A1lez Isabel Jover Isabel Ron-Pedrique Ivana Mart=C3=ADnez Vollaro Jalil James Durand James Jabir Titelman Jane Mar=C3=ADa Chambault Jas W Felter Jaume Bobet Javier Almeida Javier Creus Javier Ildefonso Sobrino Jean Torregrosa Jennifer Demello JJP Joachim Joan Miqueu Spinasse Joe Galliva Joel Chace John M. Bennett Jordi Barrachina Jordi Folgado Illa Jordi Sol=C3=A9 Jordi Vidal Jorge Daffunchio Jorge Garc=C3=ADa Jorge Garnica Jos=C3=A9 Antonio L=C3=B3pez Jose Carlos Preciados Domenech Jose E. L=C3=B3pez G=C3=A1lves Jose Emilio Ant=C3=B3n Pecharrom=C3=A1n Jos=C3=A9 Espinoza Jos=C3=A9 Guevara Castro Jos=C3=A9 Iges Jose L=C3=B3pez G=C3=A1lvez Jose Van Den Broucke Jos=C3=A9 Venegas Josep Aguilo Josep Cam=C3=B3s Josep M=C2=AA Damenson Josep M=C2=AA Yago Josep Noiret "L=C2=B4Estaminet" Joy Garnett JPG Juan Cam=C3=B3s Juan Carlos Romero Juan Clua Monreal Juan Francisco Arag=C3=B3n Juan Guerrero Juan M. Niza Juan Ragno Juan Vicente Aliaga Julia Klaniczay Julia Lohman Julien D=C2=B4Abrigeon Julio Plaza K. Van Den Broucke Kakart Karen Michelsen Karl Jirgens Klaus Rupp/Merlin Koichi Sughiara Kurt Vereecken L. Nicolas Guigou La Clau D=C2=B4Euterpe La Pluie d'Oiseaux Ladislao Pablo Gyory Latuff Laura Andreoni Leo Robertazzi Le=C3=B3n Ferrari Leonello Zamb=C3=B3n Llum Garc=C3=ADa Lu=C3=ADs Fern=C3=A1ndez - Aleph Arts Luis Romero Luisa Taliento Luiz de Aquino Alves Neto Luiz Monforte Maite Blasco Manuel Redon Blanch Mar Montero Soya Marcelo Sosa Marcos Lutyens Mar=C3=ADa Alemany Mar=C3=ADa Antonia Y=C3=A1=C3=B1ez Maria Jose G=C3=B3mez N=C3=B3voa Mar=C3=ADa Luz Zamora Loureiro Mariana Perata Marianne Muggeridge Maribel Mart=C3=ADnez Marisa Gonz=C3=A1lez Marlowe Marta Gonzalves Mart=C3=AD Pineda Martim Erre Mauricio Guerrero Alarcon Mauro Molinari Michael Lumb Michele Sigurini Mikel Garc=C3=ADa Mircia Rojo Miroljub Todorovic Mis=C3=BA M=C3=B3nica Gallardo Montse Forn=C3=B3s Muriel Frega Muruvvet Turkyilmaz Museo de la Nada Natalia Garc=C3=ADa Nathalie Hamard-Wang Natxo Xeca Navarro Manoli Nekane Aramburu N=C3=A9stor Tellechea New Jazz Nora Menghi Norberto Isca Norberto Jos=C3=A9 Mart=C3=ADnez Norma Morandini Nuria Nogu=C3=A9s Ozgur Uckan P.O.Box Paloma Mateos Paloma Porras Parking Pascal Lenoir Pascale Follard Pat Binder Patricia Salas Patxi Paulo Condini Pedro Custodio Pedro Meyer Pere Morat=C3=B3 Pere Sousa - Merz Mail Pete Spence Pete Spence Philippe Castellin Philippe Espinesse Pier Paolo Limongelli Pilar Guijosa Postart / "Roodom" Postmaster PCBD Proyecto Sorpresa Pusula Haber Programy Rafael Juarez Ramiro =C3=81lvarez Ramiro Larra=C3=ADn Reed Altemus Renate Carelse Reni Hofmueller Richard De Meester Robert Adrian Roberto Duarte Rod Summers Rogelio Cerda Castillo Rogelio Rodriguez Coronel Roger Morris Rom=C3=A1 Sol=C3=A9 Rub=C3=A9n Sanchez Ruth Turner Salvador Cobos Sandra Botner Selim Birsel Sepp Rothwangl Sergey de Rocombole Sergui Qui=C3=B1onero Shifra Goldman Silvina Szperling Silvio De Gracia Simon Baudhuin Simona Simone Rondelet Sugar Irmer Susanne Kunkele Taller del Sol Tamara Stuby Tartarugo Teresinha Pereira The Gastronom=C3=ADa of the Mediterraneo Therese Ectors Thierry Merger Transforma Unai Reglero Vagner T.S. Vanessa Hern=C3=A1ndez Veha Abrahamsberg Veterinarios sin fronteras Viktor Todorovick Viola Siruthairath Vittore Baroni Viviana Sasso V=C3=B3rtice www.crosses.net Xabier Idoate Xavier Moreno Xer Xtof Bruneel Xurxo Estevez Zaida Reverter Read more about GOM@ and the memory of our action Pinochet, Justice and Humberto Nilo on: http://www.teleline.es/personal/tartarug http://www.fut.es/~boek/Nilo.htm http://www.crosses.net/nilo/ http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/6345/justicia/auma.htm please send your cross http://www.crosses.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= - ------------------- Hans Braumueller Licenciado en Artes Plasticas Osterstrasse 98 20259 Hamburg Germany ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:02:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: free charles Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I object to the censorship being imposed on henry for allegedly posting too frequently, even though he stays within the daily limit of 5, and on gabriel for the quality of his "content," a word that more than smacks of exclusionary elitism. as a matter of fact, I often enjoy reading henry's posts -- and his commitment to, and passion for, art is, from my point of view, beyond question. as for the content issue, there are certainly more trivial remarks posted everyday than anything that gabriel has posted. to single out these two poets seems to me to be wrongheaded, whatever the rationale. much more obnoxious is the assumption that anyone, solely because of proprietary interests, should take it upon themselves to arbitrarily restrict either the frequency or quality of the work of other list members without anything resembling due process. those who advocate freeing henry, gabriel & kent johnson have it wrong -- we need to free charles and his clones from the mistaken assumption that exclusion and censorship are the appropriate responses to what are essentially political and aesthetic differences. joe brennan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:05:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: skewer & love of this list In-Reply-To: <199812032329.SAA01276@cornell.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My Dear Sir I cannot forward yr post below as I have received from Bernstein a note from his twelve lawyers via fax late late last night, waking me, the printing of which fax was so greatly jangling and rattling for some reason, as if vile counsel's words were actually BUMPY. Couldn't believe roaring threats. anyway upshot is (1) the "pressure" lastly mentioned yesta'day in hasty subterranean note to Gould was my own leaden chagrin at having fuckeditup, story of my life, Secondly I think the tree outside my window to the right is about to pop into bloom you should see this thing, birds billeted all over it, fuck-a-duck. Fourth, I sick all stinking apologies to this list as if it were a delicate thing: if it's going to die let it die, but i say we don't kill it by apologizing and as parceilli wrt 'handranging" not kill it. And ninthly CERTAINLY let's not kill the vitality of it, for what brought the stupid gaga to list was henry's messages, posts of genius, & good lord i LOVE this list and what i learn from it and what PRAXIS of OPEN THINKING it gives me and how i am eternally GRATEFUL for this COMMUNITY buffalo PROVIDES, its BOUNTY, the buffalo BOINKY OF BOUNTY, the furthermore and tenth and lastly I cannot post but a "few" times a week, so I'm waiting until tomorrow when I will post a Violent Bomb of Words which will beckon wrath of ALL in the goddamn name of WAKEY-UPPEY, at which action List will be restored to former Henry state of affairs, this being the terminal action of my own soldiering, whence i will with dainty personal decency begin again my own annoying postings of hack and drama. yours with weapons of pewter & foil, GAGA On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, henry wrote: > brutha, be cool... > 'preciate what ya doin f'me.... > ya wanna pologize f'both of us, sokay by me... > > why doan ya write in & clarify it wuz from Huffy in a huffy mood & promises > to be the LAST stealth bomb to the list... tellem we bot' love da list an > all its peoples & Henrah sez he will bide by what he hears & try seriously > man to clam the jam fo while... let sumbuddy else talks f'while... > > why doan ya forwars dis one... > > sorry, brutha, f' the heavy pressure - ain't yo fault, s'mine... > > - Henrah > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:20:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: free charles In-Reply-To: from "Joe Brennan" at Dec 4, 98 10:02:31 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Excuse my fogginess on this issue but, has Henry actually been banned from posting on the list? If so, this seems absolutely outrageous to me! Joe's sentiment that "Henry's commitment to, and passion for, art is, from my point of view, beyond question" is absolutely true and quite pertinent. I've rassled with him as much as anyone but the idea that we would somehow keep him from posting really disgusts me. I hope I've got this wrong. -Mike. According to Joe Brennan: > > I object to the censorship being imposed on henry for allegedly posting too > frequently, even though he stays within the daily limit of 5, and on gabriel > for the quality of his "content," a word that more than smacks of exclusionary > elitism. as a matter of fact, I often enjoy reading henry's posts -- and his > commitment to, and passion for, art is, from my point of view, beyond > question. as for the content issue, there are certainly more trivial remarks > posted everyday than anything that gabriel has posted. to single out these > two poets seems to me to be wrongheaded, whatever the rationale. much more > obnoxious is the assumption that anyone, solely because of proprietary > interests, should take it upon themselves to arbitrarily restrict either the > frequency or quality of the work of other list members without anything > resembling due process. those who advocate freeing henry, gabriel & kent > johnson have it wrong -- we need to free charles and his clones from the > mistaken assumption that exclusion and censorship are the appropriate > responses to what are essentially political and aesthetic differences. > > joe brennan > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:56:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: perhaps another suggestion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I enjoy the open-ended nature of the list and the chance for give and take, but like Steve Shoemaker and some others I also believe too high a number of posts per list to the day by a single person has a habit of shutting conversation down--at a total of only 50 allowable messages a day, it's literally NOT true that anyone can say anything at any time--a concerted attempt to post many times a day does effectively shut out the possibility of other people posting to the list. While it seems to me that one post per day may cut out too much potential give and take, I'd like to suggest a limit of TWO posts per day, and I'd like to suggest that the owner of the list could and should write a limit on the number of posts into the official Welcome List information. Why two per day? Well, it does allow for response--you can both make your post and respond to any and all who respond to you on the same day, provided you can restrain yourself long enough to allow those other posts to come in. It might even have the added virtue of making people think further about how they're going to respond--while everybody would still be welcome to fire back as quickly as possible if they felt like it, they would do so with the awareness that one quick jab a day is all they're going to have. I would even suggest that a person who posts THREE times a day should not be given a warning until, say, perhaps the third time they've overposted. An initial warning at the third time, a second warning at time number four, and at time number five having their posting privileges taken away for a limited period of time, say perhaps one or two months. Individuals who post more than three times a day should receive one immediate warning, a second warning, and then be removed from the list on a third occasion. Obviously, the exact nature of the numbers here should clearly be subject to adjustment. But while I think nothing can or should be done about the tone, etc, of various posts, however frustrating that can be, I do think something can and should be done about individuals who actually do take away from the democracy of the list by their attempt in some literal sense (whether conscious or not) to SEIZE message space. I would encourage Charles and Joel, again, to write such limitations into the initial message list, and I believe that these limitations will HELP the democratic nature of the forum. But I would further suggest the following--that perhaps a VOTE by the members of the list on the issue of such limitations is also possible. A motion could be put forward by the list owners--people who cared to vote on the issue would have say a week period in which to register their vote. I look forward to any discussion of this or other possibilities for enabling some level of list modernation that does not in fact constitute censorship. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 08:31:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: Help Comments: To: Jim Bennett In-Reply-To: <001201be1dde$1653f9e0$8b22883e@uni-liv.liv.ac.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jim Bennet -- I tried backchanneling you regarding "Auster Studies" but the computer belched it back. If you backchannel me I may be able to offer you suggestions. Hilton Obenzinger On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Jim Bennett wrote: > Hello listies > > I have been collecting information about PAUL AUSTER for a paper about his > work esp his poetry. I obviously have the books and translations which he > has written, but I would be grateful to make contact with anyone who knows > him, knew him or has any information which may be of use. (I have tried to > contact him direct but I think I have an old address). I am still in the > collation phase at the moment and am looking for a direction from which to > approach the subject. > > His early struggles strike me as poignant, and the story of the manuscript > of "The Chronicles of the Guayaki Indians. All very interesting esp in the > light of his piece "Why Write?" from "The Art of Hunger". > > Thanks > > Jim > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:37:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: email addresses question In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Might anyone here have the email addresses for Peter Jaeger and/or Bill Howe (Essex journal)? These would be deeply appreciated. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:52:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Experiments in Poetry, by Jennifer* MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII == Experiments in Poetry, by Jennifer* Today being such a Beautiful Day in Capital City, I want to gather parentheses! ( One, Until There is a lovely bouquet in Capital City ( By One, Which I will give to the Very Saddest Person ( By One, And they will be happiest having Lovely all at Once! ))) ... I do will see a Perfect Cloud which is a Metaphor or Like A Simile that you just Make you think a Perfect Picture of ... If you give me your Name, I will Tell you a story And I will keep your Name, and there will be a Sound Of all those Names leaping from the story And falling Down on the Cooling Ground ....... End of Experiments in Poetry, by Jennifer ... *Oh, these are all I could think of! How could Anyone keep this up!! ____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 08:52:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "tracy s. ruggles" Subject: Re: AUTOMATIC REPLY Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On Friday, December 4, 1998, Someone wrote: > > THIS IS AN AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED MESSAGE > > ----------[ http://metapoetics.listbot.com ]---------- > > Are you tired of going to the POETICS list to read about > the art of mailing list moderation and online community > building/rebuilding/destructing? > > FREE POETICS by using This List, the MetaPoetics list, to > talk about the talk about talking about the POETICS list, > and return the POETICS list to Poetics. > > Thanks, > MetaPoetics List Owner > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 12:04:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Tonight In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Maureen Owen Ed Roberson Joel Lewis Lyman Gilmore +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 7:00 PM Friday, December 4th Denise Bibro Gallery 529 West 20th Street, 4th floor New York City +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 12:07:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII As a staunch proponent of the single post per day platform, I must strenously oppose Mark Wallace's suggestion that *two* posts per day be allowed. Wallace's proposal, it should be pointed out, *doubles* the number of allowable posts and so leaves us precariously poised at the very brink of a slippery, indeed *exponentially* slippery slope: what next--4 posts per day? eight? sixteen? thirty-two? No, my friends, our only salvation lies in the Single, the Unitary, the One. Oh, ok, I actually think Mark's plan is a better one--it had already occurred to me after I made my post, but of course it would have been too unseemly to violate my barely formulated single-post principle by making *another* post that same day... steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 12:10:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion mark as i pointed out in my post on this issue, there is a limit on total posts, i.e. 50 per day, BUT, BUT, many, in fact most, days go by without limit being reached. why say people can only post once, or twice, a day, on the premise that with 50 as max more posts will shut people out, when even with multiple posters, the great majority of days we do not reach 50. remember, everytime we exceed 50 list gets frozen and that wierd paranoic reaction among those who haven't experienced frozen list occurs, and we haven't had that in WEEKS. as i also suggested earlier, one could ask for a simpler self control mechanism, with possibly a programming routine built in. i verymuch like your notion of waiting till all resaponses are in, and posting collective answer as means of cutting posts down, rather than posting quick multiple jabs. but, how about initial suggestion: each person gets max 3 posts day. at post (p) > 3, posts get shunted into queue. if total number of posts (N) =< 35, say, or 40, by say 11 pm, then queue gets released. otherwise, it is released on next day. or, if same done as self control, you ask people to post max 3, 2 if list mail heavy that day, and wait till 11:30 pm to post any more, or send any additional postings to subsidiary queue area where it is released if N =< 35 or 40 by 11pm. or, if that sort of programming impossible, make it total honor system, i.e. don't post more than 3 until 11:30 pm, if there is still room. there have been days where there were maybe 10, 15 posts. to sit about and frown and sit on people saying don't want too many posts when there were, in fact, not many posts, seems a bit heavyhanded. i realize i'm acting like a prickly rule-hating anarchist-stereotype poet/writer here, bu but i yam what i yam, old sweet potato... e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 12:21:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Mark Wallace wrote: > > I would even suggest that a person who posts THREE times a day > should not be given a warning until, say, perhaps the third time they've > overposted. An initial warning at the third time, a second warning at time > number four, and at time number five having their posting privileges taken > away for a limited period of time, say perhaps one or two months. > Individuals who post more than three times a day should receive one > immediate warning, a second warning, and then be removed from the list on > a third occasion. > I could not agree more with Mark Wallace's suggestion. Could we consider giving a warning, though, before the third and final warning (re: offence number five), so that offenders will know that this warning (i.e., the ultimate rather than penultimate warning I am proposing) will result in the immediate stripping of posting privileges for the agreed upon length of time (I think this aspect of Mark's post requires further refining). By the way, as I will not be teaching next semester, I may be available for the monitoring of the new system, if terms can be agreed. Mairead > /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > | | > | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | > | GWU: | > | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > | EPC: | > | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > |____________________________________________________________________________| > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 09:27:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My favorite way of responding to the subject of 'too many postings' is to delete the one's I am not interested in. Plus people can backchannel if they want to get really into a subject matter. The choice should be up to the writer of the post, but should also be aware that you are sending out a post that is reaching ....? so many people. Focus who you want to speak to... if it is all, then send it. If it is one person, just send it to that one person. Case solved! Next case please! ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:14:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Re: the backchannels I knew I'd get this morning. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I write a bit blindly into the list right now as I am on digest and thus haven't seen the latest frontchanneling. Public apology to Henry Gould for my joining in the public scapegoating. Though heat is what you often get for posting, so when posting often, watch out. I knew I'd get some lecturey backchanneling and here is what I'd like to respond to from Mark Weiss: > Then why not bring those discussions to the list? Unless you try and no one >listens there's not much to complain about. I have tried, just not recently. Early summer, Gertrude Stein; later, Laura Riding -- my asking seemed to spark a lot of conversation, which I listened rather than added to. And there were some others. Maybe I am one of those you automatically delete. Please don't send any more backchannel to lecture me!!!! I'm a busy and stubborn girl. cheers to poetry ELizabeth Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:21:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: nav.gaz. ethical query on new subject listafarians: i write this query from, in my bleak moods, what i think may be a naif manque position, and in my better moments, what i think may be a majority, rationalist position. could we kick this query around pretty honestly -- i think the data would merit the perhaps embarrassing self-exposure it may generate. to set question up: a few months ago, poems for workshop type crit, one of the members from an arena where i often participated in workshop crit appeared to post in another area where i have some admin say. let's call this post K2. K2 was a mocking poem, not particularly great but ok. suddenly appended to K2 was post saying apparent signed poster was not, in fact, poster. i'll spare you the thrasher details, but in my response to supposed originator of K2, call person "K," i was apparently less than the ultimate in clarity. i got back in response an appallingly vitriolic little gem, saying, among other things (and here is CRUX of matter) something like "you are a mediocre, if that, poet and i always thought your critiques were shallow and self-serving." now, K had always been, if anything, almost syncophantic. well, that goes too far, but perhaps a bit uncritically admiring? nothing obvious, or excessive, just a faint sense. good at taking a sharp crit, almost invariably positive about my writing. almost always at least one, usually more good points of critique. there had never been anything to prepare me for vitriol. i wrote back in shock, saying what on earth, and what has upset you, and so forth. nohting about "how could you denigrate my work" because i didn't want to be a whiner. well, again, cutting to chase, apparently my comments on K2 post completely misunderstood to be critical, even, to suggest i was the fake K2 poster. when K got it all straight, wrote apology and said oh, have always liked and respected your writing immensely and great crits etc. type things. HERE IS CRUX: i was almost nauseous. i simply CANNOT imagine saying either that i like someone's work when i don't, or, conversely, in burst of pique saying i think they suck when i never did think so. it completely, utterly grossed me out. i now have absolutely no trust in K's opinion. it was made worse by rumors sent me that apparently K was/is very religious. this hypcrisy from a purportedly RELIGIOUS person? i've tried to think, since. sometimes, i've said, it is true, less sharp things than i was thinking. i've made some polite noises about work i am less than wild about. but never actually said anything like "your writing is great" -- more, i'll find an image, or line, or if i can, single poem i like and praise that. and if asked, really asked, i'll be honest about what i don't like. there are writers i don't like, with work i DO like. if i speak about work, talk about work. i always try, at least, to leave personal opinion out of it. that seems like most basic degree of respect about writing one must have to really be able to do it well, or so i thought. there are people i've been angry at, jealous of, and it is possible i don't accord their work the respect i should, or as fair a reading as i should. and when i think that could be the case, i try to shut up about anything critical unless i'm really totally certain. but i miss in this. but have you, listmates, ever deliberately slammed work, publically or privately, because you didn't like writer, or thought writer didn't like your work and wanted to "get" them back? have you, verifiably, seen this happen -- not suspected, but SEEN it as i did in way that makes it unmistakable? do you think this should be a basic ethical requirement we should make of ourselves as critics? i don't ask thses as straw questions. for myself, i have this wierd feeling that if i lie, engage in this kind of dishonesty (and i do lie, we all do, but i mean, lie in THIS SPECIFIC WAY), it will pollute my writing. it is maybe superstitious, or voodoo, but at most rational level i can describe, seems like so muc hof writing is instinct and deep truths, i.e. unmediated so as to hold on to raw/edgy malleability and "artistry," that if you muck around by dishonesties about writing, you risk losing your ability to BE honest. and if you do that, you will lose your writing edge. so, in all honestly, it is perhaps selfishness that has made me toe this line more than anything. if i was assured that i could be dishonest in this way and it wouldn't effect my writing, would i do it? i think i probably would not, that it is self-belittling to be untruthful, beneath one. but it is also possible i am completely blindsiding to occurences of this in myself... even as i write this, the glory of the poetics list is happening -- i'm hearing all of your voices already in response, and i can think of lots of you trying to work out if you know of any dishonest critics who are good writers to bring up as counters. i can't think of any just now, but i will work on it too. K. is, by the way, not a great writer. ok, sometimes flat, sometimes cliched, sometimes overreaching and not succeeding in project of poem. but not in permanently, deeply awful way. more in way that suggests someone new to writing than anything else, someone with work to do that they might, in fact, actually be able to do at some point... but meanwhile, do you engage in, or know of people who have engaged in this kind of knowingly slanted crit? would you allow someone you knew to do it to write in zine/mag/journal you had control over? or do you know it regularly to occur and automatically factor it in when reading crit/ doing admin tasks involving assessment? e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 12:29:31 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Avant Writing Collection MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit from John Bennett: "I am developing a new collection here of Avant Writing, and you are one of the people I have on my list to contact. The collection is a kind of outgrowth of the extensive archive of William Burroughs' papers that were donated to this library (parts of which I have been cataloguing). As Bob (Grumman) suggested, my budget for starting this is miniscule, so I have indeed been asking people for donations of material. So anything of yours, and anything from your various publishing activities would be most welcome indeed, and would be very much at the center of what I'm trying to build here. Basically I'm collecting innovative and experimental work that is not to be found in most libraries, bookstores, and this is generally ignorred by the established institutions, but that I believe is the most important and exciting writing being done. I am convinced that this material will be recognized and valued for what it is in the future, and this collection will provide a valuable resource for future scholars and readers. As will the collections of SUNY Buffalo and Marvin & Ruth Sackner. And yes, by all means, please add my name and address to your list of archives. You can add anything you think significant from the above as a note, emphasizing that we are accepting donations of materials in the areas of innovative and experimental writing and poetry, visual poetry, audio poetry and related materials - books, broadsides, ephemera, serials, etc. Use this address: John Bennett; Curator Avant Writing Collection; Rare Books and Manuscripts; University Libraries; Ohio State University; 1859 Neil Ave. Mall Columbus, OH 43210-1286 I do have email (bennett.23@osu.edu) but am somewhat limited in what I can do with it due to a visual disability. I can print out and read messages, however and make brief responses. I much prefer to work through snail mail. I've enclosed my website address - my son (Squid) set it up and manages it. " JOHN BENNETT'S WEBSITE http://www.geocities.com/Pipeline/4848/lbp.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:26:15 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: quick history MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit As chairman of the Free Henry Gould Committee I feel it is my duty to inform the list that George Bowering's check bounced.---Carlo Parcelli George Bowering wrote: > > >Free Henry Gould > > Oh, bad timing! I paid $25 just a month ago. > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:48:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Cameron Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" As a possible solution to the ongoing debate over how many posts one should be allowed to post in a single day, I would like to suggest that anyone who posts to this list be automatically unsubbed from it. D. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:47:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: the backchannels I knew I'd get this morning. In-Reply-To: <199812041814.KAA28595@lanshark.lanminds.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well then, frontchannel. Twice issues raised and discussion provoked would seem to indicate that the system now in place in fact works. I think Elliza McGrand got it right: maybe on three or four occasions since I've been on the list I've had to wait till the next day for a post to appear because the list was maxed out. Hardly a crisis. As to the occasional eruptions of imbecility or unseemly passion, or the times when the conversation ties itself into a knot, that's the nature of communication. The britlist recently spent what seemed like a year (or was it two weeks) angrily discussing an article that only one member had read (and refused to quote apparently for fear of legal retribution--they still use the stocks over there). So there were a lot of "If what you're implying he said x, then y...," anwered by "actually it was more like z, but you should really look at the article, which is unfortunately virtually unavailable, as the ten copies printed floated down river with the livestock in last week's flood" kinds of posts, all of them vehemently passionate, many of them, given the lack of data, character assassination by way of inuendo. The topic finally went away of its own accord, as would have this one, spurred by Marjorie's initial post, which, having taken on its own life, went some fairly interesting, if intemperate, places before becoming lost in nothing but name-calling. In the past this little polity has survived worse, and without any deus ex machina. Boredom and quiet diplomacy seem potent enough. Enough handwringing. Maybe what we need is public confessions--Fritz Perls and Mao would have loved that. On another topic: the word "assassination" implies that it helps to be stoned when you pull the trigger. Is that also true of character assassination? >I knew I'd get some lecturey backchanneling and here is what I'd like to >respond to from Mark Weiss: > >> Then why not bring those discussions to the list? Unless you try and no one >>listens there's not much to complain about. > >I have tried, just not recently. Early summer, Gertrude Stein; later, Laura >Riding -- my asking seemed to spark a lot of conversation, which I listened >rather than added to. And there were some others. > >Please don't send any more backchannel to lecture me!!!! I'm a busy and >stubborn girl. > >cheers to poetry > >ELizabeth > > > >Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books >P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. >http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 12:54:40 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Re: quick history MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Its surely a study in poetic consciousness to note how a thread which originally started by asking the date the atom was split has turned into missives from the chairman of the Free Henry Gould Committee. Tho I must admit that everytime I write one of these short posts now I feel self-conscious (& those who know me, know that is an achievement) & have this mental image of someone else out there unsubscribing because of it. Is this the hive mentality devolving into spitfire anarchy? Rasputin Zukofsky ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 10:53:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: I become my own enemy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pals and countrypeople, Am I not allowed to back up Joel in his complaint??? Clearly he has invested WORK in this list, and I wanted to publicly comment on his comments. Mark Weiss wrote me: >My point exactly--one can raise issues and provoke comment, even as things >stand. >Instead we get all this handwringing. The list rapidly turns into a gestalt >therapy session. I don't want backchannel!!! I don't want to post 3 times a day!@! Perhaps this is my last post ever, posthaste.. To clarify, I want people to be concise and thoughtful -- & respectful maybe, I don't know, it tends to ease REAL COMMUNICATION! I would love LOVE to be on a list I felt more attuned to. For one thing,(not to alienate any dear pals or nothin) this list can feel very like an utterly male dominion, I know I am not the only one who thinks so. It also can feel like a dysfunctional family. Great. Two things I have been running from for years. (not to gestalt ya, pls ignore except as an intellectual construct). I don't want the list to function as a boredom-at-work easer for people. Or I don't want to be on a list that is. Do your work, go home, go for a walk, whatever. Try a matinee!! Try a chatroom!! I would love the list to be for announcements and thoughtful discussion. Even as things stand --my definition of which is: there are sometimes things that interest me being discussed, I have made new great contacts-- I am thinking of dropping off the list. Why?? ***Witness what happened to Jen Hofer when she mentioned gender-neutral pronouns.**** Why?? These back -- and later, in the digest, who knows what front- channel lectures from everyone who somehow OWNS the list (or worse yet, poetry- or the entire English language of he's and his's and for all mankind), and these will tend to be -- less than charming Elizabeth Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:54:51 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Well, its official. Mark Wallace's post shows that he has been living in this city of bureaucrats too long. But it did remind me of an incident from my distant past. When I was a kid in Catholic grade school, we had a weekly discussion session with one of the parish priests. Inevitably, one of the sessions dealt with the so-called moral question, "If you were on a life raft that could hold only six people and there were seven survivors who should make the supreme sacrifice?" Because I was perpetually hungry, questions like this irritated me. So I asked the priest, "What if one of the survivors was a communist?" The priest, a gentleman of Polish descent, leaned over an inch from my face and whispered, "Then drowning would be too good for him." I've suspected limits and boundaries ever since. Mark Wallace wrote: > > I enjoy the open-ended nature of the list and the chance for give > and take, but like Steve Shoemaker and some others I also believe too high > a number of posts per list to the day by a single person has a habit of > shutting conversation down--at a total of only 50 allowable messages a > day, it's literally NOT true that anyone can say anything at any time--a > concerted attempt to post many times a day does effectively shut out the > possibility of other people posting to the list. > > While it seems to me that one post per day may cut out too much > potential give and take, I'd like to suggest a limit of TWO posts per day, > and I'd like to suggest that the owner of the list could and should write > a limit on the number of posts into the official Welcome List information. > Why two per day? Well, it does allow for response--you can both make your > post and respond to any and all who respond to you on the same day, > provided you can restrain yourself long enough to allow those other posts > to come in. It might even have the added virtue of making people think > further about how they're going to respond--while everybody would still be > welcome to fire back as quickly as possible if they felt like it, they > would do so with the awareness that one quick jab a day is all they're > going to have. > > I would even suggest that a person who posts THREE times a day > should not be given a warning until, say, perhaps the third time they've > overposted. An initial warning at the third time, a second warning at time > number four, and at time number five having their posting privileges taken > away for a limited period of time, say perhaps one or two months. > Individuals who post more than three times a day should receive one > immediate warning, a second warning, and then be removed from the list on > a third occasion. > > Obviously, the exact nature of the numbers here should clearly be > subject to adjustment. But while I think nothing can or should be done > about the tone, etc, of various posts, however frustrating that can be, I > do think something can and should be done about individuals who actually > do take away from the democracy of the list by their attempt in some > literal sense (whether conscious or not) to SEIZE message space. > > I would encourage Charles and Joel, again, to write such > limitations into the initial message list, and I believe that these > limitations will HELP the democratic nature of the forum. But I would > further suggest the following--that perhaps a VOTE by the members of the > list on the issue of such limitations is also possible. A motion could be > put forward by the list owners--people who cared to vote on the issue > would have say a week period in which to register their vote. > > I look forward to any discussion of this or other possibilities > for enabling some level of list modernation that does not in fact > constitute censorship. > > Mark Wallace > > /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > | | > | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | > | GWU: | > | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > | EPC: | > | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > |____________________________________________________________________________| -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 13:58:55 -0500 Reply-To: groberts@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: groberts@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: my two cents laid on the r.r. track MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In the spirit of the long confessionals hereabouts of late...The following suffers from a lack of facetiousness, which no doubt leaves its earnestness open for ridicule: oh well, I 'll take my chances, because I agree that Joel's posts call for more responses from us. I hope it will be clear that my rhetoric of anonymity is deliberate; I pretend to speak for the list but am only speaking for myself, "myself" of course being itself only a caricature. Who is the list for? For its sponsors and its users (myself and strangers), but not for everyone. This much (or little) is granted easily enough. But after all it's not so easy as that. Which I think means corollary and perhaps more interesting questions should be asked, yet again. What is this list for? My generic answer is: To realize day in and day out the notion that this technology can fulfill certain loosely defined but specific goals and needs supposedly shared by sponsors and users alike. But this way of answering the question is perhaps not very helpful after all. And so: What is the list used for? And thus: What do I use the list for? Or: How do I use the list? -To learn more about experimental poetry and poetics (list as ritual space for the display of secrets to the uninitiated). I first heard about the list from a new friend I made at an academic conference at Orono, ME, so my decision to subscribe to this "community" (with at that time a head count of about 300 and already considered by some overpopulated) was based on an idealized description of it as a well-established venue for the same exhilarating exchange of names, notices, ideas, and opinions that I shared then face to face with other already subscribed listees. I am one of the horde of graduate students who have attached ourselves to the list in the vain hope that we might learn more about poetry ignored or dismissed at the schools to which we are also attached. I sometimes feel that this horde, which consists of individuals who are on some level in economic competetion with each other (a not negligible claim that I have intended to make before), doesn't have any real quickening effect on the discussions, and may even have the reverse effect. Hurrah for those who do not believe that they have a precarious economic interest in what goes on here and contribute out of other personal or political motivations! -To hear more about publications (list as bulletin board). By far, most of the postings that I have saved over the last two and a half years are announcements about stuff that I can buy, read, view, attend, order, covet, etc.. -To practice and perform an ethos (list as karaoke bar, cruising street, or playground). I occasionally post throwaway verse constructed out of or in response to discussion threads and intended as my contribution to the anarchic polyphony that is so characteristic of this list. The abject and retrograde character of my satires on our own "jargon of tribal intersubjectivity" (de Man) is fun for me to assume and infrequently enough interjected to be harmless as far as I am concerned. I very much appreciate, for example, Alan Sondheim's "experiments in poetry" and think that this list is a good place to find out how the poetics of satire and enunciative position work when they are predicated on a new medium of distribution. I have tried to participate on the list at least once a month, in however tangential or tentative way, because I think more users need to delurk in order to actively shape this discourse community. I also feel that I would be exploitatively benefiting from the work of others if I did not act to make the list work for them and me in accord with what I understand to be the list's premises and purposes. This is the onlysuch list that I have subscribed to for the simple reasons that I only have so much time for this sort of thing and I still believe this venue can provoke and persuade me to articulate my own poetics, which are not identical with but include that which I described above. Several times, I have been dismayed enough by the amount of what I consider blather and carelessness to unsub. I haven't yet done so because: I still learn something now and then, I am fascinated by the creative potential of this medium, and I am adept at deleting the many posts that don't interest me and that make this list so tantalizingly banal. Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 14:03:43 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: quick history MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit What about Bowering's frivolous post that superceded in time, space, cyberspace, hyperspace et al my frivolous post. Viva frivolity. I love listening in on the Bowering/Bromige love cooing. Perhaps, they would coo for us again today.---Carlo Parcelli miekal and wrote: > > Its surely a study in poetic consciousness to note how a thread which > originally started by asking the date the atom was split has turned into > missives from the chairman of the Free Henry Gould Committee. Tho I > must admit that everytime I write one of these short posts now I feel > self-conscious (& those who know me, know that is an achievement) & have > this mental image of someone else out there unsubscribing because of > it. Is this the hive mentality devolving into spitfire anarchy? > > Rasputin Zukofsky -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 14:19:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: nav.gaz. ethical query on new subject In-Reply-To: <199812041821.NAA17056@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I was strongly encouraged to write a negative review for the Village Voice a long time ago. I resisted (my editor had something against the author); my copy was badly affected; I didn't write any more reviews for VV. On the other hand, I once wrote a somewhat negative review of a friend's book: I was and continue to be naive and driven. My friend was absolutely enraged: I had broken a serious code. I no longer review professionally: for the most part, I found greater satisfaction in publishing favorable reviews. However, as I say, I am a strikingly naive and lonesome dude: I know this is not the way the great world works. And I still say we should all have to piss standing up. Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 15:24:05 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: suggestions: self-control, et al. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the wealth of poetic knowledge and experience that this collection of 700 +/- list subscribers manifests is too great a treasure for it to be diminished in any way. i thrive on: closely argued disussions of issues in poetics; suggestions and promotions of books and essays to read, small press publications and journals to hunt down and read; compelling cases made for writers whose work i might not otherwise check out; announcements of readings and events, even in places i might have to make an effort to get to; reports from readings and events that i would like to have attended but could not; simple queries that generate broader discussions; and yes, even some bickering (e.g. perloff-gudding, generational agon, etc). i am enervated by: personal attacks, showboating, grandstanding, baiting, running in-jokes, coffee-talk, idle banter as cure for work-a-day boredom, coterie witticisms. and nit-picky things like misdirected backchannels (careful with that reply key eugene!), whole posts copied into subsequent posts (if you don't know how to change yr email settings, find out!), front-channel requests for the email addresses of people who as it turns out are list subscribers (if you don't know how to review the list of current subscribers, find out!), requests for information that has already been posted (if you don't know how to search the list archives, find out!). (btw, "find out" = read welcome message or backchannel me!) certainly not everyone shares my tastes, but at the risk of drifting into can't-we-all-just-get-along, let's simply show some respect and responsibility for ourselves and each other. i suggest the following as a minimal standard for posting: will my post be of interest and relevance to a majority of the 700 subscribers to this list? (as corollary to the notion, stated in the welcome message, that posting here is a form of publication) ((and hoping i havent herein violated my own dictum; poster's worst fear, akin to kent's nobody likes me: am i one of those you auto-delete?)) another suggestion: perhaps those interested could put a rein on the anarchy -vs- censorship debate by the backchannel drafting of some sort of rules of the roost which could then be submitted for general approval? allbests, tom tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the life in things. -- Gilles Deleuze ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 16:40:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Freedom Is Never Free Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A couple of weeks ago I got a note from a friend on the list (yes I still do have some friends on the list) who asked me why the messages had stopped coming. I quickly checked to see what the story was and I discovered the list was locked because over 50 messages had been sent that day. I sent out a message to free the locked posts, but I sent it to the list rather than listserve. Thus my cryptic post of a couple of weeks back: Free Poetics. But the response to that message made me aware that I had not been active enough in exercising the editorial functions of the list. My attention was simply elsewhere, although I continued to read the list. The Poetics List is by its nature limited and it can't reflect the desire of all its participants, for as has been well articulated by others, the direction that some of the subscribers might wish to take the list will drive others away from it: *it has already has*. The alienation of many subscribers who for me constitute a core constituency for us is an issue that those of involved in maintaining the list are necessarily more concerned about than some list participants. This has been an issue that has come up in this and every year since the list was started in late 1993 and this is something like the reply I have given in those earlier instances: I may well be mistaken about this, but it has been a founding principal of the list and one I have stated more than any other one except the centrality of announcements of readings and publications for the list. Indeed, in 1995, when the list had only 200 subscribers, I made the point this way: “I am interested in continuing to explore what formats and styles of posting encourage, rather than simply allow, participation in this ‘virtual uncommunity’. The volume of messages is certainly a useful measure of list activity; but volume itself may be an obstacle for some to participate, just as it may encourage others.” A year or two later I put it this way: “The paradox is that in an attempt to be open and nonexcluding one can end up excluding those who are unable to handle the volume: people are drowned out rather than kept out until Dreamworks Interactive, Inc., guides us and we asphyxiate.” In any case, I do not feel obliged to let those who post the most or are the most belligerent in their posts determine the direction of the Poetics List. However, I, along with my collaborators, are reading and considering any and all suggestions we get frontchannel but also, significantly, backchannel. I am making no claim as to what is right in all cases; I am rather asserting the particular editorial parameters of this specific Internet project, and indeed my own editorial judgment (in cooperation with those who share responsibility with me for the list). Others will surely want to create different lists with different focuses and different limits, but it seemed to me worthwhile at this time to try to reassert the values of the list to which those of who organized it and maintain it are committed. This is a private list. No one is required to participate, no one is guaranteed a right to participate. Its function, structure, and aims are determined by its editors. I believe in the value of editing and I believe this value does not increase in the age of the Internet, but, if anything, increases. Editorial decisions are open to question; they may be wrong or misguided. The lack of editorial intervention is also a form of editing, subject to dispute. This is and has always been a moderated list, albeit lightly moderated; the very minimal intervention combined with maximum maintenance (thanks, Joel!) is not to limit the range, anarchy, feistiness, good or bad manners of posts -- but rather to allow space for such exchanges to continue. The parameters of this list does not include absolute right of anyone subscribing to it to send out unlimited messages; indeed, one of the very few ground rules for the list states just the opposite. I am very reluctant to express this in the number of posts per day or even week, because back and forth at any given moment is one of crucial features of the list. However, we ask that those participating in this forum stick to a general sense of limit as measured, over longer periods of time. When, in the judgment of those of working on the list, this limit has been exceed , a polite message, emphasizing that the issue is volume of posts not content, may be sent out; this should suffice for anyone wishing to participate in the list. In the history of the list, I believe we have sent a request to decrease the volume of posting to only four people among the possibly 1000 who have subscribed at one time or another. When a subscriber responds to such *multiple* requests by increasing the frequency of their posting, then it is our obligation to recognize that the structure we have set up is not working in this one instance and to act accordingly. I want a Poetics List that I can read straight through, not the only the posts I’m likely to like, but the one that annoy or irritate or surprise or baffle me. I want a list where the folks subscribed don’t set their filters (automatic or manual) to delete posts from those people they feel have already heard enough from (or otherwise use their delete button more than their view button) . I may be the only one on this list who has attempted to read all the posts that have been sent to it from the day the list was started. Maybe this makes me a bad judge maybe lists are condemned to cycles of always new readers who stay on till they have had enough. But that’s not the kind of list I want. Maybe I’m imposing reading values based on print journals or “real time” conversation and dialogue onto a new and different medium. Maybe I’m just holding onto an impossible ideal, against all odds, and against those who feel that the instant gratification of being able to post not just a much as you want (*which has never been limited*) but also as often as you want is a fundamental value of the list. The Internet, we all know, offers much more information that we can take in. I want a list that is not just another example of too much unfiltered, unconsidered product; that can be quiet, even silent, some days, and noisy others that doesn’t follow the imperative of the more the better, since the space is “free and unlimited”. Electronic space is neither free or unlimited because our lives are neither free or unlimited. The economy of the list is affected by who posts more or less, what tones they use, who is scared off and who is egged on, who has the time to read it and write to it -- and who doesn’t and perhaps feels unable to post because never able to get the end of the last series of posts before the topic has flown on to something else. My temperament may indeed be contrary to this medium: I seek containment, a space I feel I can inhabit, that is slow as much as fast, kind as much as unkind. A space I can think in and a space I want to go for conversation. These expectations are unreasonable and perhaps that is the site of the conflict here: for I want a list that articulates limits rather than imposes them by volumetric default. And I want to bring this about by self-reflective engagement of all those participating. This may not be the way some of you see these issues, but I invite those interested to stick with me in this electronic experiment. I don’t propose to stop the list or to change its structure. I propose to stick with it, pretty much as it has been these past several years. *No one has been deleted from this list,* but those of us running the list reserve the right to limit the number of posts that subscribers can send and, from time to time, to make editorial comments on posts that have been sent. Last night when I got home my son six-year old son Felix said to me, “I wish everyone in the whole school lived in the same building”. Thinking of the Poetics List, I can’t say I feel the same way. But I do wish we were all in the same conversation. I want to work for that, because I know it won’t be easy to get there. It never has been. Charles Bernstein David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters Poetics Program Department of English 438 Clemens Hall State University of New York Buffalo, NY 14260 716-645-3810 fax: 212-799-9749 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 18:32:26 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Freedom Is Never Free MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Thanks to Charles for confirming everything in Joe Brennan's earlier post.---Carlo Parcelli Charles Bernstein wrote: > > A couple of weeks ago I got a note from a friend on the list (yes I still do > have some friends on the list) who asked me why the messages had stopped > coming. I quickly checked to see what the story was and I discovered the list > was locked because over 50 messages had been sent that day. I sent out a > message to free the locked posts, but I sent it to the list rather than > listserve. Thus my cryptic post of a couple of weeks back: Free Poetics. But > the response to that message made me aware that I had not been active > enough in > exercising the editorial functions of the list. My attention was simply > elsewhere, although I continued to read the list. > > The Poetics List is by its nature limited and it can't reflect the desire of > all its participants, for as has been well articulated by others, the > direction > that some of the subscribers might wish to take the list will drive others > away > from it: *it has already has*. The alienation of many subscribers who for me > constitute a core constituency for us is an issue that those of involved in > maintaining the list are necessarily more concerned about than some list > participants. This has been an issue that has come up in this and every year > since the list was started in late 1993 and this is something like the reply I > have given in those earlier instances: I may well be mistaken about this, but > it has been a founding principal of the list and one I have stated more than > any other one except the centrality of announcements of readings and > publications for the list. > > Indeed, in 1995, when the list had only 200 subscribers, I made the point > this > way: > “I am interested in continuing to explore what formats and styles of posting > encourage, rather than simply allow, participation in this ‘virtual > uncommunity’. The volume of messages is certainly a useful measure of list > activity; but volume itself may be an obstacle for some to participate, > just as > it may encourage others.” > > A year or two later I put it this way: > “The paradox is that in an attempt to be open and nonexcluding one can > end up excluding those who are unable to handle the volume: people are drowned > out rather than kept out until Dreamworks Interactive, Inc., guides us and > we asphyxiate.” > > In any case, I do not feel obliged to let those who post the most or are the > most belligerent in their posts determine the direction of the Poetics List. > However, I, along with my collaborators, are reading and considering any and > all suggestions we get frontchannel but also, significantly, backchannel. > > I am making no claim as to what is right in all cases; I am rather asserting > the particular editorial parameters of this specific Internet project, and > indeed my own editorial judgment (in cooperation with those who share > responsibility with me for the list). Others will surely want to create > different lists with different focuses and different limits, but it seemed to > me worthwhile at this time to try to reassert the values of the list to which > those of who organized it and maintain it are committed. > > This is a private list. No one is required to participate, no one is > guaranteed > a right to participate. Its function, structure, and aims are determined by > its > editors. I believe in the value of editing and I believe this value does not > increase in the age of the Internet, but, if anything, increases. Editorial > decisions are open to question; they may be wrong or misguided. The lack of > editorial intervention is also a form of editing, subject to dispute. > > This is and has always been a moderated list, albeit lightly moderated; the > very minimal intervention combined with maximum maintenance (thanks, Joel!) is > not to limit the range, anarchy, feistiness, good or bad manners of posts -- > but rather to allow space for such exchanges to continue. The parameters of > this list does not include absolute right of anyone subscribing to it to send > out unlimited messages; indeed, one of the very few ground rules for the list > states just the opposite. I am very reluctant to express this in the number of > posts per day or even week, because back and forth at any given moment is one > of crucial features of the list. However, we ask that those participating in > this forum stick to a general sense of limit as measured, over longer periods > of time. When, in the judgment of those of working on the list, this limit has > been exceed , a polite message, emphasizing that the issue is volume of posts > not content, may be sent out; this should suffice for anyone wishing to > participate in the list. In the history of the list, I believe we have sent a > request to decrease the volume of posting to only four people among the > possibly 1000 who have subscribed at one time or another. When a subscriber > responds to such *multiple* requests by increasing the frequency of their > posting, then it is our obligation to recognize that the structure we have set > up is not working in this one instance and to act accordingly. > > I want a Poetics List that I can read straight through, not the only the posts > I’m likely to like, but the one that annoy or irritate or surprise or baffle > me. I want a list where the folks subscribed don’t set their filters > (automatic > or manual) to delete posts from those people they feel have already heard > enough from (or otherwise use their delete button more than their view button) > . I may be the only one on this list who has attempted to read all the posts > that have been sent to it from the day the list was started. Maybe this makes > me a bad judge maybe lists are condemned to cycles of always new readers who > stay on till they have had enough. But that’s not the kind of list I want. > > Maybe I’m imposing reading values based on print journals or “real time” > conversation and dialogue onto a new and different medium. Maybe I’m just > holding onto an impossible ideal, against all odds, and against those who feel > that the instant gratification of being able to post not just a much as you > want (*which has never been limited*) but also as often as you want is a > fundamental value of the list. The Internet, we all know, offers much more > information that we can take in. I want a list that is not just another > example > of too much unfiltered, unconsidered product; that can be quiet, even silent, > some days, and noisy others that doesn’t follow the imperative of the more > the > better, since the space is “free and unlimited”. > > Electronic space is neither free or unlimited because our lives are neither > free or unlimited. > > The economy of the list is affected by who posts more or less, what tones they > use, who is scared off and who is egged on, who has the time to read it and > write to it -- and who doesn’t and perhaps feels unable to post because never > able to get the end of the last series of posts before the topic has flown on > to something else. My temperament may indeed be contrary to this medium: I > seek > containment, a space I feel I can inhabit, that is slow as much as fast, kind > as much as unkind. A space I can think in and a space I want to go for > conversation. These expectations are unreasonable and perhaps that is the site > of the conflict here: for I want a list that articulates limits rather than > imposes them by volumetric default. And I want to bring this about by > self-reflective engagement of all those participating. This may not be the way > some of you see these issues, but I invite those interested to stick with > me in > this electronic experiment. > > I don’t propose to stop the list or to change its structure. I propose to > stick > with it, pretty much as it has been these past several years. *No one has been > deleted from this list,* but those of us running the list reserve the right to > limit the number of posts that subscribers can send and, from time to time, to > make editorial comments on posts that have been sent. > > Last night when I got home my son six-year old son Felix said to me, “I wish > everyone in the whole school lived in the same building”. Thinking of the > Poetics List, I can’t say I feel the same way. But I do wish we were all in > the > same conversation. I want to work for that, because I know it won’t be easy to > get there. It never has been. > > Charles Bernstein > David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters > Poetics Program > Department of English > 438 Clemens Hall > State University of New York > Buffalo, NY 14260 > 716-645-3810 > fax: 212-799-9749 > > http://writing.upenn.edu/epc > http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 15:41:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: suggestions: self-control, et al. Comments: To: Tom Orange In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have included most of your post because I assume that many, like me, have a hard time remembering what is being referred to, particularly in this forum, where several discussions may be going on at once. Part of what this list (I suppose any list) is is a community. Much of what you don't like is a form of community bonding. That I can share a witticism with someone I've never met and who, prior to my meeting them here, have never read, is I think a good thing. That I am allowed into the intimacy of a running joke, which is, by the way, an exemplary text (sorry, David, George and Rachel, if that spoils some of your fun) is for me a privilege. But there are always posts that I'll delete. Reports of readings I think are fairly useless. I'm glad they're there for others who like them, and I'm glad I don't have to read them. I of course have no idea what's of interest to the 700 subscribers, and pitching my posts with that in mind would render me mute more often than I would like. I can try to be relevant to my own interests, just as I am in work that I choose to publish, and hope that others may also be interested. I know no other mechanism. Here's a rule of courtesy I would like to see observed (I observe it myself). Backchannelled messages should never be frontchannelled without the original sender's permission. I often use backchannel for quiet diplomacy or because I think that my message might be too incendiary if sent to the entire list. I'm aware that a backchannelled message may be seen as offensive or even harassing (I hope none of mine have been). If that's the case the recipient, it seems to me, should in the first place have recourse to Joel or Charles. >i thrive on: closely argued disussions of issues in poetics; suggestions >and promotions of books and essays to read, small press publications and >journals to hunt down and read; compelling cases made for writers whose >work i might not otherwise check out; announcements of readings and >events, even in places i might have to make an effort to get to; reports >from readings and events that i would like to have attended but could not; >simple queries that generate broader discussions; and yes, even some >bickering (e.g. perloff-gudding, generational agon, etc). > >i am enervated by: personal attacks, showboating, grandstanding, baiting, >running in-jokes, coffee-talk, idle banter as cure for work-a-day boredom, >coterie witticisms. and nit-picky things like misdirected backchannels >(careful with that reply key eugene!), whole posts copied into subsequent >posts (if you don't know how to change yr email settings, find out!), >front-channel requests for the email addresses of people who as it turns >out are list subscribers (if you don't know how to review the list of >current subscribers, find out!), requests for information that has already >been posted (if you don't know how to search the list archives, find >out!). (btw, "find out" = read welcome message or backchannel me!) > >certainly not everyone shares my tastes, but at the risk of drifting into >can't-we-all-just-get-along, let's simply show some respect and >responsibility for ourselves and each other. > >i suggest the following as a minimal standard for posting: will my post be >of interest and relevance to a majority of the 700 subscribers to this >list? (as corollary to the notion, stated in the welcome message, that >posting here is a form of publication) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 18:57:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Freedom Is Never Free In-Reply-To: <3668710A.2B02@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" carlo, i just don't think it's that simple, man... here charles has taken the time to situate his own motivations---his sense of what the list is, how it works, what he'd like to see happen... he can't be faulted for taking the time to state his opinions---though he *can* always be faulted to the extent that, as the person who founded (and provides some moderation for) the list, he invokes his (as he puts it) editorship in ways that may conflict with what some "we" out here likes or dislikes... and sure, charles's sense of the list is itself, as he indicates, a function of what *he* likes and dislikes, and what he's learned re such lists over time... but the list, like that "we" two sentences back, is clearly neither univocal, nor binary... based on the last few dozen statements from various folks re what they like/don't like about the list (incl. you and me, carlo), one might well conclude that there is NO consensus at all as to what we should do re how this list runs... there is no consensus that it be left entirely to its own devices, there is no consensus that it NOT be... some of us (incl. me) have taken the rhetorical stance that it'd be better if we exerted a bit more self-moderation (i won't spell this out again)... some of us (like you, i'd say) are asking for a more vigorous, even potentially agonistic exchange, in the belief that only with this measure of "freedom" might we collectively attain something of lasting value (fair gloss?)... and some of us don't understand why we're even bothering about any of this... we all have our reasons, that is, which may be entirely rational (or whatever)... but we all have our reasons... let us assume the list functions out of some working dissensus, ok?... then, how best to handle this?... "do nothing" is surely not the only, nor is it necessarily the most democratic, response (if i believed this, i'd hardly go for ANY form of govt.)... neither is "censorship"... and note: much of what we have at our disposal by way of gauging what IS being done around here is the list history---which itself varies considerably (some of us have been here for a month, some for a number of years)---and our experiences with other such lists (which varies in the obvious ways)... again, like it or not, charles is free [cough] to take a stand here, and it's clearly not one based on sheer "censorship," but on editorial judgment---as he conceives it... whatever else, it's clear to yours truly, anyway, that charles is not merely casting out of the poetix empire those who fail to meet his arbitrarily-imposed parameters---though here again, you are free [cough] to see things otherwise... i wonder though: are we really at such odds here, carlo?---or are we, both of us in our ways, being teased by the seductive nature of this medium---our words---to fall into such polarized quarters?... alla that said: though i'd no doubt turn the screw somewhat differently than charles (b/c, for one, i'm not charles), i can only applaud his persistence here... and in any case i find his willingness to engage with us (an inclusive and dissenting us, mind you)---not in condescending terms, either, but by being forthcoming about what he finds important, and urgent---ample evidence that he's listening to what's being said... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 19:06:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Freedom Is Never Free Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" oh & forgot to say that i had a chestnut blow up in my face the other day... the pulp hit me in my left eye, no shit... & i pricked the shell too prior to roasting, as i always do... tis the season, gotta watch them little suckers... ok, gonna go watch the grinch steal xmas now... /// joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 20:35:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Auster Studies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Perhaps the list would benefit from your suggestions. I would be interested in them. GT >Jim Bennet -- > >I tried backchanneling you regarding "Auster Studies" but the computer >belched it back. If you backchannel me I may be able to offer you >suggestions. > >Hilton Obenzinger > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 22:57:09 -0500 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: Freedom Is Never Free MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm not sure of the ground work. She helped me move the boxes. And put the books on the shelf. It got to be late. And she stayed. I didn't know he was returning. We weren't lovers, he and I, anymore, but there were future possibilities. And we still loved. We all needed a place to sleep. We could all save face. "Because there is this unfinishing that partitions our being in common, there is 'literature', that indefinitely repeated suspended gesture of touching the limit, indicating and inscribing it but without crossing it or abolishing it in the fiction of a common body. To write for others means in reality to write because of others. The writer gives nothing and destines nothing to others; the project she has in view is not to communicate anything whatsoever, neither a message or herself. To be sure, there are always messages and persons, and it is important that both (treating them, if I can, as identical for the moment) to be communicated. But writing is the necessity of exposing the limit--not the limit of communication, but the limit on which communication takes place." Jean-Luc Nancy, "Of Being-in-Common", _Community at Loose Ends_. Difficult, when the bus is full (H4 line before 9 AM) to scribble. To send messages. But we are shoulder-to-shoulder. "Please move all the way back." "Pull to signal driver to stop". mc ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 12:31:08 -0400 Reply-To: efristr1@nycap.rr.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Fristrom Subject: Re: Freedom Is Never Free MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "I believe in the value of editing and I believe this value does not increase in the age of the Internet, but, if anything, increases." ? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 21:20:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Infoanimism and trickster accusations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think that the difficulties of any sort of poetics that involve things like dhtml or javascript or, really, any high-tech--and Alan Sondheim, Bob Haynes, and Bill Marsh have alluded to difficulties here--is to bring it home. Though this is also a general challenge in writing anything. To bring it home isn't to get lost in the technicalities of scripting, sort of like a creative writing approach that talks about line breaks and technique interminably. Though it is interesting to consider a criticism that can at once talk about the neath text in an engaging way while also finding ways to talk about totally non-technical dimensions of new media. Ideally, we develop a critical language that can lite through all the dimensions of the work and the frame and the other frames without getting bogged down in technicalities. That's what I'd like, anyway, and that's what I'm working toward in ditties like Infoanimism and even Enigma n. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about these things here among writers with a real interest in these things, Alan, Bob, Bill, all. Which brings me to my own two bits worth on the 'posting scandal'. Anyone who's ever organized poetry readings for a while or probably any public arty forum eventually seems to suffer the old phenomenon of the trickster insurrection and accusation. Lordy it's a bore the fifth time around. It's a bore and it's annoying because the important issue of freedom of speech is trivialized by the trickster who turns it into a childish sideshow for the sake of getting attention, nothing more. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 01:16:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Nagler Subject: Re: Des Forets query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Does anyone know of any English translations of novels by Louis-Rene Des Forets? If so, what is your impression of their quality? chris nagler ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 01:51:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: moderation, posting, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I hesitated about writing this post because I knew it would be a long one. For about five years, I've moderated or co-moderated a number of email lists, including Cybermind which has heavy posting at times; we reached an all-time high a couple of years ago at 117. We've also been trolled, hacked, and otherwise targeted by people wanting to bring down the list. Given that, I'm happy to see Poetics, in fact, so healthy. And every list goes through self-reflection; every list has in-groups, frequent posters - and lurkers, etc. First point - when Michael Current and I started Cybermind, we thought of a list as a privilege - that subscribers are privileged to be on it - that it shouldn't ever be taken for granted. Even if the moderator does very little in terms of focusing, there is no reason whatsoever to assume that you have a _right_ to be on a list. Why? Because a list is always running on free labor - on the labor of the sysadmins, the software designers (who are usually updating), and so forth. And especially the labor of the moderator. Don't _ever_ take this for granted; while at this point, my lists pretty much run themselves, there have been times (and will be more) when I've had to work hours and hours a day to keep them going. These times include heavy periods of subbing and unsubbing and requests regarding both; advertising the list whenever a change is made; searching for and augmenting a new 'home' for the list (Cybermind has moved three times); dealing with error messages - which can be nothing, or extremely bothersome if a loop's set up (one day I was on 16 hours taking care of that) feeding forward exponentially into people's mailboxes; dealing with problems of focus and other content issues; dealing with groups who deliberately try to troll or otherwise derail a list; and backchanneling constantly to keep things going smooth- ly. This is all done freely, by me, and I assume by Charles, and by others who are running lists. And there _never_ is an answer to questions of focus, on-topic, off-topic, etc. that makes sense. Right now, I'm working with several people, starting a focused semi-moderated list dealing with cyber- culture, because Cybermind has become an entrenched community (which I do not mean as a criticism). I notice Poetics is becoming the same, and that worries me. What's the problem? That there are hundreds and hundreds on this listserv, and yet the number of high-volume posters is very limited. These posters know each other; they reference each other by first name, tell in-jokes about each other, create false and sometimes real squabbles and faux texts, and so forth. While this givesa sense of community, it is also very exclusionary; I understand in fact that there _is_ another list that has split from Poetics perhaps because of this. We all want to be supportive of each other. Anyone working in the arts (however you want to define it) is under attack. Almost no one can support her- or himself. The statistics given in _Information on Artists, A study of artists' work-related human and social service needs in four U.S. loca- tions,_ written by Joan Jeffri and published by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia, are pathetic. In 1996, almost half NY artists (47.6%) earned less than $3000 from their work. So what is the point here? That one way support occurs is through community formation. But commun- ity formation can also be organized around limited spoils - who gets grants, who doesn't, who's invited in the _other_ list, who isn't. The same community that's supportive is also exclusionary. The same devices on an email list that are supportive - first name and reminiscence for example - also create a feeling among others (including myself for that matter) that they're looking in through a window, which can't help, by the very terms and intensity and firewalling of that window, be a sign of privilege. I don't honestly know what to do about this; other lists have the same symptoms, the same debates, the same trajectories - even the same splits into other lists (Future Culture and Fop-l and Phil-Lit all have had their splits). The splits sadden me, since they're more divisive than the on- list behaviors they critique by their very removal. Now, Poetics is admirable. There are a high number of female posters - which you might take for granted, but this is by no means always the case. Flames here are like embers elsewhere; they're not particularly igniting. And the discussions are usually, almost always, focused - even these recent discussions are focused. So what I would like to see, is, first, no quota for a person, but the 50 a day is reasonable (I think Cyb is currently set up with the same). Second, sensitivity to in-group/out-group behaviors - if you're _really_ writing something, say, to Peter Holiday, do you need the whole list to see it? While the writing might be great, etc., it does all too often create an image of eclusion. Third, advertising books and magazines etc. are terrific here and necessary - where else? Small press distribution has a hard enough time. Fourth, perhaps there should also be a few more calls for papers and conference announcements. Sixth, try and bring others into the discussion through open-ended questioning at times. This may seem ab- surd and unnecessary, but again, all lists follow these trajectories, and it would be great if we could slightly switch off here. And seventh, even though this is a private list, I don't think it would be a bad idea to actively try and bring new writers - who would benefit of course - onto it. At 660 or so, it's not _that_ private; Cyb's been around only 350 and we're completely public, listed all over the place. Finally, I think calls from the moderator shouldn't be easily dismissed; he or she has spent _a lot_ of time working on the list, overseeing it, reading most of the posts, and so forth. He or she also gets sub/unsub notices constantly, so it's easy to keep track of the overall trajectory of the list; when discussion on Cybermind gets nasty, the unsubs come in pretty quickly. So by all means give her or him the benefit of the doubt here - for us, Poetics is a space of discussion or presentation or dis- tribution - but we're not as aware of the full architecture as the mod- erator. I'm not calling, btw, for a bow-down to authority or anything of that sort. Nor am I saying moderators are always right; there was a time I really blew it badly on Fop-l. But I am asking for a possibly more open and accommodating list than has been indicated in the recent past (of course from the viewpoint of the dinosaurs, all past is recent here). Anyway, elsewhere I've lectured myself hoarse on issues of list gover- nance, and it's no wonder that so many moderators go, literally, crazy. But that's another topic and elsewhere. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 02:26:24 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carmen Butcher Subject: West Coast Poetry Live--Lipstick Eleven Party/Small Press Traffic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I went to the Lipstick Eleven Party tonight, a frosty night in SF, and the readings were wonderful. The half of this event I heard was superb. The scene from Kevin Killian's and Wayne Smith's "Diamonds and Rust" had the audience laughing. Dodie Bellamy of Small Press Traffic, Norma Cole (also Isabella Rossellini in "Diamonds and Rust"), Robert Gluck, and Robin Tremblay- McGaw read fresh, engaging pieces. And the raffled prizes were very pink and splendid. I heard about the reading here! Cheers, Carmen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 23:41:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: defining audience Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" in the Creeley interview in the Cortland Review: Who are some of the up and coming writers that interest you? Or are there any? There are always far more than anyone as myself can keep track of or even recognize. The old are hardly the best judges for the young. "The old order changeth yielding place to new..." Hardly a new recognition. I remember Pound saying years ago that, after fifty, one can't keep ones eye on all the sprouting corn. After seventy it's hard enough even to see it. I think quickly of two young writers who interest me and always have: Jennifer Moxley, Vincent Katz. Susan Howe (who I have to remember is not young!) interests me always. Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino. To you they might seem already too settled. But some writers, as Robert Grenier, are never so "done" as that presumes. They are always at work, on the way. Writers as Duncan McNaughton still wait for a defining audience. what do you think he means by "a defining audience" Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 23:55:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Fuhrman" Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: <2fb26686.3668e020@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Like everyone else I am sick of the meta-list talk and am anxious to get back to talking about poetry (if that's really what the list is for.) I thought I would pose a questions since many have said it would benefit the list if more people asked open-ended questions. I am a poet, not an academic or scholar so if my question seems clunky so be it. Lately I have been reading Rachel Blau DuPlessis's brilliant and haunting _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_,. In it, the image of text erased comes up. This image is also frequent in Michael Palmer and many other contemporary poets as well as visual artists. (Though I can't think of the names of any visual artists at the times, my head is full of images of text erased, blocked or blurred.) O.K. so my question, what is it about the decade we are in that makes this image resonate with us now. I guess the easy answer is that language poets and conceptual arts are interested in the philosophical issues that surround the question of "what is a text?" but I wonder if there might be more to it. In the sixties, poets were drawn to images of stones and bones partly because they may have been reading Jung-- but I think there were larger forces at work. The retreat into basic archetypal imagery was a response to the violence of the era. I think this argument is from _The Psyco-Sexual Muse_-- is that the book's title? I don't think I read it but I remember when it came out.) Anyway,I am searching for a sort of cultural answer and maybe it doesn't exist-- but I would be interested in what people think. If a cultural answer isn't appropriate, why not? Joanna Fuhrman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 00:08:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Re: West Coast Poetry Live--Lipstick Eleven Party/Small Press Traffic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Woo-hoo! And might I add that Camille Roy was sultry, Mike Amnasan funny, and the lovely boy winner of the Hair-Do Dolls very gracious and grateful. Champagne and lovely La Med finger food was enjoyed in abundance. The readers/performers were all wonderful, as was the audience. Thanks to everyone for attending; I counted approx. 50 lovelies in all. And, remember, you heard about it here. Kathy Lou eyes of blue with a blond hair-do Carmen Butcher wrote: > > I went to the Lipstick Eleven Party tonight, a frosty night in SF, and the > readings were wonderful. The half of this event I heard was superb. The > scene from Kevin Killian's and Wayne Smith's "Diamonds and Rust" had the > audience laughing. Dodie Bellamy of Small Press Traffic, Norma Cole (also > Isabella Rossellini in "Diamonds and Rust"), Robert Gluck, and Robin Tremblay- > McGaw read fresh, engaging pieces. And the raffled prizes were very pink and > splendid. > > I heard about the reading here! Cheers, Carmen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 00:05:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: showdowns "And for God's sake you didn't expect anyone to _listen_ to your foul- mouthed broadcasts, did you? Some listened until bored to death and then quit. Viola listened and was fed up with your ranting. I didn't listen at all, the mere fact of your broadcasting at all at such a time was enough for me. You might as well realize that there is a point in all controversy beyond which a man's life (his final card) is necessarily forfeit. A man accepts that and goes on with his eyes open. But when the showdown comes he loses his life." - William Carlos Williams, Letter to Ezra Pound, March 29, 1946. (Pound was awaiting trial for treason.) - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 07:44:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Des Forets query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Chris Nagler wrote: > Does anyone know of any English translations of novels by Louis-Rene Des > Forets? If so, what is your impression of their quality? > > chris nagler I don't know if they are still in print, but you may be able to get them through a University Library: Des Forets, Louis-Rene. _The beggars. _( D. Dobson, London, 1948) ( Translation of Les mendiants.) _The children's room. _ (Calder, London 1963) Translation of La chambre des enfants. (Includes The bavard.--The children's room.--The great moments of a singer.) The latter would be a great find as it contains the core works (I think The Bavard is his best fiction) -- though I don't know how good the translation is, never having read it. Des Forets is a wonderful writer -- I guess he is getting somewhat better known here now because of Blanchot's renown. Pierre ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 07:42:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: reading recommendations In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I have just been reading John Lennard's _But I Digress: The Exploitation of the Parentheses in Printed English Verse_ (Clarendon [Oxford], 1991) and want to wholeheartedly recommend this very strange, clear, captivating book and its treatment of the history and dramas of the parentheses, including perforce a running history of English print and publication (Tom Beard, you might get a kick out of this [thank you by the way for yr recent post re type-face]). I have just reached 1680-1780 when type-face, grammar, syntax, style become less confused, less messy, clearer, giving over to a kind of Rationalization of The Page. At this time too a great denigration of Rhetorick. Finally I want to recommend the reading of this List. It is a great read, including even its ructions. I read every post and no I do not have much leisure time no, being a guy barely 30 with a tiny baby, responsiBILities and who must wake at 4 am each day just to find time to write poetry before baby Clio wakes up, YES I recommend this list: it is indeed a great read, ructions and all. The Lord bless this list and its boinky of bounty! God bless the lurkers too; let them lurk if they want; God bless the blabbermouths too, whoever they are. Lector, lege in toto. gaga ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 08:14:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: DC Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lane Jennings & Susan Wheeler Sunday, December 6 2:00 pm The Writer's Center, Bethesda 301-654-8664 Susan Wheeler susan.wheeler@nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 08:36:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Policing the List Comments: To: Poetics List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think that the List is an unprecedented resource for poetry. The fact that 666 people subscribe to it speaks eloquently enough for us all. I'm sympathetic with the problems of stewardship that Charles and Joel have shouldered in making possible such an amazing project. Anyone who has ever spent time checking out the poetry usenet groups knows what a totally unedited, public resource might look like. By placing the most modest conception of "private" around the space, the List has managed to become something very different indeed. The problem is how to keep that conception modest indeed. So I'm also sympathetic to the perspective faced by Henry Gould and my personal vote here is to bring the man back. If Henry represents the extreme example, it's not all that different from what a lot of us on the list do and have done. My own sense is that the only good reason to 86 someone from the list is if the person uses it to make violent, threatening or maliciously false statements. Talking too much even with a keyboard may be obnoxious, but it's not on the same order. I think that the list works best when we self-govern it, which means self-governing ourselves and our own behavior. Lets look at how the list really works. In the month of November, 1998, there were 984 messages posted by 215 different people. The EPC archive for that month lists 219 posters, but 5 of them appear to have been Henry (including once as Eric Blarnes). At 50 messages per day for a 30 day month, November had a capacity for 1,500 messages. That means that we left fully one-third of the potential space unused. 516 messages that never got written and sent. 215 posters means that 451 lurkers chose not to send a single message. Sixty four people sent only a single message. So 151 people chose to send more than one. On average, people posted 4.5 messages for the month. (And, 451 "silent lurkers" could have each posted once and we still would have had room for another 65 messages, two per day for the entire month.) 23 of us, myself included, more than doubled the average of posts made by active users. In fact, these 23 people accounted for 437 messages, 44% of the entire months conversation. We all know who we are, but for the record, here by number of November posts (Henry's five groups bundled into one total), are the heaviest users: Henry Gould 39 Gabriel Gudding 34 Kent Johnson 32 Mark Weiss 29 Jonathon Mayhew 29 A. Jenn Sondheim 25 David Bromige 24 miekal and 21 Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 20 Eliza McGrand 19 Mairead Byrne 17 Mark Prejsnar 17 Mark DuCharme 14 Michael Magee 14 Aldon Nielsen 13 Dale Smith 13 Patrick Pritchett 12 George Bowering 12 Judy Roitman 11 Kathy Lou Schultz 11 Ron Silliman 11 Maria Damon 10 Todd Baron /*/ ReMap 10 Seven folks count for more than 20 percent of the month's messages, but in fact, Henry's not so far above Gabriel and Kent. What I see here is a continuum of use. There is no magic number below which usage drops suddenly. Unless it's the benchmark between one and zero. My question is -- is this a problem if in fact a third of the list's potential capacity remains unused? Not so very much of one, I think. I do think -- I've said this before -- that it makes sense to stop and think before posting more than two times on a given day. But even Henry has an average of under 1.3 posts per day. When people do post more than once per day, there is usually a reason, more specifically some thread, whether it's one of high theoretical seriousness or the sort of banter that George, Eliza and David treat us to (without which this list would lose a lot of its personality, frankly). In fact, an absolutely equal distribution of posts among users would mean just 2.2 messages per month, which would make the list more or less incoherent I suspect, since threads would be almost impossible and we would be reduced to listing readings, books, etc. (there may someday be need for such a list, but we haven't gotten there yet). What this leads me to conclude is that we should -- each of us -- be our own personal editor (doing the police, literally, in different voices). I'm not convinced that we need any heavier hand at this point, although I think discussions like this one are worthwhile to keep us mindful of the list's realities, limitations and needs. Finally, one aside, on the nature of my own three addresses: one (ron.silliman@gte.net) is for a digest version of the list; a second (tottels@hotmail.com) is to get messages "in real time," which allows me on a slow day to read what's been going on from the office. [I often just read the digest and then go back and delete everything from the "real time" version, which means that personal messages sent to that address run some risk of never being read.] The third account (netcom) is an old email account that I've been unable to get Joel to remove from the list. I don't have access to it anymore and can't self-unsubscribe from that address. But I tried getting Joel to do it for me when he was attempting to manage the list without benefit of either a permanent email address himself or even a steady home. (Talk about herculean dedication to the list!) Maybe now that account can go away. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 09:21:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Janet Lewis Comments: To: Poetics List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Janet Lewis Stephen Schwartz Saturday, December 5, 1998 =A91998 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/1998/= 12/05 /MN4835.DTL Janet Lewis, an internationally known poet, novelist and opera librettist= , has died at her Los Altos home. She was 99. The widow of the poet and critic Yvor Winters, who died in 1968, Miss Lew= is lived to see her fame outweigh his, thanks to her authorship of ``The Wif= e of Martin Guerre,'' a novel about 16th century France, which was adapted = for opera, screen and musical stage productions. She was born in Chicago and grew up in Oak Park, Ill., a contemporary of Ernest Hemingway, and contributed to the same high school magazine as he. She graduated from the University of Chicago, with a major in French. Whi= le there, she met Mr. Winters, whom she married in 1926 and accompanied to California. At first, she preferred poetry as a medium, publishing several books, beginning with ``The Indians in the Woods'' in 1922. Later, however, she concentrated on fiction, authoring ``The Invasion,'' = an account of the interplay between white and Indian culture on the frontier= , published in 1932. She is best known for three short novels on historical themes. The first, ``The Wife of Martin Guerre,'' was written in Los Altos and finished in 1937. It was issued in a hand-printed edition in 1941, by The Colt Press, a distinguished enterprise run by writer and book designer Jane Grabhorn, a= nd supported by businessman William Matson Roth. The book was reissued in 1959 by The Swallow Press and has remained in pr= int ever since. ``Guerre,'' told from a woman's viewpoint, deals with a man who poses as another, and whose identity must be resolved by a trial. The story was presented in opera form, with music by Bay Area composer William Bergsma,= in 1961. That work was praised by music critic Richard F. Goldman, of the Music Quarterly, as ``the best American opera I have heard.'' In 1984, a French film version, ``The Return of Martin Guerre'' was relea= sed with Gerard Depardieu. It was remade as an American film set in the Civil War, ``Sommersby,'' released in 1993 with Jodie Foster and Richard Gere. Of Miss Lewis's remaining short historical novels, ``The Trial of Soren Qvist'' appeared in 1947, and ``The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron'' in 1959. The three short novels were based on actual incidents. In addition, ``Against A Darkening Sky,'' a novel based on the 1933 kidnapping of a department store heir in San Jose, and the lynching of his accused abductors, was published in 1943 and reprinted in 1985. During the 1960s, Miss Lewis taught in the creative writing department at Stanford. Her writing attracted even greater attention with the rise of t= he feminist movement. She also published several volumes of stories and other poetry collection= s, including ``Poems Old and New: 1918-1978.'' In a comment with which many authors would agree, she told an interviewer= in 1996, ``The exciting moments come when you're writing. They disappear so fast.'' She is survived by a daughter, Joanna Thomson of Madison, Wis., and a son= , Daniel Winters of Davis. No service has been announced. =A91998 San Francisco Chronicle Page C2 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 10:16:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: Re: reading recommendations Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 12/5/98 7:42:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, gwg6@CORNELL.EDU writes: << God bless the blabbermouths too, whoever they are. >> & the troublemakers.... jb... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 10:42:19 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: schuchat Subject: Re: Freedom Is Never Free MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the relevant work of scholarship on the issue of "whither the list" is Albert O. Hirschman, EXIT, VOICE AND LOYALTY, written in the 1960s. I recommend it to all. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 10:54:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: Erasing i think it might be because we are becoming aware of the huge amount of accrued, present, and about to appear text out there. plus the 15 seconds of fame notion gnaws at us. so, even as we read, and try and conceptualize it in the classic ways we've been taught ("one of the ten best..." "one of the rare books about..." "one of...") in a sense we fear already losing it, already having forgot the "quantity" of read matter from sheer wight owhoops weight of volume. reminds me of one of my main anxiety dreams, the one where i suddenly realize it is months into the semester and there is a class i have forgotten to go to. and now i must take a test in it. or job i've forgotten i have. sense of so much to keep track of, loss of individual things in it. ?? my guess anyway e ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 10:28:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Policing the List In-Reply-To: <000b01be2054$4de5cc80$4bd2fea9@oemcomputer> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" just to say, some great stuff there from alan s and ron s... along with 'why i'm on this list' posts (like eliza's and others') it helps in fleshing out the list function entire... perhaps, then, this sort of house-cleaning/reflexive air-play is a necessary part of keeping such places alive?... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:36:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Policing the List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I for one am one. And as one I am one and I am one. I for one will post in the lovely month of December and I will post 100 times. I will post and I will post and I will make Ron Silliman's list. Randy Henry Gould 39 Gabriel Gudding 34 Kent Johnson 32 Mark Weiss 29 Jonathon Mayhew 29 A. Jenn Sondheim 25 David Bromige 24 miekal and 21 Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 20 Eliza McGrand 19 Mairead Byrne 17 Mark Prejsnar 17 Mark DuCharme 14 Michael Magee 14 Aldon Nielsen 13 Dale Smith 13 Patrick Pritchett 12 George Bowering 12 Judy Roitman 11 Kathy Lou Schultz 11 Ron Silliman 11 Maria Damon 10 Todd Baron /*/ ReMap 10 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 08:50:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: test--please delete--do not respond to this MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ahem...testing...testing... can you hear me? this is only a test, please delete do not respond to this post as it constitutes 1/50 of the days conversation i am conducting an analysis of the poetics list subscribers settings and the last part of it (to double check) requires that I post something to the list to get an acknowledgement I will send a message in a few minutes explaining what I have discovered. (in partial reply to Ron's stats) jk ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:45:26 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: Erasing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I for one am two and as two I am too. Eliza writes of her anxiety dream and I have had that dream too. And this is an account of a true event and it is very interesting. I for one have been lurking and I have been lurking for a year. Since then and since then I have been lurking and now I'm not lurking to make Ron's list and I will have fame and not as much as she and not as much as Gertrude Stein. And I for one have been erased and my lurking has been my erasing before I was even written. Randy Eliza wrote: "i think it might be because we are becoming aware of the huge amount of accrued, present, and about to appear text out there. plus the 15 seconds of fame notion gnaws at us. so, even as we read, and try and conceptualize it in the classic ways we've been taught ("one of the ten best..." "one of the rare books about..." "one of...") in a sense we fear already losing it, already having forgot the "quantity" of read matter from sheer wight owhoops weight of volume. reminds me of one of my main anxiety dreams, the one where i suddenly realize it is months into the semester and there is a class i have forgotten to go to. and now i must take a test in it. or job i've forgotten i have. sense of so much to keep track of, loss of individual things in it." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:54:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ramez Qureshi Subject: Query Pound Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Can anyone give me the source and verbatim quote for Pound's wise-ass dictum on new poetry not sounding as it may have been written twenty years ago? Thanx in advance, R.Q. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:02:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Re: Policing the List In-Reply-To: <000b01be2054$4de5cc80$4bd2fea9@oemcomputer> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm a little embarrassed to have 29 posts in November. I'm going to slow down. The 1st couple months I was subscribed I was very slow to post, and anxious about the response of y'all. As a gradually gained confidence about what I had to say, my monthly totals crept up. It takes incredible ego to think that what I have to say will be of interest to hundreds of people, only about a dozen or so I have met face to face. But when I saw so many "throw away messages" I said "why not?" As an experiment I refrained from posting for a few days--to see the effect of my absence. The conversation turned to the nomenclature of Mars bars in England, Canada, and the US. Yet it might have easily taken a more scintillating turn... Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:19:35 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: whodunnit / festival MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit this is only half of the story, Id like to see word count & see how the fabulous 20 stacks up, maybe you could bribe the twins to do it, in exchange for a free lifetime sub to the list. Henry Gould 39 Gabriel Gudding 34 Kent Johnson 32 Mark Weiss 29 Jonathon Mayhew 29 A. Jenn Sondheim 25 David Bromige 24 miekal and 21 Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 20 Eliza McGrand 19 Mairead Byrne 17 Mark Prejsnar 17 Mark DuCharme 14 Michael Magee 14 Aldon Nielsen 13 Dale Smith 13 Patrick Pritchett 12 George Bowering 12 Judy Roitman 11 Kathy Lou Schultz 11 Ron Silliman 11 Maria Damon 10 Todd Baron /*/ ReMap 10 one things that occurs to me & only one since alan, charles & ron have done a remarkable job of stroking the fire without smouldering it, is commeraderie, private sub lists, conspiracies & reconfigurations of the electronic space is how the electronic wilderness sustains itself. the more edges the more diversity. one evolution of the list that hasnt been discussed is it feels its time for real life poetics list gatherings/festivals, gatherings that would have the breadth that the list has achieved, a gathering where visual, sound, performance, & plain old poets who write words in lines could meet for several days & maybe shake up the patterns that have developed & do real work as well -- this is the same conclusion that the mailart network came to in the middle 80s, 1000s of people had mixed it up in the mail & it was time to meet face to face & invoke alliances of personality, taste & attraction that werent possible from simply exchanging art via mail. just an idea, the logistics of such gatherings would be daunting. I too would like to return to the regularly scheduled broadcasts & am scheming of initiating a project on the list, that could occupy a narrow band of this broadcast. Im interesting in collectively creating a poetics of the hypertext that would withstand the enslaught of the many invigorated minds & styles -- & to create such a dialogue / reading thru as a hypertext. To do this everything posted to this discussion would have to useable on a website other than the archives. Much of the hypertext & its discussion is quite bland & unremarkable & it would be a significant contribution to the field as a whole is we (or at least the fabulous & verbose 20) could take a stab at changing the static & 3 dimensional way hypertext thought seems to be evolving. miekal ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:20:32 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: higgins memorial MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone know who is setting up the Dick Higgins memorial at Judson Church on December 27? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 09:21:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Also that in the course of life, there are moments & times when words reveal themselves as elusive, illusory--in the most serious, least serious, most tragic, most joyous times--when life is so much *stronger* than any words that could be appended. For example, we grow facile with words and then someone close dies--and we get first row visions of silence and disbelief and time-going-on. And all the words that could explain fall away. I admire those who try to write into these voids (Harold Brodkey's _This Wild Darkness_ comes to mind, or the late work of Herve Guibert). I always feel like a prehistoric creature in the face of extreme events. I realize how late language came to our biologies. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 09:46:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: Numbers, Daughter of The Book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear poets, poeticists, poetasters, taskers, and criticks- my last post was sent simply to generate this following message: Your message dated Sat, 05 Dec 1998 08:50:19 -0500 with subject "test--please delete--do not respond to this" has been successfully distributed to the POETICS list (452 recipients). That 452 recipients is pretty consistent with the numbers that I gathered through looking at the list of subscribers and their settings. This means that about 214 or so people are set to NOMAIL. After looking at this list of people set to NOMAIL, I am pretty sure that many of them are not coming back. Some of them are either dead, moved on to new academic institutions, new ISPs, or whatever. There are many duplicates, as has been pointed out. Of the people who were set to NOMAIL, I noticed probably a dozen or so (at most) who were or have been, and probably will be, active members (readers &/or contributors) to the list. Of the rest, many of them have never posted, as far as I can tell. If you send the following command REVIEW poetics in a one-line message to the listserv@listserv.buffalo.edu address you will see that there are 666 (+/-) people listed. Three are concealed, and one of the concealed is (oddly) also set to NOMAIL. Perhaps there is some sense of "who's who" that makes people who aren't interested in participating keep their names in the coolio hipster poetics list register. Anyone on the list who needs to find Jena Osman, say, or whomever, can find that person without much difficulty. So I do think that there is some functionality to being set NOMAIL. Of the remaining 450 or so people who receive poetics list posts, currently about 200 (with a 1% margin of error) are set to digest. This means they receive all of the messages as one message at 12:00am ET. This leaves about 250 or so participants reading these messgaes one at a time. Because it is much more difficult to reply from the digest mode to a particular issue, the greatest amount of participation comes from these 250 who are regular subscribers to the p-list. Very few digest members of this list ever write in to the list and it seems to be one step from NOMAIL in the sense that the amount of effort to delete what has been at times a several hundred page document (each day's digested message) is about the same as it is cancel a transaction at the ATM. in response to Ron, who says: "215 posters means that 451 lurkers chose not to send a single message. Sixty four people sent only a single message. So 151 people chose to send more than one. On average, people posted 4.5 messages for the month. (And, 451 "silent lurkers" could have each posted once and we still would have had room for another 65 messages, two per day for the entire month.)" If we chop off 200 hundred for NOMAIL and maybe estimate that less than half (?) of the digest people are actually reading these messages (though I would suspect that it is much lower) then lets say that there are approximately 150-200 lurkers The problem here, Ron, is that growth of replies out of a source post is exponential. I would bet that if 50 or so people who don't write in to this list, but who are regular readers of it, were to START posting something, there would be a wildfire of response multiplying the top people on your list into numbers that would ruin your "still room left under our tent" theory. perhaps I am wrong, maybe they would all be ignored.... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 07:31:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Janet Lewis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From this morning's NY Times (The composer of the Martin Guerre opera was Bergsma, not Bergsman): Janet Lewis, 99, Poet of Spirit and Keeper of the Hearth, Dies By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr. Her first writings to reach print ran shoulder to shoulder with Ernest Hemingway's. For her first published poetry she was grouped with William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore. She made it to Paris ahead of both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was a leader of the University of Chicago school of imagist poets, and if hers is not a household name, by the time she died on Monday at the age of 99 in the house in Los Altos, Calif., she had occupied for two-thirds of a century, Janet Lewis had the satisfaction of knowing she had written poetry throughout the 20th century and seen it published and praised in every decade since the first. Her reputation has seemingly been eclipsed by that of her late husband, Yvor Winters, the poet, professor and critic who wrestled Hart Crane's "Bridge" into print and made Stanford -- and Los Altos -- a magnet for three generations of poets. Yet there are many who will assure you that when the literary history of the second millennium is written at the end of the third, in the category of dazzling American short fiction her "Wife of Martin Guerre" will be regarded as the 20th century's "Billy Budd" and Janet Lewis will be ranked with Herman Melville. (Though, to be fair, her prose is more often likened to Stendahl's.) What makes her accomplishments even more impressive is that over the course of a a career in which she wrote hundreds of poems, a single collection of short stories, a couple of children's books, a handful of novels, the words to five operas and one acclaimed masterpiece, Miss Lewis pursued a literary life in which the focus was on the life and the life was one of such placid equilibrium and domestic bliss that she had to reach deep down in her psyche -- and far back in the annals of criminal law -- to find the wellspring of tension that produced some of the 20th century's most vividly imagined and finely wrought literature. She also had to find the time. As she once observed, women of prodigious literary output, like Willa Cather and Edith Wharton, tended not to have children. As the mother of two, Miss Lewis willingly put her work aside when her children were young and cheerfully accepted other duties as well. "It's a question of what you want to do with your life," she once said. "You might also want to take care of your husband." The daughter of a poetry-spouting English professor, Miss Lewis was born in Chicago and grew up in Oak Park where she and her 1899 contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, contributed their first works to the same high school literary magazines, she deriving inspiration by summering even deeper in the north woods than he and finding a lifelong fascination with nature and the natural flow of life. Her sentiments were expressed in a 1922 poetry collection, "The Indians in the Woods," in a series of stories later included in a 1946 collection, "Good-Bye, Son and Other Stories," and in a 1932 narrative, as she called it, "The Invasion," the multi-generational account of a Scotch-Irish-Indian family. After two years at a junior college, Miss Lewis completed her education at the University of Chicago, majoring in French while joining the famous Poetry Club and meeting Mr. Winters, who had spent time at a tuberculosis sanitarium in Santa Fe, N.M. After a brief stay in Paris after graduation in 1920, Miss Lewis returned to Chicago but soon contracted tuberculosis herself and spent five years at the same sanitarium, engaging in a passionate correspondence with Mr. Winters and eventually marrying him and following him to California, where she threw herself into a satisfying domestic life that included tending to her husband's registered Airedales, harvesting the fruit from the adjacent orchard and serving as a sort of serene den mother to an extended, animated family of her husband's awed acolytes. One of the first and by far the fiercest and most controversial of the New Critics and a man of cocksure opinions, for all his fabled influence on 20th century American poetry, Mr. Winters may have made his greatest contribution to literature when his wife, whose life was virtually without drama, complained that she had trouble finding suitable plots and he gave her a chance copy of a 19th-century compilation of famous old legal cases. By the time she had finished it, Miss Lewis had all but abandoned poetry and embarked on what turned out to be three short historical novels, "The Wife of Martin Guerre" (1941), "The Trial of Soren Qvist" (1947) and "The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron" (1959), all based on actual cases and so compellingly imagined and told that she inspired the 1956 "Wife of Martin Guerre" opera by William Bergsman, who asked her to write the libretto. The composer Alva Henderson was so impressed he got her to write the libretto for his 1976 opera, "The Last of the Mohicans," and two others. The historical novels, Miss Lewis said later, represented the "heavy thinking" of a literary career that did not include her poetry. Her poems, she said, were always personal, a quiet corner of her life. Devastated by her husband's death in 1968, Miss Lewis, who never took his name off the mailbox and maintained his writing shed as a shrine, sought to deal with her grief by revisiting the Southwest, rediscovering her fascination with the local Indians and producing a series of memorable poems. For Miss Lewis, who is survived by a daughter, Joanna Thomson of Madison, Wis.; a son, Daniel Winters of Davis, Calif., and three grandchildren, her family was always more important than her work, and her life is well reflected in her final collection, "The Dear Past," (1994) with poems covering most of the century. Under the influence of her husband, she had done her share of experimenting, but the woman who had begun her career by taking part in the imagist revolution that sought to strip poetry of its former artifice, ended it the same way, using spare, lyrical language to describe and celebrate the simplest scenes of nature. For a woman who charmed generations of troubled poets and other literary figures with her almost otherworldly serenity, looking back over the domestic scenes of a long, literary life it would be hard to find a more compelling image of Miss Lewis -- or one more evocative of the flesh-and-blood life beneath the surface of 20th-century literature -- than one of the many at the family's house after a warm, rollicking meal with the couple's dearest friends. You may have to close your eyes to conjure up the sight, but there they are forever, two 1899 contemporaries standing side by side at the kitchen sink, Janet Lewis washing, Vladimir Nabokov drying. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 10:29:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Marsh Subject: new media criticism [was Infoanimism] In-Reply-To: <3668C296.580589AE@speakeasy.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:20 PM 12/4/98 -0800, Jim wrote: Though it is >interesting to consider a criticism that can at once talk about the neath text in an engaging way while also finding ways to talk about totally non-technical >dimensions of new media. Ideally, we develop a critical language that can lite through all the dimensions of the work and the frame and the other frames without >getting bogged down in technicalities. indeed, a criticism with its own neath text -- especially if the criticism is composed in dhtml / that layering again... but seriously, i agree with your call here and would even like to see criticism that separates these dimensions, if only temporarily and for the sake of discussion / perhaps a new breed of polarized critique that on one side (of the page?) stresses the non-technical and on the other the technical aspects of the work -- some formal possibilities here / also could make for some neat collaborations between folks more attuned to the aesthetics and others better versed in the software bill - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - William Marsh | PBrain | http://bmarsh.dtai.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 13:56:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: enervation effect In-Reply-To: <000b01be2054$4de5cc80$4bd2fea9@oemcomputer> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ok, flexible (or maybe just wishy-washy) fellow that I am, I'm now abandoning my advocacy of the two-post per day platform (since it's never going to happen anyway), and am now all in favor of the virtues of self-moderation. This is what I wanted all along anyway (as I said)--I had just begun to wonder if it could really happen. Now I've decided to be, once again, infused with optimism about this possibility. But I did want to mention something that seems to me to be missed by Ron's analysis of "how the list really works," and by those others before him who pointed out that the ceiling of 50 posts per day is most often not reached. It seems, to me at least, that there is something enervating* about reading multiple postings from the same people, day after day, especially if there seems little in the way of rewarding content in those posts. This "enervation effect," I would argue, has an unfortunate effect on the vitality of the list, and this effect occurs *even if the day's limit is not literally exceeded*. One's list-appetite can be surfeited on this sort of diet long before that limit is actually reached. *enervate--Tom Orange has already used this word in relation to list dynamics, and it seems to me peculiarly applicable. "To deprive of nerve, force or strength; to weaken physically, mentally, or morally; to render feeble." The word also, to me, has a pleasingly fin de siecle ring about it. I predict a new vogue for it as the cyberage approaches the millennium. steve ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 13:58:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Janet Lewis and Miekal And In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" herb, thanx... geezus, what a story!... and i have to say, i don't think i've ever read a word by janet lewis... so i guess i have to add her to my ever-growing list... & well now that miekal has posted to the list something i've felt should happen for a good while now, i'll 2nd the motion: i too think we should have an f2f conference, derived somehow from (owing somehow to?) this list... how i'm not sure, but it's all open to discussion... perhaps "conference" isn't the right word either---perhaps a gathering of the tribes would be more apropos... or a festival, or a garden party, or----- of course not just logistics and money are involved... TIME would be involved, somebody's time in particular... so what, now, do we ask charles to put this together for us?... again, is this up to charles (and joel, et al.)?... i can only help out (i think) via this box here mself... so what, now?... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 16:34:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: enervation effect In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Steven Shoemaker wrote: > seems, to me at least, that there is something enervating* about reading > multiple postings from the same people, day after day, especially if there > seems little in the way of rewarding content in those posts. This > "enervation effect," I would argue, has an unfortunate effect on the > vitality of the list, and this effect occurs *even if the day's limit is > not literally exceeded*. One's list-appetite can be surfeited on this > sort of diet long before that limit is actually reached. > If we could get rid of the 4 or 5 female posters in the top 23, that might be a start. I have noticed that females sometimes tend to write many short posts rather than a single long "rewarding" posts. This definitely saps the masculinity, I mean the vitality, of the list. I know there aren't that many women piping up but guys like Henry and Gabe also contribute to the splintering or splitting of male, sorry mail, energy. Look at the end of the last century -- those cissies Beardsley and Wilde. Down with weakness, physical, mental, or moral. Be aware: I have no vested interest in this post (I'm a man). Mairead > *enervate--Tom Orange has already used this word in relation to list > dynamics, and it seems to me peculiarly applicable. "To deprive of nerve, > force or strength; to weaken physically, mentally, or morally; to render > feeble." The word also, to me, has a pleasingly fin de siecle ring about > it. I predict a new vogue for it as the cyberage approaches the > millennium. > > steve > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 14:41:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: Erasing and non-po reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For me, a fascination with the idea of the poem going around what it is "about" rather than directly on or through it. A circumnavigation rather than description, or description of "everything but" the purported subject. Also, the tantalizing nature of omission. Strikethrough is a sort of sleazy cousin to this, omitting, but allowing us to see what was omitted. Good for those of us with insatiable nosiness. And while I'm here, my recent non-poetry reading includes The Annotated Alice Bachelard, The Poetics of Space An Article on Global Warming written by my uncle in Nucleus magazine Padgett, Creative Reading (read that a while ago, but have to mention it) Pacific Crest Trail Guidebooks Best, Laura -- Laura Wright, Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 ----------------------------------------------------------- "Speech keeps strangling itself, but wisdom has not come." --Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 17:01:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: Re: enervation effect In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ah, yes, that's it, that sensation I was trying to pinpoint: the feeling of having my precious (male) bodily fluids drained, like Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove... I meant to be poking fun at myself a little with the "enervation" thing, even as I also had a point to make, but maybe that didn't come across. But if we do seriously look at this thing from the standpoint of gender, it seems to me that the more pertinent fact is that *only* four of the twenty-five top-posters are women. And the women who do post to the list, or have tried to, have often complained about this sort of male dominance of listchat. Further, if you look at just the top 5 posters, or even the top 10, they are *all* male. It seems, then, that there may be an interesting correlation between the predominantly male frequent-posting phenomenon and the feeling of exclusion so many female listmembers have complained about over the years. steve On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Mairead Byrne wrote: > On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Steven Shoemaker wrote: > > > > seems, to me at least, that there is something enervating* about reading > > multiple postings from the same people, day after day, especially if there > > seems little in the way of rewarding content in those posts. This > > "enervation effect," I would argue, has an unfortunate effect on the > > vitality of the list, and this effect occurs *even if the day's limit is > > not literally exceeded*. One's list-appetite can be surfeited on this > > sort of diet long before that limit is actually reached. > > > If we could get rid of the 4 or 5 female posters in the top 23, that might > be a start. I have noticed that females sometimes tend to write many short > posts rather than a single long "rewarding" posts. This definitely saps > the masculinity, I mean the vitality, of the list. I know there aren't > that many women piping up but guys like Henry and Gabe also contribute to > the splintering or splitting of male, sorry mail, energy. Look at the end > of the last century -- those cissies Beardsley and Wilde. Down with > weakness, physical, mental, or moral. Be aware: I have no vested interest > in this post (I'm a man). > Mairead > > > *enervate--Tom Orange has already used this word in relation to list > > dynamics, and it seems to me peculiarly applicable. "To deprive of nerve, > > force or strength; to weaken physically, mentally, or morally; to render > > feeble." The word also, to me, has a pleasingly fin de siecle ring about > > it. I predict a new vogue for it as the cyberage approaches the > > millennium. > > > > steve > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 16:11:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: enervation effect In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" steve, let me risk raising my tally to (1) post less than 100 words (an amazing feat for me, as you all know by now), and (2) to say, with as much (masculinist?) emphasis as possible, RIGHT ON re gender... of course to be more inclusive means (and here i risk what is by now a bromide) to be willing to entertain difference... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 16:24:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: enervation effect In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" As one of the top five posters, but also a poster of usually very brief messages, I'd like to point out that I'm only mostly male. At 05:01 PM 12/5/98 -0500, you wrote: >Ah, yes, that's it, that sensation I was trying to pinpoint: the feeling >of having my precious (male) bodily fluids drained, like Sterling Hayden >in Dr. Strangelove... > >I meant to be poking fun at myself a little with the "enervation" thing, >even as I also had a point to make, but maybe that didn't come across. >But if we do seriously look at this thing from the standpoint of gender, >it seems to me that the more pertinent fact is that *only* four of the >twenty-five top-posters are women. And the women who do post to the list, >or have tried to, have often complained about this sort of male dominance >of listchat. Further, if you look at just the top 5 posters, or even the >top 10, they are *all* male. It seems, then, that there may be an >interesting correlation between the predominantly male frequent-posting >phenomenon and the feeling of exclusion so many female listmembers have >complained about over the years. > >steve > > > > >On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Mairead Byrne wrote: > >> On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Steven Shoemaker wrote: >> >> >> > seems, to me at least, that there is something enervating* about reading >> > multiple postings from the same people, day after day, especially if there >> > seems little in the way of rewarding content in those posts. This >> > "enervation effect," I would argue, has an unfortunate effect on the >> > vitality of the list, and this effect occurs *even if the day's limit is >> > not literally exceeded*. One's list-appetite can be surfeited on this >> > sort of diet long before that limit is actually reached. >> > >> If we could get rid of the 4 or 5 female posters in the top 23, that might >> be a start. I have noticed that females sometimes tend to write many short >> posts rather than a single long "rewarding" posts. This definitely saps >> the masculinity, I mean the vitality, of the list. I know there aren't >> that many women piping up but guys like Henry and Gabe also contribute to >> the splintering or splitting of male, sorry mail, energy. Look at the end >> of the last century -- those cissies Beardsley and Wilde. Down with >> weakness, physical, mental, or moral. Be aware: I have no vested interest >> in this post (I'm a man). >> Mairead >> >> > *enervate--Tom Orange has already used this word in relation to list >> > dynamics, and it seems to me peculiarly applicable. "To deprive of nerve, >> > force or strength; to weaken physically, mentally, or morally; to render >> > feeble." The word also, to me, has a pleasingly fin de siecle ring about >> > it. I predict a new vogue for it as the cyberage approaches the >> > millennium. >> > >> > steve >> > >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 16:59:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: it feels like harassment Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" OK, I frontchanneled a back channel msg from Mark W. Really not feeling like making enemies for no reason, but to me, a back channel msg basically telling me to shut up because what I am saying is obvious or pointless, well IT feels like harassment to me! sick of the list, seeya Elizabeth Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 05:56:40 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Todd Baron /*/ ReMap Organization: Re*Map Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tosh wrote: > > My favorite way of responding to the subject of 'too many postings' is to > delete the one's I am not interested in. Plus people can backchannel if > they want to get really into a subject matter. The choice should be up to > the writer of the post, but should also be aware that you are sending out a > post that is reaching ....? so many people. Focus who you want to speak > to... if it is all, then send it. If it is one person, just send it to > that one person. > > Case solved! Next case please! > > ----------------- > Tosh Berman > TamTam Books > ---------------- NOT SOLVED I checked in today and received 90!!!!!!!!!! mails/postings. While I applaud and sing the praises of the list How the heck can ANYONE have so much time AWAY from the "real work" of writing???? GEEEEEEZ! Todd Baron ++++++++ ReMap Readers ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 22:38:23 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Good question, but I think the answer doesn't need to bring in "larger" philosophical/psychological stuff. A interest in negative space and clearing away room in the arts goes back at least as far as Matisse and surfaces in a cyclical fashion from that time on. For me this "negative" interest is also more concrete and relates to the poem on the page. tom bell J. Fuhrman wrote: > > Lately I have been reading Rachel Blau DuPlessis's brilliant and > haunting _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_,. In it, the image of text erased comes > up. This image is also frequent in Michael Palmer and many > other contemporary poets as well as visual artists. -- //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\ OOOPSY \///\\\/\///\\\/ <><>,...,., WHOOPS J K JOVE BY HHH ZOOOOZ ZEUS'WRATHHTARW LLLL STOPG [ EMPTY ] SPACER index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/gloom.htm ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 22:57:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: new media criticism [was Infoanimism] Comments: cc: wr-eye-tings wr-eye-tings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit bill (and jim), while i applaud your interest in criticism of hypertext writing that takes an interest in the "non technical" dimension, i'm more than a little leery of separating technical and non technical aspects. As a writer I can't do this and in my "critical" work i'm finding that drawing that particular distinction can be misleading. "We need to see ourselves at depth and engaged: within the historical scene, not confronting it, authoring the text of our future, projecting and not projected upon." "In constructive hypertexts we are able to see our thought in movement, to see ourselves as light and not in shadows" Michael Joyce, _Of two minds tom William Marsh wrote: > > > indeed, a criticism with its own neath text -- especially if the criticism > is composed in dhtml / that layering again... > > but seriously, i agree with your call here and would even like to see > criticism that separates these dimensions, if only temporarily and for the > sake of discussion / perhaps a new breed of polarized critique that on one > side (of the page?) stresses the non-technical and on the other the > technical aspects of the work -- some formal possibilities here / also > could make for some neat collaborations between folks more attuned to the > aesthetics and others better versed in the software > > bill -- //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\ OOOPSY \///\\\/\///\\\/ <><>,...,., WHOOPS J K JOVE BY HHH ZOOOOZ ZEUS'WRATHHTARW LLLL STOPG [ EMPTY ] SPACER index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/gloom.htm ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 21:30:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: <366A0A3E.22FCA71E@home.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" And beyond Matisse to Rembrandt by way of Whistler. Check out their graphic work. More recently in verse Schwerner's _Tablets_ is almost a dictionary of negative space--origin late 60's. At 10:38 PM 12/5/98 -0600, you wrote: >Good question, but I think the answer doesn't need to bring in "larger" >philosophical/psychological stuff. A interest in negative space and >clearing away room in the arts goes back at least as far as Matisse and >surfaces in a cyclical fashion from that time on. For me this >"negative" interest is also more concrete and relates to the poem on the >page. > >tom bell > >J. Fuhrman wrote: >> >> Lately I have been reading Rachel Blau DuPlessis's brilliant and >> haunting _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_,. In it, the image of text erased comes >> up. This image is also frequent in Michael Palmer and many >> other contemporary poets as well as visual artists. >-- >//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\ >OOOPSY \///\\\/\///\\\/ <><>,...,., >WHOOPS J K JOVE BY HHH ZOOOOZ ZEUS'WRATHHTARW > LLLL STOPG [ EMPTY ] SPACER > >index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell >essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/gloom.htm > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 01:06:15 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: Erasing In-Reply-To: <199812060502.AAA27290@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII joanna, do you have time to post a part of the duplessis text that you feel speaks to this issue and comment? i haven't been able to get a hold of it yet... a line of speculation one could trace regarding erased texts and blank pages might go from mallarme's un coup de des, through blanchot and jabes, to current work by anne-marie albiach and even barbara guest's latest, which seems to be particularly "evacuated" (which along with "enervated" seems to be my fin-de-siecle hommage for the week). i'm interested in the comparative evacuative strategies that might be at work here... bests, t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the life in things. -- Gilles Deleuze ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 01:12:30 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: whodunnit / festival In-Reply-To: <199812060502.AAA27290@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII miekal, for this poetics of hypertext project, are you talking about working off a new website or siphoning stuff from this list? (or both...) t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca you wrote: "Im interesting in collectively creating a poetics of the hypertext that would withstand the enslaught of the many invigorated minds & styles -- & to create such a dialogue / reading thru as a hypertext. To do this everything posted to this discussion would have to useable on a website other than the archives. Much of the hypertext & its discussion is quite bland & unremarkable & it would be a significant contribution to the field as a whole is we (or at least the fabulous & verbose 20) could take a stab at changing the static & 3 dimensional way hypertext thought seems to be evolving." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 01:55:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Re: it feels like harassment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 1. I would hate to see Elizabeth T. leave the list as she (gasp!) actually posts about (gasp! gasp!) poetry and poetics, and has spurred interesting discussions here. Also I wanna hear about the doings at Double Lucy (my favorite press name). 2. Charles Bernstein is hereby named winner of the Bionic Eyeball Award for having read ALL (gasp!) the posts on this list since its inception. Good god, man! I think you should lie down or something. 3. I'm so pleased to have made someone's top 25 and, hey, I tied with Ron Silliman. 4. I think efforts by Charles and Joel to moderate the list are made in good faith and must be accompanied by good will and self-moderation on the part of the listees. Now, everyone get some sleep. We'll all feel better in the morning. Peace, Kathy Lou Elizabeth Treadwell wrote: > > OK, I frontchanneled a back channel msg from Mark W. Really not feeling > like making enemies for no reason, but to me, a back channel msg basically > telling me to shut up because what I am saying is obvious or pointless, well > IT feels like harassment to me! > > sick of the list, > seeya > > Elizabeth > > Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books > P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. > http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 21:57:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: v i s u a l a n g u a g e MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit v i s u a l a n g u a g e is a new piece at http://speakeasy.org/~jandrews/vispo/VisualLanguage/frame.html based mainly on a search of altavista for the term "visual language" (with the quotes), but also on my cogitations these days on visual language. Regards, Jim. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:36:24 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: perhaps another suggestion Comments: To: toddbaron@earthlink.net >I checked in today and received 90!!!!!!!!!! mails/postings. > >While I applaud and sing the praises of the list >How the heck can ANYONE have so much time >AWAY from the "real work" >of writing???? Like many writers that I know I spend most of my time trying to find thing to do that will distract me from the laborious task of writing. Getting up from the computer to start redecorating the room is not unheard of simply to avoid the awful truth which is that I have to write to earn my living (perhaps "justify my existence" is a more direct phrase albeit cliche). Anyway the truth is, the lists to which I belong, yes I belong and receive in indigestible(?) form the whole content of 4 lists, I read. In fact I must be the singularly most clued up screwed up obsessively anal retentive listee on the planet. There is just nothing better in my day than the wonderfully chirpie voice which announces, "incoming mail", this means I have to leave my work, change screens and pay attention to some inane rambling from another, stranger, world. Occasionally I even respond to them. (like now). So I do not mind leaving my work for the few moments which are required to pay attention to mail, and I suppose I have the advantage of working mostly when the majority of listees are asleep on the other sides (sic) of the world. But then again I am a really sad case, and suitable for treatment, if it was not for the lists I think I would have to go train-spotting. But seriously... I really believe the lists are an impressive function of the net phenomenon, and when the furore and immediacy of the fashion aspect of the internet die down (remember CB radio, hoola hoops et al) the lists, perhaps developed into net meetings, will be the abiding feature which makes the technology worthwhile. The problem I have with email is its lack of permanence. Occasionally an email will contain a splash of brilliance, (never the ones I write unfortunately) and I always feel inclined to try and save them to a disc. But whereas researchers have letters and notes available from past years, little remains of the electronic transmissions of recent times, except the list archives, but how permanent are they? Any way keep posting and save me from myself, Jim Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 Click on this link to visit my site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 08:06:16 -0000 Reply-To: suantrai@iol.ie Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: Re: it feels like harassment Comments: cc: dblelucy@LANMINDS.COM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elizabeth, This is unhappy news. I am tempted to say that sending such a msg bc rather than fc is cowardly, that no one has the right to tell anyone to shut up and that if they like points so much they should stick their heads in a pencil sharpener. But I'd rather say how much I like your posts, all of which I read, and which bring a valuable light to the list Randolph Healy from suantrai@iol.ie ---------- > From: Elizabeth Treadwell > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: it feels like harassment > Date: 06 December 1998 00:59 > > OK, I frontchanneled a back channel msg from Mark W. Really not feeling > like making enemies for no reason, but to me, a back channel msg basically > telling me to shut up because what I am saying is obvious or pointless, well > IT feels like harassment to me! > > sick of the list, > seeya > > Elizabeth > > Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books > P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. > http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 23:46:39 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: it feels like harassment Comments: To: Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Randolph, >that no one has the right to tell anyone to >shut up and that if they like points so much they should stick their heads >in a pencil sharpener. ouch! mine's a 2B (or not too buzz-buzz, gloes that money). Maybe i misunderstrode the question. You can't make a Hamlet without breaking posts. understanding (i'll respect your shit if you respect my shit?) often misses the point as you so eloquently put it. Shanks for the memo bro. let this list roll - with respect (more quirky humours, less guffaws) I mean, if this be turf, why so many people out cutting the grass? love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:10:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: poetics of hypertext MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tom Orange wrote: > for this poetics of hypertext project, are you talking about working off a > new website or siphoning stuff from this list? (or both...) > tom, it is my hope to use any resource available but in particular to get a project going on this list, & make a quantum leap out of the necessary self consciousness weve been under the spell of. anyone working on this would have to agree to their "texts" being put up on a website. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 11:08:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Also there is Rauschenberg's famous erasing of a de Kooning drawing. RR asked de Kooning for a drawing to be erased, and was given a mixed media thing because de Kooning wanted to make it a difficult process. RR apparently used about a dozen different kinds of erasers to get the job done, and he claimed it took him about a month to finish. I've never seen this piece reproduced or in any collection: it just exists for me as a rumor. Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 11:13:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU wrote: > > Also there is Rauschenberg's famous erasing of a de Kooning drawing. RR > asked de Kooning for a drawing to be erased, and was given a mixed media > thing because de Kooning wanted to make it a difficult process. RR > apparently used about a dozen different kinds of erasers to get the job > done, and he claimed it took him about a month to finish. > > I've never seen this piece reproduced or in any collection: it just exists > for me as a rumor. > > Gary R. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has it, I believe. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 12:53:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carmen Butcher Subject: J. Fuhrman's Question on Palimpsests Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This topic puts me in mind of the Anglo-Saxon palimpsests I worked with in the British Museum. Yes, they were "making room," recycling available "paper" by erasing and writing over. It is wonderful to see the old text underneath the new, since erasing was hard work and not always fully accomlished. Why was the old text being erased? Lack of vellum? Mistakes? New ideas needing space? Sometimes this erasure even made the latest text hard to read, which was also in some sense marvelous, if somewhat frustrating. You think of archaeological tells when you read such a manuscript. Also, Vikings, who helped make texts scarce. I also think of the Medieval approach to plagiarism. You did simply use the works of others as your own and you built on that, took of them whatever you needed, and made your own work without blushing. You hadn't stolen. Everything built on everything else, the mindset of the palimpsest, in many ways. I realize this doesn't address the question below directly. But will follow indirection to truth if I can. I thought the question excellent, one that will keep turning over in my mind for time to come... Cheers, Carmen tom bell wrote: "...clearing away room in the arts goes back at least as far as Matisse and surfaces in a cyclical fashion from that time on." J. Fuhrman wrote: Lately I have been reading Rachel Blau DuPlessis's brilliant and haunting _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_,. In it, the image of text erased comes up. This image is also frequent in Michael Palmer and many other contemporary poets as well as visual artists. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 09:58:11 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: free Henry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I don't believe he is actually banned from posting, but my understanding is all his posts have to be approved by Charles Bernstein, &/or he is limited to a certain # per week. I'll second Mike & everyone else-- as I already backchanneled to Henry last week-- that I don't at all agree with this action. Mark DuCharme P.S. to Charles Bernstein: hey Charles, does the list get to vote on this? It certainly seems that everyone disagrees with with restricting Henry. Michael Magee wrote: >Excuse my fogginess on this issue but, has Henry actually been banned from >posting on the list? If so, this seems absolutely outrageous to me! >Joe's sentiment that "Henry's commitment to, and passion for, art is, from >my point of view, beyond question" is absolutely true and quite >pertinent. I've rassled with him as much as anyone but the idea >that we would somehow keep him from posting really disgusts me. >I hope I've got this wrong. -Mike. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 10:01:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Fuhrman" Subject: Re: Erasing Comments: To: Tom Orange In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Some lines from DuPlessis, from "Draft 17 Unnamed" It's true that every ending only erases the board rather then filling it. The poems are written in strange chalk strange, a chalk in some light dark, plump with serifs on a scumbled, agitated whiteness, but mainly a white chalk on a whiter page. from "Draft 26: M-m-ry" On her cake the "e" in "years" got smudged. From "Draft XXX: Fose" Imagine a book, a little book whose words are covered one by one with the smallest pebbles-- (As DuPlessis reminds us in her notes the book does exist, created by Ann Hamilton) I have seen work by other artists that participates in a similar blocking of letters. -------------------- Also here's some Palmer from "Disclosures" in _At Passages_ Beneath the writing on the wall is the writing it was designed to obscure. The two together form a third kind from "Untitled (February '92)" Words are made of electrons it turns out Words remind us of fragments it turns out parts of legs and parts of arms It's inviable ink which blots them out. ----- My question, again, has to do with why these images of erased, smudged or blocked text speak to us at this point in time. While I was typing this I just remember that Heather McHugh has an essay on Tom Phillips _A Hummument_(an art book in which a new story is created by blocking the old text) in her book _Broken English_ In the essay, she writes All poetry is fragment: it is shaped by its breakages, at every turn. It is the very art of turnings, toward the white frame of the page, toward the unsung, toward the vacancy made viable, that wordlessness in which our words are couched. Its lines insistently defy their own medium by averting themselves from the space available, affording the absent it say, not only at the poem's outset and end but at each line's outset and end. I suppose part of the reason there are so many poems and works of art about "erased texts" is that we are now more self-conscious about the power of fragments than we were. On Sun, 6 Dec 1998, Tom Orange wrote: > Joanna, > > do you have time to post a part of the duplessis text that you feel speaks > to this issue and comment? i haven't been able to get a hold of it yet... > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 13:14:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Some of the javascript pages I have at www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt speak to this; in one, columns of text efface each other (depending on the browser); in other, a text appears for a split second; in a third, with changing pages, a black page appears - the text is black on black, visible only by using the view command. www.jodi.org of course uses the view com- mand a lot; what appears on the surface is often scrabbled. the piece i did with overlapping columns, btw, is also readable in view - and view is interesting, revealing the bones of works, to the extent that it's acces- sible, i.e. not blocked from view itself. finally, there are real-time effacements - if one is talking on ytalk for example, where each letter typed appears as soon as it's typed, it may be the case that a line is typed then suddenly erased, for example i want you to make love to me appears for a split second, then is gone. it's present and absent simul- taneously, a trace or murmur, leaving an impression Alan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 13:38:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: J. Fuhrman's Question on Palimpsests one listmember, brenda iijima-uchman, will address this better than i will, but in quick summary, brenda (who is unbelievably gifted visual artists as well) and i were talking about revision. brenda said that she tried not to get stuck in past work, when i said thtat i would sometimes get work from four or five years ago, and then angst about the mistakes/problems in it, then try and fix it. i think her mindset comes more from painting world, where a big part of making art is knowing when to stop. but she elaborated about a sort of self-erasure, almost phoenix from the ashes in a sense. she described getting interested in X problem(s) -- ideologic, philosophic, materials-oriented -- and producing work addressing/connected to that problem/query. then at certain point, getting interested in new prob/que, moving on to that, and letting go of old, letting that old body of work "represent" her from that period and not going back to revise. it would be interesting to know if this self-erasure is a visual/plastic arts tendency, or if writers experience it as well. if writing can be whoops writers can be divided into those who practice self-erasure, who view work as time-permeated and best left in its context, and those who, like me, continually go back and ERASE parts of old work and palimpset it into present work! my hunch is that writers keep and revise. e ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 14:05:57 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: hello again and query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, Rachel Democracy here, back on the list. If at first you don't. . . Just wanted to say I never did switch to the new email address, if any of you tried to reach me at mindspring, would ya try me at my old email. Also, does anyone have an email for Gilbert Alter-Gilbert and does anyone have a suggestion for how to contact Christina Peri Rossi? P.S. Not a Review-- Went to see Peter Gizzi and John Ashbery yesterday at Double Happiness/Segue reading series and feel renewed. Peter read some new work which seems more playful including a renewed piece, a series of, I think 7 poems meditating on the boogieman. I'd just the night before met a dog named Boogie. Ashbery was sparkling and funny and lewd and open and I was very very happy. He read unpublished work and I'd thought I'd write down titles but I got carried away. I was amazed at how he's kept reinventing himself within himeself, his singular Ashbery rhythm and how (this was the first time I'd seen him) his voice was just exactly the voice I'd heard on taped readings, tears literally popped out of my eyes! P.S.S. Could I start a thread on poetry residencies? What has folkses experience been? Thanks a mill, R. Democracy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 14:27:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > Joanna -- I tend to think that the poetics (or the aesthetics ) of erasure are one of the 2 dominant modes (the other being its near opposite, that of the ever-unfolding fullness of the world in the text, say, the gamble of EP's Cantos etc.) that poetry has taken since the early days of modernism -- I'd put Mallarmé up there as as one core originator of this thought. And, in his wake, a whole range of French poetry this century, a quasi "minimalist" mode -- the likes of Daive, Du Bouchet, Albiach, Royet-Journoud. (Literally, much of their work is based on erasing text from first draughts, eliminating words, whittling what they consider the too full representational magma of written text they start from down to a final structure that consists of a careful interplay of "le Blanc" the (mallarmean) whiteness of the page and the few inscribed traces of text left over. That sense of "erasure" is also allied to a range of notions developed later by Maurice Blanchot (absence, unworking, etc.) The term "erasure" in the sense of something being "under erasure"as such comes, if I'm not mistaken, into French theoretical thought via Derrida out of Heidegger. Pierre -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 13:35:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" related to erasures: well worth checking out jim rosenberg's hypercard project, _intergrams_ (available from eastgate systems), where word clusters materialize and dematerialize by moving the cursor, each cluster consisting of lines that partially obscure other lines... *so* many artists have played with print technologies over the past century... i once generated some great-looking busted-up script by running my stuff off on a daisy-wheel printer with an outworn ribbon... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 13:52:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: My one post for December MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I've been reading over, trying to digest some of the discussion in this amazing posting-politics thread (for I am one of the six no-mail "active" listees Joel alluded to). Now that Ron has posted the numbers, we know who has caused all this trouble: a handful of bulemic-like posters, the three most afflicted of whom have, over the entire month of November, averaged a fraction more than (get your calculators out) _one post per day_. In these bulemia sweepstakes, I come in third, and I apologize to any one of the hundreds at this table who has been made by my condition during the month of November (or other months, though Nov. has been the cuelest one for me, I believe) to feel marginalized, silenced, enervated, bored, nauseous, whatever. I admit I sometimes have a problem with controlling my appetite, and I would gladly take every one of those posts back and even never post again if it would help in some small way to save the List from this crisis of too many posts-per-person-- a crisis that is ever and dangerously deepening as those individuals who seem most anxious about the problem (including males worried about too many males posting) are now bombarding the List with multiple posts per day in an attempt to theorize how this problem might be solved without hurting the feelings of those poor souls who post too much. I mean the irony of this is so rich and effortless it kind of makes a try-too-hard ironist like me want to hurl chunks of envy all over my screen! And could I ask if it's someone's joke or if it's _really_ the case that Henry Gould, the poster who most passionately and consistently and intelligently talks about Poetry on this List (though I am personally enervated by a good deal of what he says), has really been temporarily "86'd"?? What's the story with this, anyway? My solution to the problem: Let people like Henry, who post and psot about Poetry and the difficult love for it post all they want so as to keep the List at its core focused and debating about what the List is here for, for goodness sakes. Let there be one, two, three, many Henry's. Then all the peripheral jabberers like me and some others who like to talk about cadavers and sex and slinky underwear will just be an amusing sideshow instead of an ontological cul-de-sac.. Along with DuPlessis and Armand Schwerner, Ronald Johnson is one of the most interesting and brilliant "erasers." Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 12:56:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: J. Fuhrman's Question on Palimpsests MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I *never* go back to old work and always order book manuscripts chronologically, because they are written in/for a specific time & are then finished. I can't imagine working with an old text. I don't want the psychological baggage of having to feel responsible for "unfinished" pieces forever. I figure it's done once it's published in a mag, and I erase the whole manuscript from disk once it's published as a book. And *that* erasure is such a pleasing one! But I was a sculpture major undergrad. Eliza McGrand wrote: > it would be interesting to know if this self-erasure is a visual/plastic > arts tendency, or if writers experience it as well. if writing can be > whoops writers can be divided into those who practice self-erasure, who > view work as time-permeated and best left in its context, and those who, > like me, continually go back and ERASE parts of old work and palimpset > it into present work! my hunch is that writers keep and revise. > e ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 21:02:15 +0000 Reply-To: sam@netmatters.co.uk Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stuart Mitchell Organization: netmatters Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 4 Dec 1998 to 5 Dec 1998 (#1998-145) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is my first posting to the Poetics list. I write from Glasgow, Scotland. I receive the Digest of this Poetics List to keep informed about US poetics and poetry - I do buy books on a regular basis - I'm sort of educating myself in recent poetry, realising a couple of years ago thatI knew very little about the poetry being written right now. So I feel kind of inexpert pitching in on topics, although I do gain a great deal from lurking. Recently, I have been re-assessing my approach e-lists. I value the discussions but feel, as a reader, that I need to absorb what is happening at quite a slow rate: pressures of work, time to catch up with issues I know nothing about preclude hitting the Reply button. So I digest. Best wishes Stuart Mitchell ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 17:22:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: numbers, daughter of the book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dear joel -- and to the many blessed persons who are writing in about writing in to this community chest, i am on the list of 'set to nomail' list members. i would like to stand and confess my reasons: email space (the in-box gets flooded) & time (it's hard to check and read and delete all the time to keep it from getting flooded). having no desire either to separate myself or to discourage the flow of words on this list (why not change the maximum number of permissable messages to 75, or 100, a day? -- is there any particular technical reason? -- or is 50 a kind of happy maximum?), my solution is to read postings through the wonderfully organized archives you maintain (or the machine, having been programmed wonderfully, maintains). i click on my 'poetics archive' bookmark and scroll through postings for individual months. i usually do so every day. i watch the subjects build and build ('numbers, daughter of the book -- 2 messages'), and i love to read poetics this way. it's like a new book every month -- you never know how it will end. and then -- january comes! so even though i =seem= to be a nonparticipant, my 'nomail' setting belies my constant reading of poetics posts. i wonder how many others do this? i've always been intrigued by the word 'lurkers' -- it sounds so voyeuristic, so slurpy and hungry and shy and full of unsatisfied desires. but when i read a book, say, i don't feel like a lurker, even though the words i mutter as i'm reading resonate only against the walls of my room. i don't post much because (apart from the kind of busy life-building we're all doing) what i might write usually swerves away from 'conversation' -- into something i'd rather write essays about, i guess -- and this doesn't feel like an unmediated literary talking time, to me. there are eternal recurrences here -- i'm glad to read them -- but even now i have a sense that i'm adding water to the wordy world. nonetheless, i will send this, prompted to tell joel that people are perhaps listening more than they seem to be. or at least this people is. thanks to all who do write. really. lisa s. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 17:55:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: <01J50JSMC58IQQW78X@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Sun, 6 Dec 1998 GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU wrote: > Also there is Rauschenberg's famous erasing of a de Kooning drawing. RR > asked de Kooning for a drawing to be erased, and was given a mixed media > thing because de Kooning wanted to make it a difficult process. RR > apparently used about a dozen different kinds of erasers to get the job > done, and he claimed it took him about a month to finish. > My memory of the story is that Rauschenberg somewhat self-effacedly asked for a spare or losable drawing but de Kooning insisted that a really fine piece be used. Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 15:05:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: feels like harassment to me, too Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm sorry that Elizabeth is opting out, but before I become the latest bete noire I think I'd better reproduce my entire backchannel discussion (complete, I think--I may have edited a line or two before saving) with her. E. [frontchannel] I would especially like the conversation to be more thoughtful, essayish, and most importantly about topics that feel IMPORTANT (compelling, generative ? -- oh excuse me!) to me. Such as occurs in my small reading/writing group here in the Bay Area, where we read a book superclosely, and yes, sometimes get in entanglements. I am hungry for places to discuss writing M. [bc] Then why not bring those discussions to the list? Unless you try and no one listens there's not much to complain about. E. [bc] I have tried, just not recently. Early summer, Gertrude Stein; later, Laura Riding -- my asking seemed to spark a lot of conversation, which I listened rather than added to. And there were some others. M. [bc] My point exactly--one can raise issues and provoke comment, even as things stand. Instead we get all this handwringing. The list rapidly turns into a gestalt therapy session. Bully that I am, I thought that we were having a conversation. And I do think that it was appropriate to go backchannel (all 400 or 700 of us really fascinated by this interchange?). And I reiterate that it's just bad manners to publish a private interchange by going frontchannel without permission. PS. I just looked up bete noire in my handy dandy Larousse. Seems the phrase originally meant wild boar, and not just any black beast, something I truly don't wish to become, despite the flavor. At 08:06 AM 12/6/98 -0000, you wrote: >Elizabeth, > > >This is unhappy news. I am tempted to say that sending such a msg bc >rather than fc is cowardly, that no one has the right to tell anyone to >shut up and that if they like points so much they should stick their heads >in a pencil sharpener. > >But I'd rather say how much I like your posts, all of which I read, and >which bring a valuable light to the list > >Randolph Healy > > >from suantrai@iol.ie > >---------- >> From: Elizabeth Treadwell >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> Subject: it feels like harassment >> Date: 06 December 1998 00:59 >> >> OK, I frontchanneled a back channel msg from Mark W. Really not feeling >> like making enemies for no reason, but to me, a back channel msg >basically >> telling me to shut up because what I am saying is obvious or pointless, >well >> IT feels like harassment to me! >> >> sick of the list, >> seeya >> >> Elizabeth >> >> Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books >> P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. >> http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 18:18:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Happy Holidays MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Best Fruit Cake Ever 1c. butter 1c. sugar 4 large eggs 1c. dried fruit 1tsp. baking powder 1tsp. soda 1tsp. salt lemon juice 1c. brown sugar nuts 1 or 2 qt. whiskey Before you start, sample the whiskey to check for quality. Good isn't it? Now go ahead. Select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc. Check the whiskey again as it must be just right. To be sure the whiskey is of the highest quality, pour 1 level cup into a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat. With an electric mixer, beat 1 cup of the butter in a large, fluffy bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of thugar and beat again. Meanwhile, make sure that the whiskey is of the finest quality. Cry another tup. Open second quart, of necessary. Add 2 arge leggs, 2 cups fried druit and beat till high. If druit gets stuck in beaters, jsut pry it loose with a drewsciver. Sample the whiskey again, checking fro tonscisticity, then sift 3 cups of salt or anything, it really doesn't matter. Sample the whiskey. Sift 1/2 pint lemon juice, fold in chopped butter and strained nuts. Add 1 babblespoon of brown thugar, or whatever you can find, and mix well. Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 degrees. Now pour all of the shit into the coven and ake. Check whiskey again and bo to ged. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 20:44:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: 2 NYC Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ann Lauterbach and David Bradley Reading Wed. Dec. 9 at 6:30 City College 138th Street and Convent Ave. NY 'NAC' Buliding Room 6141 Free Admission Refreshments ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jackson Mac Low and Joan Retallack Reading Fri, Dec. 11 at 7:00 Dia Center for the Arts 548 West 22nd St NY Reduced admission for students Free admission for all CCNY Creative Writing MA students ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 19:47:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: A web site for the imagination MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The Museum of Jurassic Technology www.mjt.org --you gotta check this out. Truly amazing. A museum to poetic spirit unbounded. There is also the magical book on the MJT from a couple years ago, _Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder_, thoguh I don't have author's name handy. How about postings from time to time on favorite web sites Listfarians might check into? I sit at my Alta Vista Search window and my mind goes blank more often than not. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 23:46:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Amy King Subject: Re: why Peter Ganick cannot think... a listserv MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Grizzly Matt Tragic opens the rose, petal by pedal, as if a bike stood solely on two paths, wearing. Warring binds another matter in all: The Enemy Papers want a bite; we all eat one way or another and sacred boundary issues of nurturing ways conceal amongst the eggs of easter baskets, sun-dried color-filled. Who rode from last year's advice into an inventory of this year's litany ... de-cauterize, bound to truth, roped in on the lying train straight for the Byzantine arsenal. Ira has been there– take care of the law revealing, squelch the revealed. Behind the caboose separates you from hermetics, just plain tea leaves and mug, mugging for the adopted scene in sequins of flaking parts, the rough road of stars generate pressure for a day in the making: he has taken it apart, the fate's doldrums tinker behind that curtain's day, wheels spin for shadows of eye's day casting. Jesus is in the ceiling if we just look hellbound. In a puddle, a program, showbill, nightly agenda creeps emitting omissions, our sonic leftovers of a dinner two years in the interim between the sky east and west, never again landing. In cold feet, I stand on what's not mine. Enough of this wishy-washy pie. Command your presence: sent to the bowl and swiped some cherries. There's more vine left than these old stalkings. Of those party ways, what would hors doeuvres sound like when using conversation as we see fitting. To blow off the tirade for a mutual lingo overtone annihilation undertaken in dissonant harmony, to begin with the neverending. (Caution. May wear dictionary & still use blind guardians.) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 22:02:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Erasing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >From: Daniel Zimmerman >GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU wrote: >> >> Also there is Rauschenberg's famous erasing of a de Kooning drawing. RR >> asked de Kooning for a drawing to be erased, and was given a mixed media >> thing because de Kooning wanted to make it a difficult process. RR >> apparently used about a dozen different kinds of erasers to get the job >> done, and he claimed it took him about a month to finish. >> >> I've never seen this piece reproduced or in any collection: it just exists >> for me as a rumor. >> >> Gary R. > >The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo has it, I believe. > >Dan Zimmerman No no Dan, it is not at Albright-Knox, it is (or will be shortly) here in San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, hooray!! The Museum here has a new director the notorious David Ross lately of the Whitney and to welcome him the trustees must have spent a zillion dollars to buy all kinds of things, incl. the Erased de Kooning drawing (purchased directly from Rauschenberg) and San Francisco's first Eva Hesse, Mondrian, etc., some incredibly beautiful works. When I go to the museum now I feel sad because my favorite piece is on loan (Jackson Pollock's "Guardians of the Secret") for the big Pollock retrospective but on the other hand they have just acquired that famous Magritte one, mm, I can't remember what it's called ("Personal Values"? "Relative Values"?) but you know, the walls of the room look like the sky and there's a giant comb, shaving brush, pill, all leaning against the furniture of an ordinary bed sitting room. Well, come on down everyone, to San Francisco and take a look. Besides the erased De Kooning drawing they also have the Rauschenberg piece where John Cage drove a truck over huge sheets of paper. Heavy metal thunder. Oh, and the original drawings ("they" say) for Duchamp's "Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even," even. Evenly yours, Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 00:01:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Archieval Revival Re: Original Good Reads Comments: To: Laura Wright <"\"Laura E.Wright\" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For some reason (perhaps because of my derangement) I've kept your post in my todo box. I really like your D-E-R-A-N-G-E-D comment and I would appreciate hearing from other D-E-R-A-N-G-E-D poets (not critics or psychologists who could define it) tom bell Laura E. Wright wrote: > > > This chapbook In Aethers of the Amazon is truly deranged. > > > > I've been trying all day to come up with a real opposite of cliche (one issued > raised by Ted Fristrom) and I think "truly deranged" is a pretty good one. > > Good derangement cannot be taught, though some learn it on their own, whether > their early cliches are harshly criticized or not. > > The D=E=R=A=N=G=E=M=E=N=T school poets have usually never met each other, in fact, > some of them have never met anyone at all. > -- > Laura Wright, Library Assistant > Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute > 2130 Arapahoe Ave > Boulder, CO 80302 > (303) 546-3547 > * * * * * * > "Then there was a situation with tufts (and flowers). This did not agree > with me either, and time just kept on passing." > (Henri Michaux) -- //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\ OOOPSY \///\\\/\///\\\/ <><>,...,., WHOOPS J K JOVE BY HHH ZOOOOZ ZEUS'WRATHHTARW LLLL STOPG [ EMPTY ] SPACER index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/gloom.htm ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 22:36:41 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Yes, and Heidegger could be seen as a kind of pivot here and antidote to both a naive realism and positivism. Its Heidegger the phenomenologist as much as Heidegger the existentialist and its springs from his understanding of the futility of Husserl's approach where Husserl intends to peal away the inefficient aspects of languages relation to the 'real' by applying a mode of discourse that he has systematically unraveked from the sclerotic accretions of centuries and to eliminate the need for ever proliferating sets of meta-contrivances while acknowleding the contigent demands of time. Thus Logical Investigations is in its own way a very absorbing failure. Husserl kept freezing (trapping) the entity he wanted to free in his language, a natural result of analysis or verbal vivisection. I find Kant useful here in that he insists ding an sich cannot be captured through in its wholeness (see Bohm). It always struck me that he was quite presciently saying, and their are plenty of writers who have winnowed the same idea so its no big deal here, that knowledge is contingent. Schopenhauer among other things covered Kant's flank by foreseeing the need to address questions arising from what he called 'naive realism.' These same fundamental questions above were at the heart of the philosophical revival in the physics community around quantum theory in the late twenties and early thirties (see Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond. also Hansen, Bohr, Feyerabend, Putnam, Quine etc, etc, ad nauseam) and not surprisingly have been unconsciously fundamental to the debate leveled by conservative elements in the scientific community as well as the Cartesian left of Noam Chomsky and Alan Sokal against Deconstruction and Postmodernism. The problem is these factions (with the exception of Chomsky who is simply an unabashed Cartesian) ignore the roots of Decon/Postmod in European Transcendental Philosophy and the philosophical debate such as that which resulted in the Copenhagen Interpretation surrounding discoverys in quantum mentioned above. The criticism from Gross, Levitt, Sokal et al also lacks a sense of play, that is a sense of/for art which is found in Derrida, Foucault, Latour or as an artist might say the freedom to simply say it, whatever it might be. As Pierre suggests art and especially poetry has a huge stake in this. Mallarme, Pound, Olson, (well the list is immense) have all sensed that the fragment provides an alternative epiphanic glimpse at an essence. The Pinsky/Howe debate touched upon some of these issues. I've always suspected that Pound came to possiblities of the fragment, at least in part, when he 'edited' the Wasteland erasing long, narrative passages while maintaning enough of Eliot's text to provide a series of 'luminous details.' I like to think that the enervated harmony of personal anguish in the context of historical anxiety that is the Wasteland as we know it, must have continually stunned Pound (and suggested a form for the Cantos) as he simply went about cutting much of Eliot's personal narrative away. We haven't looked at translations of ancient texts which exist only in fragments, in the same way since the moderns. Derrida and deconstruction as well as postmodernist writers are familiar with all the threads I awkwardly touched upon above. In this their contribution if not entirely unique (e.g. The Frankfurt School) is in direct and oblique ways highly supportive of art and poetry in particular in a world that largely doesn't give a damn. Erasure is a preposturous notion to, say, a Cartesian rationalist or a pragmatist. What is left out can't be measured. Unlike a mathematical equation, The elidings do not follow rules and the result is evocative and not necessarity 'elegant' though Mallarme's Un Coup de Des certainly qualifies as both.---Carlo Parcelli Pierre Joris wrote: > = > > Joanna -- > = > I tend to think that the poetics (or the aesthetics ) of erasure ar= e one > of the 2 dominant modes (the other being its near opposite, that of the= > ever-unfolding fullness of the world in the text, say, the gamble of E= P's > Cantos etc.) that poetry has taken since the early days of modernism --= I'd > put Mallarm=E9 up there as as one core originator of this thought. And,= in his > wake, a whole range of French poetry this century, a quasi "minimalist"= mode > -- the likes of Daive, Du Bouchet, Albiach, Royet-Journoud. (Literally,= much > of their work is based on erasing text from first draughts, eliminating= words, > whittling what they consider the too full representational magma of wri= tten > text they start from down to a final structure that consists of a caref= ul > interplay of "le Blanc" the (mallarmean) whiteness of the page and the = few > inscribed traces of text left over. That sense of "erasure" is also all= ied to > a range of notions developed later by Maurice Blanchot (absence, unwork= ing, > etc.) > The term "erasure" in the sense of something being "under erasure"a= s such > comes, if I'm not mistaken, into French theoretical thought via Derrida= out of > Heidegger. > = > Pierre > = > -- > =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= > Pierre Joris > joris@csc.albany.edu > http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ > 6 Madison Place > Albany NY 12202 > tel: 518 426 0433 > fax: 518 426 3722 > =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= > Nomadism answers to a relation that > possession cannot satisfy. > = > =97 Maurice Blanchot > =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 03:17:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Fwd: TINFISH 7 is out! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_913018627_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_913018627_boundary Content-ID: <0_913018627@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part0_913018627_boundary Content-ID: <0_913018627@inet_out.mail.hawaii.edu.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from rly-zb04.mx.aol.com (rly-zb04.mail.aol.com [172.31.41.4]) by air-zb04.mail.aol.com (v53.20) with SMTP; Mon, 07 Dec 1998 03:09:59 -0500 Received: from relay1.Hawaii.Edu (relay1.hawaii.edu [128.171.3.53]) by rly-zb04.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with SMTP id DAA10673 for ; Mon, 7 Dec 1998 03:09:58 -0500 (EST) Received: from [128.171.44.54] ([128.171.44.54]) by relay1.Hawaii.Edu with SMTP id <150586(2)>; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 22:09:55 -1000 Received: from localhost by uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu with SMTP id <171766(7)>; Sun, 6 Dec 1998 22:09:33 -1000 Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 22:09:31 -1000 From: Susan Schultz X-Sender: sschultz@uhunix4 To: Peter Riley cc: poetryetc@listbot.com, hitinfish@aol.com Subject: Re: TINFISH 7 is out! Geographically interactive! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit TINFISH 7 is now available for purchase ($5 each, or $13 for a subscription to 3 issues). TINFISH is a journal of experimental poetry, with emphasis on the Pacific region. Contributors: from Hawai`i, Ida Yoshinaga, Bill Luoma, Steve Carll, Michael McPherson, Joe Balaz, Rob Wilson, Kathy D.K.K. Banggo, and John Rieder (book reviewer). From the U.S.A.: Renee Gladman, Bobbie West, John Olson, Summi Kaipa, Jason Olive, Dan Featherston, Hugh Steinberg, Jonathan Brannen. From Australia: John Tranter, Stephen Oliver, Louis Armand (well, Czech Republic), John Kinsella (well, U.K.), Coral Hull. From New Zealand: Murray Edmond. From China: Hsia Yu, Steve Bradbury (trans.). The marvelous covers, inner and outer, by Gaye Chan (HI) and Lisa Asagi (San Francisco). Please order from me, Susan Schultz, at the address below, or at 47-391 Hui Iwa Street #3, Kaneohe, HI 96744, USA. Barter is possible, especially where different currencies are involved. Thanks, Susan ______________________________________________ Susan M. Schultz Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing Dept. of English 1733 Donaghho Road University of Hawai'i-Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/schultz http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/tinfish --part0_913018627_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 12:51:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: i want you to make love to me Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thats' how the message from Julia, to Winston Smith, would have appeared then disappeared (v. Sondheim, Re Era sure) had 1984 been written today. Thats mainly what I wanted to say, but feeling obliged to provide further substance, would remark that this novel's chief contribution is not its vision of a future, banal as it is, but its life as a love story--which is also a de (con) struction of the love affair. Perhaps the vision was not banal in 1948, but to those of us who have lived thru the 50 years since, it is--whereas the excruciating anaylsis of passionate love and the society whose stability is thought to depend upon its repression, has currency and will travel. Or, in the interests of a more interactive, kind und gentle List, consider those assertions to be couched as questions. They certainly open themselves to qualification. . . . db3 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 12:28:21 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: nicholas grindell Subject: Re: Happy Holidays Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dear list just wanted to express my gratitude for the most excellent birthday cake. i recently switched to digests in a bid to focus my list-reading time. it worked. besides the thick blanket of fresh snow, this morning brought mr johnson's recipe, which triggered an outburst of at-the-screen mirth. i read the whole digest through every day. every so often i post something. greetings from berlin nicholas ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 08:41:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: Re: Erasing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit gut Morgan! if anyone's interested, there's some heidegger in lacan's "Ethics of Psychoanalysis" where lacan serves up his take of several heideggerian concepts, most noticeably das Ding. joe... b/t/w/ my spellcheck wants to change heidegger to headgear.... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 09:35:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: the wasp of capital Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Juliana Spahr has written a stimulating and brief work called "Spiderwasp or Literary Criticism" (Spectacular Books, 1998). Beside the metaphor, the "or" refers to the verso/recto binary of narrative and text; the recto also vertically divided with provoking notes. Spahr has begun an initial mapping of contemporary poetry in terms that have often been discussed on this List; namely, from where/what is current poetry taking its cues: new american? post-language? both? neither? Through the works of three "emerging" writers, again briefly, Spahr applies this query. It's thoughtful and direct and articulate. I read it Saturday and felt compelled to recommend it. Perhaps Katy Lederer can post the ordering information again. - 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: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 10:38:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Henry Gould, News Regarding In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hg has left the list. this is, for me, a great loss. but of course he had no knowledge, no expertise, no worthy thoughts, nothing in that nut-like pate and nothing in that dessicated prune of a heart to make his posts edifying or humorous or prodding. he was just a windbag, wasn't he. good riddance. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 10:43:04 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris McCreary Subject: address queries Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit If anyone has addresses, e-mail or pony express, for Will Alexander &/or Myung Mi Kim, please back channel. Thanks much in advance. Chris McCreary ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 10:41:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: groberts@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Carlo Parcelli wrote: "What is left out can't be measured. Unlike a mathematical equation, elidings do not follow rules and the result is evocative" etc. To which I would adduce the qualifying example of Joan Retallack's "AI/D/SAPPEARANCE" from HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS: this elegy follows rules of subtraction which are brutally rigorous. "Evocative" does not feel like the right word for the resulting illustration of systematic erasure. The poem eliminates groups of letters from itself, and sort of spirals into nothingness like a curled shell. Near the end, the remaining y's and n's (and a single x) become merely "y", which is more plaintive and angry than evocative because it can be vocalized as a full sentence. The shorthand for "yes" becomes a pun for "why?" When it goes, there is only silence and invisibility rather than the play of the fragment. But this blankness is only one state in the series, so perhaps it is a fragment. Does its situation as the final state in the series endow it with a special status? Whether or not the silence of the dead can be read in/as text, and whether or not this silence is total or irrevocable would seem to be related to the issues of how Derrida, Blanchot et al theorize erasure and the connection between body and inscription. And in turn whether absence of text can represent death, or instead must always represent more text. Can there be different kinds of palimpsests, created by different gestures of blotting, erasing, tracing, collaging.......? Schwerner's Tablets........Is blankness possible only as a hypothetical case beyond the horizon of the line? Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 09:56:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: Erasing/rigor In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Carlo Parcelli wrote: "What is left out can't be measured. Unlike a >mathematical equation, elidings do not follow rules and the result is >evocative" etc. > >To which I would adduce the qualifying example of Joan Retallack's >"AI/D/SAPPEARANCE" from HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS: this elegy follows >rules of subtraction which are brutally rigorous. "Evocative" does not >feel like the right word for the resulting illustration of systematic >erasure. The poem eliminates groups of letters from itself, and sort of >spirals into nothingness like a curled shell. Near the end, the remaining >y's and n's (and a single x) become merely "y", which is more plaintive >and angry than evocative because it can be vocalized as a full sentence. >The shorthand for "yes" becomes a pun for "why?" When it goes, there is >only silence and invisibility rather than the play of the fragment. But >this blankness is only one state in the series, so perhaps it is a >fragment. Does its situation as the final state in the series endow it >with a special status? > >Whether or not the silence of the dead can be read in/as text, and whether >or not this silence is total or irrevocable would seem to be related to >the issues of how Derrida, Blanchot et al theorize erasure and the >connection between body and inscription. And in turn whether absence of >text can represent death, or instead must always represent more text. >Can there be different kinds of palimpsests, created by different gestures >of blotting, erasing, tracing, collaging.......? Schwerner's >Tablets........Is blankness possible only as a hypothetical case beyond >the horizon of the line? > >Gary R. Only slightly (well, maybe more than that) changing the subject, there are other examples of "brutally rigorous" rules producing evocative work. For example, the programs Jim Rosenberg created to realize the vision of John Cage (this was the stuff with key words appearing vertically down the middle of the page, a sort of variation on acrostic, taken from existing texts --- anyone remember the name of this form?). Back to the subject --- absence of text can represent many things besides death or more text. And why should it represent anything at all? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 23:58:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Erasing/rigor In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >For >example, the programs Jim Rosenberg created to realize the vision of John >Cage (this was the stuff with key words appearing vertically down the >middle of the page, a sort of variation on acrostic, taken from existing >texts --- anyone remember the name of this form?). mesostic 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: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 08:33:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: re erasure/rigor: judy's question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mesostic, I believe, is the word for the kind of acrostic you refer to, Judy. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 11:27:33 -0500 Reply-To: mbyrne@ithaca.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Adieu In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Henry gently says goodbye. Though he did mention trained seals. I guess he didn't like the doghouse, despite all the fine and well-aimed bones. I've never met Henry. But he definitely is a big shaggy person in my mind. Is personality too raw for poetics? What do you guys really think about censorship/moderation? I know in my own case I was taken aback, on November 7, when I received an unsigned advisory notice telling me "to keep posts to the list close to the focus of the list as indicated in the Welcome Message." How many of you have received such warnings? Being fairly new to the list, I posted news of my advisory notice but received no feedback. I can only conclude that such notices are either very common or very rare. How many of you have been in the doghouse? Are you still on the list and why? Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 11:34:19 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Erasing/rigor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I thank Judy and Gary for pointing up an obviuos error or omission of possiblities at the end of my earlier transmission.---Carlo Parcelli Judy Roitman wrote: > > >Carlo Parcelli wrote: "What is left out can't be measured. Unlike a > >mathematical equation, elidings do not follow rules and the result is > >evocative" etc. > > > >To which I would adduce the qualifying example of Joan Retallack's > >"AI/D/SAPPEARANCE" from HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS: this elegy follows > >rules of subtraction which are brutally rigorous. "Evocative" does not > >feel like the right word for the resulting illustration of systematic > >erasure. The poem eliminates groups of letters from itself, and sort of > >spirals into nothingness like a curled shell. Near the end, the remaining > >y's and n's (and a single x) become merely "y", which is more plaintive > >and angry than evocative because it can be vocalized as a full sentence. > >The shorthand for "yes" becomes a pun for "why?" When it goes, there is > >only silence and invisibility rather than the play of the fragment. But > >this blankness is only one state in the series, so perhaps it is a > >fragment. Does its situation as the final state in the series endow it > >with a special status? > > > >Whether or not the silence of the dead can be read in/as text, and whether > >or not this silence is total or irrevocable would seem to be related to > >the issues of how Derrida, Blanchot et al theorize erasure and the > >connection between body and inscription. And in turn whether absence of > >text can represent death, or instead must always represent more text. > >Can there be different kinds of palimpsests, created by different gestures > >of blotting, erasing, tracing, collaging.......? Schwerner's > >Tablets........Is blankness possible only as a hypothetical case beyond > >the horizon of the line? > > > >Gary R. > > Only slightly (well, maybe more than that) changing the subject, there are > other examples of "brutally rigorous" rules producing evocative work. For > example, the programs Jim Rosenberg created to realize the vision of John > Cage (this was the stuff with key words appearing vertically down the > middle of the page, a sort of variation on acrostic, taken from existing > texts --- anyone remember the name of this form?). > > Back to the subject --- absence of text can represent many things besides > death or more text. And why should it represent anything at all? > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! > Math, University of Kansas | memory fails > Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." > 785-864-4630 | > fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Note new area code > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 11:41:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Latta Subject: Anne Waldman Archive In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I thought some may be interested to know that the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan just acquired the papers of Anne Waldman, described as "over 24,000 manuscripts, letters, business and personal documents, photos, and audiotapes." The collection at this point is totally unprocessed, meaning it will be some months before it will be ready for regular use. Kathryn Beam (kjmb@umich.edu) notes that interested parties can contact her, though, with specific questions, with the caveat that details about items included in the archive are not now fully known by the staff. John Latta ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 10:49:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: FW: Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > -----Original Message----- > > Hi friends, > > I realize you get lots of e-mails and lots of requests for action from me > . > But I'm writing because there are some very important activities taking > place in Geneva which will affect the future long-term status of > indigenous > people all over the world. The Draft Declaration on the Rights of > Indigenous > Peoples is being considered and the United States is at the head of the > charge to gut the document. The document is the result of 15 years of > work > of indigenous people from all over the world. If you can fax or email > letters to the people mentioned below it would be very helpful to the > indigenous folks in Geneva and around the world. > > Thanks, > > Carolyn 303-544-9180 > carolyn@idcomm.com > > Here's a little background info. > > The next UN Intersessional Working Group on the Draft Declaration is > taking > place from November 30-December 11 in Geneva, Switzerland. This year's > meetings, we believe, will be vital to the fate of the declaration. We > believe that the U.S. and other nation-states will attempt to gut the > draft > of all protections of indigenous peoples' collective rights-particularly > the > right to meaningful self-determination. The U.S. has already stated its > opposition to Article 3 of the draft, which reads "Indigenous peoples have > the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely > determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social > and cultural development." Indigenous peoples present at the UN have > agreed > unanimously that Article 3 is essential to the Declaration, and must not > be > weakened in any way. Your hard work in this action is vital to protecting > indigenous peoples' fundamental human rights!! > > 12/3 The United States Department of State released its position on the UN > Draft > Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the UN Intersessional > Working Group working in Geneva to review the Draft. As anticipated, the > US recommends significant changes in the Draft Declaration. Those > recommendations include: > > *A call for a new declaration > *Focusing on the rights of individuals (not the collective rights of > peoples) to preserve identity and culture > *Elimination of political self-determination. > *Removing the "s" from the phrase "Indigenous Peoples" and redefining the > operative definition in terms of individuals or groups or populations, but > not "peoples". [The word "peoples" reflects the nation status that many > Indigenous Peoples hold. The word "People" does not.] > > In essence,the United States' position would undermine the work of over > 160 > Indigenous Peoples' organizations, forty two UN state members, nine > specialized UN agencies, and other interested non-government organizations > who worked for eleven years to develop the currrent 1993 Draft which > represents for indigenous peoples a minimum standard of human rights. The > US position also seeks to impose aspects of US Federal Indian Policy onto > the rest of the world. > > > > ACTION ALERT!!!!!!! > > > SUPPORT JUSTICE FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES > > December 4,1998 > > As you read this, the government of the United States, is > participating in a meeting at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. > At > this meeting, > the U.S. delegation is taking a public position that the rights of Native > peoples are only individual rights, threatening the collective existence > that Indigenous Peoples have known since the beginning of time. The U.S. > has > suggested that the people of the U.S. do not support the right of > Indigenous Peoples to possess the internally-recognized right to > self-determination. We think that this official position is simply a > contemporary version of the > conquest and assimilation U.S. Indian policy of the last century. We think > that the U.S. delegation is both incorrect and morally wrong in taking > these positions, and we are asking for your help. > > Please contact the officials below and tell them that: > > * THE OFFICIAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES SHOULD BE THAT INDIGENOUS > PEOPLES MUST BE AFFORDED THE STATUS AND RECOGNITION OF ALL OTHER > PEOPLES IN THE WORLD. > > * YOU SUPPORT THE INTERNATIONAL RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION FOR ALL > INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. > > * YOU SUPPORT THE DRAFT UNITED NATIONS DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF > INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AS IT IS CURRENTLY WRITTEN, AND THAT THE UNITED > STATES GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUPPORT IT AS IS. > > * YOU BELIEVE THAT INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS SHOULD EMBRACE BOTH > INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RIGHTS, AND THAT THE U.S. SHOULD EXPAND > ITS OFFICIAL POSITION ON HUMAN RIGHTS TO REFLECT THIS. > > * TREATIES BETWEEN THE U.S. AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ARE BINDING > INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTS THAT SHOULD BE SUBJECT TO INTERPRETATION > BY IMPARTIAL INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS. > > Please communicate these messages immediately to the officials > below, and send copies of the communication and/or responses to: > NETWARRIORS (kekula > @aloha.net) > > President William J. Clinton > (202)456-1111(ph.) > (202)456-2461(fax) > president@whitehouse.gov > > Secretary Madeleine Albright > Secretary of State > (202)647-5939 (Fax) > secretary@state.gov > > Mr. Harold Koh, Asst.Secretary of State for Human Rights - > (202)647-4344(fax) > secretary@state.gov > > U.S.Mission to the UN in Geneva > tel:011-41-22-749-4111 > fax:011-41-22-749-4880. > > This position endorsed by: > American Indian Movement,Indigenous Law Institute, American Friends > Service > Committee > > > > > > ------------- End Forwarded Message ------------- > > You are receiving this from the Left Hand Books event list. To be removed > from the list contact: > frans@sopriswest.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 12:02:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carmen Butcher Subject: Jackson Pollock on "destroying the image" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit A Pollock quote I have on my desk where I write poetry, to remind me of something I find true: When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of "get acquainted" period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. Carmen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 12:36:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: irony goggles (Be Safe: Wear Them!) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII First of all, congratulations to Kent Johnson for his astute detection of delicious ironies like: males posting to the list about males posting too much! This one was so juicy it almost squirted me in the eye when I bit into it. Luckily, I was wearing my irony goggles. Also luckily, I'm not all that afraid of irony anyway--or Kent's post might seem to suggest that there is no way for males to attempt to address questions of gender inequity. This would be a convenient way of thinking, in that us males would be absolved from ever having to talk about the issue. But I'm sure this isn't what Kent would want to suggest, given the urgent interest in political and social issues he has often demonstrated in his posts. Oops--things are getting delicious again! Also, just for the record, if Henry has really left the list it's a shame, and I for one would never have wanted it to happen. As I've said front-channel and back-channel, and will say again, I've always valued a great deal of what Henry has had to say. I hope he'll come back. I've also been operating under the assumption, though, that the list wouldn't be hurt by a little self-examination, by an exploration of how to enrich the conversation, perhaps by including more voices, etc. But for some folks any suggestions along these lines seem to be interpreted as a sort of quasi-fascistic intervention into a situation (the status quo) that was somehow always already "free." This strikes me as a profoundly *conservative* reaction, even as it comes from folks who like to think of themselves as rebels and radicals. steve ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 11:41:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Left Hand Reading Series for December MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain > The Left Hand Reading Series for December proudly presents an evening of > pre-soltitial/postprandial Brilliance: > > LISA JARNOT > MARK DuCHARME > EDMUND BERRIGAN > > Thursday, December 17 @ 8:30pm at Left Hand Books > 1825 Pearl Street, Boulder, above the Crystal Market > > An Open Reading will proceed the featured readers. > > FREE - but donations are requested. > > Lisa Jarnot is the author of "Some Other Kind of Mission" and the > forthcoming "Ring of Fire" (from Zoland Books) and is co-editor of "An > Anthology of New American Poets," which was named by Publishers Weekly as > one of the best new books of the year. She is currently working on a > biography of Robert Duncan and teaching at the Naropa Institute as > visiting faculty. > > Mark DuCharme is the author of "Contracting Scale" and "Three Works." His > chapbook "Near To" is forthcoming from Poetry New York. His poetry and > essays have appeared in many journals. He has taught at the Naropa > Institute and is co-director of the Left Hand Reading Series. > > Edmund Berrigan is the author of several chapbooks of poetry and an editor > of Log magazine. He lives in San Francisco. > > "To write is to let fascination rule language." - Maurice Blanchot ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:40:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Blau DuPlessis Organization: Temple University Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dear List, as I was erasing a lot of messages, 365 piled up in a few days (cf. Big Debate, inc. gender isues [finally!], moderations, etc), I came upon and the issue of erasing. So of course, I stopped erasing, and started posting. I am interested in memory and the issues of amnesia (personal and historical). This interest is both personal (I have a bad--i.e. porous-- memory) and historical (in the twentieth century there are many attempts to obliterate groups, to erase them from the face of the earth). The trauma of amnesia and the trauma of remembering, witnessing are intertwined for me. My interest did not begin "textually" (that is solely as a question of rhetoric, representation, or formal interests) tho it takes shape textually. There is (for me) no sense of textuality as a value in a vacuum; making texts, and alluding to textual stuff (like black pages, or glosses) is absolutely linked to depths of ethical and social and poetic feeling. I don't know whether this is totally clear. I am a little wary of putting my own poems up here, but the following, for those who want to read it, might be germane. From Draft 17: Unnamed (in _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_) The first 11 lines are cited and italicized. She stood at the pit where, this 50 years, 155 Jews were shot. There, near a field of rye, she'd found dozens of notes and addresses tossed away moments before their deaths. To this day, she regrets that, out of fear, She did not pick them up. The poetics seems plain. Since then there ar many people spend their time picking up the notes. But they are not there. They are as gone as possible to be. So the gathering is imposible. But still the shapes are bowed, and search this otherwhere of here. Yet had they actually been there that time being remembered, it is equally possible they too would have left all of them where they lay. (the poem continues; but this is what I will post) ========================= Rachel Blau DuPlessis Temple University Philadelphia, PA 19122 215-204-1810 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 14:35:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: juliana spahr Subject: why I am not a reader of the poetics list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is my confession. I can't read poetics list anymore. I have a shortage of time in my life. I have a loss of patience. I am a girl and it feels like it isn't a friendly place for girls. In fact, some days it feels like it is only friendly to white men. I know I generalize. That is why I use the word feel. But what I mean to write here is why I am sad about the poetics list. I like to buy books. I like to send money to small presses and get things made by hand back. I like to read these and then put these in my bookshelves. They bring me comfort at faculty meetings where it is said that younger people do this or don't do that and and thus they should all be punished. Or they give me something to read on long airplane trips back to the contiguous 48. But because I can't read poetics list I can't get all the good announcements of books to buy. At one point, years ago, someone, was it Marjorie?, suggested that the poetics list be a place of announcements only. This was protested. I myself wasn't so sure it was a good idea. But might it not be time to reconsider this? There are various ways now that one can set up one's own list for free. And those that have lifestyles that allow them to read a lot and post a lot and feel like the place is friendly for them and like to post a lot, well they should be posting a lot. Isn't that the right of boundless opportunity of electronic and consumer society? But maybe they should be doing this with those that like to read a lot of postings on a list set up for this. The high post poetics list say? Or it might good now to have total listserve anarchy and for there to no longer be a central convesation but rather for there to be the creation of self-governing, special interest lists. And then the poetics list could be the announcement of readings list. Really I would like it to be the call for work, the announcement of readings, the I published this, the order this, the does anyone know where this quotation is from, and the brief review of something I read recently list. With maybe around 5-6 posts per day. Or in my utopia there would be no conversation. No I agree or I disagree. No so and so is stupid. All that would go on the adjunct list for day to day conversation or the one for good general loving conversation or the one for many posts per day conversation or the one for attacking conversation among those who have the wonderful luxury of time or the better abilities of efficiency than me. I don't know. I just makes me sad that this list, which is a huge, and perhaps only, information resource, is something that I can't do or that feels hostile. I miss the old days. With kindness and loving and trying not to be insulting, Juliana Spahr ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:46:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: items eye polite dangers and other softnesses Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" time atoms heavenlyweight reefer lexicon feathery quill tonal recall list: leathery queue will/shall until still the elements and things of maya evenly weighted Ur's the her's day skat ladle moon re: fire spray doubt 'n' co-up-links lead car what sin spiral channel recall a vital verbidity something about the taste a chilly little riddle lick dis'n the world as a hole info-host cavity propulsion unit t' self-untie unity divine my destined candy mass tick-up tea cup hiccupsphere even further hidden class dis t' ink shut-ins writ all out plain 'n' ample sample up here to disappear down there derive pie lonesome displacement by one t' be the cave-sinner preywrist addition edition on wedding day in favorable write nuffin' tear rhyme wit ear-leering works fray blown t' melt a physical entrances upon the lathery pre-take off spiralling off somewhere the recipient of mail domination: subject: energy depletion flawprof points of inflammation shot with sugar brainstream of the very clearest words some planet screen Shadow Town valves via sedentary entrances hisses t' rue careerest works the act of joining taken to some other field location so as not to prematurely disturb or truncate current spaces these for emphasis apt laws 'n' modern spice re-braining t' trance fire imprunity ticklinkly gun sitter link-time daily is a name rotational report on our lather sensuous mutual versations/verse-actions hastily t' Lola way one zone leaf a gloss o' tea plays all rougher me gentle swayin' easy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 12:49:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Concerns MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT List companions: Charles Bernstein posted me b-c in response to my message yesterday about the posting wars. Below is my response to him. Because a later message from him this AM suggests he misunderstood the concerns I was trying to express in my reply to him below, and because I think the issues involved are very important (Henry Gould's apparent quitting of the List shows that the issues are, indeed, important), I thought I would share my letter to Charles. I don't do this lightly, nor do I presume, even, that most people on the List wish to discuss the controversy any further. There seems to be an understandable desire to move on and to "get back to the way things were." But I do feel that there are some things that have been left unsaid in all of this, and unless they are fully and honestly discussed, things will never really be "the way they were," at least as I have come to understand and love the spirit of this List. So as someone who has been quite active on this space over the past couple of years and and as someone who feels grateful for the deep enjoyment and _true education_ that activity has provided, I feel compelled to say a few things, realizing tht doing so may well perhaps lead to my own leaving of the List. I wrote in a post yesterday (the one with the barely believable title "My one post for December"), that the real issue in this whole affair has nothing to do with numbers as the consensus has painted it. If it did, then why not just cut people off after the alloted five posts, or reduce the daily limit for everyone to provide more space? Or how could it really have to do with numbers if, as I pointed out, Henry-- poster numero uno-- averaged only a fraction more than one post per day for the whole month of November. He and Gabe Gudding-- Gudding at number three with the most posts-- have been told (and I ask to be corrected if I'm wrong), that their posts are to now be reviewed and judged before they may appear. But I, _as poster number two_, have been forewarned of nothing and have been reassured by Charles that no one has made a move to do so. All of these things put together only reaffirm for me the unpleasant and fairly obvious truth that no one seems willing to frankly discuss: That what has given rise to this whole affair is a somehow unwelcome _content_ in the sometimes biting, even, yes, iconoclastic, posts of Gould and Gudding-- a contentious content that is being "corrected" (and with the apparent acquiescence or direct approval of many on this List) through ideological monitoring and outright censorship. And I choose my terms so as to call a spade a spade. I'm frankly stunned by this development. And I reject the argument that this is merely a matter of excercising an unfortunate but sometimes needed control for the benefit of the greater community. Yes, there would certainly be bizarre situations that would warrant such action, but no one has expalined _what it is_ about Gould and Gudding's posts that would warrant this turn of events. I, for one, as a member of the List, truly grateful, as I make clear below, for all of Charles's vision and work in makeing this space possible in the first place, do not want to be--cannot bring myself to be-- part of a "community" that has drawn an unacknowledged but very real invisible shock fence around it-- especially of a community that exists to discuss, quarrel, and _collectively_ search this unbounded and always opening subject of poetry. I want to make absolutely clear that in stating these concerns I am in no way impugning "bad" motives to anyone. Let me be clearer at the risk of seeming maudlin: I have a sense of debt to Cahrles Bernstein, though he doesn't know it, not only out of tahnks for his efforts on this List but also in the sense that I have learned much from his thought in poetics, as I have from a number of other peopel on this List. I'm even granting Charles the best of intentions in his actions. But I do think there is an unacknowledged "political unconscious" at work in the moves to "exercise control" of the List, think that those moves are unfortunate ones, and I'm not going to let any gratitude and indebtedness I might feel keep me from saying what I think. If peopel _would_ say what they really think about this matter THEN the List can truly get back to the way it was, and perhaps, even, a person valuable to the rich heteroglossia of our conversation like Henry will come back. I hope so anyway. Kent ------- Forwarded Message Follows -------From: Self To: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: yr post to Poetics Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 17:34:39 -0500 Charles: No, no one has asked me to reduce my postings, but I have to wonder why, since in the past couple of months I have posted almost as much as Henry and more than Gabe Gudding. In expressing your concern that the List had recently been topping out at 50, your post to everyone suggested that the issue was numbers, and the crisis-like disussion has indeed focused on that as the "problem." And so this frankly leads me to feel, especially following Ron's smoke 'em out tally, that most of those expressing concern must well have had me in mind as one of the "troublemakers." My own concern (and I know it is shared by others) is that the numbers really have very little to do with this and that what underlies the brouhaha is an impatience on the part of some with the stubborn and feisty voicing of positions that counter the dominant "aesthetic politics" of the List. It should be reaffirmed, and clearly, I think, that people on the List can argue for any kind of Poetics they want to. Ove rthe past year or so that has been the case, wiht Henry adding much of the exotic spice, and _in part_ because of that this List has been a great place to be, a big renga-house to wander and think and learn within. Most recently, Gabe Gudding's hilarious and sometimes biting rants were a perfectly healthy thing for the List, whcih I consider to be a wonderful, wonderful thing, and for which I, like everyone, am very grateful to you. Please take the above, then, as an honestly felt critique of your (surprising, to me) intervention into the controversy (which was _really_ sparked, I feel, by Gudding's cheekiness contra Perloff), and understand that it is offered in appreciation for the tremendous effort over the years that you have given to make this space exist in the first place. But I think it would have been best to simply let things ride-- and it would be best, in my humble opinion, to not step-up any kind of level of "supervision." Sincerely, Kent ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:11:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: readings at the Poetry Project Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Hi Everybody, The readings at the Poetry Project this week are: Ange Mlinko & Lee Harwood on Wednesday, December 9th at 8 pm This is a very rare stateside appearance for Lee Harwood, who has just published his first full-length collection in many years, _Morning Light_. Jaywalking Blues: d.a. levy Lives on Friday, Dec. 11th at 10:30 pm with Edward Sanders, Mike Golden, and others. Robert Bove and Janice Lowe on Monday, Dec. 8th at 8 pm Mitch Highfill & Ed Roberson on Wednesday, Dec. 16th at 8 pm AND Not Home for the Holidays--Dysfunctional Family Stories with Todd Colby, Sarah Schulman, Bonny Finberg, Taylor Mead and Hal Sirowitz on Friday, Dec. 18th at 10:30 pm That will be our last reading before the 25th Annual New Year's Day Marathon Reading on JANUARY 1ST, starting at 2 pm (Patti Smith, Eric Bogosian & Cecil Taylor are some of the headliners) For information, call 674-0910. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 16:30:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: Auster Studies In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jim Bennett and George Thompson asked for any resources on Paul Auster's poetry. I dug through bibliographic sources -- most of which is in French or German. In fact, it's quite startling and disturbing to see the reception and commentary Auster receives in Europe and how relatively ignored he is in the US. I found only one article about his poetry: "In the Realm of the Naked Eye: The Poetry of Paul Auster" by Norman Finkelstein in the collection of esays on Auster's work, Beyond the Red Notebook (Phil: U of Penn, 1995). Of course, most of his work is fiction (and now film), so the paucity of criticism on his poetry has some explanation. But, given the questions of poetics he addresses (such as the erasure discusion going on right now), his fiction and poetry should be receiving far more attention than it has. This may be one instance where "academic" or more scholarly consideration is far behind other venues. Perhaps other folks know more and can share.. Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:18:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: God Bless the Tumors, the Boils and the Blisters Comments: To: Mairead Byrne In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "You are impertinent, they said to me. I'm not impertinent, I said: I'm lost." -- Brecht, "Emigrant's Lament" I was going to reserve this 30 min's of freetime tht I now have for posting a few more thoughts on the THEORY OF SLAPSTICK POETICS. But the news of Henry's departure has so saddened me I am moved to write a meta-poetics commentary. The little backchanneling of late that CB and I have done is I think fairly summed up by the above quote. Some have said CB is killing an essential part of this list with his interventions. I have even gone so far as jokingly to call CB a controlling prig. One or two of us have however gone on to compliment CB on his open-minded and fair attitude (I am one of these). I compliment CB on his open mind. Then some have come on and wrongly and scathingly denounced CB as a pompous, washed-up, control-freak who has chained letters to an outdated linguistic ideology and is someone unwilling to face the literary reality that little if any true BRISANCE can be found among the work of those who subscribe to this ideology and that his over-editing of this list's tone and content in order that no one malign this ideology is bruising the fruit of the orchard that is this list, thereby reducing its boinky of bounty. But I think that's more than unfair and possibly grossly inaccurate. Some have even insisted that this list now be killed off in the name of all that is decent, just, fair, true, wise, excellent, healthy, progressive, non-tv-oriented, and ecologically sound. But I am not one of these. I love this list and its boinky of bounty. But already I miss Henry. Some -- not I -- wrote in saying CB was a mistake, a literary accident, a flash-in-the-pan turned into a slightly-lingering coruscation-in-the-air and soon to blip into a retinal after-image on the disco-floor of letters (and whoever wrote THAT obviously had no sense of when enough is enough.) AGAIN, I am not one of these: I enjoy his work. It is important. Besides, this is everyone's fate. Some have said it is quite plain CB's muzzling of Gould & yrs truly had little to do with volume and more to do with content -- perhaps GG's subject lines might indicate something here: "Ross Feld on Bernstein," "Bernstein and The Avant-Bored," "Bernstein Better a Haberdasher," "Marjorie Perloff is Wrong" etc etc. All of which is irrelevant, unless of course someone says different. Despite my subject lines, I don't stand with these people: I have thanked CB both publically and privately for his open-mindedness, Indeed I am the _Boyuna_ the harmless snake of Ceylon. Some have even forgodsake written in impotently flaming that in the name of all that keeps our lungs pink CB should forthwith be removed post-haste like Pinsky from his poet-post, since he never deserved it in the first place these people are beneath contempt icky icky. They are sciolists and nothing more. But let us forgive these people. They are only a little LOST in their thinking. And afterall, what is an avant-garde but a group of artists dedicated to being lost? WITH WHOM THEN DO I STAND? With my fellow lost, of course. MY AFFILIATIONS ARE WITH THOSE WHOSE IDEALS MATCH THOSE MENTIONED IN THE WELCOME MESSAGE OF THIS LIST. Despite many of their foibles, these Lost have much to say: a great deal of it is said in disagreement, with varying tone, with wild conjecture, with blicky froth of death, with mild I-would-hit-you's and with rash I-Hate-You-I-Hit-You's. In the words of the sage, It's all good. Let's suffer our mutual foibles (enervating and annoying though they be) for the sake of our many fruits. With whom then do I stand? The lost. Not the found or the well-housed; not the comfortable. And certainly not with the well-behaved. Be wise and write well. Warmly, Gabe [[ps, and when that editor at Gladhanding U Quarterly Journal writes you and says "I like everything about your poem but THE TONE, just wanna change a few things and then I'll publish it," would you think twice about saying "Puh, no thank you"? I'm sure Mairead Byrne wouldn't, Henry wouldn't. And Bernstein wouldn't, that's for sure. God bless this list and its boinky of bounty: God bless Charles and Joel! God bless Henry Gould! & since nonymity is what it's all about: A pubic and wholehearted thankyou to Henry, Joel, Charles, Mairead, Elliza and Eliza, Steve Shoemaker, Joe's Amato & Brennen, Callow Parcelli, KENT JOHNSON, George Thompson, Billy Little, oh and Marjorie Perloff & others for hashing this out. Now: who's got henry's ph #? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 21:33:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: ATTENTION KEVIN AND DODIE--- In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Could one of you (or both of you) backchannel me? thanks, chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 19:59:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Note on the Indo-European origins of Gabe Gudding's game Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gabe Gudding and I have been talking off-list about the history of "insultive traditions". Since I am aware of such traditions in old Indo-European at least, I thought that some of the list might be interested to know that there is a kind of long intellectual background to what GG has been doing on this list. An Old Irish poet [a fili, a 'seer'], for example, if you annoyed him enough, could curse, mock, revile, or 'insult' you. And you would become shamed, or disgraced, or even disfigured, as a result. You might even die of shame, if the poet were a really good one in this genre. We call it blame poetry these days. I wonder if anyone on this list has suffered any disfigurement, etc., lately. Maybe it would be interesting to consider Gabe's game in light of Old English 'flyting' [see OED 'flite, flyte'], or the Old Norse verbal duels that Loki, among the gods, was fond of. You could also check out "The Contest of Homer and Hesiod" [or, even better, the BATRAXOMYOMAXIA, 'The Battle of the Frogs and Mice']. Or, on a more perssonal note, look at what happened when Archilochus trashed Lycambes [L. and his three daughters unfortunately committed suicide, so they say]. Walter Ong has been mentioned on this list in the past. He is the Jesuit who has been interested in oral literature and oral consciousness since the sixties, and has written some books that many on the list know about [*Presence of the Word*, *Interfaces of the Word*, *Orality and Literacy*, and something called *Fighting For Life: Contest, Sexuality and Consciousness*]. In this last one Ong examines the agonistic roots of culture [esp. male culture], and claims that oral literature is predominantly agonistic, that academic culture is predominantly agonistic, and that intellectual culture in general is predominantly agonistic. Hard to argue with him, given our own experience. Isn't poetic culture predominantly agonistic too? I don't know if this is a cultural universal. In general, I don't trust claims of cultural universality. But in any case this list's behavior seems to confirm Ong's thesis, as does my familiarity with Vedic culture and literature. May I trouble the list with one more example, this time from Vedic literature? [Please erase this if you please; erasure is interesting too, to be sure...]. People tend to think of the Vedas as populated by wise or vacant swamis and yogis, or chanting brahmins pouring smoking ghee into midnight fires. Well, there's some of that in them. But there is a surprising lot also of what Gabe calls "insultive tradition." Now the Vedic horse sacrifice, which I do believe tells us more about ourselves than the Pisan Cantos do [no, I don't know why], has many interesting features which I'm sure the list would enjoy [Bowering and Bromige in particular, but let's not go there]. But I will confine myself to the insults that are exchanged between the brahmins on the one hand and the chief queens on the other [an exchange that immdiately follows the riddling that frames the central mystery of this Vedic "Mass": the sacrifice of the horse]. I won't get into what the horse and the chief queen do, though that is in fact what triggers the insults that follow. The brahmins proceed to insult the queens by calling tauntingly to the queens' little tweetees [literally: little birds]., and the queens respond to this taunting by insulting the size of the brahmins' little peckers [literally again: little birds]. Well, a whole lot of indiscriminate insulting, of a shockingly graphic sexual kind, ensues, [including the suggestion, made by the guy who has sponsored the whole damned expensive sacrifice, the king himself, that the queen should be buggered by his proxy, the horse...]. Makes you want to convert to Buddhism. Well, in the end, or up the rear, the point is this: according to the Vedas, "insulting speeches are for all kinds of attainment, for through the horse sacrifice all desires are achieved..." So what has Gabe attained? I don't know. But you're supposed to end the Vedic horse sacrifice with some sweet smelling verses, in order to propitiate those who have been offended [i.e., the gods]. And Gabe I think has done things as prescribed in the Vedas, after all. So, why has Henry Gould been sacrificed as well? There seems to me to be no need for this, since all of the *correct* insulting has already been accomplished, and, after all, it was only a ritual. The ritual is supposed to protect us from the real.... what has happened here? GT ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 13:27:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Eileen Myles . Kenneth Koch . Poetry City MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Eileen Myles and Kenneth Koch will read from their work this Thursday night December 10 at 7 pm at Poetry City in the offices of Teachers & Writers Collaborative 5 Union Square West in New York The reading will be free will you? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 15:08:31 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Re: Anne Waldman Archive MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit John Latta wrote: > > I thought some may be interested to know that the Special Collections > Library at the University of Michigan just acquired the papers of Anne > Waldman, john, do you know anything more about this special collection, what other kind of works are in it, & in particular a contact address? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 15:59:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ramez Qureshi Subject: erasing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Another instance of this sort of thing in Cage is his _Empty Words_, in which he subjects a Thoreau text to random I-Ching operations. -RQ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:57:47 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: The Martyrology of St. Henry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit to charles & joel & the players feels to me like the silence & confusion imposed upon the list comes from a lot of wondering from all of us "am I to be censured, scolded, moderated next?" beyond the question of whether st henry or st gabe or st kent conformed to some mysterious preconception of list ettiquette, is a need as a reader to want to build a faith & trust among this written community so that what we say is supported & given chance to rise about the ordinary, to be more than digit noise in the cathode fantasy. my understanding of such establishing of trust includes having available to us the microscopic truth of what the saint fuck is going on, that moderation & the wizard behind the curtain is exposed & made visible, so that we can put a stop to wondering if we are are the next target & speaking personally, Im prompted to jump into this for a moment, not because Im paranoid, but because this textual wilderness comes with responsibilities & accounting, which would seems to me to be relevant to the list as a whole, not just the select few who are closest to the editorial closet truly the undersigned st and the impaired ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 03:27:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: boo-boo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII == boo-boo When I die, I want to take you with me, I want to take ten of the ten, and fifteen of the fifteen, And I will wear the dreary blue-blue you have given me - There will be one atom left, to placate the dreary vacuum, One molecule grappled by cell-counts sloughed and scrambled, Tissue rent asunder, organs corroded, soul's debris abandoned - And I will wear the blue-blue, I will wear the overcoat and ring, Carnelion round my neck, magnetite across my throat, and singing - Your name - as I am torn asunder, the fifteen dreary words, The ten lost and forlorn colors, the fifteen dying notes, The ten corroded sites - you Blue-Blue, wear my overcoat - You Blue-Blue wear my ring - placate my death with dreary yours - What a vacuum here, and souls of dying atoms split asunder Stumble just beneath you Blue-Blue, taking me abandoned - _____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:59:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Concerns In-Reply-To: <84C4F5B0178@student.highland.cc.il.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well now we have two posts---juliana's and kent's---which in many ways are oppositionally aligned, insofar as their approach to the "content" of this list goes (what it should be, whether it should be controlled in any way, etc.)... i suppose i don't have to note, as well, that juliana is a woman (a fact re which she makes direct reference) and kent is a man... i'm reminded of the fascist vs. anarchist debates in italy... only reminded though... one additional issue that needs to be brought to the fore here: one of the reasons we're struggling of late is that this medium has brought us all together in some unprecedented ways... yes, the issue of medium---i won't belabor it here, but the public-private dimension of this list constitutes in some ways a direct challenge to print practices, incl. perhaps the editorial function that charles is trying, in my view is trying at some pains, to institute (and i'm not "accusing" or "blaming" charles here---i've no doubt he's doing his best)... we're stuck (in the sense i long ago came to appreciate via pirsig's _zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance_), and the only way out of our stuckness, i think, will be to find a way to make for infrequent, real-time, up-front moderation (much as self-moderation/regulation currently works in collective terms)... but i'll leave it to charles, as listowner, to listen to what we're all busy telling him (front & backchannel) and weigh in here with what he thinks we can/should/might/oughtta do... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 16:34:24 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Your segue into your poetics, to my mind, is perfectly legitimate. If your brief theoretical disquisition seems somewhat forced in order to conform to the set of preceding posts, well, then we've all done that from time to time in order to be a part of one discussion or another. Your subject matter is beyond reproach even if your aesthetic does not conform to the fundamental bias of this list.---Carlo Parcelli Rachel Blau DuPlessis wrote: > > Dear List, as I was erasing a lot of messages, 365 piled up in a few > days (cf. Big Debate, inc. gender isues [finally!], moderations, > etc), I came upon and the issue of erasing. So of course, I > stopped erasing, and started posting. I am interested in memory and > the issues of amnesia (personal and historical). This interest is > both personal (I have a bad--i.e. porous-- memory) and historical (in > the twentieth century there are many attempts to obliterate groups, > to erase them from the face of the earth). The trauma of amnesia and > the trauma of remembering, witnessing are intertwined for me. My > interest did not begin "textually" (that is solely as a question of > rhetoric, representation, or formal interests) tho it takes shape > textually. There is (for me) no sense of textuality as a value in a > vacuum; making texts, and alluding to textual stuff (like black > pages, or glosses) is absolutely linked to depths of ethical and > social and poetic feeling. I don't know whether this is totally > clear. I am a little wary of putting my own poems up here, but the > following, for those who want to read it, might be germane. From > Draft 17: Unnamed (in _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_) The first 11 lines > are cited and italicized. > She stood at the pit > where, this 50 years, > > 155 Jews were shot. > There, near a field of rye, > she'd found dozens of notes and addresses > > tossed away > moments before their deaths. > To this day, > > she regrets > that, out of fear, > She did not pick them up. > > The poetics seems plain. > Since then > there ar many people spend their time > > picking up the notes. > But they are not there. > They are as gone as possible to be. > > So the gathering > is imposible. > But still the shapes are bowed, > > and search > this otherwhere of here. > Yet had they actually > > been there > that time > being remembered, > > it is equally possible > they too would have left > all of them where they lay. > > (the poem continues; but this is what I will post) > ========================= > Rachel Blau DuPlessis > Temple University > Philadelphia, PA 19122 > 215-204-1810 -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:52:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: poetry reading in D.C. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII We hope that you can join us for a poetry reading on Saturday, December 12 at 7:30 p.m. at the Ruthless Grip Art Project (1508 U Street NW, on U Street near the corner of 15th, beside the big black sign!) for a poetry reading by LISA SAMUELS and ROD SMITH. Much to the amazement of everybody who noticed it here in D.C., LISA SAMUELS' first book-length collection of poems, SEVEN VOICES (O Books) received a glowing (if short) review recently in the Washington Post, making it pretty much the first non-mainstream poetry collection ever to be reviewed in the Post, as far as anyone around here seems to know. But everybody should read the book anyway! Sophisticated and philosophical, SEVEN VOICES offers a highly theoretical, yet still emotionally engaged, look at the contemporary condition of language and the world that language both makes and can't quite find. ROD SMITH is the author of a number of books of poetry, including IN MEMORY OF MY THEORIES (O Books) and THE BOY POEMS (Buck Downs Books). He is also the editor of AERIAL magazine, whose forthcoming issue on the work of Bruce Andrews forms the backdrop of an interchange between Rod and Bruce in the most recent issue of PHILLY TALKS. Once called by Connie Deanovich a "New York School Poet in Language Poetry clothing," Rod's work is actually far more unique and surprising than such a label suggests--but it's still a pretty funny thing to say, anyway. We hope to see you there and for all festivities afterwards. /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 01:31:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo In-Reply-To: <199812080503.AAA32610@smtp4.fas.harvard.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm sorry to hear the Henry Gould has left the list; I've had my fair share of conflicts with him, and, even when I'd been lurking and disengaged from most of the debates on the list, I still welcomed his voice. Have been reading Lyn Hejinian's _The Cold of Poetry_, which is my first real forary into the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. I'm working on a feature for the arts magazine here on "metaphysical" poets (beginning with Eliot's notion in his lectures), and the piece has been widening its scope step by step until I decided that one useful thing I might do is try to bring a writer (Lyn) into the discussions that happen around the campus, which usually center around a resolute conservative position. The basic idea -- that much of what is considered poetry today is a simple concatenation of aphorisms about suburban life, sometimes widened into a "multicultural" domain. I began considering the piece when I realized the strange dead feeling that came over me when I read so much of the "approved" poetry of recent years; once upon a time, reading opened avenues into new experience. Now, so much of what is written seems to be a series of anguished reworkings of what is always around. Reading the _Cold of Poetry_, I realized how much I had been missing simply because I had "gotten too good" at reading, say, the Confessionals -- which is partly my fault, but partly, I think, theirs. In other news: I'm beginning the ground work for a paper on notions of beauty in an urban context (it's actually for Elaine Scarry's class that came up for discussion here a few days ago). Is there anybody on the list that can point to some interesting works on urban space? There is, unfortunately, so much bad work out there in this field that I feel I need a Virgil to guide me to useful starting points. -- Simon sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 11:53:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: call me morbid call me pale Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" I was wondering if anyone could, in public or in private, explain to me what exactly the "Abstract French Lyric" or the "French Abstract Lyric" is? I hear rumors of its existence, but no one has ever grabbed me by the waist & pointed one out. Anselm Berrigan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 05:54:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: erased MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit i find it a sad commentary on the state of this list that we get Rachel Blau DuPlessis out of her erasing-frenzy to respond to a thread with some serious potential, and yet, not one post in reply. Perhaps we should have another round of "Free Henry"-- as that seems to be what keeps people going around here. I would like to cite a passage from Rachel's post and throw it back into the mix, as I think it warrants further attention: "... The trauma of amnesia and the trauma of remembering, witnessing are intertwined for me. My interest did not begin "textually" (that is solely as a question of rhetoric, representation, or formal interests) tho it takes shape textually. There is (for me) no sense of textuality as a value in a vacuum; making texts, and alluding to textual stuff (like black pages, or glosses) is absolutely linked to depths of ethical and social and poetic feeling." it would be good to hear further elaboration as to what is meant by this statement. Obviously we don't live in isolation, nor in a vacuum. I would be curious to hear of instances of poetic value which assert themselves as such-- i.e. as without regard to externalia in this day and age; and perhaps more importantly, how do the various poets and/or critics on this list see/ or solve the issues raised by questions of erasure. I am thinking, initially, of Susan Howe's *Eikon Basilike* and the resolution of such by "making the dead walk again" ... more from Rachel, whose work on Susan and others has been at the fore, would be much appreciated... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 20:18:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: non-po reading In-Reply-To: <199812051554.KAA24954@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm a little behind the eight ball on this one, what with all my demanding but oh so rewarding work on the Rules Committee. But I love the list when it lists, and listens. Dodie Bellamy--Letters of Mina Harker. Picked this up as a result of all the glowing recommendations from various listmembers. And it does glow, like a radioactive isotope. Nicholson Baker--The Size of Thoughts, Essays and other Lumber. Baker is a bit wonkish sometimes but also brilliant, funny, & one of the master practictioners of the sentence writing today (though maybe not the *new* sentence). Of special interest to list-types are two wonderful essays, one on the history of punctuation and another on the demise of the card catalog system. I went into the latter essay thinking about how the old card catalogs always gave me a stiff neck, and remembering that you couldn't log in from home back in the days, but B. makes a damn good case that the destruction of these catalogs to make way for on-line systems has been an atrocity. (He's not saying we shouldn't have gone on-line, but he's pissed that libraries simply dumped & destroyed the old catalogs, and he points out both some lost virtues of the old system and some serious flaws in the new one. Might consider this one under the "erasure" thread.) Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela--The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Weird neurobiologists from Chile. The O. Henry Awards Prize Stories, Best of 1997. The Prize Jury for this one was Louise Erdrich, Thom Jones, & David Foster Wallace. Some too-familiar formulas here & there, but also some pretty good stories, including the first-prize winner by Mary Gordon, and one that made it in from Conjunctions by Rick Moody. I hadn't known either of these writers, but it says in the back that Moody wrote the novel The Ice Storm. I'm assuming that this is the novel the movie was based on, but don't know for sure. Anyway, I liked the movie--anyone read the book? steve ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:42:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris McCreary Subject: a modest proposal Comments: cc: js@LAVA.NET Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit This is in response to Juliana Spahr's tentative suggestion that the list could possibly become a more restricted forum limited to the posting of announcements, etc. I'd just like to point out that that's all most of us are apparently on the list for, anyway. I know that my life became much easier once I started deleting every message that didn't have the word "announcement" in its subject line or wasn't written by someone who I know &/or whose opinions interest me. I'm sure that I've missed an interesting thread or two, but I consider the trade off to be worthwhile there. Maybe folks announcing a reading, publication, or whatever could be sure that the subject line for their message reflects this-- that way, those of us who don't read each & every message would still know to actually read the announcement... Despite Mom's advice, ignoring the schoolyard bully didn't always work-- they could still push you in the mud puddle & take your lunch money. Here, though, the power is all in your "delete" command... use it wisely & use it often. & remember, when it comes to the temptation to read the messages from the pompous blowhards that you love to hate, just say no. --Chris McCreary ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 20:05:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Wilson Subject: Re: Erasing Erasure as both a poetic and a personal concern: There was a time in my writing when i wanted to pare down to the single luminous statement, to let the writing serve as much as a mark for what wasn't said or understood as for what was. I was influenced in this i think both by a sort of mystical catholic heritage, in which writing felt like a gestural ritual to evoke grace, pain, mystery, (but also a sort of domination and control), and by my thin adolescent knowledge of eastern writing, which seemed to me then to deal much with evanescence, the sparsity and insufficiency (and wonder) of our perceptions and of the thingness of things. Later i began to feel that it was more true to my own hyperactive, compulsively descriptive and analytical personality (a product of the culture i really grew in) to be more expansive, to catalogue and imagine via language how much muchness seemed to be, that the sparseness i was fascinated by was interior, more a product of how little i knew - being a writer seemed to imply facing some overwhelmingly indefinite variability. Today, it doesn't seem to me to be a choice between, as Pierre put it, fullness/unfolding and erasure/minimalism. It's the interplay of the two - which i think Rachel's work in the Drafts displays quite powerfully. Erasure as the outside (and other) to the folding and unfolding. Because erasure - loss - forgetting - elimination - is both dangerous and necessary. Erasure refers to the huge pit of absence that an event like the holocaust opens in history. Erasure is also a hazard to be faced - denial, forgetting, loss of history. But it is also true to the process of letting go of, for instance, prejudice or other sick habits of thought, confining codes, errors, the crippling power of trauma. Reinventing the self (and the social, and their respective languages), so necessary to continuance, involves selective forgetting. Much of what we do in poetry now, i think, is to represent such processes of transformation, loss and gain, but always in flux. Modernism's forward-thrust (make-it-new revolution, extincting the old) has given way to a spiral. (Not that this is unprecedented - Stevens' poem as act of the mind, ye olde stream-of-consciousness etc.) Many of us work on non-linear models to call up the ways that thought, perspective, representation, articulation double back on themselves, forget some things, repeat and recall others, bog down, calm down, agitate again, bifurcate, split, mark, break, erase, write. Little of interest is happening in still-lifes, static judgments. Yet we are haunted by those erasures, their smudges and tears. If it's all transformation, how do we judge our responsibilities (and ethical choices). Where does the forgotten go? How much of the etymology and how many past uses of a word lurk under its apparent surface and sound? The unspeakability of that haunting interrupts our accounts of interruption, pins them to their tracks, demands its own recognition. The mention of Retallack's ai/d/sappearance - alphabetic subtraction - also reminds of the Oulipo lipograms, esp. Perec's La disparition or (in English) A Void, in which the erased letter (E) from the vocabulary of the book also becomes the central point of the plot - everyone is looking for the thing that has been erased. While Perec is comic about it, mostly, the seriousness of the theme for Perec in postwar France is fairly evident. These seem inescapable writing issues, but Rachel's quite right I think to note this as a particularly end-of-this-century urgency. I'm curious how this approach to erasure, at least in tone, might change in 10 or 20 years. carl patrick wilson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 16:11:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: (no subject) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit this morning I heard, sadly, that henry gould had called it quits, and now kent johnson b/c me to say that several posts that he and gabriel gudding have sent to the list have thus far not appeared. just as a matter of information, are any, or all messages submitted to the list being monitored prior to publication? joe brennan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:00:02 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: under and over erasure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII It seems to me folks have pinpointed TWO levels of erasure, in responding to Joanna's challenge... 1. erasure being mentioned, and woven, as an image/conceptual nexus, into a poem; 2. the absence of words from blocks of space in the poem, as a formal and structural dimension of the writing; ...the first seems exemplified by the passages from the Drafts Joanna quotes; the second by the Tablets, as someone mentioned. Then there was the poem by David Antin, whose form was skywriting. Which brings up an interesting point. I agree with a very early response to JF, which mentioned the overwhelming universe of clotted and crowded information/data/bricolage that characterizes contemporary subjective experience....As tho poets were trying to clear away space, to speak (to breathe!); but also as if they were apprehending the crush of info overload and noise, as itself a form of erasure: things fail to cohere and are in effect lost because of the overburden of hyperactive and disconnected "meanings." But there's another source for erasing, which is a philosophical concern with the reality of things, of activities, of poetry, of ideas. This was part of Antin's motivation, i would say. I think that poets who have been influenced to some degree by Buddhistic and similar traditions, would be among those interested in erasure: like the disappearing of the mind when it realizes its own nonreality, in Buddhism, Taoism, etc. ...the achievement of nonself. Unfortunately, i don't recall offhand a use of erasing modalities (of either type) in the poets i know and like best, who were influenced by these traditions: Mac Low, Cage. Kent Johnson might wish to speak to the general topic of Buddhism-influenced poets and erasure (if i had read his magnificent anthology as closely as it deserves, maybe i could come up with more) The Atlanta poet John Lowther has spent time living in Asia, in part to encounter and study these Eastern traditions. He also counts Mac Low and Cage (as well as Antin) among his primary interests and influences...He has a long work in which he used Duchamp's random generated forms, called "stoppages," to **erase** sections of prose from a number of books on Duchamp's life and work....These are further worked, and the result is a sequence of poems shaped and formed by useing *exclusion* or erasure as **the primary poetic technique**, in a sense. Some of this work has just now appeared in Kenning 3. More is going to appear soon in Misc. Proj. Mark P. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 20:35:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: f.y.i. (ho-ho) Comments: cc: cdalonzo@eden.rutgers.edu, foley_5@aol.com, ath6645@mindspring.com, hayes430@aol.com, eholzer@dejanews.com, AbuFehmi@aol.com, anord@interactive.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** Canada co. pulls Jesus cellular ad RED DEER, Alberta (AP) - An Alberta telephone company pulled a TV ad featuring one of the Three Wise Men pitching cell phones to the baby Jesus after receiving about 100 complaints. "We felt people felt strongly about this religious issue and that it would be better to withdraw the ads," said Arnie Stephens, vice president of marketing for Telus Mobility, the company that canceled the ad Friday. The commercial featured two of the Wise Men offering frankincense and myrrh to a figure off-camera, presumably Jesus. Instead of offering gold, the third Wise Man offers a deal on the phone company's prepaid cell-phone plan. "We expected we would get some calls," Stephens said. "The intensity of the feelings, that's something new to us." ### ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:00:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Amy King Subject: Rachel raises a good point: She Speaks of Poetry Comments: To: levitsk@ibm.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am not so much pissed for I do not mind the contention but being young and lazy with books I would like to read more about poetics and poetry but Poetics not only describes behavior between poets The poets like to show what they know as well as what they feel Sometimes you put your neck out in the world in text and ex-pect (or ate) it to come back. Rachel, I don't think this is solely a "girl" thing as suggested of intimidation tho some of it but it is a community (person/s) that comes with communal dynamics including checks and balances, desires/endeavors/skeletons, never clear cut, fluxuating though topics creep up and die (deleting ...) This one wins this time tho for a Tirade, a long one and yes, I wish it would move on a bit, not back, so I can lurk and learn and hear poets talk about other poet products and one day speak. Thanks Rachel. -----Original Message----- From: Rachel Levitsky To: Amy King Date: Tuesday, December 08, 1998 1:13 PM Subject: Re: why Peter Ganick cannot think... a listserv >Amy I liked this a lot am interested in the form between a sentence and >a poetic line and between in the missing parts, erasure, seems both >pissed and romantic, up my alley >--Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:01:25 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Yes but this is the 'chance' of vivisection. Because though the permutations possible from throwing the yarrow (sic?) sticks is very high, it is still finite and therefore not truly random or subject to chance. Jacques Monod in Chance and Necessity tries to make an 'ontological' case for discrete operations but falls back on the throw of dice as a metaphor with banal philosophical results. The same misinterpretation occurs throughout the physico-philosophical literature e.g. Max Born, early Quine, all of the Vienna Circle excepting the divine Herr Wittgenstein who was really not a member, and Logical Postivism. The sticks or the die contain their own discretion (e.g. discrete) or limitation but as Kant or Schopenhauer would say only for the thrower e.g. the perceiver. This takes us back to Heidegger who strongly insists that attributing a process that is fundamentally a product of Dasein e.g. 'being in the world' to 'being' throuugh Dasein comes to its knowing contributes to the existential dislocation that he relates to the modern technological condition. The 'flowering out' of Cage's best work comes from these limitations or discretions and are accorded an aesthetic and not an ontological status as a result. Erasure here can operate successfully precisely because there is an upper bound---acknowledged or not. The misuse of the words chance and randomness are unfortunate, but probably no more so than they are in complexity or chaos theory. The mathematician, G.H. Hardy, once said, "Rigor is what Littlewood [his assistant] and I call gas." The double meaning is both true of the physical nature of gasses and scatalogical in order to illustrate that too much must not be made of this nature.---Carlo Parcelli Ramez Qureshi wrote: > > Another instance of this sort of thing in Cage is his _Empty Words_, in which > he subjects a Thoreau text to random I-Ching operations. > -RQ -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 10:10:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: ccoolliiddggee qquueerryy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A query: Is there any recording commercially or otherwise available of Coolidge reading with the Rova Quartet? Is the list "enslaved" once again? Let's hope it is soon free again to work its magic. Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:17:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ANNOUNCEMENT Henry Gould, late of this list, has a new Flash Poem in MUDLARK. You can find his chapbook, _Island Road_, & his broadside, "Millennial Grain Elevator," "Bilbao, Drydock," & "Halloween," in MUDLARK too. Rauschenberg erased de Kooning. Henry Gould erased Henry Gould. His voiceprints are everywhere to be found in MUDLARK William Slaughter _________________ MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... E-mail: mudlark@unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:22:14 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Home and Tone MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Argh. I'm trying to catch up with the List crises and there are many holes in my understanding but want to pitch in. Like the rest of you I have much to eulogize about the list. If it weren't for the list I would have remained aesthetically isolated in Boulder. I would not have made correspondence with Patrick Pritchett, Hoa Nguyen, Alan Sondheim, Renee Gladman, David Bromige and many others which has been one lynchpin of of my poetic home. And for all the other reasons mentioned, quick info, publishing, audience, obviously, this list is crucial. I think we slam Charles Bernstein way too quickly with charges of censorship. In fact I was on an alternative, selective list for a little while and got off because I found it too internal, found the dialogue to self-reflective and self-conscious/polite/uniform. Betsy Andrews call Poetics the "populist" list, and I agree with her. Obviously its keepers are doing something right. But it does get bogged down with vituperative and personal rants and repartee. This stuff effects the list's ratio of usefulness/interest to time consumption demanded and narrows the scope of debate. Granted I've been in my own world for several months but there wasn't much on the list that was energetic except a sort of tit for tat. I appreciate Juliana's suggestion that it be limited to exchange of information but we will then lose that occasional gem of a thread that grabs even the most sleuthful lurker and puts them on the screen. I am a member of the Park Slope Food Coop here in Brooklyn. Like the list it is shopping for members only but membership is absolutely open and available to everyone. If you can't afford the $100 deposit, you can pay as little as you can and accrue the deposit over as long as it takes. There is childcare and special memberships for folks with special needs. There are over 3,000 members and so, of course working together to run the store is a challenge. The way the challenge is met is that every problem is answered by a policy, approved of by the membership. Clearly, some policies are repugnant to some people, for example, that you must show your empty bags before buying your food to prevent intentional and unintentional theft. And I have one friend who gets angry every time--but her overall feeling of gain makes her have to go along. I've been as annoyed as anyone by both this list and the food coop but in my world, these attempts of vastly diverse people to get together and create something, that is better than malls and disney, merits sticking to it. As an activist I've come to have a policy of always placing my appreciation of what a person is doing above my critique, if possible. I've also stated on this list that I've been in a position to censure someone in the effort to maintain a tone that allows for diverse community. A generous assessment of Charles Bernstien's motives for trying to manage some particularly present voices, is that he is trying to maintain a balance. Proposal: Can a letter, approved of my this list, be sent each month to the five big posters automatically--not to judge the content of their post, just to let them know they've been particularly visible that month and they may want to give five others a chance to be particularly visible the next month? With this letter of reminder, perhaps loud mouths (I am one, no?) could regulate themselves? Again, I want to urge us to save this list. There is no good reason as far as I can tell, to self-destruct. yours truly, Rachel Democracy Levitsky ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 15:17:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Impeach or Censure (Was: Concerns) In-Reply-To: <84C4F5B0178@student.highland.cc.il.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =93The unhappy have fewer rights but bigger ones.=94 Bruce Andrews at KGB= Bar reading last night. * [Quoting Kent Johnson's post earlier today"]: >I wrote in a post yesterday (the one with the barely believable title >"My one post for December"), that the real issue in this whole >affair has nothing to do with numbers as the consensus has painted >it. Or how could it really have to do with numbers if, as I >pointed out, Henry-- poster numero uno-- averaged only a fraction >more than one post per day for the whole month of November.=20 This is untrue. The situation here is based on a correspondence on this matter with the subscriber going back *many months*. We have written to this subscriber numerous times in the past. For example, near the end of March of this year, the subscriber was informed that while the two other most frequent posters= had 27 messages, or an average of one per day, his were already at twice that number (total for that month alone: 61). I could go on detailing this correspondence but I haven't because I considered it private. At a certain point, you realize that polite requests for cooperation are not working. I think those who want to turn this matter into something ideological are doing a great disservice to all the people involved here.=20 The choice we made was the best option we had if we were indeed serious= about keeping limits on postings. Going back to Kent Johnson=92s accusation, one= might wonder how even such a formidable crew as those of at Poetics List Central could have known, before the end of November, what the total posts would be for this month. We are not clairvoyant. Kent Johnson chose not to consider the more obvious conclusion that the total posts for November might have been= different if we had not ever so politely asked a couple of our beloved frequent= posters to observe an often repeated list ground rule about overposting to the list. As it happens, all of the amazing (I think) four people in the history of the list we have ever written to gently request that they might consider= consolidating their posts have been written to because -- I realize it defies belief --= they were -- stop for a second to take this in -- *posting too much*, more than anyone else. NOT THE CONTENT OF THEIR POSTS! If a subscriber to the list makes unambiguously manifest that she or he has no intention of abiding by the= basic ground rules of the list, then those responsible -- not only *to* the list= but *for* the list, I would add -- need to act fairly and generously but also decisively. This is no more than a clich=E9 of List Management 101.=20 >He and Gabe Gudding-- Gudding =85 have >been told (and I ask to be corrected if I'm wrong), that their posts >are to now be reviewed and judged before they may appear.=20 You are wrong. Gabriel Gudding's subscription status has never been changed and his ability to post to the list directly is the same as all 600 plus current list subscribers. In future, you might want to ask Joel or me before posting such misinformation to the list. In your Sunday post you also claimed that Henry Gould had be "86d" from the list. This is also wrong, as anyone= reading my post from Friday would be aware.=20 * There was no improper relation. I did not ask anyone to lie. The assumption that those of us who are spending considerable time and= energy providing this service are somehow guilty of something -- let=92s assume tha= t and find the crime later! -- seems to me, um, er, counter-productive. (But I= know: Tis far nobler to tear down those institutions we=92ve established than find ways to support them.) * I realize I have an apology to make to the list. Many of those who were most active on this list, and most cared about it, have urged me to do something= to make it readable, and make it habitable, again. They spoke of the list being dominated by a few men (yes gender is an issue) whose tone tended to be= harsh or scolding and that when they did post their posts were either ignored or treated derisively. They responded to my inaction has been to leave the list or stop reading it.=20 Their contributions are very much missed.=20 But no fanfare was made about these folks, who felt very much pushed out by the volume of posting, by the often hectoring tones of many posts on this list= and also what they described to me, over and again, as the squandering of the= list space by posts that would have been better sent backchannel. I hesitated to act, for one thing because I was committed to having the list be as= minimally moderated as possible -- and for this I probably should be held accountable, even censured. But I also knew that even the tiniest amount of editorial intervention on this list, on the most unassailable grounds, and in strict compliance with the stated policies of the list in the Welcome Message,= would be subjected to a firestorm of protest.=20 * The fact is -- I realize again this must be shocking to a few of you --= that *no post has ever been censored on this list* and that the only complaints= we have received about censorship concern those who post more than anyone else= on the list. There is an irony here if you want to find it. * The few men who post most frequently on this list, who dominate the discussion, are not the ones being silenced. * Like several others who have recently address this issue, my concern about= the list is not focused exclusively on the needs and rights of those who want to post in an unlimited way. Rather than lament that one person, who has posted more to this list, I suspect, than anyone in the history of the list, has chosen to leave the list rather than restrict the number of his posts, I lament the dozens and dozens of people who have told me they felt pushed off the= list by the exactly the problems that we have been trying to address in the past few weeks, by exactly the hubris expressed in several recent posts: that to post more than anyone else, to try to dominate the tone of the list, the psychic release involved in being belligerent -- is an unimpeachable right and that anyone who tries to interfere with that right will be defamed in one way or another. People rarely make list announcements about the signing off the= list of this *legion of =93others=94*, or publicly laments their absence, but= each of these departures has been as important as the one resignation that has been focused on recently. * The tendency a very few list members to assume and broadcast the worst about the minimal list moderation that we do is, perhaps, expectable. However, it= is not only my sense but also the strongly voiced opinion of most people I= speak to that the list needs more editing not less -- *surely, some people have other ideas about lists*, but the point is not necessarily to always follow the least line of resistance, although that would certainly make for less flak.=20 Indeed, as I=92ve noted, I have been inundated with complaints by one= person after another that if the editors of the list can't create a better and more readable environment, people will stop reading it. Of course, there are others ready to replace them, who don't share these concerns -- that may be the= heart of the issue -- whose list is it? It seems only common sense that you won't see multiple posts from people who find it an inhospitable place to post because they are most likely to shy away from the predictable stock responses out of the macho training camp: if they can't take it let them unsub, if they can't stand the heat let them keep quiet, how dare they censure my right to speak by questioning me, etc. The real sympathy must go to those "bad boys" who show their mettle by refusing to respond to even the most reasonable requests of the list editors. I have a fairly thick skin, but not thick enough. I hope my= skin never gets that thick. * In any case, the idea that most people support the abdication of any editing or moderation of the list is exactly the opposite of what I hear -- it's that idea of what the list is that has driven away more people than I care to name. We -- and it's not just me -- are committed to making editorial and indeed= aesthetic judgments as an integral part our list ownership: that is the foundation for the list. Such judgments mean making choices with which some people, even= very vocal people, will disagree with. That's reasonable and understandable. *But our choices are not arbitrary or motivated by the desire to suppress any one tone or point of view, but rather to foster an environment which will enable greater participation.* The editors of the Poetics List make very few editorial suggestions directly to subscribers: it almost never happens. In the history of the list this has occurred maybe three or four times to check extended =93chat=94, maybe a= couple of times to reconsider =93tone=94, and the few instances of asking folks to consolidate messages, already mentioned. For myself, I have been reluctant= to post critical remarks about other posts on the list because I felt, as list owner, that such remarks might take on more significance than I would= intend. That is, for all these years I have avoided making any unnecessary interventions on this list *of any kind* -- front channel or back channel.= =20 * In my experience, the Poetics List has been among the most open poetry institutions I have encountered. In one sense, it is not as open as a newsgroup or an chat list because some constraints are put in place. Without these constraints, however, the range and depth of contributions would be, I believe, diminished; many of the people on this list would depart post haste, and without fanfare. Nor would there be anyone now involved willing to maintain the list. The openness of the Poetics List is a product of its mission, as= stated in the Welcome Message in terms both aesthetic and structural. So it is openness is framed by the terms of the specific project for which it was designed. I mistyped something in my last post, so let me rewrite it now: in the age of the Internet, I believe more editing not less is required. Those who are philosophically against moderated or edited or private lists should work to create the kinds of lists they want and show those of us who are skeptical that we are wrong. But debunking this list for its editorial commitments seems to me misguided and does not serve the cause of openness. This list cannot fulfill all the desires for all who would like to be its members. No list can. Yes, this list reflects my editorial, philosophical, ethical, and aesthetic judgments, tastes, predilections, commitments. Anyway I hope it does, as best I can make it. I have asked too many people to hang in with this list (in too many cases unsuccessfully), too many people to join the list, too many= people to take the chance to post something, etc., for that not to be the case.=20 * Do to my own time limitations, I cannot spend all the time some of the= people on this list seem to need to respond to questions of list management. For example, I will not be able to spend much more time this week on the list= and will be away from any computer access for part of the week. Changes in the list management are in process, and as soon as these can be finalized, we will= get back to you. In the meantime, I hope all of you will understand that my time for this project has simply run out.=20 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:35:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: Vanishing posts In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I must admit I'm one of the lurkers, and I was one of the digest folks, to boot. I think I did it for two reasons. I didn't think I could resist the temptation to read each and every post I was receiving throughout the day at work. So, I signed up as a digest reader. This allowed me the opportunity to get acquainted with the scope and the discourse of the list. I also understand the I wasn't getting as much as I could out of the list by not entering the dialogue. But, I believed that I need a bit of an education or that I should take the cotton out of my ears and stuff it in my mouth as an orientation. I also realized it became difficult to respond when I read the digest each night on the way home from work, and I would miss many of the weekend posts. I still miss the weekend posts. Reading the digests, however, has been a good education for me, and I have learned a great deal about things I never considered when it came to poetry. The recent banter has been educational as well. I, for one, miss Henry Gould's posts and wish he'd come back. Yesterday, I switched back to mail poetics rather than digest. And, it appears that no one has posted in almost 24 hours. This post may be more of a test than anything else. Open ended question: Why do the poets on this list write poetry? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 10:24:54 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ralph Wessman Subject: famous reporter 18 (apologies for x-posting) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable famous reporter 18 To be launched by Christiane Bostock - at Hobart Bookshop 5.30 p.m., Thursday 10th December. =20 In this issue: poetry=20 John Allison, Marilyn Arnold, eric beach, Christiane Bostock, Laurie = Brinklow, Adrian Caesar, SM Chianti, Alison Croggon, MTC Cronin, Alison = Daniel, Stephen Edgar, Rory Harris, Greta Harrison, JS Harry, Pete Hay, = Randolph Healy, Jennie Herrera, Karen Knight, Jules Leigh Koch, Yve Louis, = Myron Lysenko, Angela Mahoney, Claire Mahoney, Stephen Mallick, Lorraine = Marwood, Lissa Mitchell, Mal Morgan, Adam Morgenstern, Louise Oxley, Bill = Pitt, Lyn Reeves, Charmaine Salter, Emma Searle, Andrea Sherwood, Matt = Simpson, Juliana Spahr, Maurice Strangard, John West, Terry Whitebeach, = Les Wicks, Elizabeth Winfield and Quendryth Young reviews Geoff Dean Over The Fence (Barney Roberts) Benjamin Gilmour The Song of a Hundred Miles (David Jack) Hobo magazine (Marilyn Arnold) Robert Manne The Way We Live Now (Anne Collins) Cassandra Pybus Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree (Lisbet De = Castro Lopo) Henry Reynolds This Whispering in our Hearts (Elizabeth Dean) articles Kevin Brophy, Medieval Thinking and the Novelization of the Poem (a talk = presented at the Wollongong Poetry Workshops, January 1998) Jane Downing, Getting Away From It All Mary Jenkins, A Meditation on Women, Place and =27The Sound of One Hand = Clapping=27 Robyn Mathison, Farmhouse Fragments Mark O=27Flynn, launch speech: Five Islands Press New Poets Program - Ric = Adamson, Lucy Dougan, Jane Gibian, Judy Johnson, Alistair Stewart and Jane Williams Lisa Robertson, Essay (from =22Soft Architecture=22) Liz Winfield, Aftertaste - a brief exploration of recently published = journals and collections opinion Freedom of Speech & the Fatwa Against Rushdie Yasmine Galenorn The Satanic Verses, Art or Libel? Rukhsana Khan Tasmanian Parliamentary Reform Norm Adamczewski, Robert = Bell, Simon Cubit, Fred Duncan,=20 Neil McCormick, John Shimmins, Annie Willock prose=20 Orson =27Steve=27 Claridge / Anne Shimmins / Zenda Vecchio Young Writers poetry and prose by Katie Astrinakis, Bridget Eltham, Daniel Grey, Chess = Haig, Alena Hrasky, Jamie McCallum, Kate Murphy, Liz Rogowski, Paige = Smith, Ben Walter and Megan Williams 100 words prose & poetry section Ann Abrahmsen, Emma Buss, Bill Collis, David Farnsworth, Sandy Fitts, = Kevin Gillam, Jacqueline Hogan-Toll, Catherine Mair, Marguerite Varday, = John West and Rosmarie Winter haiku Ross Clarke, Ysobel Copp, John West, Kate McMaugh, Estelle Randall, Sue = Mill, Robin Loftus, Marylee Valentine, Carol Easton, Margarita Engle, = Patricia Prime, Cornelis Vleeskens, Matt Hetherington, Catherine Mair, = E.A. Horne, Martha Connors, Sue Stanford, Bill West famous reporter =23 18 ... =248 from Walleah Press, PO Box 368, North = Hobart, Tasmania 7002 Australia ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 16:00:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Erasing rachel et al.: are you familiar with the work of the german philosopher (recently deceased) hans blumenberg? one of his core ideas, i think (a friend of mine is a blumenberg scholar--i'm not, alas), is the necessity of forgetting. burt Burt Kimmelman Department of Humanities and Social Sciences New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102 973.596.3376 (p) 973.642.4689 (f) kimmelman@admin.njit.edu (e) http://eies.njit.edu/~kimmelma (i) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 21:47:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Kane Subject: "The Academy of the Future is Opening..." MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Could someone let me know what poem the line "The Academy of the Future is Opening its Doors" is from -- an Ashbery poem, I know, but which one? And if you know for sure that the line "feminine, marvellous, and tough" is "originally" from F. O'Hara, could you let me know which O'Hara poem it is? Please backchannel responses to . Much appreciated. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 18:48:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: i want you to make love to me In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bromige is a genius--but then I always almost knew that. Iteacher.n my overquick memory/thinking abt that novel, I considered the political story in its broad parodic swipe as the main show, and had never thought that long about the love story, seeing it as just one of many human aspirations shown to be battened but still seeping. But Brom is right. The love story, and its limits and "betrayal" a terrif centre of the book. Thanks, ol' >Thats mainly what I wanted to say, but feeling obliged to provide further >substance, would remark that this novel's chief contribution is not its >vision of a future, banal as it is, but its life as a love story--which is >also a de (con) struction of the love affair. Perhaps the vision was not >banal in 1948, but to those of us who have lived thru the 50 years since, >it is--whereas the excruciating anaylsis of passionate love and the society >whose stability is thought to depend upon its repression, has currency and >will travel. GB George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 12:14:11 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: [Fwd: Protest Institutional Violence in NYC Jails] Comments: To: verde@people-link.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------6CC16258225" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6CC16258225 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maybe some of you can go to this today in NYC. I'll be teaching. Bytheway regarding my backstreet affairs with GB: I thought I was having backchannel affairs and could no longer be arrested by the Disney Police but its true they threw the book at us for considering our demographics and insisting they mattered despite our wealth and it didn't help matters at all that children were crying over the icky fluids we'd gotten all over their rugrats. --------------6CC16258225 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from igcb.igc.apc.org [192.82.108.46] by in5.ibm.net id 912721953.95772-1 ; Thu, 03 Dec 1998 21:52:33 +0000 Received: from igce.igc.org (igce.igc.org [192.82.108.49]) by igcb.igc.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA14468; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:51:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from pppe-37.igc.org (rperez@pppe-37.igc.org) by igce.igc.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id NAA06122; Thu, 3 Dec 1998 13:45:10 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199812032145.NAA06122@igce.igc.org> Sender: From: "richie perez" Organization: boricuanet To: mmcompa@igc.apc.org, mp254@is5.nyu.edu, "Melissa Hernandez" , gardens@cybergal.com, mag42@columbia.edu, Monifa Akinwole , "Monique M. Larocque" , newyorkbrc@people-link.com, nmh2@cornell.edu, levitsk@ibm.net, "Ray Rivera" Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:08:44 +0000 Subject: Protest Institutional Violence in NYC Jails Reply-to: rperez@igc.apc.org Priority: normal X-mailer: Pegasus Mail/Windows (v1.22) ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: Self To: rperez@boricuanet.org Subject: Protest Institutional Violence in NYC Jails Reply-to: rperez@igc.apc.org Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 16:01:39 JUSTICE FOR JOSE SANTOS STOP INSTITUTIONAL VIOLENCE IN NYC JAILS *Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1998, 5:30 - 7:00 pm* Dept. of Corrections/60 Hudson St. (1,2, A trains to Chambers St.) Jose "Rolow" Santos was murdered by Rikers Island correction officers on June 9, 1997. The killing was covered up as a "suicide" by the NYC Dept. of Corrections. An independent autopsy revealed injuries inconsistent with suicide and consistent with violence--violence which witnesses say started in a confrontation with correction officers in the visiting room the day before Jose Santos's death. Ever day, the number of young people, overwhelmingly young Blacks and Latinos, that are imprisoned grows. Like police brutality on the outside, violence in NYC prisons at the hands of correction officers has escalated to the point that the city was recently forced to settle a federal lawsuit for assault and murder against prisoners. The Santos family, which has joined other families fighting police abuse, urges you to join them. Their son, like thousands of others awaiting trial on Rikers Island, was supposed to be INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY. But brutal guards, protected by a brutal system took away his rights and his life. Richie Perez National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights rperez@boricuanet.org. Richie Perez rperez@boricuanet.org 212 614-5355 --------------6CC16258225-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:17:24 -0700 Reply-To: emgarrison@uswest.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "E.M. Garrison" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Simon DeDeo wrote: > I'm sorry to hear the Henry Gould has left the list; I've had my fair > share of conflicts with him, and, even when I'd been lurking and > disengaged from most of the debates on the list, I still welcomed his > voice. > > Have been reading Lyn Hejinian's _The Cold of Poetry_, which is my first > real forary into the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. I'm working on a feature for > the arts magazine here on "metaphysical" poets (beginning with Eliot's > notion in his lectures), and the piece has been widening its scope step by > step until I decided that one useful thing I might do is try to bring a > writer (Lyn) into the discussions that happen around the campus, which > usually center around a resolute conservative position. The basic idea -- > that much of what is considered poetry today is a simple concatenation of > aphorisms about suburban life, sometimes widened into a "multicultural" > domain. > > I began considering the piece when I realized the strange dead feeling > that came over me when I read so much of the "approved" poetry of recent > years; once upon a time, reading opened avenues into new experience. Now, > so much of what is written seems to be a series of anguished reworkings of > what is always around. Reading the _Cold of Poetry_, I realized how much I > had been missing simply because I had "gotten too good" at reading, say, > the Confessionals -- which is partly my fault, but partly, I think, > theirs. > > In other news: I'm beginning the ground work for a paper on notions of > beauty in an urban context (it's actually for Elaine Scarry's class that > came up for discussion here a few days ago). Is there anybody on the list > that can point to some interesting works on urban space? There is, > unfortunately, so much bad work out there in this field that I feel I need > a Virgil to guide me to useful starting points. > > -- Simon > > sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu > lydianmode@ucsd.com > http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html Simon, When I think of the concept of beauty of in urban places, I think of graffiti. Now, Im not going to bother to defend this view to those that would say that graffiti is an act of destruction with my view that acts of destruction have with in them the seeds of creation, except to say that these works have a definite voice, and it should be considered. beth ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 14:18:56 -0700 Reply-To: emgarrison@uswest.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "E.M. Garrison" Subject: Re: call me morbid call me pale MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To whomever decides to reply...Please do it in public...Im always hungry to Know.... beth Poetry Project wrote: > I was wondering if anyone could, in public or in private, explain to me > what exactly the "Abstract French Lyric" or the "French Abstract Lyric" > is? I hear rumors of its existence, but no one has ever grabbed me by the > waist & pointed one out. > > Anselm Berrigan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 23:13:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thank you for posting what you did. I have seen verbalizing as an important element in resolving trauma in my work (as psychologist). In my work as poet I have felt an impulse to obscure or obliterate what I've said for some time (going so far at times as incorporating visual work that covers the text. I suspect that all these are related. tom bell Rachel Blau DuPlessis wrote: > textually. There is (for me) no sense of textuality as a value in a > vacuum; making texts, and alluding to textual stuff (like black > pages, or glosses) is absolutely linked to depths of ethical and > social and poetic feeling. I don't know whether this is totally > clear. -- //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\ OOOPSY \///\\\/\///\\\/ <><>,...,., WHOOPS J K JOVE BY HHH ZOOOOZ ZEUS'WRATHHTARW LLLL STOPG [ EMPTY ] SPACER index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/gloom.htm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 13:37:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: items eye polite dangers and other softnesses Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit hey Daniel. I like your manifesto. Randy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:25:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: erased In-Reply-To: <366D0564.15FD@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Errr, Joel, one of the problems is that posts are not getting thru; one lengthy post of mine was sent yesterday and resent a couple of hours ago and it has not been posted on the List... Now while it was before Rachel's post and therefore doesn't respond to her, it's a very substantive post on the erasure thread...Hasn't anything to do with freeing Henry or the List thread. Why has it not appeared? you can hardly snipe at list members for not posting, when we are posting and the posts aren't getting thru! (if my post appeared to others, i apologize for this querulous plaint! But it hasn't appeared here, and i am set to receive my own posts to this list, and always in the past have...) mark p. On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, J Kuszai wrote: > i find it a sad commentary on the state of this list that we get Rachel > Blau DuPlessis out of her erasing-frenzy to respond to a thread with > some serious potential, and yet, not one post in reply. Perhaps we > should have another round of "Free Henry"-- as that seems to be what > keeps people going around here. I would like to cite a passage from > Rachel's post and throw it back into the mix, as I think it warrants > further attention: > > "... The trauma of amnesia and the trauma of remembering, witnessing are > intertwined for me. My interest did not begin "textually" (that is > solely as a question of rhetoric, representation, or formal interests) > tho it takes shape textually. There is (for me) no sense of textuality > as a value in a vacuum; making texts, and alluding to textual stuff > (like black pages, or glosses) is absolutely linked to depths of ethical > and social and poetic feeling." > > it would be good to hear further elaboration as to what is meant by this > statement. Obviously we don't live in isolation, nor in a vacuum. I > would be curious to hear of instances of poetic value which assert > themselves as such-- i.e. as without regard to externalia in this day > and age; and perhaps more importantly, how do the various poets and/or > critics on this list see/ or solve the issues raised by questions of > erasure. I am thinking, initially, of Susan Howe's *Eikon Basilike* and > the resolution of such by "making the dead walk again" ... more from > Rachel, whose work on Susan and others has been at the fore, would be > much appreciated... > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:45:35 -0500 Reply-To: Emily Lloyd Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: The Cold of Poetry &, eventually, "girls" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Simon, etc., For what it's worth, it's pretty fascinating to read _The Cell_ after reading TCOP's "The Composition of The Cell." I have no idea which came first--a lot of the material in each is the same (or a resemblance: a draft? a backdraft?); *logically*, I suppose "The Composition" would come first, as it seems more like notes for things that eventually ended up in the book-length sequence _The Cell_. And *logically*, I suppose _The Cell_ would come first, for one could only speak of its composition after the fact--or (it might break one's back) simultaneously. Then there's the joke that "The Composition of The Cell" doesn't necessarily refer to the composition of _The Cell_. Which brings me to the fact that no one, at least publicly, replied to Maria Damon's query about the composition process of LH's _My Life_. While a whole slew of people replied (and some, excuse this, incorrectly) to MD's question about Stein's rose. I'd be interested in hearing the "answer" to the "composition of _ML_" query frontchannel, for one. Perhaps this could kick off the discussion/s Joel K. suggested not too long ago--on female "experimental" poets that are going to be either present or discussed, I unfortunately forget which (both?), at an upcoming conference (name of which I don't remember either)... Also, Simon, do, if possible time-wise, read LH's _My Life_ (and all the rest, but there's a point here). Read it because you've been reading "confessional" poetry. Strangely, maybe (and I'm afraid perhaps offensively to the poet, yet with the utmost admiration), I often find Hejinian to have rescued/challenged/subverted and continued to work with "confession" or "confessional poetry." I also often think of Stein as a confessional poet, without all the freight of the Confessional Poetry lowelly "movement" entering into my thinking the words "confessional poet." I guess what I mean is that I find it interesting that, when reading the poems of Confessional Poets, I feel like I'm coming up against a wall--not hearing anything "confessional" or intimate, but something quite to the contrary. Whereas I find much of Hejinian's & Stein's work what I'm ashamed to call, but must for lack of better words-'n-smarts, unbelievably intimate, beyond "confessional" & "personal"...I suppose because it's beyond "speech"--doesn't attempt to pass for something whispered or wailed, as does Confessional Poetry. At any rate, I couldn't comfortably call either one of them L=A=N=G poets... On the "girls v. boys" issue, gotta post an (old, old) poem here quickly: Strap-On Canon His feet are too clean for my hair. Just throw the ball of wool, I'll clap my knees, admit I hated to be an apprentice... Whenas, whenas--knowhutImean? I left the tip on her throat. Two francs. I bet she walks crooked all the way home from Cho-Fu-Sa! --------------------------------------em, who mostly identifies w/those whose gender is unguessable--now. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:49:19 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: schuchat Subject: Re: call me morbid call me pale MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I don't know French, so I am probably the best person to answer your query. The "abstract French lyric" is by Pierre Reverie. The "French abstract" lyric is an academic piece, a song about a list of articles either in French or on French. Can the "Abstract" French "Lyric" can cut the mustard? Le lyric abstruit Fran-swa? C'est moi! However, there is also the possibility of Isidore Isou, the Romanian (naturellement) inventor of Le Poesie Lettriste, who wrote "in French" to the extent that lettriste poesie would be in a language. It is possible that Andy Britain also wrote a French abstract lyric. As we say in Russia, "etot vsou" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:50:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: The Martyrology of St. Henry In-Reply-To: <366D223E.6E6A@mwt.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT As I courageously emerged from the closet and blandished my own "advisory notice" to the list, and solicited replies to 5 questions relating to censorship / moderation (which everyone has ignored: is it that delete button?), I am anxious to be elevated to some type of sainthood too. Furthermore, as the FIRST to bring this censorship issue to your screens on this List, folks, I do want to claim my ignoble laurels. Henry, Gabe, Kent, let me join in your shame or do you feel compelled to hog it all, you dogs. Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:48:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: a modest proposal In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hey, re Chris McCreary's point (and Juliana's?) that we should restrict the list to ANNOUNCEMENTS, I say "bland, bland, bland!" I much rather agree with Joel Kuzsai of taking things such as the poem RBDP posted and addressing things it raises... That takes more time, which I will have when I'm unemployed in 10 days and counting.... (assuming they don't take my account away), but just to say....... chris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:22:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: erased In-Reply-To: <366D0564.15FD@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to Joel K. for his pushing on this. I was also interested in Blau duPlessis' description of her memory as porous and what this says about a notion of self as it plays out in the work; erasing not as willed but inescapable. (Which describes me fairly well.) Both also raised the huge issue of language/world vis-a-vis ethics, and perhaps the lack of response is because this subject is so enormous and humbling. I would like to encourage short, tentative posts on this --- no need to attempt completeness. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:34:11 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Wilson Subject: Re: erased >i find it a sad commentary on the state of this list that we get >Rachel Blau DuPlessis out of her erasing-frenzy to respond to a >thread with some serious potential, and yet, not one post in reply. i agree completely; the same theme broke my own busy-deleting-finger habit - but i *did* post in reply and after two attempts it strangely hasn't come through. i'll make a final effort and, again, apologies to anyone who receives this twice. * * * Erasure as both a poetic and a personal concern: There was a time in my writing when i wanted to pare down to the single luminous statement, to let the writing serve as much as a mark for what wasn't said or understood as for what was. I was influenced in this i think both by a sort of mystical catholic heritage, in which writing felt like a gestural ritual to evoke grace, pain, mystery, (but also a sort of domination and control), and by my thin adolescent knowledge of eastern writing, which seemed to me then to deal much with evanescence, the sparsity and insufficiency (and wonder) of our perceptions and of the thingness of things. Later i began to feel that it was more true to my own hyperactive, compulsively descriptive and analytical personality (a product of the culture i really grew in) to be more expansive, to catalogue and imagine via language how much muchness seemed to be, that the sparseness i was fascinated by was interior, more a product of how little i knew - being a writer seemed to imply facing some overwhelmingly indefinite variability. Today, it doesn't seem to me to be a choice between, as Pierre put it, fullness/unfolding and erasure/minimalism. It's the interplay of the two - which i think Rachel's work in the Drafts displays quite powerfully. Erasure as the outside (and other) to the folding and unfolding. Because erasure - loss - forgetting - elimination - is both dangerous and necessary. Erasure is awareness of the looming absences events such as Holocaust create. Erasure is also a hazard to be faced - denial, forgetting, loss of history. But it is also true to the process of letting go of, for instance, prejudice or other sick habits of thought, confining codes, errors, the crippling power of trauma. Reinventing the self (and the social, and their respective languages), so necessary to continuance, involves selective forgetting. Much of what we do in poetry now, i think, is to represent such processes of transformation, loss and gain, but always in flux. Modernism's forward-thrust (make-it-new revolution, extincting the old) has given way to a spiral. (Not that this is unprecedented - Stevens' poem as act of the mind, ye olde stream-of-consciousness etc.) Many of us work on non-linear models to call up the ways that thought, perspective, representation, articulation double back on themselves, forget some things, repeat and recall others, bog down, calm down, agitate again, bifurcate, split, mark, break, erase, write. Little of interest is happening in still-lifes, static judgments. Yet we are haunted by those erasures, their smudges and tears. If it's all transformation, how do we judge our responsibilities (and ethical choices). Where does the forgotten go? How much of the etymology and how many past uses of a word lurk under its apparent surface and sound? The unspeakability of that haunting interrupts our accounts of interruption, pins them to their tracks, demands its own recognition. The mention of Retallack's ai/d/sappearance - alphabetic subtraction - also reminds of the Oulipo lipograms, esp. Perec's La disparition or (in English) A Void, in which the erased letter (E) from the vocabulary of the book also becomes the central point of the plot - everyone is looking for the thing that has been erased. While Perec is comic about it, mostly, the seriousness of the theme for Perec in postwar France is fairly evident. These seem inescapable writing issues, but Rachel's quite right I think to note this as a particularly end-of-this-century urgency. I'm curious how this approach to erasure, at least in tone, might change in 10 or 20 years. carl patrick wilson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:17:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: MESSAGE-ID field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. From: Don Cheney Subject: Book Announcement: The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm proud to announce that my first book of poetry is now out from Meow Press: _The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart_ by Don Cheney 27 poems from the full length work. The poems were selected by Bill Luoma and the cover drawing was done by Rose Anne Raphael. Here are some reader comments on _The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart_: "You and Zukofsky are a 1,2 punch out Catullus." James Sherry "I'm a big fan of your Catullus translations. You're a fucking genius." Juliana Spahr "Your Catullus is truly great. I read it once a day to ward off the demons." Bill Luoma "I like it a lot, so ill and so urbane." Stephen Rodefer "The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart is delightful. That's a decision I reached after I got used to the language, which I then began to enjoy thoroughly - the quirky, surprising, incongruous, humorous diction - Somehow the recurrence of those Roman names with their burden (in more conventional texts) of solemnity in the midst of this modern-day idiom and sometimes these Southern California images is very pleasing also." Lydia Davis THE QUALMS OF CATULLUS & K-MART: Get it while the getting's good. Meow Press, 32 pages, 1 drawing, 6 bucks! via Small Press Distribution 1-800-869-7553 SPD Online: http://www.spdbooks.org/ Meow Press Online: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/presses/meow/ Don Cheney Online: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5791 Thanks, Don Cheney ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:33:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: Re: The Cold of Poetry &, eventually, "girls" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Emily, and, of course, all -- The notion of Lyn Hejinian being somehow "more" than confessional is interesting. The notion of hitting a wall in reading the trad. confessionals is interesting: for me, there is an "aesthetic experience" (i.e., I do think it's somehow poetic, and not simply a hashing out in verse.) I understand your saying "I hit a wall", then, as the aesthticization of hitting a wall. My problem with someone like, say, Lowell, is not that I think his work is bad, but rather that I don't have a taste for it in the end. I just don't really want to spend time in such a resolutely "bipolar" language world, by which I don't intend to say that someone who is psychophysiologically bipolar can only write in bipolar language. I prefer the more polyvalent aspects of someone like Hejinian. Someone like Plath, I think, belongs in a different category from the main Lowell thread; her poetry is, to much, closer to Heijinan in the way it has multiple nodes, multiple resting points. Plath is neither a whisperer or a wailer in the way that Lowell is (or, more obviously, I think, Berryman, who focuses his dream songs around that.) If it makes sense to talk "about" poetry at all, I guess. You're right, of course, that I need to read more of Hejinian's work. I'm also interested in your statement that you couldn't comfortably call either Stein or Hejinian a L=A=N=G. poet. What does it mean, for you, for someone to be a L-poet? I approached Hejinian thinking, OK, here's someone who is "in" this scheme, and a way for me to come to know what the movement itself means. Is L-poetry constructed before the poetry within it? Or is it just that someone else is more 'authetically' a L-poet than H? I don't mean to raise the usual aporias about "well, these are just terms, they mean what you want". How do you perceive H in relation to more "normative" L-poets, and who might those be? -- Simon sdedeo@fas.harvard.edu lydianmode@ucsd.com http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sdedeo/localpapers.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:25:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grotjohn Organization: Mary Baldwin College Subject: three questions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Question 1: I am reading Arthur Sze--"Redshifting Web." In that sequence he has these three lines: Instead of developing a navy, Ci Xi ordered architects to construct a two-story marble boat that floats on a lotus-covered lake Does anyone know this story? Who Ci Xi was? How I might spell his name to have more luck finding out who he was? Where to look to find the story? Question 2: In another part of the poem, he has this line: "as a lobster mold transforms a russula into a delicacy." What is a "russula"? OED on line was no help. Question 3: I have figured out what a redshift is (more or less). Does anyone know if there is such a thing as a redshifting web--astronomically, cosmologically, referentially to the universe outside the poem--, or is Sze writing to his poem? Thanks ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:31:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: A response to Charles Bernstein MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Charles: You are the Listowner and you make decisions as you feel they best serve the List as you understand its nature, purpose, and function. You make that point clearly and I have no argument-- as merely one of the hundreds who visit here-- with your right to run the List in any way you choose. The List is private, as you say. My concerns were offered in sincerity and good faith, out of a sense that too heavy a hand was being applied to the situation you outline. And while I _do not_, to say it again, feel you have been guided by dishonorable motives in your recent decisions, nothing in your post changes my opinion about the politics of the matter. In fact, to the contrary. Now, most people on the List seem fairly uninterested in the controversy (as I rightly ascertained in my last post) so I will try to be brief. Let me make just a couple of points, pausing here just to say that if you choose to reply you may call me just "Kent" and not "Kent Johnson," which repeated five times or so makes me feel somewhat like a thing rather than a person... So now my response: You (unintentionally, I think) reveal, Charles, by going back to the situation "over many months," that the perceived problem of post volume coming from Henry Gould was actually getting better. Getting better in November, it seems, by 100%. Why, then, was Henry placed on "review" at a time when he seemed to be doing precisely what he was being asked to do? I want to say that I apologize if I misunderstood Gabriel Gudding and misrepresented his situation to the List. You seem to be upset about this, but it wasn't my intent to offer "misinformation" in speaking of him as in the same category with Henry, and Gabriel can perhaps elaborate separately on the nature of his communications with you. But I was right, it appears from your comments, in asserting that Henry's "subscription status" _was_ changed. I understand as well that two of the three posts Henry submitted while he was on such "special status" never appeared on the List. Because of your emphatic assertion that "no post has ever been censored from this list," I now assume that this must have been a technical glitch and had nothing to do with any implementation of special conditions governing Gould's "review" status. But I admit I felt concern about that when I learned of it. And I still feel concern, frankly, about the issue of censorship. This does not mean that I feel _you_ see your editorial actions as constituting such, but when you send a message reading "You appear not to have been willing to reduce the frequency of your posts despite the request made to you earlier in the week. Daily posting is not an option. Please reduce your posts to no more than a few each week." to a person (Gabe Gudding) who is relatively new to the List and thus has no history behind him of "over-posting," you in effect selectively, and --according to my sincere evaluation of the overall situation-- *because of matters of content,* remove a privilege given publicly to all members of the List: a limit of five posts per day, which to my knowledge no one has come close to violating in any kind of systematic way. To my mind, candor behooves one to acknowledge such intervention as *censorship,* whether one is doing it for the perceived "greater good" or not. For when in a community it is decided by someone who exercises a function of power that a few are not permitted to say what they would like to say, when they would like to say it, and in the form they would like to say it, _when others are given the full privilege to do so_, it becomes something akin to an opposition newspaper in a state-controlled distribution system being allowed the "freedom" to publish, but only with the supply of newsprint that the state has purposely and emphatically curtailed for the sake of the "common good." The state may well be benevolent and have the loftiest of goals, but it is censorship de facto, with the de jure hanging unsaid like a sword behind the screen. Why put someone under "review" if the threat of a post's possible erasure is not there and ready to be wielded? Of course, this is a Listserv to discuss poetics, not Nicaragua when the Sandinistas were in power. But if I've helped make an issue of the situation it's because I've come to adhere to that school of head-in-the-clouds anarchist thought that believes that any repressive measures against wayward voices have future and noxious consequences that undermine the lofty vision one hopes to achieve. I suppose I believe that in poetry as in poetics as in the institutions enacted by "oppositional" poets for the democratic promulgation of new forms and contents, form and content must be one, or must be an interlocked figure, as someone once said, and that what appears to be plain madness may actually, seen in an unexpected light, prove to be a meaningful part, or, even stranger yet, prove to be part of the ancient and exciting Vedic poetic tradition of insult! Leaders of a community of poets searching wild and open form, then, faced with situations of a wild and sudden irruption of someone saying that other member's cocks and cunts, for example, are not so fine as claimed (see George Thompson's wonderful post of today) should not --in response to the scandalized "core constituency" of the community-- so quickly say to the wild one that daily posting is not an option; leaders may, rather, want to tell the upset valued members who are complaining to please remember that poetry and poetics is a wild, sometimes frustrating thing in its overwhelming heteroglossia and that if you go away it's probably going to be your loss. And please come back, if you change your mind. We'll always be here. This is more or less what I meant by being so presumptuous as to suggest that it would have been simply best to allow each and every member to post within the stated limits of five posts per day without the threat of punitive measures. Rather than single some people out and tell them that "daily posting is not an option," it would be best to clearly remind those bothered that they can post the same amount, delete any post with the undesirable name, or propose a change in the List's governing rules for posts per day which the Listowner will take into consideration. But never, in my personal and perhaps overly idealistic opinion, no matter who the person is who threatens to go away, should a leader say, OK, I'll put this guy under special rules in the hopes that he'll change his tune. But clearly, the decison has been made. I think this is long enough. I will be leaving the List for a long time now. I have greatly enjoyed being here, and I thank Charles, as I did before, for making this space possible. But honestly, something I can't be a part of seems to be happening. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:02:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: re The Cold of Poetry/Em's strand Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have shared your disappointment, finally, with the Confessional poets, for exactly the same cause--they arent confessing much of interest. I am tempted (ands am going to yield to this temptation) to reframe Bob Grenier's "I Hate Speech" and write "I Hate Confessional Poetry." Just as Bob meant (IMHO) "I hate the representation of speech as currently practiced in poetry", so I dislike the representation of confessing, etc.etc. I apologize, to myself first & foremost, for certain generalizations here, but the Confessionals seldom break their frame, and once you've decoded that, what is there to maintain interest? It is like watching a wind-up doll bounce off the walls. The Confessional poet I've probably read most, is Charles Bukowski. He's not usually called that, but basically, thats what he is up to. I have read a lot of his books because we shared a publisher, who would give me each new Buke as it appeared. I would take it home and devour it like a box of chocolates, and then I would feel just as if that's what I'd done : guilty of time-wasting, ashamed of my self-indulgence, and nauseous. One objection along this "one-frame-monotony" trail, that I have, is the convectication (if thats a word), the swollen image, of the poet who is delivering the poem. So much comes to depend on his/her life--"interesting"? "Old New England family"? "ex-beauty queen"? "Bogart-cloned alcoholic sex-addict smoker"? Now, no one can help where they come from, but I object where these arbitrary (to me) matters dominate, where they substitute a "life" I cant assume, for a liveliness of text which I can. (Such liveliness, say, as makes Plath readable, despite her being a "Confessional"). [NB : I appreciate that there are groups who value this or that poet as a welcome mouthpiece for hitherto-unaired concerns. I am talking esthetics here, however, not message.] Maybe some will be surprised that a poet as "personal" as I have been, should feel this way. But (and here I feel especially in line with Emily Lloyd) this interest is precisely why I find Confessional poetry inadequate. Inadequate to personal life as I've known it; a masquerade of personal life, painted mask, con job. Being alive is so much more various, strobe not ditch. Or can be. Might be. Could be. Maybe I only write the wish. Moreover, I see no need to always be pointing out that it is "I" writing it. There's an author's name at the foot of the poem. How the heck would a reader suppose those words had got there, on the page? In Lyn's "My Life," while we glimpse much of her actual lifetime, what one reads for (again, IMHO) are the sentences, their quality, their variety, their intelligence--and their unpredictable juxtapositions, a non-sequitur quality that keeps a reader on tiptoe. * Like many Listafarians, I am distressed and chastened by our recent eventuations, reluctant to post at all yet wanting to help provide something to chew on. I know I perpetrated some of what's been objected to : tit for tat, and also that I have brought my silly-bugger side front-channel, if to the amusement of some, then to the boredom and chagrin of others. I shall try to rein these shadow-side emanations in. I hope today's posting can keep a thread going, and that it doesnt appear that I am pissing on someone's favorite plinth. I have also wanted to post on the Erasure thread to the effect that erasure is a subset of textual deformation, a process I see as inherent to poetry, not just since the Romantics. Again, my position as a high-poster has held me back. But perhaps Lisa Samuels could weigh in here, with news of her project with Jerome McGann? Erasure, for historical causes accurately discerned by some posts to this thread, is a dominant mode in our century. Had it not been, however, we should have had to invent another. IMHO. David ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:16:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ruth Danon Subject: Re: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm jumping in on this one, lurker that I've been. Some time ago I found myself writing poems in which concrete nouns simply disappeared. Gone. Couldn't conjure one up to save the day. I read Kristeva's Black Sun and began to understand why. The strategy of Perec's book has a similar source in the incapacity to grieve or to find adequate expression for loss. There are cultural and poltiical equivalents. Cliches that separate modernists from post modernists say that pomos "embrace apoacalypse." Bah humbug. Who isn't scared of the dark? As the chunks of ice fall away from the arctic ice shelf who doesn't shudder in their quiet little bones? ---------- > From: Carl Wilson > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Erasing > Date: Monday, December 07, 1998 8:05 PM > > Erasure as both a poetic and a personal concern: There was a time in > my writing when i wanted to pare down to the single luminous > statement, to let the writing serve as much as a mark for what wasn't > said or understood as for what was. I was influenced in this i think > both by a sort of mystical catholic heritage, in which writing felt > like a gestural ritual to evoke grace, pain, mystery, (but also a sort > of domination and control), and by my thin adolescent knowledge of > eastern writing, which seemed to me then to deal much with > evanescence, the sparsity and insufficiency (and wonder) of our > perceptions and of the thingness of things. > > Later i began to feel that it was more true to my own hyperactive, > compulsively descriptive and analytical personality (a product of the > culture i really grew in) to be more expansive, to catalogue and > imagine via language how much muchness seemed to be, that the > sparseness i was fascinated by was interior, more a product of how > little i knew - being a writer seemed to imply facing some > overwhelmingly indefinite variability. > > Today, it doesn't seem to me to be a choice between, as Pierre put it, > fullness/unfolding and erasure/minimalism. It's the interplay of the > two - which i think Rachel's work in the Drafts displays quite > powerfully. Erasure as the outside (and other) to the folding and > unfolding. Because erasure - loss - forgetting - elimination - is both > dangerous and necessary. > > Erasure refers to the huge pit of absence that an event like the > holocaust opens in history. Erasure is also a hazard to be faced - > denial, forgetting, loss of history. But it is also true to the > process of letting go of, for instance, prejudice or other sick habits > of thought, confining codes, errors, the crippling power of trauma. > Reinventing the self (and the social, and their respective languages), > so necessary to continuance, involves selective forgetting. > > Much of what we do in poetry now, i think, is to represent such > processes of transformation, loss and gain, but always in flux. > Modernism's forward-thrust (make-it-new revolution, extincting the > old) has given way to a spiral. (Not that this is unprecedented - > Stevens' poem as act of the mind, ye olde stream-of-consciousness > etc.) Many of us work on non-linear models to call up the ways that > thought, perspective, representation, articulation double back on > themselves, forget some things, repeat and recall others, bog down, > calm down, agitate again, bifurcate, split, mark, break, erase, write. > Little of interest is happening in still-lifes, static judgments. > > Yet we are haunted by those erasures, their smudges and tears. If it's > all transformation, how do we judge our responsibilities (and ethical > choices). Where does the forgotten go? How much of the etymology and > how many past uses of a word lurk under its apparent surface and > sound? The unspeakability of that haunting interrupts our accounts of > interruption, pins them to their tracks, demands its own recognition. > > The mention of Retallack's ai/d/sappearance - alphabetic subtraction - > also reminds of the Oulipo lipograms, esp. Perec's La disparition or > (in English) A Void, in which the erased letter (E) from the > vocabulary of the book also becomes the central point of the plot - > everyone is looking for the thing that has been erased. While Perec is > comic about it, mostly, the seriousness of the theme for Perec in > postwar France is fairly evident. > > These seem inescapable writing issues, but Rachel's quite right I > think to note this as a particularly end-of-this-century urgency. I'm > curious how this approach to erasure, at least in tone, might change > in 10 or 20 years. > > carl patrick wilson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:43:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: under and over erasure In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark P. said: >But there's another source for erasing, which is a philosophical concern >with the reality of things, of activities, of poetry, of ideas. This was >part of Antin's motivation, i would say. I think that poets who have been >influenced to some degree by Buddhistic and similar traditions, would be >among those interested in erasure: like the disappearing of the mind when >it realizes its own nonreality, in Buddhism, Taoism, etc. ...the >achievement of nonself. > >Unfortunately, i don't recall offhand a use of erasing modalities (of >either type) in the poets i know and like best, who were influenced by >these traditions: Mac Low, Cage. That's because "the disappearing of the mind when it realizes its own nonreality, in Buddhism, Taoism, etc. ...the achievement of nonself" is perhaps not the best way to put it. The notion of emptiness --- each thing is inherently empty of its own thingness --- is not about erasure. The mind realizing its own nonreality, so to speak, is then free to become full of everything --- that's why the mirror analogy is used so often ("red comes, red; white comes, white"). Traditional East Asian poetics influenced by Buddhism and Taoism tends to focus very much on particular things (I'm not talking about the philosophical stuff like, say, the Hsin Hsin Ming or the Tao Te Ching) --- in haiku this is raised almost to a fetish. (Although I'm not a specialist in East Asian poetics, and perhaps there is a tradition there of the sort Mark P. posits that isn't well known in the U.S.) (And thanks for telling us all about John Lowther's work.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:34:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: Re: Impeach or Censure (Was: Concerns) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dear chalres, your courage as papabear keeps me going or i would have quit this silly "community" long agao. i am so tired, man, of the sad ness i reap from the ugliness on the list--and the spankings i get for wanting it to be fruitful, meaning ful. or for thinkint that it is all there is for me right now. san diego is cold, like a desert moon circling a star with no center. our poetics family seems to have burnt out and you tired paternal badboy on triel for obligoatory offenses. sorry you have to take the blume. i am lonely here and it is cold. my arthristis keeps my fingers in statinary orbit around hungry keyboard. i suspect things will happen faster now in manageamtn swtichover and the bailure of juliana and our other lovely friends to hang in there speeds up the creation of a new listserv syntax, which i will write to you about after i have time to think about. the new co-manager must have an iron gut; i dread the idea of going anywhere now and having to talk about this mess, and just assume shove-off. from here this bale full of wax i can see how quickly that would happen anyway, and i promise to finish my disseration before the millenial purge. and the idea of having to read another research paper on serial killers, or how to care for lizards, ( i sswear)...... and yet i love teaching and seeing progress in the most banal topics such as supporting arugments and with good thesis statments and blahblahd blah ... i am down. it has been a terrible week. before i said i felt that I was sendtenced to the slist and now i feel like i'm clinging to some family unit represented by that forum HOW PATHETIC -- fuck ideogloy. ! if those morons only knew how little time there was for itogdldy., anyhow--------sorry to be so weepy. I have half a sixpack of beer in my friedge and i am too frozen to go get aeven one bottle of it. meanwhile imbeachment is like a subtle harpsichord, i cnnot play i suggest you remove yourself as active owner and just be sponsor as we discused and i will try to check in for everyday until holiday and mla -- i will see you in san fran and we can exhanxcge secret hand-signals as you wont recognize me with beard and cane... anyhow......as i said....love, j ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 11:49:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: whodunnit / festival Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Aldon Nielsen 13 >Dale Smith 13 matter / antimatter??? Dale, how did we ever become so symmetrical? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:29:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Xplo 6!!!! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've been reading minus tides, the mag from the next island over, it's a local situationist/surrealist literary political rag(no matter how often the bourgeois drunken television reader says the 60s are over i suspect the sixties are alive all over in the rural and there's an entire new generation our kids with the same values do you find that tu autre rurales?), it includes the work of another poet from nowhere, amanda hale, whose work i couldn't say i like but it disturbs me passing emily dickinson's test of making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: Homecoming the undertaker has grown rich solid flesh covers bone the imprisoned maggot eats its pathways through the soul the city is full of vampires swooping on the antennaed dark banks of blood are changing hands entire lives a small clone screams all genitals and mouth impotent rage cribbed in the parlour sperm fruit conceived on the embalming slab soul still glimmering on the gathering dark Amanda Hale Canada is paved with poets turn left or turn right out votre porte d'or you're liable to bump into your favorite i was reading the britpoets list the other day and there was my favourite bill bissett reading in london i hope you know bill bissett's work his pomez n is payntings are a tomic you can hear them buzzing on the page and on the canvas and when you hear him sing them the transformation is complete he also performs with a band, the luddites bowering hates him that ought to be enough of a recommendation bowering doesn't hate him he's just jealous kerouac praised bissett everybody canadian starved for attention in this ocean of poets was jealous of bissett just george never got over it i take that back dorothy livesay nor leonard cohen wasn't jealous of bissett if you're writing english and you're not canadian what chance have you got? michael ondaatje wasn't jealous of bissett. margaret avison wasn't allowed to be jealous. frank davie doesn't have a jealous bone in his body. gertrude stein never heard of jack kerouac. you look at the shape of his words they're repeated they're repeated over and under as if they merely filled in the drawing these repeated but then you hear him sing and shake and suddenly you're not in the words you're in the woods and cool wildman guillaume kerouac's pet has got you there three angels and one old goat work at my post office goddess bless them they brought me the new Hexplosive mag, no 6 $5 what a beauty i've been impressed with every issue of Katie Lederer's magazine that i've seen and this one is the best, the list is well represented, who is nava fader with this marvelous false translation of canto xvi from dante's inferno and dave morice hooray make me laugh madman, Magdalena Zurawski wowski! she's splitting the nucleus! and dave morice hooray the hysterical poems of jackson maclow he thinks a mile a second that old man keeps coming to life, Susan Shultz formidable! Dale Smith a gem. This is an important issue. Let's give her all the support we can, she's this good now imagine what's to come subscribe increase her possibility her confidence let her thrive five dollars it's a steal, there's twenty dollars worth of reading here, send her twice as much as she wants subscribe for a friend it's chanukah she should have a grant to make this bilingual capische? Arigato. Tovarich. Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:26:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anya Lewin Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: <9811079130.AA913089962@ccMail.GlobeAndMail.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was thinking about erasure in the process of translating - in texts - but also in the fact of someone who is exiled or leaves in choice their country and adopts a new language what happens to their old - particularly people whose language of orgin was representative of horrors etc ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 18:23:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Serge Gainsbourg's Evguenie Sokolov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just want to mention that my title Serge Gainsbourg's Evguenie Sokolov is now available at Small Press Distributions as well as Amazon.com, etc. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:58:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: Home and Tone In-Reply-To: <366D8A75.7526@ibm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I want to second Rachel here. For me, the discussion is wonderful; a lot of us are not part of any poetry community, and the chance to participate here is vitally important. I value the announcements, but I also value the talk. It's remarkable that it has run so long without these problems. I wish Henry would come back. I wish people would post a bit less. I don't think there's a need for reminders to be sent to the top posters, but only for everyone to be aware that it's a public list, much larger than the number of posters would indicate. Perhaps someone could write Henry. Perhaps we could all be grateful for this space a bit. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:30:59 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: The Cold of Poetry &, eventually, "girls" seems to me that confessing as it is usually understood depends on language that possesses coherence in the way that Langpo is thought not to. moreover, the pizzazz of lowellian poetry (and yes the same can be said more or less for plathian or berrymanian) is that the language is done up to suggest a identifiable and thus somewhat unified or coherent "self" albeit perhaps a self that is in pain because of its self-perceived fragmentation (like the wicked witch of the west from a movie that is more or less contemporaneous?). bk ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 19:10:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: <366CB577.37F26A67@home.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rachel speaks of textuality linked to the depths of ethical and social and poetic feeling -- to differentiate from a kind of abstract literary fascination -- and I agree with her. Treblinka was to be covered over and made into a park. So, then, what is the opposite of erasure? Inscription? Imposition? Bloating up the void? Being written down? A deep sense of presence? Every blank page (every blank computer screen) writes over a past; every time something is written, it blocks out something else, which is a kind of erasure. Every possibility ends possibilities. While we usually consider erasure as something to recover from, to re-inscribe -- such as the erasure of whole peoples, of memories, of pasts -- there is another aspect: erasure as a positive complement to inscription. Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 22:34:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: a modest proposal if you go back to juliana spahr's post, she suggested seperate list FOR announcments, and other for the rest. and she mentioned enjoying rest beside announcements until she got way busy and clogged down, and sick of recent spate of snarls. finally, if you peruse posts going back a few weeks, you will see that most lurker posts (and others) do NOT, as mr./ms. mccreary states, say that they only like announcements. i am not particularly happy to see namecalling, and the "schoolyard bully" pejorative would, i think, have been better left unsaid. but gabriel gudding-wise, i must point out a delicious irony: as a woman, am too often treated to persons overendowed with entitlement who feel it is encumbent upon them to "explain" what i have said, speak FOR me, and in so doing, completely ignore what in fact i HAVE said. i suspect that the numerous people, lurkers and otherwise, who have been posting that they like the multiplicity of posts, in addition to announcement posts, are perhaps less than idyllic about having it "explained" that in fact they were posting to say they only read announcements. how quaint that the interpretation is conjoined to disparagement of "schoolyard bullies." i feel the same frisson of distaste about "schoolyard bully" taunt whether i am, or am not, considered to be lumped among them. how bully of me -- mairead, watch it or i'll take over your "Butch" spot... call me spike... e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 17:23:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: 2 of per diem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit in case it werent mentioned, everyone was silenced for nearly 20 hours or so as the listserv was down sorry for my hasty notice for non response re: erasure & Rachel this morning --tired from grading papers (I used to stay up all night writing papers now I stay up grading them) but I think non-response is silence is erasure is pavement or hoffa in new jersey time to circle the mob (paranoiacs: read conspiracy) a suggestion: don't take the bait ignore threads that don't interest you and eventually the bickering banter will die away on another BOOKSALES oriented front, did anyone else hear the news that BARNES & NOBLE has purchased INGRAM DISTRIBUTION? I thought Ingram was long gone already....any info here would be greatly appreciated. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 22:59:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Announcements, Events Comments: To: Poetics List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Juliana's point is well taken, but so is the comment "bland, bland, bland" The EPC has a links page for publishers, but what if it had a page that listed nothing but reading announcements. And another that listed descriptions only of books and magazines. Posted of course by the folks who want the word out about such events. Anyone who feels overwhelmed by the # of messages should definitely get the digest version. It makes a huge difference to get 3 messages if you've been offline for 72 hours instead of 150. I only wish all the other lists (PoetryEtc, UKPoets, and subsubpoetics, say) had the same capacity. CAP-L has a digest option but seems these days to be stuck on just one or two messages per day. Big event here in Philly this week is Bruce Andrews & Rod Smith in the PhillyTalks series at Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, 6 PM on Thursday!! Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:07:55 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Erasing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel et al: Burt Kimmelman's suggestion is a good one; Hans Blumenberg's ideas around 'the necessity of forgetting' are interwoven with much else in his works. This from his Work on Myth which, if my memory serves me, contains Blumenberg's central idea [sorry about the 'in medias res' form of the quote]: "At the same time the art myth of the [Auf den] Marmorklippen [by Ernst Ju(umlaut)nger] shows that everything that man gained in the way of dominion over reality, through the experience of his history and finally through knowledge, could not remove the danger of sinking back--indeed, the longing to sink back--to the level of his impotence, into archaic resignation, as it were. But for this sinking back not only to become possible but to become the epitome of new desires, something had to be forgotten. This forgetting is the achievement of distance through 'work on myth' itself. It is a necessary condition of everything that became possible on this side of terror, of the absolutism of reality. At the same time it is also a necessary condition of the fact that the desire to return home to the archaic irresponsibility of simple surrender to powers that cannot be gainsaid does not need to be resisted and is able to penetrate to the surface of consciousness." Three of Blumenberg's books have been translated into English; Work on Myth, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and, my personal favorite, The Genesis of the Copernican World. I especially draw from the chapters that focus on the Nolan, Bruno, but any and all are well worth your time.---Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 23:42:33 -0500 Reply-To: Emily Lloyd Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: L=A & L.H. In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Simon & all, I don't think I've earned the right to define what "L=A=N=G" poetry is (which is to say I know I'll get in trouble here for my simpledom--simpletondom?)...that would mean, of course, that neither have I earned the right to call Hejinian a NON-L=A=N=G poet. But, ugh, I did, so here's an attempt at explaining why. My simplest, puritan definition of an L=A poet would be a poet whose primary interest is in abandoning (nicer light: questioning) "the signifying function of language, evoking instead the sounds, the non-referentiality of words." In quotes because I scrawled it in my copy of *Tender Buttons* as being something Chas. Bernstein said about Stein--this is probably a paraphrase, and it was not intended by CB, to my knowledge, as a definition of L=A=N=Gpo. I also've got there that CB said the desire to "decode" Stein reflects the reader's "misplaced urge to 'make sense' of poetry." I disagree with CB on Stein here (but I disagree with almost everyone on Stein, inc. CB's "opposites," who say *TB*'s just one big coded lesbian statement). And I don't know if I agree or not with myself putting this fwd as a definition of L=A=N=Gpo (there's some awkward multiple nodes for ya ). I do know that I would name _Writing Is an Aid to Memory_ as what seems to me Hejinian's closest moment to L=A=N=Gpo, but at the same time I'd feel facile in doing so... The term "confessional" is clearly problematic. Someone quite rightly backchanneled me on my earlier use of it, wondering just what the hell it meant to me. I identified, earlier, capital-C confessional poetry with "speech" and (not or) transparent use of lang., etc., ostensibly about the self--that is, the self not just of the narrator, but of the writer. Such a definition (esp. in the sense of transparency) would not usually apply to Plath or Berryman. It would sometimes apply to Whitman & O'Hara, Hass & Gluck. I dare say there are moments when it would--at least nearly--apply to S.Howe (whom I can't think of as a L=Apoet, either). I failed to say what I identified lowercase-c confessional poetry with, other than, abstractly enough, a sense of "intimacy." Even less academically, I'd say a sense of honesty. At some point, and I can't explain why, I stopped "trusting" (jeez, this is sounding like a confession) the word(s) of those poets who seemed to be consciously asking for my trust, for me to believe their stories, or their observations, and why not!, since they were putting it in the clearest, more see-through language possible, and in writing (much as I've loved much of her work, for me, one of the most obnoxious lines in poetry is the first sentence of Forche's "The Colonel": "What you have heard is true."). It'll sound like an idiot's mobius/mobile, but when I wrote of hitting a "wall" in reading Confessional Poetry, I meant that I felt something, I think, akin to the (more documented at my schools) way that many students feel when first encountering L=A=N=Gpo (or, sometimes, Stein--but not Hejinian). The "wall" is the language of the poem. For whatever reason, "transparent" language, when used in a poem--and I'm operating as one who cannot think of a "poem" itself as transparent: by "nature," it's a written, crafted thing--anyway, transparent language, when used in a poem, so as to (the poet hopes?) direct attention to the "ideas" or "story" or "thoughts" in the poem and not the language, calls *truckloads* of attention to the language. Of Confessional po., Simon writes, "for me, there is an 'aesthetic experience' (i.e., I do think it's somehow poetic, and not simply a hashing out in verse)." Okay: a poem is an aesthetic experience; a poem in "transparent" language feels, to me, like it's quietly (read: LOUDLY) trying not to be. But I'm talking *transparent* here. Maybe not even Lowell, but, say, Linda Pastan. "Trust," "truth," "honesty"--I'm embarrassed even to be writing of them. And yet I trust Hejinian's poetry, and I trust Stein's. I trust these because they manage to be, to me, both critically aware of (and sometimes delighting in) language/artifice/poemhood *and*, well, intimate. Whereas, say, when Adrienne Rich goes "and this is the oppressor's language," it just doesn't seem either (critically aware/intimate). In a similar way I have come to think Marianne Moore's work as almost scarily--so intensely is it--intimate. Could it be that I can't explain (and certainly can't convince) because I'm in love? and for the wrong reasons? I don't doubt it for a second. At any rate, Simon, I hope my tone & stumblings here make it clear that I didn't, in my last post, mean to suggest that you "need to read more of Hejinian" because you're in some way glaringly wrong in calling her a L=Apo. My disagreement is more from the gut than from the intellect (or, to be sure, the background in L=Apo that I don't have). And I don't know who the "most exemplary" L=A=N=Gpoets are, but when I was academically functioning I found _The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_ & some of Bob Perelman's _The Marginalization of Poetry_ helpful in that arena (L=A=N=Gpos, Simon: don't take this last bit as cheeky. I mean it sincerely: I read the books, I digested them, I can remember finding them very good. But my scholarhead burnt out not long after and I truly can't remember exactly who self-identifies, or is suspected of identifying, as a L=Apo. Bernstein? Silliman? Andrews? Watten? Grenier? Not--egads--Hejinian?) Transparent As I Wanna Be, em ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 23:01:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Whose sexual organs? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT May I bother the List with with a small correction for clarity's sake? When I said in my reply to Charles Bernstein that >Leaders of a community of poets searching wild and open >form, then, faced with situations of a wild and sudden irruption of >someone saying that other member's cocks and cunts, for example, are >not so fine as claimed (see George Thompson's wonderful post of >today) I should like the apostrophe to be placed _outside_ the 's' in "member's," lest the odd impression be given that I am thinking of a many-organed individual. Ah, my last post to the List, and see what I am reduced to. A fiddling with cocks and cunts. Think of me, every now and then. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:21:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Quartermain Subject: Coming in December, puff puff puff! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=====================_913209710==_" --=====================_913209710==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If you're going to the MLA convention, you might try the University Press of New England / Wesleyan University Press book stand for the following, just puffed in Publishers Weekly. The cover, I might add, is a knockout. --=====================_913209710==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Review1.txt" from _Publishers_ Weekly_ 30 November 1998 page 67 _OTHER:_British_and_Irish_Poetry_Since_1970_ Edited by Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain. Wesleyan Univ., $19.95 (352 p) ISBN 0-8195-22589; cloth $45 -22414 Though England has seen a spate of recent anthologies of alternative U.K. poetry, this collection marks the first published in the States in more than two decades. Caddel, a noted poet, and Quartermain, a prominent critic of postmodern poetry, collect a diverse and exciting range of work that is evenly balanced between such trends as Caribbean dub poetry; the mellifluous, baroque lyric as it has been developed in Cambridge; London-based performance and concrete poetry; and "outsider" figures such as Bill Griffiths (an independent Anglo-Saxon scholar) and Tom Raworth, whose Reverdy-inspired early lyrics first found appreciation in the States. The compelling introduction portrays a late-millennium English milieu that is marked by overlapping ethnicities and class perspectives, but that traces an experimental tradition "back to Clare, Blake, Smart and the two Vaughans, Henry and Thomas." The selections from the 55 poets are brief yet excellent. Barry McSweeney, a self-styled Rimbaudian, is represented by a number of terse, direct poems that flaunt pvocative language. Denise Riley's subtle, tradition-conscious ear allows lines that are unexpectedly comforting, while Raworth's "That More Simple Natural Time Tone Distortion," a sonic joy-ride of one- to three-word lines that bristle with pixilated narrative, is a contrast to his traditional short lyric "Out of a Sudden." Tom Leonard's Glasgow Scots, not unlike John Agard's Guyanese-inflected idiom, brings to eye and ear a sweet, confident music that is unlike anything in this country. Veronica Forrest-Thomson, a poet and critic who died at 28; Cris Cheek; Maggie O'Sullivan and concrete poet Bob Cobbing are all well represented, as are important figures who guided the influx of New American poetry to the islands: Eric Mottram, Roy Fisher and Andrew Crozier. This is an important sourcebook to a literature that is probably more marked by multi-culturalist energy and divergences from the main modernist line than that of the United States. (_December_) ------------------------------------------------------- --=====================_913209710==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 846 Keefer Street Vancouver B.C. Canada V6A 1Y7 Voice : 604 255 8274 Fax: 255 8204 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + --=====================_913209710==_-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:13:32 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: forked tongue? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "[T]he only significant alternative to the neutral-toned plain style of most philosophical writing of the present time is the weightier tone of judiciousness; BUT RARELY WHIMISCAL TONES OR ANGRY, OR BEFUDDLED OR LETHARGIC OR IRONIC, AS IF THESE TONES WERE MOODS THAT HAVE BEEN BANISHED, REALMS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE THUS SYSTEMATICALLY UNTOUCHABLE. NOT ONLY IS THE QUESTION OF METHOD SUPPRESSED, BUT EVEN THE POSSIBILITIES OF TONE WITHIN THE STYLE ARE REDUCED![!]"--- ---Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 00:52:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Stein,Charles,&LesbianCodes:one girl's fantasy "Oprah" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In my last post, I mentioned disagreeing with Charles & some other pro. critics on Stein's *Tender Buttons*, but didn't go into why. Below is why. It's a longish why--a msg. I sent a yr. or so ago to a friend who was unfamiliar with both some major critics' and, um, my takes on *TB*, so there appear quotes from critics, then my takes on the quotes. If length/tone/or topic is unbearable, please delete at will. But I didn't think it was--honorable?--to leave with "I disagree with the world-on-Stein" and no "here's why"s. em _________________________________________________________________ On *Tender Buttons*: *Eliz. Frost, fr. *Postmodern Culture*, v.5 n.3: "Stein's poetic experiment remains separate from the social and political realms that avant-garde artists of her day addressed in their highly polemical & disorienting art & manifestoes. One need only compare *TB* to any # of Marinetti's pronouncements, or to Apollinaire's "Merveilles de la Guerre," or even Breton's first surrealist manifesto, to see the extent to which Stein insisted on the privacy of her language...Stein's fetishization of lang. both exalts lang. to the status of material object & participates in disguising the erotic 'content' of *TB* as a whole... [note: GS' tendency to "isolate intimate, personal experience from the public sphere is being revisited/critiqued by fem. theorists who stress the political implications of speech in the public sphere & the 'impossibility' of separating the symbolic realm of lang. from the social realities lang. reflects] *in somewhat of the same vein, William Gass & Lisa Ruddick, on *TB*, suggest GS uses this hermetic space to create a private lang. of lesbian experience in which particular words function as clues ("THIS IS THIS DRESS, AIDER"= "this is distress, Ada"--where "Ada" was a nickname Stein had for Toklas). Individual words also function as codes for sexual experience (cow=orgasm, etc.). My Thoughts on the Above: bullhunky, mostly. Must everyone assume the forms Stein uses are used as hiding places--is that the only way to interrogate these forms, if we know she was a dyke? First of all, it does not appear to me that Stein is hiding anything in her writing--nor would that thesis gel with the open way in which she lived. Second, "private lang." published/publicized isn't all that private anymore, is it? How can one say the erotic content of *TB* is disguised? One would need to lack much imagination & sense of humor about eroticism to believe this--the sort of person who needs to see genitals called genitals before s/he realizes sex is being talked about...or thinks s/he is *special* for realizing sex is being talked about when genitals *aren't* explicitly referred to, thinks the general reader won't get this, so it must be patiently explained in a scholarly essay. How about the idea that words that refer specifically to genitals are TIRED? Aren't cheeky, aren't erotically FUN anymore? Take the poem called "PEELED PENCIL, CHOKE," the entire text of which, after the title, is "Rub her coke." I find this dizzingly, a bit disturbingly, but most importantly, *powerfully* erotic. Would Eliz. Frost have it read "Rub her clit"? Does she think this really reads as a command to fondle someone's soda-pop bottle? I think of the time K. and I were interrogating the ways in which pop-culture sexual scripts filtered into our own lives as if naturally--how K., an atheist, would say "Oh, God" during sex--and so we actively decided to try and eroticize previously "non-erotic" phrases (say, "I'm a little teapot") by using them in a sexual context. Of course this works. Basically, one is freshening, or re- inventing, sex, as one might say that GS freshens, or re-invents, language. One is naming. While I'm not convinced that the question of whether or not GS was politically "radical" enough in her poetry is the place to start interrogating her form, it seems clear that this naming, freshening, or whatever you want to call it, is radical at a far less surface level than penning "I love you, you love me, homosexuality!" It is also re-naming/inventing sex & lang. in a far less narrow way: by this, I mean, NOT just for lesbians. Dudes can rub her coke, too. She can rub a dude's coke, and then we have to re-guess what coke might mean. Insofar as GS' work contains specifically lesbian content (in places in *TB*, more obviously in "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" and "Lifting Belly"), it seems to me that she is embracing erotic experience, period, and that "lesbian sex" is simply the context in which she knows it. She's not trying to exalt lesbianism over other erotic experiences, as so many lesbian writers seem hell-bent on doing: Stein is in no way *defensive* about her sexual choices. *She's not on the defense, so she doesn't need to be on the offense.* I expect fem. theorists make their mistakes about Stein because they find it impossible to explain how she could be so utterly open, so "so what," about her lesbianism in the early 1900s, when VERY few lesbian writers are "sho what" about it even now. It IS almost impossible to believe. However, that's how it was, I think. To the greatest possible extent, Stein seems (in life, at least) to have simply expected others to rise above thinking there was anything special about her being a dyke...this "aside" should certainly pale, she'd think, to her being a "genius." Which she was convinced she was, with relatively little public support to substantiate her claim. A genius is not a woman, or a lesbian, or a man, or what-have-you (Stein might think). It's another species. It should not be disturbed with such trivial things as objections to its sex, sex life, weight, etc. And, for the most part, it seems that she wasn't (by salon visitors, etc.). This must, to some extent, have been due to her demeanor (and her charisma). Everyone knows that you can get away with shoplifting if you just walk in the store acting as though it were your right, and nothing out of the ordinary, to pocket something. Note that there was a large, tight-knit community of lesbians and bi women on the left bank in Stein's time, salon-ing at Natalie Barney's place--and that Stein had nothing to do with them. Why? Because they were not geniuses. Picasso, Alfred Whitehead-- others Stein considered geniuses--were her chosen company. Today's fem theorists gnash their teeth upon hearing that GS, when asked what she thought of "The Woman Question," replied that it had nothing to do with her. They are unable to understand how it had nothing to do with her. In the name of fem & gay liberation, they would have preferred that Stein confine herself to these issues in her writing. How liberating. Gass and Ruddick are correct when they speak of Stein's private jokes and punning, to the extent that these jokes *do* appear in her writing. They do not constitute the main of it, though, and it doesn't seem at all necessary to refer to them as a "private language of *lesbian* experience." They're private jokes, period. Indulgences, and perhaps a weakness in Stein's writing. There probably aren't many writers of any era, gender, or sexuality that haven't stuck a private joke in here or there in their writings. It's difficult to resist--and may be even more so when you keep hearing that no one understands any of your work, anyway. I do not believe it is something that should be particularly focused on in an exploration of Stein's work. Another Pro's Take: Charles Bernstein argues that, in *TB*, Stein abandons the signifying function of language altogether, evoking instead the sounds, the non-referentiality of words. CB says the desire to "decode" GS reflects the reader's "misplaced urge to make sense of poetry." My Reaction to Bernstein: GS obviously plays with sound in *TB*; one of the more amusing "plays" appears in "ROASTBEEF," when the paragraph beginning "Lovely snipe and tender turn" slips aggressively into rhymed tetrameter--clearly a "referential" move, one that refers to capital-P poetry. It seems to me that the desire to "decode" *TB* does indeed reflect a misplaced urge of the reader--not the urge to make sense of poetry, but the urge to make sense of, as seen above, a lesbian who doesn't use lesbian catch-phrases in her work. I simply do not think it possible to logically claim that Stein "abandons the signifying function of language altogether." For one thing, she preserves syntax and uses a fairly constant tone--one of a primer, sometimes, of someone making true, indisputable statements. There's also a frequent use of negatives: "this is not," "this does not make," "this is no," etc.--declaratives, "proofs," etc. She *might* be playing with the idea that one can communicate/teach through silly old words, she *might* be making fun of sense in the way it's popularly conceived. But here again, it seems to me that she's simply re- inventing/freshening an old idea of what making sense *is*. By which I mean that she *is* making sense in *TB*, but in a new way, in a way that forces the reader to question "sense" and making it in the same way that K. and I were forced to question sexual scripts. To say that *TB* does not make sense and is not representational is akin to saying that a Cubist painting does not make sense and is not representational. Of course a Cubist painting is representational of reality. It's representational of multiple realities/perspectives, though. It changes the boundaries of what is meant by "reality." In this, Cubism seems to me *very* purposeful, very scientific--an absolutely logical reponse of painting to photography, which at that time was "taking over" traditional representational painting. GS' work has been compared to Cubist paintings, and some of the poems in *TB* read almost like word-painting representations of their titles (for ex. "A METHOD OF A CLOAK," "WATER RAINING," and the--menstrually-ruined?--petticoat of "A PETTICOAT"). What's interesting is that, while Cubism follows naturally from photography's "threat" to "directly representational" painting (naturally in time/history), Stein's forms could really, as avant- garde as she seemed then and does even today, have happened ages before Stein "invented" them. Writing as a method of representing reality has *always* occupied a challenged space, and poetry in particular had long been seen as something "other" than the representation of reality, whether it be seen as a "heightened" reality or whatever. "Real people don't speak in rhymed meter," etc. It seems the most obvious thing in the world to say "Stein was before her time," but was she *really*? I can think of nothing occurring in history at Stein's particular moment that made her form "necessary" *right then*, as Cubism & abstract expressionism seemed necessary to the survival of painting in a photographable world. It could've happened a century, centuries earlier. I imagine Stein understanding this and being absolutely at a loss as to why others considered her work so "out there." I imagine her almost laughing because she'd "lucked in" to her genius-ness: noticed what, "unbelievably!", no one had noticed before. It could be said, bizarrely, that Stein's writing is both primitive and avant-garde. She alternately telescopes and microscopes, steps incredibly close to and back from objects. The *TB* phrase "Object that is in wood," from the poem "A WAIST," reminds one of an archaeologist reporting on an artifact whose use is unknown. Whatever the "object that is in wood" is, no one who knows the name of said object would refer to it as an "object that is in wood." An observation that basic is (nearly) no longer available when one knows the name of the object. Your generalized poet would take the name of the object and then add description *to the name*, would build on the given. Here, Stein builds *backwards* from the given. Somewhere Anne Sexton writes that a poet is one who builds trees out of wood furniture. I do not think this is often the case, but with Stein, with "object that is in wood" and its equivalents, it is apt. I guess I'd say here GS works to uncover what the "civilized, educated" psyche *smooths* over--what is no longer available to the all-too-trained (and rushed) eye. Stein's dealing with the psyche, here, as she does in more obvious ways *Three Lives* and *The Making of Americans* (and there it is only more obvious because she's actively questioning the motives/architecture of different personality "types"--whereas here, it's any reader's, any observer's, psyche that is being not questioned, but, in some way, restored: Stein is really restoring ways of seeing that have been lost, as much as or more than she is inventing new ways of seeing). Misc. Notes (not on Tender Buttons) Always controversial is Stein's statement "There is no such thing as repetition," esp. since so many readers read her as repetitive: in The Making of Americans, some of the portraits., etc. (not TB). "Repetitive"-looking passages in Stein are often permutations, not repetitions of a phrase (a compliment Stein always cherished was someone's comparison of her work to Bach's fugues). But there ARE certain sentences repeated verbatim, and more than once. What were these to Stein, if not repetitions? How should we read them? Okay, my thesis: it's not at all hard to argue that one can't repeat the same sentence when speaking. It'll never sound exactly the same way twice--the timbre of the voice might vary, a car might pass by, acts of speech are inherently acts of performance, etc. I think Stein is insisting that neither can one type the same sentence twice. Perhaps forcing us to imagine the conditions under which each sentence was typed. There can be no repetition because this sentence was typed at 10:41, and this sentence, which contains exactly the same words, at 10:42. Hence Stein's concept of the "continuous present." I think? If so, she was bumping against the langue v. parole debate somewhat before the debate supposedly officially started (at least as we read it today). Claiming the same primacy (and indeterminacy?) for the written as for the spoken word. And for the read word: I read the sentence in different conditions than you, so each sentence is endlessly new. Hmm. Re: femtheory, lesbians, & gender identity: In addition to saying that the "woman question" didn't concern her, Stein referred to herself as "husband" and Alice as "wife" (Stein & Picasso in one room discussing art, their wives dicussing hats and perfume in the other room). It would be wrong, however, to label theirs a butch-femme relationship. Stein was no butch. There were famous butches in Paris at the time: Radclyffe Hall, Lady Una Trowbridge, etc., as well as famous femmes: Natalie Barney, etc. These butches dressed the part--hats, trousers, ties, short slicked- back hair. Stein wore skirts, not pants, and only cut her hair to Caesar-length quite late in life. It would be more accurate to view theirs as a male-female relationship than a butch-femme one...that is, more accurate to see Stein as "transgendered" than as a lesbian. The woman question did not concern her because she was not a woman. This may be hard to grasp, and it's hard to communicate. But butch-femme relationships are highly coded ones, and dress is an essential--perhaps THE essential--marker of them. And when I say "transgendered," I don't necessarily mean that Stein thought of herself as a man. I think she thought of herself as a Stein (or a genius)--somehow outside of gender. She seems to have dressed in whatever she found comfortable, rather than making the very active & time-consuming decisions a butch must in putting together a coded appearance. Similarly, in "Patriarchal Poetry," where Stein denounces "Patriarchal Poetry," I think it's a definite mistake to read this as a denouncement of poetry by men. Huge! Some fem-lesbs latch onto this one poem as "proof" that Stein was politically conscious and cared about them. But by "patriarchal poetry," I believe Stein means "establishment poetry," or canonical verse. Not all men write patriarchal poetry, and some women do. There is no call for a "matriarchal" poetry, and remember that Stein was buying non-establishment paintings by men before anyone else-- *while* everyone else was defacing them at painting exhibitions. It would be the same "patriarchy" keeping these male painters from being appreciated that kept Stein's work from being appreciated... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 23:12:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Special to Bay Area teachers/students (Course Announcement) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I would appreciate your help in spreading the word about this course. It is open both to students who are enrolled in the "regular" university AND to those who are not. (Come one! Come all!) Students receive 3 units of credit in creative writing, which counts toward the major. Thanks.--KLS WINTER SESSION COURSE Creative Writing 510: Personal Narrative CW 0510-01 (J) 3.0 Units 01/04/99—01/21/99 MTWTH 0900—1245 HUM 384 San Francisco State University College of Extended Learning Description: This multi-genre, upper-division writing course will examine the ways in which writers transform the raw material of personal experience into publishable works of art. Students will read genres including the novel, memoir, short story, personal essay, and the long poem. Topics to be covered include work, family, sex, personal/history, politics, and the writing life. Throughout the course students will be encouraged to push the boundaries of what we define as both "personal" and "narrative." Responses to the texts (both critical and creative), in-class writing assignments, and a final project are required. We will also spend time workshopping student work. Texts include: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, Beneath The Underdog: His World As Composed by Mingus by Charles Mingus, This Boy's Life: A Memoir by Tobias Wolff, Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, My Life by Lyn Hejinian, essays by Joan Didion, The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy, Marjorie Kempe by Robert Gluck, and selections from Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life. Instructor: Kathy Lou Schultz, MFA has published poetry, prose, critical essays, and book reviews in a variety of journals including Mirage, Tripwire, Idiom, Outlet, Lyric&, and Fourteen Hills. Recent work is also forthcoming in Rhizome and Kenning. Her collection of poems, Re dress, was selected by Forrest Gander as the winner of the Michael Rubin Award given by San Francisco State University. Kathy Lou is co-editor of Lipstick Eleven, a magazine of experimental writing. For more information, contact the instructor at: kathylou@worldnet.att.net or (415) 386-5854. The number for SFSU College of Extended Learning is (415) 904-7700. The schedule number for this course is 10356. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 02:25:35 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: call me morbid call me pale In-Reply-To: <199812090614.BAA03523@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII anselm, beth: by "abstract french lyric" my guess at the work being referred to would be that of anne-marie albiach, claude royet-journoud, perhaps also dominique fourcade, jacqueline risset, jean daive, phillipe denis, and of a slightly older generation, jacques dupin, andre du bouchet, et al. french originals might be had at a good library, and translations available from presses like sun/moon, burning deck, post apollo... hoping that helps, t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the life in things. -- Gilles Deleuze ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 00:32:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: A response to Charles Bernstein In-Reply-To: <86B02D92BAD@student.highland.cc.il.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" What makes me reach for the delete key is the damned godawful Length of a lot of those argumentative posts. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 00:32:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: re The Cold of Poetry/Em's strand In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now that last Bromige posting on Bukowski---that was long, and it was worth it, because it was a literary discussion, not a lot of dressing down of some other gink on a minor point. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 01:45:26 -0800 Reply-To: clarkd@sfu.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Organization: A Use for Poets (Editing) Company Subject: RADDLE MOON again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable hello, I notice that a couple of people asked about the address for RM subscriptions, so I thought I'd repost my earlier post; for further information, = please contact Susan Clark at clarkd@sfu.ca. = *************************************************** Announcing the publication of RADDLE MOON 17 -- dedicated to the memory of Charles Watts -- = A special section, "Some Vancouver Writers," with work by : = Marie Annharte BAKER, Ted BYRNE, Susan CLARK, Peter CULLEY, = Kevin DAVIES, Jeff DERKSEN, Dan FARRELL, Deanna FERGUSON, = Maxine GADD, Dorothy Trujillo LUSK, Rob MANERY, Paul MUTTON, = Meredith QUARTERMAIN, Lisa ROBERTSON, Nancy SHAW, Christine STEWART, = Colin SMITH, Catriona STRANG, Lary TIMEWELL, Melissa WOLSAK. = Work from Quebec, curated by Nicole Brossard : = Cynthia GIRARD, Michael D=C9LISLE, = translated by Robert Majzels and Erin Mour=E9=82 New work from : = William FULLER, Jean DAY, Jackson Mac Low, = Gil McElroy and Rae Armantrout Photograms by Katrine Le Gallou ******************************************************* SUBSCRIPTIONS: in Canada : subscriptions ($15 indiv/$24 inst); single copies, $10 in USA or overseas: same as above, in US$; = (add $16 per sub for airmail overseas) send address and issue you want to start with to: RADDLE MOON, 518-350 East Second Av., Vancouver, BC V5T 4R8 Canada for subscriptions using credit card please contact: New Star Books, Vancouver: newstar@pinc.com (Visa accepted) DISTRIBUTION: = individual orders: New Star Books, Vancouver: newstar@pinc.com (Visa accepted) booksellers, please order through General Distribution : Ontario & PQ: 1-800-387-0141 = in the rest of Canada: 1-800-387-0172 in the USA : individuals, please order through : Small Press Distribution, Berkeley, 1-800.869.7553 or orders@spdbooks.org or through = Bridge Street Books, Washington, DC : contact Rod Smith, AERIALEDGE@aol.com US booksellers, please order through : = General Book Distribution, Toronto, Canada : 1-800-805-1083 = OR through = Small Press Distribution, Berkeley above. in Britain: through Paul Green, at Spectacular Diseases, 85b London Road, Peterborough, Cambs, England PE2 9BS, or through New Star (VISA accepted) ********* our ISSN is: 0826-5909 *************** *Erratum*: Marie Annharte Baker's name is spelled [consistently] incorrectly throughout the issue as Annehart. Most issues were shipped before this error was noticed and so lack erratum slips. Apologies to Marie. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 05:03:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Oliver Subject: Re : Abstract lyric Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Hi Anselm! I think Simon's "Reverie" on the French abstract lyric is a li= ttle off-base. Hi Simon! As I understand it, the term was introduced more recently to explain why contemporary French post-Derridean poetry which, i= n Celan-like terms, raised the problem of the lyric voice nevertheless had a lyric look and feel to it, as indeed Celan's poetry had. The lyrical tend= ency is abstracted into a play of language influenced by a theoretics; and the personal emotional content is cauterised or ablated or something, although= the impulsion of poet into poetry remains what it always has been, from the gu= t. But the lyrical music still lives along the fragmented lines, and let's no= t even mention "erasure" please! Perhaps the finest example, if I'm right i= n my derivations, would be Anne-Marie Albiach's work, some of it recently translated by Keith Waldrop as Geometry. But I think more particularly of= her Etat and Viva Voce. When you hear her read (not usually possible), you ca= n sense what I can only call a lyrical time interval occur within the Mallar= m=E9an white spaces of the page. The specifically post-Derridean movement in Fre= nch poetry really began, following Tel Quel mag of the sixties, with Claude Ro= yet- Journoud's, Anne-Marie's, and Michel Couturier's magazine Si=E8cle =E0 Mai= ns in 1969-70 in my opinion. Doug ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 02:26:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: izak Subject: Transfer Reading Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ***Reading for Transfer 76*** Monday, December 14th from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Poetry Center San Francisco State University *FREE* * Mike Freeman * Ruth Goldstone * Cynthia Green * Dana Teen Lomax * Sarah Mangold * Dan Mayer * John Monroe * Rose Najia * Sarah Rosenthal * Cynthia Sailers ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:51:20 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alaric Sumner Subject: British Poets in digest form Comments: To: POETICS%LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU@sun2.mhs-relay.ac.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ron Silliman suggested that british-poets does not have digest. This is untrue. If you are a member of the list then you can set and unset digest thus: >Setting digests > >To receive messages as a digest, send this command to mailbase@mailbase.ac.= uk > > set british-poets digest > >And to stop receiving messages as a digest, send this command to >mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk > > set british-poets nodigest =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1= =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1= =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1 Alaric Sumner Lecturer in Performance Writing Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EJ, UK http://www.dartington.ac.uk/prospectus/pw.html =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1 PAJ (Performing Arts Journal) Johns Hopkins UP Guest Editor for section on (live) Performance Writing PAJ 61 January 1999 http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/performing_arts_journal/information/highlights.= html =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1 poems + RealAudio soundwork in Perihelion (ed. Barbara Fletcher/Jennifer Ley) http://webdelsol.com/Perihelion/sumnerpoetry.htm =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1 'error studies and portraits' in Cartograffiti (ed. Taylor Brady) http://writing.upenn.edu/AandL/english/pubs/spc/cartograffiti/contents/poems= =2Ehtm l =B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1=B1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 08:42:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Stein,Charles,&LesbianCodes:one girl's fantasy "Oprah" In-Reply-To: from "Emily Lloyd" at Dec 9, 98 00:52:56 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Emily Lloyd said: "Must everyone assume the forms Stein uses are used as hiding places--is that the only way to interrogate these forms, if we know she was a dyke? First of all, it does not appear to me that Stein is hiding anything in her writing--nor would that thesis gel with the open way in which she lived. Second, "private lang." published/publicized isn't all that private anymore, is it? How can one say the erotic content of *TB* is disguised? One would need to lack much imagination & sense of humor about eroticism to believe this." Emily, just wanted to thank you for your long and concerned posts on these various LangPo & Stein issues. We actually disagree on a fair amount of the particulars but in honor of the list's recent despair I figured I'd stick mostly to areas where discussions might be productive rather than merely antagonistic. Those who've had the patience/time/interest to read my posts in the past won't be surprised when I say, as I think Charles B would, that non-referential langauge is not necessarily non-signifying langauge. Stein would have understood this as well, being a student of William James. Tender Buttons does indeed signify all over the place, though I don't believe it is particularly concerned with the referentiallity of language. But - in regards to the quote from you above, I'd be inclined to agree with you. Particularly in regards to your statement that "it does not appear to me that Stein is hiding anything in her writing." TB has always seemed to me not a repressed work in the least -- not a matter of closeting or any such thing. To believe so would be to drop Freud very oppressively into Stein's brain and, again, as far as psychology is concerned, Stein is not a Freudian bu a Jamesian. So what else is there to say then. Well, I think there's another way to talk about *codes* without talking about *hiding*. And here it is: I think then when we're dealing with TB we are properly in the realm of slang. Here's Paul Goodman on slang and I think it's pretty relevant to what's going on it TB: "Much of slang is first invented as a neologism of a gang or special group...yet it comes into circulation *as slang* by breaking out of its sub-culture. When the boundary is broken, there is a different kind of language, not self-naming and defensive but common and wild...slang creates new language just like poetry, and it can be regarded as a kind of folk poetry...Whitman says, 'Slang is the lawless, germinal element below all words and sentences and behind all poetry.'" So, when we're talking about lines like "rub her coke" I would say, as I think you said, that we're not talking about language which is secret and coded but, as Goodman says, "common and wild." That's what's so great about it! What the hell's so fun about saying Stein was trying to hide the fact that she was a dyke? Not only does it seem quite wrong, it seems - worse! - boring. Stein's *intent* doesn't interest me that much but if I had to address it I would say that she knew enough about the nature of language as fundamentally *public* (i.e., collaborative, un-hideable, un-tameable, circuitous) to understand that one's codes never stay hidden - they move out into common arenas and do work with/on/against/through other codes. As an aside, I'd like to say that this sort of talk (the kind Emily initiated) is an important part of this list. It's not just announcements and the occassional brief, inevitably kind review. I know that to open it up to more than this risks occassional chaos, hurt feelings, and abandonment by listmembers we admire. But I also believe (and I say this with full sympathy for posts such as the recent one from Juliana) that the list cannot remain viable and vital if it is merely an uncontentious bulletin board. Thanks. -Mike. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 09:18:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: three questions In-Reply-To: <366DD182.DCE13E04@cit.mbc.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Bob, To grok "redshifting web" in a possible Buddhist context, search on either "Indra's web" or "Indra's net"--Hindu-Buddhist version of "a thousand points of light," sorta. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 09:53:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pattie McCarthy Subject: Re: Erasing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 12/9/98 12:28:35 AM, you wrote: <> but isn't erasing / forgetting more strenuous than remembering? I agree that this cld never BE an abstraction. had Treblinka been made into a park, I don't suspect many wld have forgotten that it had been Treblinka -- cld it have ever become a void, truly? or, in a broader sense, cld anything erased become void? or wld it become something else entirely -- itself transmuted in an attempt to erase? which then, textually, does it become itself plus the process? in which case itself 'erased' is more charged than forgotten? I agree w/ "erasure as a positive complement to inscription" but find myself wandering here in this maze of what is the void & how is this inescapable? Rachel's poem excerpted earlier begins : "It's true that every ending only erases the board / rather than filling it." which seems to embrace the inextricable entaglement of forgetting / remembering & their simultaneous natures. so then, yes -- what is the opposite of erasure but also what is erasure? usually lurking, Pattie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:20:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: Fwd: blick Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_913216830_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_913216830_boundary Content-ID: <0_913216830@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII in an effort to give HG an opportunity to respond to CB in front of the only audience for whom it's important, I forward this to the List. joe brennan --part0_913216830_boundary Content-ID: <0_913216830@inet_out.mail.BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from rly-za02.mx.aol.com (rly-za02.mail.aol.com [172.31.36.98]) by air-za03.mail.aol.com (v53.20) with SMTP; Tue, 08 Dec 1998 21:50:16 1900 Received: from BROWNVM.brown.edu (brownvm.brown.edu [128.148.19.19]) by rly-za02.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with SMTP id VAA01014 for ; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:50:14 -0500 (EST) Resent-Message-Id: <199812090250.VAA01014@rly-za02.mx.aol.com> Message-Id: <199812090250.VAA01014@rly-za02.mx.aol.com> Received: from BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU by BROWNVM.brown.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R4) with BSMTP id 7862; Tue, 08 Dec 98 21:50:07 EST Received: from BROWNVM (NJE origin AP201070@BROWNVM) by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 5949; Tue, 8 Dec 1998 21:50:08 -0500 Resent-Date: Tue, 08 Dec 98 21:48:40 EST Resent-From: henry Resent-To: JBCM2@AOL.COM Date: Tue, 08 Dec 98 21:27:40 EST From: henry Subject: blick To: gabe Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Dear Joe, I forwarded this to Kent also. I wish somebody would post to list. as my last say. Bernstein appears to have hunkered down for the long phony haul. Bizzarro. - Henry ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hey Gerber, you still breathin there, foxhole?? I'm following it on the website. Bernstein let quite a big one there. I wish somebody would clarify oncet & for all why I quit. It was the censorship, not the limitation. The fact that 2 of my "reviewed" posts got disappeared. Kent & Mairead are gettin there... plus he makes it sound like I was constant overposter. blow. he warned me abo ut 3-4 times tops over the last 3 yrs. Evry time I consented to his demand & reduced posting. politics, baby. the smear about intimidating people. he shd talk. I treated everybody to the same candid sop. rough sometimes, maybe. but hey, are we baby consumers here, looking for a magazine rack?? I tried to stick to the issues. can you forward this to somebody? I can't reply. Bernstein has slandered me. - Henry --part0_913216830_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 10:31:32 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Call me abstract, call me French In-Reply-To: <366D588E.DAB@his.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "The abstract French lyric" is an infamous coinage of Ron Silliman's, in Philly Talks. He claimed that this was what most poets were today publishing (not including the workshop types, natch). And that it was very limited and limiting, that most people were only doing the A.F.L. This occasioned much bemused head-scatching, here in @lanta, and elsewhere. The "French" is especially intriguing. Totally off-base, i would say; but intriguing and provocative. Is it because contemporary post-L=A=N=G tendencies trace back historically to Rimbaud and Mallarme? Certainly Char and surrealism are not the primary inputs in contemporary u.s. work! (Throwing down the gaunlet here to RS, to defend his honor) mark p. On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, schuchat wrote: > I don't know French, so I am probably the best person to answer your > query. > > The "abstract French lyric" is by Pierre Reverie. > > The "French abstract" lyric is an academic piece, a song about a list of > articles either in French or on French. > > Can the "Abstract" French "Lyric" can cut the mustard? > > Le lyric abstruit Fran-swa? C'est moi! > > However, there is also the possibility of Isidore Isou, the Romanian > (naturellement) inventor of Le Poesie Lettriste, who wrote "in French" > to the extent that lettriste poesie would be in a language. > > It is possible that Andy Britain also wrote a French abstract lyric. > > > As we say in Russia, "etot vsou" > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 10:58:08 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Stein,Charles,&LesbianCodes:one girl's fantasy "Oprah" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Murmur pet murmur pet murmur. Push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea push sea. Sweet and good and kind to all. --Stein from Sacred Emily Emily, Thanks for your Stein posts, they are great. Who are the feminists you take issue with? I think the issue of what Stein was thinking about is slippery, clearly her work is no political gripe even when she is head on the subject of global politics, mostly her thoughts observations are fodder for the experiments. Some of her projects seem more transparent to me as a reader than others. Maria Damon's discussion of Yet Dish as Yiddish in her essay in _the dark end of the street_ came as a revelation to me, and I can no longer think German w/o hearing 'gem in' or Polish without 'a polish' or Russian, 'rush in slice' (and then I rush to Brighton Beach to have a rush in slice of smoked salmon) As far as her gender identification--yes perhaps not an issue, she liked girls and girls was good but what if she didn't like girls? I mean don't you think the desexualization of men is meaningful to her accomplishment? Also, I think that the time and place of Paris when GS was writing there, while N.Barney et al were saloning it up was the last time before the 1990's when there was an actively aestetic context for lesbians. "Lesbian" per say may not be an aestetic category but social context--as separate as she was from it--could allow Stein to have a 'so what' attitude and yet not be rendered invisible by denial. She was separate but in contact with the both the lesbian scene and the black scene, and my sense is that these were important to her in terms of being "of her time" rather than outside of it, ahead of it, which she flatly denies as a possiblitity. "No one is aheat of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept." (Composition as Explanation) Which to me is a great rebuke to those prissy gasps and the fact that GS counted her self among a handful of world geniuses--there are varieties of being genius, someone else could have her handful too. I'm going off here but I think what's shocking is that Stein (and this goes back to Damon) had the chutzpah to say what she thought of herself and what allowed her to indulge in the experiment of writing. It's more palpable and gentile in these parts to say "I'm nobody! Who are you?" So, by the way, who are people's five living geniuses? I'll have to think about that myself. By the way, check out below what happened to your post on my server. How much did I miss? Emily Lloyd wrote: > > WÃüTpbo\Þùrw¶´Íï} > P[ÿév½üõÃ|Rœ` ‡–ÇÉ•mkË_åRع*í •“|_ ï׺ùÝo‡¥,ßww¼c†­–¹\à > ¯ Æn6ošÅìåûÖ¶Æb¦ïA{aÿu™ÍÖ}0 ý_úž9É F4¡],àïšyÊ~¶ÿí˜#=éò¾¶Ä’>r!jÜâ —q®n;\ê?—zÎvÞp¦C½Ñ&/xÕ 6²|/ã?' {Ì! > ï‘]Käùè6È ¯«i½Ûï:Ø·ã-1l‰ÍãcÚÛUÆ´ ÷láF'Û¼ènsº×d ³ûݼF·¹ÁœîyÃÛ¿çÞtM > œovóóÞêæî»y ]^˜à ··½ þ^}‹t£Õ °¼‘{ð ·›µ¼µ8!.߈WÜà ¯,{GNr¥º·ä=íÈC{Ùà~Ö¬/ k˳\Ï Ä|ª %î?onXž'ö¤*Ç)SË:Ú ¸Ü±.å«\ 9[tÂŽv«< :W“ and eventually the bickering banter will die away > > on another BOOKSALES oriented front, > did anyone else hear the news that BARNES & NOBLE has purchased > INGRAM DISTRIBUTION? > > I thought Ingram was long gone already....any info here would be greatly > appreciated. > > ould be greatly > appreciated. > > he most extensive book distribution > > >system in the country, enabling online book buyers to get books > > >as fast as possible. (Imagine the advertising tagline: "Every book > > >tomorrow.") B&N also takes control of Amazon.com's largest > > >wholesaler-supplier. (In 1997, Ingram supplied 58% of Amazon.com's > > >books, although that percentage likely has dropped significantly > > >following Amazon.com's opening of a warehouse in Delaware and > > >generally diversifying its sources of supply.) > > > > > >The Wall Street Journal speculated today that the FTC and > > >Justice Department would approve the purchase because it is a > > >"vertical" purchase, i.e., not the purchase of a company in the > > >same part of the business. The ABA is campaigning for government > > >disapproval and reported that a Justice Department spokesperson > > >said that the purchase is "definitely something that would come > > >under review." But the Bertelsmann purchase of Random House > > >was approved earlier this year with no problem, and the > > >government has shown more concern with purchases that result > > >in a combination that dominates one segment of an industry. > > > > > >Blurred somewhat by the focus on online bookselling, however, > > >is what the purchase means for both the country's largest book > > >retailer and largest book wholesaler. > > > > > >At B&N, this purchase is the latest sign of how seriously the > > >company views the potential of online bookselling and shows > > >that B&N is once again reinventing itself. > > > > > >But reinvention this time is occurring with much more speed > > >and less control than in the early 1990s, when B&N gradually > > >went from being the biggest mall bookseller to the largest book > > >superstore operator. (That superstore strategy, incidentally, > > >seems to have lost steam. One measure: the pace of B&N > > >superstore openings has declined dramatically from 90-95 a > > >year to only 11 in the first half of the current fiscal year.) At > > >that time, B&N set the pace and stayed in the lead as a new > > >retail concept swept through the book world. This time, it was > > >blindsided by Amazon.com and appears to be desperately > > >playing catchup. (For its part, Borders, B&N's primast importantly, *powerfully* erotic. > Would Eliz. Frost have it read "Rub her clit"? Does she think this really > reads as a command to fondle someone's soda-pop bottle? I think of the > time K. and I were interrogating the ways in which pop-culture sexual > scripts filtered into our own lives as if naturally--how K., an atheist, > would say "Oh, God" during sex--and so we actively decided to try and > eroticize previously "non-erotic" phrases (say, "I'm a little teapot") by > using them in a sexual context. Of course this works. Basically, one is > freshening, or re- inventing, sex, as one might say that GS freshens, or > re-invents, language. One is naming. While I'm not convinced that the > question of whether or not GS was politically "radical" enough in her > poetry is the place to start interrogating her form, it seems clear that > this naming, freshening, or whatever you want to call it, is radical at a > far less surface level than penning "I love you, you love me, > homosexuality!" It is also re-naming/inventing sex & lang. in a far less > narrow way: by this, I mean, NOT just for lesbians. Dudes can rub her > coke, too. She can rub a dude's coke, and then we have to re-guess what > coke might mean. Insofar as GS' work contains specifically lesbian > content (in places in *TB*, more obviously in "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" > and "Lifting Belly"), it seems to me that she is embracing erotic > experience, period, and that "lesbian sex" is simply the context in which > she knows it. She's not trying to exalt lesbianism over other erotic > experiences, as so many lesbian writers seem hell-bent on doing: Stein is > in no way *defensive* about her sexual choices. *She's not on the > defense, so she doesn't need to be on the offense.* I expect fem. > theorists make their mistakes about Stein because they find it impossible > to explain how she could be so utterly open, so "so what," about her > lesbianism in the early 1900s, when VERY few lesbian writers are "sho > what" about it even now. It IS almost impossible to believe. However, > that's how it was, I think. To the greatest possible extent, Stein seems > (in life, at least) to have simply expected others to rise above thinking > there was anything special about her being a dyke...this "aside" should > certainly pale, she'd think, to her being a "genius." Which she was > convinced she was, with relatively little public support to substantiate > her claim. A genius is not a woman, or a lesbian, or a man, or > what-have-you (Stein might think). It's another species. It should not > be disturbed with such trivial things as objections to its sex, sex life, > weight, etc. And, for the most part, it seems that she wasn't (by salon > visitors, etc.). This must, to some extent, have been due to her demeanor > (and her charisma). Everyone knows that you can get away with shoplifting > if you just walk in the store acting as though it were your right, and > nothing out of the ordinary, to pocket something. Note that there was a > large, tight-knit community of lesbians and bi women on the left bank in > Stein's time, salon-ing at Natalie Barney's place--and that Stein had > nothing to do with them. Why? Because they were not geniuses. Picasso, > Alfred Whitehead-- others Stein considered geniuses--were her chosen > company. Today's fem theorists gnash their teeth upon hearing that GS, > when asked what she thought of "The Woman Question," replied that it had > nothing to do with her. They are unable to understand how it had nothing > to do with her. In the name of fem & gay liberation, they would have > preferred that Stein confine herself to these issues in her writing. How > liberating. > Gass and Ruddick are correct when they speak of Stein's private > jokes and punning, to the extent that these jokes *do* appear in her > writing. They do not constitute the main of it, though, and it doesn't > seem at all necessary to refer to them as a "private language of *lesbian* > experience." They're private jokes, period. Indulgences, and perhaps a > weakness in Stein's writing. There probably aren't many writers of any > era, gender, or sexuality that haven't stuck a private joke in here or > there in their writings. It's difficult to resist--and may be even more > so when you keep hearing that no one understands any of your work, anyway. > I do not believe it is something that should be particularly focused on in > an exploration of Stein's work. > > Another Pro's Take: Charles Bernstein argues that, in *TB*, Stein > abandons the signifying function of language altogether, evoking instead > the sounds, the non-referentiality of words. CB says the desire to > "decode" GS reflects the reader's "misplaced urge to make sense of > poetry." > > My Reaction to Bernstein: GS obviously plays with sound in *TB*; one of > the more amusing "plays" appears in "ROASTBEEF," when the paragraph > beginning "Lovely snipe and tender turn" slips aggressively into rhymed > tetrameter--clearly a "referential" move, one that refers to capital-P > poetry. It seems to me that the desire to "decode" *TB* does indeed > reflect a misplaced urge of the reader--not the urge to make sense of > poetry, but the urge to make sense of, as seen above, a lesbian who > doesn't use lesbian catch-phrases in her work. I simply do not think it > possible to logically claim that Stein "abandons the signifying function > of language altogether." For one thing, she preserves syntax and uses a > fairly constant tone--one of a primer, sometimes, of someone making true, > indisputable statements. There's also a frequent use of negatives: "this > is not," "this does not make," "this is no," etc.--declaratives, "proofs," > etc. She *might* be playing with the idea that one can communicate/teach > through silly old words, she *might* be making fun of sense in the way > it's popularly conceived. But here again, it seems to me that she's > simply re- inventing/freshening an old idea of what making sense *is*. By > which I mean that she *is* making sense in *TB*, but in a new way, in a > way that forces the reader to question "sense" and making it in the same > way that K. and I were forced to question sexual scripts. To say that > *TB* does not make sense and is not representational is akin to saying > that a Cubist painting does not make sense and is not representational. > Of course a Cubist painting is representational of reality. It's > representational of multiple realities/perspectives, though. It changes > the boundaries of what is meant by "reality." In this, Cubism seems to me > *very* purposeful, very scientific--an absolutely logical reponse of > painting to photography, which at that time was "taking over" traditional > representational painting. GS' work has been compared to Cubist > paintings, and some of the poems in *TB* read almost like word-painting > representations of their titles (for ex. "A METHOD OF A CLOAK," "WATER > RAINING," and the--menstrually-ruined?--petticoat of "A PETTICOAT"). > What's interesting is that, while Cubism follows naturally from > photography's "threat" to "directly representational" painting (naturally > in time/history), Stein's forms could really, as avant- garde as she > seemed then and does even today, have happened ages before Stein > "invented" them. Writing as a method of representing reality has *always* > occupied a challenged space, and poetry in particular had long been seen > as something "other" than the representation of reality, whether it be > seen as a "heightened" reality or whatever. "Real people don't speak in > rhymed meter," etc. It seems the most obvious thing in the world to say > "Stein was before her time," but was she *really*? I can think of nothing > occurring in history at Stein's particular moment that made her form > "necessary" *right then*, as Cubism & abstract expressionism seemed > necessary to the survival of painting in a photographable world. It > could've happened a century, centuries earlier. I imagine Stein > understanding this and being absolutely at a loss as to why others > considered her work so "out there." I imagine her almost laughing because > she'd "lucked in" to her genius-ness: noticed what, "unbelievably!", no > one had noticed before. It could be said, bizarrely, that Stein's writing > is both primitive and avant-garde. She alternately telescopes and > microscopes, steps incredibly close to and back from objects. The *TB* > phrase "Object that is in wood," from the poem "A WAIST," reminds one of > an archaeologist reporting on an artifact whose use is unknown. Whatever > the "object that is in wood" is, no one who knows the name of said object > would refer to it as an "object that is in wood." An observation that > basic is (nearly) no longer available when one knows the name of the > object. Your generalized poet would take the name of the object and then > add description *to the name*, would build on the given. Here, Stein > builds *backwards* from the given. Somewhere Anne Sexton writes that a > poet is one who builds trees out of wood furniture. I do not think this > is often the case, but with Stein, with "object that is in wood" and its > equivalents, it is apt. I guess I'd say here GS works to uncover what the > "civilized, educated" psyche *smooths* over--what is no longer available > to the all-too-trained (and rushed) eye. Stein's dealing with the psyche, > here, as she does in more obvious ways *Three Lives* and *The Making of > Americans* (and there it is only more obvious because she's actively > questioning the motives/architecture of different personality > "types"--whereas here, it's any reader's, any observer's, psyche that is > being not questioned, but, in some way, restored: Stein is really > restoring ways of seeing that have been lost, as much as or more than she > is inventing new ways of seeing). > > Misc. Notes (not on Tender Buttons) Always controversial is Stein's > statement "There is no such thing as repetition," esp. since so many > readers read her as repetitive: in The Making of Americans, some of the > portraits., etc. (not TB). "Repetitive"-looking passages in Stein are > often permutations, not repetitions of a phrase (a compliment Stein always > cherished was someone's comparison of her work to Bach's fugues). But > there ARE certain sentences repeated verbatim, and more than once. What > were these to Stein, if not repetitions? How should we read them? Okay, > my thesis: it's not at all hard to argue that one can't repeat the same > sentence when speaking. It'll never sound exactly the same way twice--the > timbre of the voice might vary, a car might pass by, acts of speech are > inherently acts of performance, etc. I think Stein is insisting that > neither can one type the same sentence twice. Perhaps forcing us to > imagine the conditions under which each sentence was typed. There can be > no repetition because this sentence was typed at 10:41, and this sentence, > which contains exactly the same words, at 10:42. Hence Stein's concept of > the "continuous present." I think? If so, she was bumping against the > langue v. parole debate somewhat before the debate supposedly officially > started (at least as we read it today). Claiming the same primacy (and > indeterminacy?) for the written as for the spoken word. And for the read > word: I read the sentence in different conditions than you, so each > sentence is endlessly new. Hmm. > > Re: femtheory, lesbians, & gender identity: In addition to saying that the > "woman question" didn't concern her, Stein referred to herself as > "husband" and Alice as "wife" (Stein & Picasso in one room discussing art, > their wives dicussing hats and perfume in the other room). It would be > wrong, however, to label theirs a butch-femme relationship. Stein was no > butch. There were famous butches in Paris at the time: Radclyffe Hall, > Lady Una Trowbridge, etc., as well as famous femmes: Natalie Barney, etc. > These butches dressed the part--hats, trousers, ties, short slicked- back > hair. Stein wore skirts, not pants, and only cut her hair to > Caesar-length quite late in life. It would be more accurate to view > theirs as a male-female relationship than a butch-femme one...that is, > more accurate to see Stein as "transgendered" than as a lesbian. The > woman question did not concern her because she was not a woman. This may > be hard to grasp, and it's hard to communicate. But butch-femme > relationships are highly coded ones, and dress is an essential--perhaps > THE essential--marker of them. And when I say "transgendered," I don't > necessarily mean that Stein thought of herself as a man. I think she > thought of herself as a Stein (or a genius)--somehow outside of gender. > She seems to have dressed in whatever she found comfortable, rather than > making the very active & time-consuming decisions a butch must in putting > together a coded appearance. > Similarly, in "Patriarchal Poetry," where Stein denounces > "Patriarchal Poetry," I think it's a definite mistake to read this as a > denouncement of poetry by men. Huge! Some fem-lesbs latch onto this one > poem as "proof" that Stein was politically conscious and cared about them. > But by "patriarchal poetry," I believe Stein means "establishment poetry," > or canonical verse. Not all men write patriarchal poetry, and some women > do. There is no call for a "matriarchal" poetry, and remember that Stein > was buying non-establishment paintings by men before anyone else-- *while* > everyone else was defacing them at painting exhibitions. It would be the > same "patriarchy" keeping these male painters from being appreciated that > kept Stein's work from being appreciated... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2012 11:08:27 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: oh and one more thing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Being that I am into the incorrectness of identity, I am collecting names and emails of writers who consider themselves queer. Please forward if you are interested in being collected by me. Rachel Levitsky ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 07:57:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "tracy s. ruggles" Subject: Re: Ingram and B&N (was: 2 of per diem) Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On Tuesday/8.December.1998 2.23.31pm, J Kuszai wrote: > [ ... ] > > on another BOOKSALES oriented front, > did anyone else hear the news that BARNES & NOBLE has purchased > INGRAM DISTRIBUTION? > > I thought Ingram was long gone already....any info here would be greatly > appreciated. Here are some news articles: http://www.seattletimes.com/news/business/html98/altamaz_110698.html http://www.sfwa.org/news/bni.htm http://www.ingram.com/press_release.htm http://www.bkstore.com/images/home_page/110698.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 16:01:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: new book announcement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" New from Chax Press SPEECH ACTS by Eli Goldblatt $10 ISBN 0-925904-24-4 Poetics list members pay no shipping/handling charges if they declare themselves as poetics list members, and if they live in the USA. Foreign orders will be billed appropriate shipping charges. Please send all email orders directly to Chax Press at chax@theriver.com Or send check with order to Chax Press 101 W. Sixth St., no. 6 Tucson, AZ 85701-1000 "Energetic and engaging work, ranging over *ache* and *embrace,* reality and dream in a rich, quicksilver language. Goldblatt's *Speech Acts* puts 'Everything on my radio.'" --Rachel Blau DuPlessis, author of *Drafts* and of *The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice* "In *Speech Acts,* Eli Goldblatt writes realist lyrics; this is not a world that is "utterly changed," it's more the place where the question,'What language does the poet speak?' is beginning and goal of writing. These poems speak our languages, with care and passion." --Bob Perelman, author of *Virtual Reality* and of *The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History* "THREE POEMS" in *Speech Acts* HISTORY having planted corn, you wait for corn to grow. The enemy is the penchant to believe you know. Wheat in bread is bleached to sell. Roads ripple in heat, split in cold. Light bends out of courtesy to mass, a social arrangement between peers. No schoolman can tell a sentence how to mean. Like border guards, children learn their craft by losing the nationality they're paid to defend. Metaphors rise against their masters. No player's marginal in plague & Time runs counter to its crop. MUSIC OF THE SPHERES Our ghost story you could learn to croon unhurried into microphones. Ears ready for the kill, listeners expect each moment a crash as you steer the story past Crab & Dragon & on to dusk. After the plot runs out, mechanisms still roll--sets shift, props drift down river toward an uneasy sea. Spectators murmur in their crape. Cattle standing all day sleep standing & old hotels maintain their facades; an owner must care for his property. No motion among stars is harmonious. Ghouls & caped heroes play their part under weather that is neither fair nor just. Squeal, flex, erupt: among humans earthworks catch on fire. I have always felt like a native of this planet but a stand-in for my ghost. WHOLESALE SURRENDER A backdoor melody spieling of spring wins nothing, pulls ahead of the pack on the road to release. A creased pant leg can mean the difference between promotion & serial obsession, one silk-screened beside the other in infinite regression. A rime honeys tea or, given the proper economics, signals a secret crop among the tenants. Televised, repeated blows to the head & gut don’t raise questions for the fan at home. Even a quark shares space--o unholy alliance--with that fool, History. ELI GOLDBLATT is currently the University Writing Director and an associate professor of English at Temple University. His other books include Sessions 1-62, Journeyman’s Song, Herakles, ‘Round My Way, and, for children, Leo Loves Round and Lissa and the Moon’s Sheep. 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: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 16:42:44 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Day Subject: Re: Erasing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Interesting points. I have spent a fair section of my life not erasing, but recovering. I currently help support a system that deliberately keeps all the changes and every document submitted to the aegis of this system can be viewed at a particularly point in it's change history. In addition to this, there can be more than one current version of the document: the development tree can be split into trunk and branch. Nothing ever gets erased, although there is an illusion of erasure. The way the system does this is for the tip to be the latest copy, and the changes required to take it back to it's original state are kept on a version basis. And disk-space isn't at a premium in these matters. Indeed, the whole system of changes has been developed to a high ceremony where the requests (for changes), the changes, the source and the tasks (to do the changes) are managed. I would also note that the erasure discussed here reminds me of space management on a computer's hard-disk: go and delete a file, and it disappears from your folder. It hasn't gone - most systems flag the disk space used by the file for further usage rather than erasing the file (some systems actually write nonsense in it's stead as a kind of track-covering (another erasure)). You can get systems which resurrect these "lost" files - although obviously, this is sometimes partial. I'd like to think you could re-cover such deletions into some kind of textuality. Douglas Coupland described people as "amnesia machines". I would go further. I think erasure is the easiest and is always. If things weren't erased/forgotten we'd have "eternal return" - and what a terrible burden that would be. The best we can hope is that fragments and distortions remain. Roger ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:02:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: half-rant, and a question... Comments: cc: kjohnson@HIGHLAND.CC.IL.US, AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" suffering from severe vertigo at the moment, rushing from one tube to another, trying to follow the impeachment hearings on tv and the one here on poetix... i feel for henry g's plight, but must observe that what charles sez is no less true: that many folks have unsubbed from poetix for all sortsa reasons (incl. my wife/partner kass, above "from" line), and that nary a public tear has been shed when this has happened (and if it's happened in silence, we all know why---or should)... whatever else, however much i believe that charles should operate on a strictly frontchan basis---and contra henry (and kent---sorry guys)---i yet do not attribute evil ideological motives to charles, and believe that to do so is, well, just plain unfair, maybe even ungrateful... this list is now enjoying (?) it's fifth anniversary as a public-private list---it began back in december of 93, if i recall correctly, at the end of a semester when it was used as a list for charles's grad course... and having been here 'from the beginning,' i think it's been an amazingly productive forum, and feel, with alan, that it's likewise amazing that our recent problems have taken this long to e-merge... moreover, this is itself a clear sign of the even-handedness with which charles has run this list (even allowing that recent allegations are in any sense true)... anyone who doubts this ought to have a good long look at those first coupla of (sometimes contentious) years... to pick up on something i said, in jest, earlier, and as i just backchanned someone (so nice to work out my thinking elsewhere for a change!): the whole thing reminds me of the anarchist/fascist split in italy... and i guess i have to be one of the fascists, b/c there's only two groups [cough], and the anarchists have clearly proclaimed their loyalties as such... and as to the "insult poetry" thread, which has taken such scholarly directions of late (thank the lord), but which in some sense precipitated our recent melt-down: even setting aside the fact that (as i've said before), the list is not merely performative; and even imagining an actual insult thread in which folks (mostly men, no doubt) exchanged insulting/agonistic barbs in order to attain, uhm, enlightenment: are any of you really suggesting, really, that this is how you wish to use your time?... well if so, ok (and btw, just to be clear: i hear the kent/eliza/david b/george b thread in somewhat different terms---no real insults there, far as i can tell)... but i wouldn't be the first to observe that anyone tossing insults, even in such obviously modulated terms ("for fun"), is likely to be outclassed when it comes to same by the most unschooled of the blue-collar workers i grew up around, and sometimes worked with... nothing against said blue-collar workers, mind you, but just so's we're all on the same page, that y'all are aware i'm extremely good at spotting even the glimmer of a silver spoon up someone's ass... hell, it's too bad we're not celebrating the fucking list right now---raising w/o ire, perhaps by way of a "review," what reservations we may have---rather than picking to pieces the person who's primarily responsible for its existence in the first place... --------------------- anyway, yes, i DO have a question, and would greatly appreciate any backchan help: i'm trying and have been unsuccessful at tracking down a citation for valery's "all theory is autobiography" (or something to this effect)... can anyone help me out here?... sorry to have to post the list for something this straightforward, but for some reason it's eluding me... probably owing in part to my vertigo, above... many thanx... and apologies for the delete-able prologue... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:15:41 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: f.y.i. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > {{Courtesy of Andy}} > > > August, 1998, Montevideo, Uruguay: > > Paolo Esperanza, bass trombonist with the Simphonica Mayor de Uruguay, > in a misplaced moment of inspiration decided to make his own > contribution to the cannon shots fired as part of the orchestra's > performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at an outdoor children's > concert. > > In complete seriousness he placed a large, ignited firecracker, which > was equivalent in strength to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his > aluminum straight mute and then stuck the mute into the bell of his > quite new Yamaha in-line double-valve bass trombone. > > Later, from his hospital bed he explained to a reporter through bandages > on his mouth, "I thought that the bell of my trombone would shield me > from the explosion and instead, would focus the energy of the blast > outwards and away from me, propelling the mute high above the orchestra, > like a rocket." > > However, Paolo was not up on his propulsion physics nor qualified to use > high-powered artillery and in his haste to get the horn up before the > firecracker went off, he failed to raise the bell of the horn high > enough so as to give the mute enough arc to clear the orchestra. > > What actually happened should serve as a lesson to us all during those > delirious moments of divine inspiration. First, because he failed to > sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the blast propelled the mute > between rows of players in the woodwind and viola sections of the > orchestra, missing the players and straight into the stomach of the > conductor, driving him off the podium and directly into the front row of > the audience. > > Fortunately, the audience were sitting in folding chairs and thus they > were protected from serious injury, for the chairs collapsed under them > passing the energy of the impact of the flying conductor backwards into > row of people sitting behind them, who in turn were driven back into the > people in the row behind and so on, like a row of dominos. The sound of > collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling on their behinds > increased logarithmically, adding to the overall sound of brass cannons > and brass playing as constitutes the closing measures of the Overture. > > Meanwhile, all of this unplanned choreography not withstanding, back on > stage Paolo's Waterloo was still unfolding. According to Paolo, "Just as > he heard the sound of the blast, time seemed to stand still. > > "Everything moved in slow motion. Just before I felt searing pain to my > mouth, I could swear I heard a voice with a Austrian accent say "Fur > every akshon zer iz un eekvul un opposeet reakshon!" > > Well, this should come as no surprise, for Paolo had set himself up for > a textbook demonstration of this fundamental law of physics. Having > failed to plug the lead pipe of his trombone, he allowed the energy of > the blast to send a super heated jet of gas backwards through the mouth > pipe of the trombone which exited the mouthpiece burning his lips and > face. > > The pyrotechnic ballet wasn't over yet. The force of the blast was so > great it split the bell of his shiny Yamaha right down the middle, > turning it inside out while at the same time propelling Paolo backwards > off the riser. And for the grand finale, as Paolo fell backwards he lost > his grip on the slide of the trombone allowing the pressure of the hot > gases coursing through the horn to propel the trombone's slide like a > double golden spear into the head of the 3rd clarinetist, knocking him > unconscious. > > The moral of the story? Beware the next time you hear someone in the > trombone section yell out, "Hey, everyone, watch this!" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 12:13:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph@AOL.COM Subject: The Big R - Spencer Selby Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I highly, admiringly recommend Spencer Selby's new book from Angle Press - The Big R. This is an exceptionally wonderful work that you won't regret having and reading and re-reading. I've always liked Spencer's work. This particular example of it is more stunning than ever. Read to find out why. Buy it and savor! Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:27:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ken|n|ing Subject: Big Allis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Seems as though I had this information at one time or another, but I can't seem to find it now. Has anyone got contact, subscription, and contents information for the magazine, Big Allis? By "contents" I mean a partial list of contributors to the latest number. It might be helpful to others to post your reply to the list as a whole . . . at least, in the flurry of reconsidering the role of this list in building a community around poetics, or of poetics, it remains my belief that publication announcements are central. Patrick F. Durgin P.S. Speaking of which, although it's a vast job, the epc appears to be lagging a bit in keeping the print-mag listings up to date. It might be time for the sort of list Juliana Spahr suggested the other day, which would be limited to such announcements / listings. | | 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, 9 Dec 1998 09:39:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Brook Subject: correspondance avec guy debord MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The following is the Jeff Martos' own announcement for his recently published--and soon to be suppressed, perhaps--book of correspondence with Guy Debord. - - - - JUST PUBLISHED: CORRESPONDANCE AVEC GUY DEBORD by Jean-Francois Martos One volume 12.5cm x 21.5 of 320 pages. ISBN:2-903557-03-9 Price: 140FF (French Francs) + postage Publisher: Le fin mot de l'Histoire, BP 274,75866 Paris Cedex 18, France Please send your request with a check or a postal money order for 165 French Francs to the order of "Le fin mot de l'Histoire". or write or phone: jf_martos@yahoo.com Telephone: (33-1)42.59.97.45 A trial to seize the book is imminent, we cannot certify that it will be available in the third millenium. ================================================ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 13:21:51 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: My final List polemic In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > suffering from severe vertigo at the moment, rushing from one tube to > another, trying to follow the impeachment hearings on tv and the one here > on poetix... i feel for henry g's plight, but must observe that what > charles sez is no less true: that many folks have unsubbed from poetix for > all sortsa reasons (incl. my wife/partner kass, above "from" line), and > that nary a public tear has been shed when this has happened (and if it's > happened in silence, we all know why---or should)... whatever else, however > much i believe that charles should operate on a strictly frontchan > basis---and contra henry (and kent---sorry guys)---i yet do not attribute > evil ideological motives to charles, and believe that to do so is, well, > just plain unfair, maybe even ungrateful... > I believe that the above is true, and apt, and yay to Joe for saying it. There have been far more expressions of support for Henry than for the significant number of people who have left before him (because like Henry they felt stifled). A number of them have posted...And i must say two who in recent memory have *also* like Henry left in a rage, are FAR more important to me as poets and positive presences on the poetry scene than he is: Tom Beckett and Juliana Spahr. Now i have been looking back at JS's post of a couple of days ago; i believe it would be more constructive to discuss her accusations toward the List, than Henry's. Is it really a place that is "only friendly to white men"? As a white man, it's a little hard for me to contradict that. (Nor do i want to contradict it: i hope all of us will *examine* it...) I can't think of a poet of greater promise and accomplishment on the scene right now, than JS. And her highly political and challenging work has been very valuble to me. That she should make so sharp a critique, and leave the List, seems to me the real important issue of this recent tumultuous period. Anyway, to wrap up, i also agree with Joe and others that Charles B. has done a very good job. Is doing a good job. As someone posted in the last couple of days, the listowner/moderator on any listserv does a huge amount of work and donates significant resources and time and nerves and energy and vulnerability. They do this because they cared enuff to do it. They have and must have the space to moderate.. (Unless they act in a strikingly arrogant and insulting way; and contrary to the gouldites I believe that is not the case here.) I believe that Kent (for whom i have lotsa liking and respect), and others who've taken up the cudgel on behalf of Henry, are using a model that assumes this is a radical democracy, here on the List. Like a collective. It is not that. It cannot be that. As a socialist i want to establish a radical democracy without private ownership of capital in society at large; and i want there to be community wherever we can meaningfully build community. But we cannot declare a listserv a community any more than we can declare that all the little poetry magazines by right should belong to their readers and contributors, and prnounce that they are now collectives and communities, and have been liberated from their editors. A few people are providing resources that the rest of us are benefitting from; if all of us could help CB shoulder the burden of running this thing, then it could be a collective and people could vote, etc. In the meantime, the list managers *have* to take the heat for things that happen here. No one can change that. So they also have ultimate say over what happens here--no one can change that either, any more than on any other moderated listserv. in struggle, mark p. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 13:24:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: MLA ? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Is the book exhibit hall at the MLA accessible to the academically unencumbered? charles ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 13:36:53 -0500 Reply-To: Emily Lloyd Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Stein,Charles,&LesbianCodes:one girl's fantasy "Oprah" In-Reply-To: <50C4B510.38A9@ibm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rachel writes: <<>> Darn tootin'. I like Camille Paglia, Nietzsche, and Dennis Rodman in some cases more for their nearly refreshing chutzpah than their work. Of course, they've made said chutzpah an issue, while Stein seems to have been more graceful. Or more interested in making "more important" things her issues. I learned much from Damon's essay on "Yet Dish," too, and hear those same echoes. Rachel also writes: <> and <<"Lesbian" per say may not be an aestetic category but social context--as separate as she was from it--could allow Stein to have a 'so what' attitude and yet not be rendered invisible by denial.>> That first one's a really tough question. There was a time when I would've said "of course" and assumed those who didn't were either woman/or homo phobic. Now I want to be slower to say yes. The desexualization of men probably helped her to see men as her own brother singulars--to not get bogged in the "I'm just a girl, what does my stuff matter?" thing or the "I must have male approval of my writing" thing. And many sexy Stein poems (esp.the "banter between GS and ABT" one) mightn't have turned out the same way were she not desexualizing men. Though possibly she would've written just as sexy "heterosexual poems". I guess I want to say that I don't think desexualizing men is in any way connected with escaping either of the two bog-things I've just mentioned. Lesbians, for the most part, are still seen as women and "women"--of whatever sexuality--for the most part, are still going to be "trained" to consider male approval important, and witness enough to cause the "I'm just a girl, what does my stuff matter?" to happen. H.D., for a time, an admittedly young time, was a pretty pathetic queer re:these--and who wouldn't have been? (and yet, Loy wasn't too pathetic a heterosexual) These days it might be even more amazing to meet a lesbian writer with the chutzpah to not need *lesbian*, rather than male, approval. Stein rarely seems to have *required* (I don't say wanted) the approval of readers of any gender or sexuality. Except maybe Alice. And on bad days Leo. I think of Stein less as having desexualized men and more as having degendered herself, at least in wondering which may have had more to do with her accomplishment. I think of Stein when I read Hejinian's (uh-oh, not her again) "No wonder there are no/single notes, no unique gender" and think "bull." Who was it, Witting?, who made the claim "Lesbians are not women"? I disagree with whoever it was. There're all kinds of lesbians who would collapse without their male friends or male approval as others might collapse w/o same from females (and far rarer others who wouldn't collapse from lack of support from anyone). To say "Stein was not a woman"--in the sense that Witting/whoever meant "woman"-- wouldn't seem wholly unlikely to me. Somehow she slipped through--or chiseled & kicked, w/o making much noise, through--the cracks. Stein was a being. Please don't get me wrong. I certainly think Stein's queerness affected her work. I just think it was a queerer queerness than lesbianism...in the "degenderate" sense, or in the queerness of having a skyrocket's measure of chutzpah & faith in one's own work. I'm afraid on GS I can be a bit like someone standing on a st. corner kind of raving at everyone who walks by, yelling some obsessive "point", & not backing it up with passages from scripture, or "She Bowed to Her Brother," or any text. Someone with a big hunch on her shoulder. But I hope this had been in some way clarifying--? incorrectly, collectable em ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 13:04:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MJ Devaney Subject: Re: MLA ? In-Reply-To: <9c071c5b.366ec05f@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If you have a badge, you can get into the book exhibit, and anyone can get a badge (but you have to pay for it, alas (you have to pay for it if you are academically encumbered too)--I don't know what the registration fee is). cheers, MJ ___________ MJ Devaney Humanities Editor University of Nebraska Press At 01:24 PM 12/9/98 EST, you wrote: >Is the book exhibit hall at the MLA accessible to the academically >unencumbered? > >charles ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 14:29:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Angle Press Announcement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Posted for Brian Lucas (direct inquiries to the address below): Angle Press announces the publication of the following books: The Big R by Spencer Selby $10 (incl. postage) (perfectbound) Jeweled Chrysalis by Patrick Monnin $3 (incl. postage) (chapbook) also available is The Trustees in Spite of Themselves by Brian Lucas $5 (incl. postage) (this second edition published with pink clouds by Neko Buildings. Those interested may order from Angle Press a copy for Christmas friends). All of these books are "divine and interesting" according to William Cloud, esquire and lover of tides. A pearl hatchery has been incubating these babies for a millenium--they all come with a bit of the author's processes intact! make checks payable to: Brian Lucas Angle PO Box 220027 Brooklyn, NY 11222-0027 bl189@columbia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 15:05:41 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: 'Democracy is Merry' - Beuys will be Beuys MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit WE FEEL IT IS OUR DUTY TO INFORM YOU THAT CHARLES BERNSTEIN HAS COMMITTED A GREAT SLANDER UPON THE MEMORY OF JOSEPH BEUYS!! Through some cruel irony, Joan Retallack and Jackson MacLow will be reading December 11 at DIA Center for the Arts in New York City. DIA is concurrently hosting an exhibit of the installations of the German artist Joseph Beuys. Beuys, of course, felt that he should make the time to build an artistic legacy that would be generous and inclusive. Beuys felt a strong committment to teaching & as such felt it morally wrong to turn away anyone seeking to enter the dialogue about art. On the first day of the winter semester of 1972 'Beuys wrote the names and addresses of the 125 candidates who had been rejected in August on the basis of their portfolio submissions; by doing so he confirmed their admission to his class. Beuys then demanded that all the rejected applicants be formally registered.' "If 400 students want to study with me I'll stay here as long as they want." Beuys felt that we had a 'restricted idea of culture which debases everything'. "We reject now and in the future, as a wrongful infringement of academic freedom, any attempt to impose an admissions policy on our class. The same goes for any regulations regarding the number of students in our classes. (The Academy is free). And the same goes for any other regulations that infringe on this principle of freedom. It is thus possible for a teacher, if he is willing, to admit 142 additional students, although others - tenured teachers - feel themselves overburdened with six or so students. Questions of Academy capacity, shortage of space, shortage of service staff, shortage of teaching materials, shortage of teachers, have no bearing whatever on admissions regulations. Responsibility for such deficiencies, in relation to those involved and to the people as a whole, lies with the authorities concerned, with their officials, and ultimately with the party politicians who rule in disregard of the majority. An arbitrary limit on student numbers is a violation of basic rights and not a proper solution to the problem of capacity." Such is the spirit of Beuys violated by the sentiments of those who control this list. "The Academy is like a battleship under fire. We are in an emergency. I want to portray a sick system and to try, as far as possible, to work within it. The school has a reponsiblity to society. The concept of liberty plays an essential role here. I consider it my duty above all not to turn away students who want to enter my class. I shall not yield until the tanks draw up to the Academy!" The Langpo's so typically want to usurp the thunder of someone like Joseph Beuys without taking the tiniest risks. Joseph Beuys should not be so dishonored. The quote in my earlier post, "forked tongue?", is from Charles Bernstein's Writing and Method. He recommends among other things 'anger' in philosophical discourse. However, what's good enough for philosophy is obviously too much of a living idea for peauxetiquettes. Finally, Beuys wrote: "The evolution of Western Thought, in philosphy, and of the resulting concept of science, especially what is called exact scientific thought, has been a quest to attain matter....[But] you only attain matter when you attain death...." That quote was just for me. ---Carlo Parcelli ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 15:12:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: My final List polemic Comments: To: mprejsn@law.emory.edu In-Reply-To: from "Mark Prejsnar" at Dec 9, 98 01:21:51 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just a word in support of these words from Mark P: "A few people are providing resources that the rest of us are benefitting from; if all of us could help CB shoulder the burden of running this thing, then it could be a collective and people could vote, etc. In the meantime, the list managers *have* to take the heat for things that happen here. No one can change that. So they also have ultimate say over what happens here--no one can change that either, any more than on any other moderated listserv." and a clarification of what I said earlier (apologies if this seems self-indulgent but I feel like otherwise I might be misrepresented and I'm the nervous type when it comes to such things). Yes, in some ways this list clearly cannot be a radical democracy, but in other ways it can and is, and I don't think Charles's moderate restrictions preclude such democratic possibility - they only preclude anarchy which is quite different. In any event, I have no problem with moderate restrictions designed to ensure the most liberty for each listmember compatible with the liberty of all other members. My original worry was that Henry had actually been *banned* from the list which would have been a real drag. But to set some guidelines for number of posts seems both inevitable and wise. So for what its worth, my sense of Henry's value to the list doesn't contradict, as far as I'm concerned, support for Charles who I think does a bang up job just keeping this mess up and running. -m. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 15:28:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: announcement: SUBMIT YOU DOG In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The e-zippy zingy-zine SUBMIT YOU DOG is now accepting submissions (of poetry only) and subscriptions for its January issue. December's issue featured Miekal And Mairead Byrne John Barna Tony Beeman Julie Babcock Guttapercha Bunsen Andy Scott & several anonymous submissions of erased texts We have no editorial policy (we accept everything submitted to us) except that we order submissions alphabetically (though we even get that wrong sometimes since I just learned the alphabet myself ([and still count on my fingers]). *ASCII format only. We send this out in one digest post. Each contributor gets three contributor's copies (we email it you three times). Coming soon to a website near you. Those interested, please email gwg6@cornell.edu with SUBMIT YOU DOG in the subject line. yrs sincerely, persona non gaga ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 16:18:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: correction, spell-check, self-check MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I wrote: <> 2 things I want to edit-for-the-record there: I meant "banter between GS and ABT *ones*, in the plural. And it looks pretty ridiculous to have writtem "The desexualization etc. probably helped her to not get bogged etc." and a few lines later "I don't think desexualization is in any way connected with escaping the bogs." I meant *necessarily* connected--more importantly, to me, is that it's the latter statement I meant and mean to put forth. The earlier was a forgot-to-edit-it-out first-thought-process kind of thing. embarrassedly, em ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 14:08:34 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hoa Nguyen Subject: Frank O'Hara, Skanky Possum MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain --(please forgive cross postings)-- Hello everyone: I am currently taking orders for: A new pamphlet sized book(like the old Black Sparrow books), _What's Up with Modern Art_, selected short reviews and other art writings by Frank O'Hara, edited by Bill Berkson. A charming unpublished photo of FOH graces the back. The collection takes its name after a wonderful article, reprinted here, subtitled "Kids Quiz A Critic" from _Ingenue_, a glossy magazine "for sophisticated teens", (1964). From Mike and Dale's Press. Only $5 (US)dollars. As some may know, I was to edit the fall issue of _Mike and Dale's Younger Poets_ under the title _Mike and Dale and Hoa's Younger Poets_. Mike has since gone on to other projects; Dale & I are to continue publishing a quarterly poetry magazine in the same format and similar vein. To recognize the shift in editorship, we are naming the new venture _Skanky Possum_ after the venerable critter that skanks around our neighborhood. _Skanky Possum #1_ includes poets such as Eileen Myles, Linh Dinh, Rachel Loden, Sotere Torregian, Anselm Berrigan, Carl Thayler and Alice Notely, as well as an exerpt from a memoir of Philip Whalen by Tensho Schneider and classic-movie reviews by Bill Berkson. _Skanky Possum_ features hand painted covers. From Skanky Possum Press. Only $5 (US) dollars. To order either, please indicate your order (title, # of copies) and send a check made payable to me (Hoa Nguyen) to: 2925 Higgins Street Austin, TX 78722 Please forward this announcement to anyone who may be interested. Thanks for your support. Love, Hoa ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 15:14:46 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale Smith Subject: The Hat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain If you haven't already, check out The Hat, edited by Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar. The quality of writing varies, but it is especially interesting to read next to the recent Moving Borders Anthology. The writing in The Hat is motivated by various complex yankee anxieties of gender, race and 'consciousness,' with language as the mediating force. J. Spahr's piece examines gender-specific pronouns that are used to construct a kind of "love" poem to some equally distant being bound in the process of internal re-imagination (or is it re-ordering?). Her lines are expressed according to syllogistic logic, direct but complicated by other syntactic "movements" of repetition and rhetorical positions. "So this," she writes, "is what is meant by the 'seeking that takes place between prelanguaged and languaged states, before and behind the 'I.''" And then a few lines later: "Or I or he or she am or is trying missing or mixing things up. Thanks for the directions." Juliana's insistent position that we examine and articulate the complexity of gender and human construction is valiant, moreso since her critique has tightend here, for me, becoming more direct and less hesitant. Although firmly entrenched in the socio-cultural, her energy appears to come from another place entirely, but other readers can determine that for themselves. With 20 pages, Kimberly Lyons receives the most space in this issue. The poems are sharp, angular, focused on naturally occuring phenomena. Objects lie in juxtapositions that create imaginative possibilities. Some might find only colors and shades here; others only sentimental attachments. But the phrasing and rhythm, the space around the lines-- these things create a radiation of event that swells up from within the poem: Trees fill the window and light is thin, holds its dust. On the bar last night I saw Three martinis, trembling triangles. Nancy said this is the first time I've felt happy. big white trucks. I guess everybody goes there at least once. The line breaks and injambment play with meaning. There's a strangeness here that resists explanation. There's a sense of revelation without opaque self-consciousness. You can see why the editors chose so many pieces from her. Janice Lowe address race directly in her poem, "The Summervilles of Pickens County." She resists theorizing the politics of racial encounter by revealing experience that lives "in the mouth." Although her use of the little 'i' is annoying, the coloquial articulation of this poem builds a powerful address. i tell the black ones calling me red you wanna be red like me nigger the white ones you redder than me you gotdam cracker all this is turning me into a kind of peckerwood nigger i don't like for people to be black and greasy at the same time i prefer yellow women for lovemaking some have said all my children have lightskinned mothers of course i'm a race man Witness the velocity of those lines, the build-up and speed. Like many of the pieces in this collection, the concerns of the social are delivered in a language that feels threaded to other agencies of expression. This only complicates and increases the emotional trajectories aimed against the dominate regimes of the social. Anyhow, it's a magazine worth checking out. Poems by Catherine Barnett, Brenda Coultas, Tonya Foster, Greta Goetz, Lisa Jarnot, Carol Mirakove, Ange Mlinko, Cynthia Nelson, Hoa Nguyen, Alice Notley and Prageeta Sharma are also included. Contact Jordan if you're interested. The Hat is cool. Dale ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 18:17:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: erasure/frags MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII One more post, then I'll stop being such a space glutton. In a course once, while we were discussing the work of a poet who wrote in fragments, somebody said, "But once we get the whole fragment thing, why do we need any more poems written in fragments? I mean, I *get* it already." Basically a riff on Williams' "All sonnets say the same thing," replacing "sonnets" with "fragments," and of course I countered with "Why do we need any more sonnets?" etc. I couldn't decide whether the person was playing devil's advocate or just being kind of stupid. I'm ready for folks to be similarly indecisive about me: when does the proliferation of "erasurey" work at this point in time go from being the (only? most?) possible, logical, ethical response to the past half-century to being, well, maybe, kind of trendy? Ever? ("Instant Ethics! Just add white space!" ...and when did the term "stubble fields" go from being a term one might but probably needn't ever use to the requisite included term in all poems published in *Poetry*?) On another tack--what, if any, is the relationship between "the poetry of erasure" (not bad lyrics for a europop group) and, also specific to our last (max.?) 50 yrs or so, the poetry of "breaking one's silence" (if one's in any group viewed as or treated as a minority)? Can one "break one's silence" w/ an erasure? I think so! How about that! Interesting. Hilton brought up Paul Auster. I've only read *The New York Trilogy*, in which characters become the obsessive, thorough, unwitting agents of their own erasure. In doggedly trying to fill some gap or void--some previous erasure?--they erase themselves. This translates with more slippery consequences, I think, than those poems which "ethically" describe/reflect an erasureful or fragmented world in an erasureful or fragmented way. For one, it implicates the writer/maker-of-things in the fall/corruption/breakage; the writer is inescapably held responsible, too...the "helplessness" or "impossibility" of the writer to honestly write in anything *but* fragments &/or erasures seems, somehow, more genuine & horrifying to me here--where those who are hell-bent on helping (read: writing in whitespaceless sentences) and "equipped," they think, to do so, end up helpless, too...and this *process* is recorded/enacted. em ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 17:29:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: L. Shaw talks F. O'Hara in SF Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Small Press Tafffic presents "Frank O'Hara and Coterie" a talk by Lytle Shaw Friday, December 11, 7:30 p.m. New College Cultural Center 766 Valencia Street, Room 11 $5 Shaw's work on Frank O'Hara examines his career as a way to recast debates about the politics of reference and community within 1950s and early 60s American poetry and art. This talk will begin with what has been the most common problem for readers of O'Hara-the charge that, because his poems prominently feature obscure proper names, he is merely a coterie poet. By unpacking the social and linguistic implications of O'Hara's systems of poetic reference, Shaw situates O'Hara's practice of coterie writing 1) against a tradition of modern poetry and poetry criticism for which proper names should reference canonical sites of knowledge or structures of myth and 2) beyond familiar oppositions between particularity and universality. Don't worry, he'll explain! Lytle Shaw is a poet and scholar, author of many critical publications on contemporary poetry and theory. His own poetry has appeared in many journals including Lyric&, Non, Log, Idiom, Explosive, and Mirage #4/Period[ical], and in three forthcoming books. With Emilie Clark he edits the journal of pre-poetics, Shark. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:49:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: erasure/frags MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Emily, Thank you for your wonderful posts [after reading them once, I've had to save them for later savoring]. Anent erasure, two things: first, the first section from Anselm Hollo's "four stills from _the poet_ / for Tom Raworth" [in _Maya_], for me a locus classicus re erasure: _the poet, drunk, is seen composing a poem to the revolutionaries of the world._ it is to be a long poem. while working on page 9 he realizes that he is stone cold sober: he stops, goes back, reads what he has written starts crossing out words -- lines -- sections -- whole pages. one line remains, on page five. it says: _the heroes, their mouths full of_ it is not a very good line. maybe he only forgot to cross it out. we cannot ask him. he has fallen asleep. [<<27 years ago, I performed -- no doubt in much the same state -- a similar service for the esteemed Finn; I hope he has forgiven me>>] Second: my sonnetoidal "Isotope" poems, which I began to write in August, 1997 [based on anagrams of 4x4 wordsquares I construct] result from a kind of erasure of all but 14 of the possible combinations of the 16 letters in each wordsquare which form lines of words. In each case, I work with a complete and finite set of such lines [usually several thousand]. In the "Isotopes," though, one can restore all the erased elements by taking any of the remaining lines and running it through an anagram generator -- so, in a sense, they constitute a ratour sans ratour, a presence signalling or floating upon a determinate absence. I hadn't thought of them in this way until I'd begun to 'wind up the golden ball' of this erasure thread, but it helps me to scope out [theodolize] the 4x4iverse. Muchas gracias, amiga. Dan Emily Lloyd wrote: > > One more post, then I'll stop being such a space glutton. > > In a course once, while we were discussing the work of a poet who wrote in > fragments, somebody said, "But once we get the whole fragment thing, why > do we need any more poems written in fragments? I mean, I *get* it > already." Basically a riff on Williams' "All sonnets say the same thing," > replacing "sonnets" with "fragments," and of course I countered with "Why > do we need any more sonnets?" etc. I couldn't decide whether the person > was playing devil's advocate or just being kind of stupid. > > I'm ready for folks to be similarly indecisive about me: when does the > proliferation of "erasurey" work at this point in time go from being the > (only? most?) possible, logical, ethical response to the past half-century > to being, well, maybe, kind of trendy? Ever? ("Instant Ethics! Just add > white space!" ...and when did the term "stubble fields" go from being > a term one might but probably needn't ever use to the requisite included > term in all poems published in *Poetry*?) > > On another tack--what, if any, is the relationship between "the poetry of > erasure" (not bad lyrics for a europop group) and, also specific to our > last (max.?) 50 yrs or so, the poetry of "breaking one's silence" (if > one's in any group viewed as or treated as a minority)? Can one "break > one's silence" w/ an erasure? I think so! How about that! Interesting. > > Hilton brought up Paul Auster. I've only read *The New York Trilogy*, in > which characters become the obsessive, thorough, unwitting agents of their > own erasure. In doggedly trying to fill some gap or void--some previous > erasure?--they erase themselves. This translates with more slippery > consequences, I think, than those poems which "ethically" describe/reflect > an erasureful or fragmented world in an erasureful or fragmented way. For > one, it implicates the writer/maker-of-things in the > fall/corruption/breakage; the writer is inescapably held responsible, > too...the "helplessness" or "impossibility" of the writer to honestly > write in anything *but* fragments &/or erasures seems, somehow, more > genuine & horrifying to me here--where those who are hell-bent on helping > (read: writing in whitespaceless sentences) and "equipped," they think, to > do so, end up helpless, too...and this *process* is recorded/enacted. > > em ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:58:08 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: schuchat Subject: Re: three questions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit to answer your first question, Ci Xi was the Empress Dowager of China. She is generally considered to have ruled China from the 1870s through till her death, in the first decade of 20th century. She is accused of having wasted money which was supposed to be spent on the construction of a navy on adornments to her pleasure garden at the summer palace, thus, the marble steamboat. The traditional Confucian view is that when women rule the state there is disaster, so in this view (which the Communists have partially bought into, being good patriotic Chinese) it was her reactionary, obscurantist, corrupt, etc, rule that the western powers were able to defeat, control, humiliate, etc, China. otherwise, the Brits would never have won the opium war, there would have been no foreign concessions, the boxers would have succeeded in expelling all foreigners from China, etc, etc. journalist Sterling Seagraves has a book (DRAGON LADY) which attempts to debunk some of these stereotypes about Ci Xi but of course being mere journalism it has problems of its own. the marble steamboat is quite pleasant. it doesn't actually float, and is adjacent to the shore, so it lacks that feeling of being on the open waters, but it is a delightful monument and much better than the real fleet that the money was actually spent on (by Li Hongchang) and which the Japanese sank in 1895. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:56:30 -0500 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: Impeach or Censure (Was: Concerns) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------54DCC90196B3EFF7B435EF7E" --------------54DCC90196B3EFF7B435EF7E Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Bernstein wrote: > I hope all of you will understand that my time > for this project has simply run out. Rachel Blau DuPlessis wrote: > There is (for me) no sense of textuality > as a value in a vacuum; Subject: why I am not a reader of the poetics list From: juliana spahr > I can't read poetics list anymore. I have a shortage of time in my life. > Tick Tock. (Out of Time) Cumberland Gap. Donner Pass. "Ever since sentences started to *circulate* in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a *coupla* each sentence ties one thing to another; all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of an Ariadne's thread leading thought into its own labyrinth". the list is dead/long live list/list mc --------------54DCC90196B3EFF7B435EF7E Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit  

Charles Bernstein wrote:

> I hope all of you will understand that my time

for this project has simply run out.
 
Rachel Blau DuPlessis wrote:
There is (for me) no sense of textuality
as a value in a vacuum; 
Subject:           why I am not a reader of the poetics list
                From:
          juliana spahr <js@LAVA.NET>
 
I can't read poetics list anymore. I have a shortage of time in my life.
 

Tick Tock. (Out of Time)

Cumberland Gap. Donner Pass.

"Ever since sentences started to *circulate* in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a *coupla* each sentence ties one thing to another; all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of an Ariadne's thread leading thought into its own labyrinth".

the list is dead/long live
 

list/list

mc --------------54DCC90196B3EFF7B435EF7E-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 00:09:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Amy King Subject: Re: Erasing and the Ghost of Listserv Present MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -----Original Message----- From: Mark Prejsnar To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Date: Tuesday, December 08, 1998 5:02 PM Subject: under and over erasure >has a long work in which he used Duchamp's random generated forms, called >"stoppages," to **erase** sections of prose from a number of books on >Duchamp's life and work....These are further worked, and the result is a >sequence of poems shaped and formed by useing *exclusion* or erasure as >**the primary poetic technique**, in a sense. This version of erasure is the closest I've read so far about the erasing that seems to have struck much pop culture as of late: to take a set of conditions and remove some element in order to define the reconfigured result. The X-Men at Marvel are recently finding what it means to live as if Wolverine never was made; One of Buffy's friends wished the Slayer had never come to town on this week's episode; this weekend Xena will learn what the world would be like if she had never quested for power but stayed in her little village for life. Soon, Scrooge will be popping up to be erased for seasonal festivities. I think this cultural obsession stems from more than just wanting to know how much we'll be missed. Of course, the implications abound, but specifically, and I have not thought about this thoroughly yet, but this erasing seems to be about measuring "power" by erasing a presence to reveal the places that presence affected. The gaps get filled in, but by what? The wrench in the monkey is that we all know that someone was here, now she's gone but let's pretend she never was. Buffy's writers did a poor job because she still popped up in the town she wasn't supposed to ever come to. She filled in her own gaps. But I am far more interested in this kind of erasing as a technique I have never consciously tried within poetry, aside from editing out to avoid being expository in my work. I've heard about poets writing about a topic without using words that define or reveal that topic but what about the "What if it was here and I've removed it" practices? Does anyone know of work that plays with those implications, not as random word erasing, or am I simply being too abstract/oblique here? Henry has not gone; he has become the ghost of Listserv Present. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 00:42:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Erasing In-Reply-To: <031001be23fb$4ca1fb00$17d249d1@alk3.onepine.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I don't honestly see HG as the ghost here, any more than others come and gone. Lists change all the time; the oddity is that Poetics changed so little for so long. Populations pass through them. There are others who have left here out of chagrin, and I've had to go off from time to time as a result of overflowing mailboxes. Meanwhile, one might look at instances of _the disappearing woman,_ which form a matr/ix covering a great deal of ground (metaphysical and other- wise). Not only Lilith as an obvious case (the doubled Eve creation in B'rashit), but also Melies' use of _the sawed woman_ or _disappearances_ of women by magicians. From there through Patty Hearst, so much narrative depends on this disappearance and suturing (and think of Irigaray's in- stance of the woman as a _transitive function_ or other between the same/ same relations among men - not to mention functions of 'wife-swapping' (never called 'husband-swapping'), etc.). With Heidegger, Derrida, with Freud's absent answer to 'what does woman want,' with Lacan's lack, and so forth (think again of the absence of pubic hair on all those classical statues), it is the woman/womyn, that is turned-aside, as if in embarrassment. In erasure, there is this political context, then, political economy. It's a deeper/other level than that of erasing a drawing or a text or obscuring part of a work, which in fact might even be said to operate precisely as suture, making the world safe for absence. (To say this is not to make it so, of course - I am only pointing out that erasure doesn't necessarily carry liberation, but in fact can be politically problematic. Randomly erasing a text is one thing; randomly erasing people, say in Stalinist Russia, is another. In any case erasure is loaded, is overdetermined in so many ways.) Alan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 21:52:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: Announcement - Inscape #4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" INSCAPE 4 features 32 pages of poetry by: Patrick Durgin Brydie McPherson Sheila E. Murphy Laynie Browne Jono Schneider Dana Lomax Alan Catlin Gian Lombardo Spencer Selby Drew Milne Yours Truly it's printed on good paper and available from: Instress P.O. Box 3124 Saratoga, CA 95070 for $4 But Wait! That's not all. For the low, low price of just $10 you can receive this cute little magazine PLUS the following chapbooks of similar size: Emblems by Martha Ronk & Next Song by Maxine Chernoff Both contain very nice poems which are printed on 70 lb. linen-finish paper with translucent fly-leafs and semi-attractive covers -- fun to hold in your hands and read. But Wait! That's not all. Whether you are new to the Instress series or already a subscriber, why not give the gift of chapbooks to a friend or loved one this holiday season for the super low price of just $9 for each additional set! No friends? No loved ones to share the holiday spirit with? Why not support the arts, spread holiday cheer, AND make a new friend by sending a check to me, Leonard Brink. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 00:14:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ike/clare Subject: Re: ErAuster In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've read _The Invention of Solitude_ and _Leviathian_ and none of his poetry. Both of these works, the former a meditation on his father and a strange altered family photo, the latter about a man(1) who retraces how a man(2) who has blown himself up has affected this man's (1,3) (love) life, are mighty erasurly. maybe my fortune cookie was right: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. ike ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 01:23:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: STOP IMPEACHMENT! Free call to Congress. (fwd) In-Reply-To: <199812100511.AAA27479@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII STOP IMPEACHMENT! Call the Capitol Switchboard for FREE: 1-877-TO-MOVEON (1-877-866-6836) December 9, 10, 11 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday ====================================================================== The House leadership is rushing to IMPEACH the President before the newly elected Congress is sworn in, on a purely partisan vote. THE VOTE WILL BE VERY CLOSE. If they succeed, the nation will be paralyzed for months as the President is put on trial in the Senate. You can prevent this. (1) CALL 1-877-TO-MOVEON (1-877-866-6836) to be connected to your representative for FREE (2) Alert your friends and colleagues by forwarding this message (3) Get others to call 1-877-TO-MOVEON this week -- talk to them personally (4) Click on http://www.moveon.org/actionplus.htm so we can count your call and report totals to the press. For just three days, December 9th through December 11th, we have arranged for FREE long distance calls direct to Capitol Hill. We need to make Congress understand the nation's passionate opposition to this cynical and destructive use of the impeachment process. Everyone must call. Call toll free 1-877-TO-MOVEON (1-877-866-6836) to reach the Capitol Hill switchboard and ask for your representative. If you get a busy signal, try again or use the direct numbers given above. The direct D.C. number is better for lobbying, but will cost a few dimes. Tell your friends and colleagues about 1-877-TO-MOVEON. They can just give the operator their zip code to be transferred to their Member of Congress. It's easy and FREE. Once you reach your representative's office, let the staff member know (1) that you are a constituent (by giving your name and city) (2) that you are opposed to impeachment, (3) and that you expect Congress to immediately "MOVE ON" to important issues. Express your own personal concerns and ask for a response from your representative. Click on http://www.moveon.org/actionplus.htm to do even more. We've got to act now. Free calls are provided courtesy of Working Assets Long Distance (http://www.wald.com). The 1-877-TO-MOVEON action line will be active from December 9 to December 11, 1998 only. You can call the congressional switchboard at any time directly at 1-202-224-3121. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 02:01:17 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Book Announcement: The Qualms of Catullus & K-mart MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I love this book. I really love this book. Try it. You might love this book too. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:49:20 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: Erasing Hi all I thing there are two possible strands at work in this erasure discussion (well there are others , but two that I want to address), The first is erasure to make a poem more permeable, transparent in parts which invite the reader to fill in (or fall in) and it is true that some poems are accessible because of what has been omitted, or erased, but left visible below the text. The second is the idea of compression which I think is different and often creates an impermeable wall forcing the reader to accept the writers images. In our own minds erasure is non selective, but I am always intrigued at the quotes I remember, I think seamlessly only to find words missing or transposed. I am very interested in accessibility in writing and it is the transparent quality of language used which creates the eye kick and the immediacy quotient, but that is selected through choice, and selection implies erasure. And how much can be taken away before meaninglessness takes over or does it ever? Perhaps the spacial quality of words means that there will always be a gestalt forced on the reader. Jim erasure permeable transparent accessible visible compression impermeable images seamlessly transposed accessibility transparent quality of language immediacy erasure meaninglessness gestalt ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 05:56:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: Re: items eye polite dangers and other softnesses In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >hey Daniel. I like your manifesto. > >Randy why thank you very much/(for the inkcouragement), Randy. Daniel ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 05:59:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Carter Subject: Torque Inly failed the skies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" distant(ly) his sway(ing) frame of flame(s) Torque Inly veiled the skies that tangent thin thus slowingly that tan gent did swarth 'n' swerve is-way though gently oh missing letter planeted win new sighs (that newly now) mattered M cooly sparked madness writ dawn the day when thus and not lived therefore relieved not relived thereof the clothedness of hem add herness shy of nest her nest would have pen but toured without a hat though therein planted nun the lesson he did listen 'n' list therein the hen could not re-systematize ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 07:56:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Frank O'Hara, Skanky Possum In-Reply-To: <19981209220835.18771.qmail@hotmail.com> from "Hoa Nguyen" at Dec 9, 98 02:08:34 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hoa, could you send me a copy of What's Up with Modern Art? - check's in the mail. -m. According to Hoa Nguyen: > > --(please forgive cross postings)-- > > Hello everyone: > > I am currently taking orders for: > > A new pamphlet sized book(like the old Black Sparrow books), > _What's Up with Modern Art_, selected short reviews and other art > writings by Frank O'Hara, edited by Bill Berkson. A charming > unpublished photo of FOH graces the back. The collection takes its name > after a wonderful article, reprinted here, subtitled "Kids Quiz A > Critic" from _Ingenue_, a glossy magazine "for sophisticated teens", > (1964). From Mike and Dale's Press. Only $5 (US)dollars. > > As some may know, I was to edit the fall issue of _Mike and Dale's > Younger Poets_ under the title _Mike and Dale and Hoa's Younger Poets_. > Mike has since gone on to other projects; Dale & I are to continue > publishing a quarterly poetry magazine in the same format and similar > vein. To recognize the shift in editorship, we are naming the new > venture _Skanky Possum_ after the venerable critter that skanks around > our neighborhood. _Skanky Possum #1_ includes poets such as Eileen > Myles, Linh Dinh, Rachel Loden, Sotere Torregian, Anselm Berrigan, Carl > Thayler and Alice Notely, as well as an exerpt from a memoir of Philip > Whalen by Tensho Schneider and classic-movie reviews by Bill Berkson. > _Skanky Possum_ features hand painted covers. From Skanky Possum Press. > Only $5 (US) dollars. > > To order either, please indicate your order (title, # of copies) and > send a check made payable to me (Hoa Nguyen) to: > > 2925 Higgins Street > Austin, TX 78722 > > Please forward this announcement to anyone who may be interested. > Thanks for your support. > > Love, Hoa > > > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 10:10:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Erasing and the Ghost of Listserv Present In-Reply-To: <031001be23fb$4ca1fb00$17d249d1@alk3.onepine.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Amy King wrote: > One of Buffy's friends wished the Slayer had never come to town on > this > week's episode; this weekend Xena will learn what the world would be like if > she > had never quested for power but stayed in her little village for life. The Buffy episode is a parody of It's a Wonderful Life (thus the Xmas timing); presumably the other is too. Pop culture is getting too cute fer its own good-- O chateaux! O pomo! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 10:20:08 -0500 Reply-To: mbyrne@ithaca.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT For me, the erasing and censorship/moderation threads are aligned. This, I hope, is the last time I will post on this subject so I will go for full disclosure. In November, still in the first frolics of having joined this list, full of high jinks and excitement and pleasure in relation to all the talk about poetry, and the notion of so many hundreds of experimenting poets out there, I jumped into a bout of silliness initiated by Roger Day, I think, on the subject of Mars Bars (Yes Jonathan). Well, I'm Irish and I get lonely (but don't get me started again). I noticed that the contributors to this "thread" or "filament" were noticeably British / Irish / Canadian: yes, I for one was indulging in a bit of a canter in very few words. A post of eight words brought me the following message: Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 13:57:26 -0500(EST) From: Poetics List > Meanwhile, one might look at instances of _the disappearing woman,_ which > form a matr/ix covering a great deal of ground (metaphysical and other- > wise). Not only Lilith as an obvious case (the doubled Eve creation in > B'rashit), but also Melies' use of _the sawed woman_ or _disappearances_ > of women by magicians. From there through Patty Hearst, so much narrative > depends on this disappearance and suturing (and think of Irigaray's in- > stance of the woman as a _transitive function_ or other between the same/ > same relations among men - not to mention functions of 'wife-swapping' > (never called 'husband-swapping'), etc.). > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 11:02:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Garrett Kalleberg Subject: TF7 Comments: To: Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Other echoes Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow? Quick, said the bird, find them, find them - T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets The Transcendental Friend Issue No. 7, December 1998 http://www.morningred.com/friend/1998/12/cover.html This month's issue features some birds, some more birds, alien flight, a Flight of Imagination, and an Iguana, with work by Kevin Killian, Zhang Er (translated by Eleni Sikelianos & Zhang Er), Katy Lederer, Garrett Kalleberg, Daniel Machlin & Richard Tyson, and P. M. Deshong (presented by Jesse Glass). Back issues of The Friend are now available from the new Home page, at http://www.morningred.com/friend Garrett Kalleberg mailto:editor@morningred.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:03:51 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: Stein,Charles,&LesbianCodes:one girl's fantasy "Oprah" Please note. If you get more mailings from me than is acceptable, some were sent yesterday (my time) and this is tomorrow, or something like that cos you are still having yesterday (I think). Dear Emily (and list) Thank you for posting your (essay?) anti-criticism, re appraisal. I found it stimulating and innovative. It echoes thoughts I have had for some time, and which have grown from discussions. Fortunately I never attempted to group these thoughts together, I say fortunately, because I do not think I could have produced anything like the depth of your piece. I would ask, (in general, so not necessarily related to sex) if the use of specialized language, jargon or argot, has the effect of marginalising, and whether the introduction of the definitions or use of the words from common vocabularies albeit with differing definitions actually helps in the process of general acceptability or normalising because people will find a common word out of context or in a different context easier to interpret?. Jim _________________ Jim Bennett University of Liverpool U.K. Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 Click on this link to visit my site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:27:22 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Day Subject: Re: Erasing Comments: To: mbyrne@ithaca.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii At 10/12/98 15:20:08, Mairead Byrne wrote: # For me, the erasing and censorship/moderation threads are aligned. This, # I hope, is the last time I will post on this subject so I will go for full # disclosure. # # In November, still in the first frolics of having joined this list, full # of high jinks and excitement and pleasure in relation to all the talk # about poetry, and the notion of so many hundreds of experimenting poets # out there, I jumped into a bout of silliness initiated by Roger Day, I # think, on the subject of Mars Bars (Yes Jonathan). Well, I'm Irish and I # get lonely (but don't get me started again). I noticed that the # contributors to this "thread" or "filament" were noticeably British / # Irish / Canadian: yes, I for one was indulging in a bit of a canter in # very few words. A post of eight words brought me the following message: Fingered. Ouch! Henceforth, all my posts will be of a singular and solemn nature. My frisky frolicking seal-like nature will be eclipsed by a greyer, solemnicle umbrella and high jutting collar. No, seriously. I do think there are worse crimes in the world than talking about Mars Bars, even on a list like this, although I realise that the noise-to-signal ratio should be low. BTW, apologies to Mairead on this: didn't mean to cause these problems.Oddly, I never received a similar warning message. I do miss Henry and Kent. Well-sized, well-structured, elegant posters both. Wibble. Roger ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 10:31:34 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Erasing In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mairead, i like your seven points... may i add a friendly amendment to item 4? to wit, and just a draft: 4. Moderation by listowner (or designee) would be better rec'd if frontchannel, signed, employed only in the most dire of controversies, and good-spirited. List members should likewise do their utmost to avoid flaming, and to be receptive of different agenda. i assume we all know the difference twixt flames and dry ice... i'm not sure if some of this isn't already in the poetics "welcome message" (too lazy to check), but just for the sake of conversing... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 11:29:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Gottlieb Subject: Alan Davies, Carole Miracove NYC Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" All Listers in or near NYC: Alan Davies will be reading, with Carole Miracove, this coming Sunday evening, 12/13/98, at 6:30 PM at Zinc Bar. Zinc Bar is located at 90 W. Houston St. NYC (just west of La Guardia Place). This'll be great. Michael Gottlieb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 12:06:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Erasing Comments: To: Mairead Byrne In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII CB, PLEASE DON'T ERASE THIS!!! THANK YOU, MAIREAD! SEe below. On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Mairead Byrne wrote: > Is personality too raw for politics? In my opinion, no. I've received several backchannels egging me on: people love Personality, but folks are a little afraid to show it here. I think in large part because of messages from CB like those below, which I enclose here with VERY weak apologies to CB: "Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 16:59:24 -0500 From: Charles Bernstein To: Gabriel Gudding Subject: addendum to "Free Poetics" Your quote of Kenneth Tynam I suppose was intended to be self-mocking, since your contributions to the list as far as I have been aware have been entirely in the realm of literary criticism. Before your next post, I hope you will consider not only where you are going but how, as I get the sense you are too little aware of both. What impression you choose to make on individual readers of the list is of course your problem, but what impression you make on the environment of the list as a whole is mine as well." Date: Sat, 28 Nov 1998 17:05:05 -0500 From: Charles Bernstein To: Gabriel Gudding Subject: overpositng the list Parts/attachments: 1 OK 4 lines Text 2 Shown 6 lines Text ---------------------------------------- [Part 1, Text 4 lines] [Not Shown. Use the "V" command to view or save this part] on the issue of frequency of posting: you have posted more messages this month than anyone else. You appear not to have been willing to reduce the frequency of your posts despite the request made to you earlier in the week. Daily posting is not an option. Please reduce your posts to no more than a few each week. > What do you guys really think about censorship/moderation? I'm with Beuys and Rosalie & Callow, I'm with Henry, I'm with Eliza, and I think I'm with you, Mairead. I'm also with Silliman: self-moderation is good, is fine. But let's cut out the backhanded high-handed under-handed authoritative backchanneling. I say "authoritative" because CB wasn't willing after to reply to the first two responses I gave to his messages. His posts read like the man's GOT A TEMPER! > Have any of you received warnings? Javol > Are you still on the list and why? The reasons I'm still on the list are to follow. > > None of my questions received an answer I'm sorry I didn't answer them: two reasons: 1. CB had already, i thinkd by that point told me to cut back to "a few" times a week, anything else being "not an option"; 2. your questions were frankly too close to home -- answering them wd have brought out THE 12 BLICKY DEMONS. I thank you for your boinky, Mairead. love, Gabe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 12:39:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David Erben (Art)" Subject: San Francisco Comments: To: UB Poetics discussion group MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My wife and I will be attending the MLA in San Francisco and I would like to ask listmembers for suggestions on restaurants/poetry venues/jazz clubs to visit. Please backchannel. Thank you ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 09:58:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Poets of the MLA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark your calendars! Poets of the MLA Tuesday, December 29, 7:30 p.m. New College Theater 777 Valencia Street $5 Every year the Modern Languages Association convenes during the last week of the year somewhere in the world and this year it's San Francisco's turn. Small Press Traffic has invited many of the finest poets in the world to read for five minutes apiece, a kind of Supermarket Sweep of the mind. They include Beth Anderson, Charles Bernstein, Stephen Cope, Benjamin Friedlander, Loss Pequeno Glazier, Carla Harryman, Pierre Joris, Tan Lin, Nicole Markotic, Andrew Mossin, Sianne Ngai, Jena Osman, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Meredith Quartermain, Jerome Rothenberg, Lisa Samuels, Gail Scott, Lytle Shaw, Chris Stroffolino, Barrett Watten. We'll post a reminder closer to the date. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 10:59:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: mars/bars/spars/stars Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" sorry mairead i got an advisory b/c about the same issue and i thought i had wrestled the candy bar into a stanza to wit in new york in august we kept our mars bars in the freezer, break them with a hammer, yum, cold and sweet, no gooey. the more delicate saw a slice off with a serrated knife, let the cool chocolate melting lubricate their murderous thoughts and i responded f/c with another pome which i seem to have lost right now and you even responded appreciatively so i thought you understood we were in the same doghouse i've been an activist all of my adult life and know how anger can poison my days and even effect those i least want to burden so if i can deal with it right away and transmute that energy into something useful like a poem or comic relief, turning that anger into pride enables me to protect my associates, i thought joel was a little overzealous but i could see he was anxious about his relocation and how it would affect his relationship with charles and his stewardship of the list so i shrugged and got a little solidarity note i thought b/c from you. I remember Bowering posted on this as well and i wondered at the time if he got a note from joel but i never asked just switched my allegiance to o henry bars. Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:05:43 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc. Subject: Big Mouth Strikes Again MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I have been in absentia for a bit, I want to get to some scene reports but first a number of things to say-- First, has anybody seen the new Georgia Review, I understand they reviewed one of Pavement Saw's titles _Wherever You Want_ by Douglas Goetsch & I am unsure of what their words were. Second, when I visited APR I was amazed to find out that they too ran a fully anonymous submission process, and for the Honickman award they too ended up with a new comer who only had three credits in little magazines. As a plug, one of these fine magazines, Nedge, is run by our former list member Henry Gould. Yet another nail in the coffin of my theory that anonymous competitions result in publishing unknown/rarely published talent. Third, for Ron Silliman, I understand there was question posed a few weeks back about people upholding the Language movement and not to see a response from Ron seemed odd. I say this because a few weeks ago when I went to hear Rae A. read at Penn for some unknown reason the introduction consisted of Ron emphasizing that Rae was a Language poet. While I was hoping for an articulation of why he found her work scintillating, instead he spent his time reifying that she was a language poet through saying it over and over again without justification as to why. Such statements as "while her lines are different than most people associated with the movement, she is a language poet" were offered as clarification. I found this quite baffling for a movement that has prided itself on its use of theory in and about poetry. I still am curious as to why Ron thought this type of introduction was necessary. As for this debate about people leaving, and the questions presented, I have been on for at least three years maybe four and have never received a warning. I have not always been active on the list for this duration either. Censorship or perceived censorship is a wonderful conduit for writing. What can be better than emotionally charging or intellectually challenging one to action? Even if the action is to leave this list and transit to another stable of writers. If one feels they are in strife or opposition with one particular sect, it fuels something, preferably new. Perhaps I sparked a few things which could be considered doghouse material, esp. when first starting. I am on the list because little attention is paid to Language and Language influenced material outside of the two coasts. I want to be aware of the rare flares of excellent material. Being aware of who the popular practicioners of the movement are also allows me to pick up the books in the cut out bins of Ohio and sell them for a profit when heading coastward. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 15:11:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Don't all call me Archibald Cox at once (or even James G. Farley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit So, just to be clear, is this now a moderated list? Just want to know what I'm posting to, and whether I can expect messages I (or anybody else on the list) sends to be delivered. Luv, Hilary Rodham Donald Segretti ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 13:05:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: the poetics of impeachment Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just heard the majority counsel describe interrogatives as declaratives. I suspect, given his resume, that he does know the difference. Is this, to use my newly acquired word, "perjurious"? without an Office of Independent Grammarian I suppose we're in for any amount of abuse of language powers this week -- and, having heard so much about this, I just looked up "sexual relations" in my Websters -- despite the fact that the entry for "sexual intercourse" includes a secondary definition that seems to accomodate non-penetrative genital contact (now that was a surprise to me), the one and ONLY definition for "sexual relations" reads, in its entirety, "COITUS" -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 15:39:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jen hofer Subject: thoughts not announcements: on meaning, hejinian, my life In-Reply-To: <199812090614.AAA40780@moon.uiowa.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as for: >My simplest, puritan definition of an L=A poet would be a poet whose >primary interest is in abandoning (nicer light: questioning) "the >signifying function of language, evoking instead the sounds, the >non-referentiality of words." it is firmly my belief that all words reference. (i.e. we cannot get away from the denotative & connotative signifying functioning of language, though we can--thankfully--disrupt those in many & delightful ways.) i cannot speak for lyn hejinian, but i would be shocked if she subscribed to the belief that she does not mean her words to mean. this is not to say that she (or any other poet) means her words to mean for you what they mean for her, or even that we believe our words to mean now what they will or might mean tomorrow, or etc. questioning (or challenging or exploring) the signifying function of language, and the politics of such, is not the same thing as abandoning signification (were that even possible). i find it much more useful to think of langpo as a historical moment, involving certain players (hejinian among them, along with many others whose initial alleged L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E texts can be found in the delightful anthology of that very name edited by bernstein & andrews) rather than a homogenized ideology or poetics that binds these very diverse writers together. like any historical moment, especially one well-documented textually, langpo has vast & varied reverberations. plus gives young folk like myself the option of calling ourselves "post-language" which, to my ear, is rather delightful. & while my virtual mouth is open (which it rarely is for reasons already mentioned by the much-appreciated likes of juliana spahr & elizabeth treadwell) i'll mention this about _my life_: according to the biographical notes at the end of the sun & moon volume, "Hejinian further explored her own past and autobiography (in _My Life_). Writing it in 1978, in her 37th year, Hejinian constructed a work of 37 sections of 37 sentences, each section paralleling the year of her life. For the second Sun & Moon edition, published eight years later, Hejinian added 8 sections and 8 new sentences to each previous section to account for her current age." when she added the new sentences, she did not just tack them onto the end of each section, but rather interspersed them throughout the various sections, thereby changing the resonances of some of what she had written earlier. she did not allow herself to re-write the previously published text, though i am pretty sure she cut out a few words here & there. i hadn't posted on _my life_ earlier because i figured that many people knew this information & would have already backchanneled maria; therefore, if this is redundant, please forgive. je ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:46:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Kane Subject: "Deep Image" In-Reply-To: <01be2479$4f759020$38c754a6@blwczoty> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Am wondering if anyone on this list can point me to essays which analyze the "Deep Image," particularly if such essays look at the "movement" in an historical perspective -- i.e., by looking at the magazines "Trobar" and/or "Pictures from the Floating World" and their complicated relationship to/reconciliation of "outsider" poets like R. Kelly and "academic" poets like James Wright. You can backchannel me at . Much appreciated. Also want to say that the book _Close Listening_, ed. Charles Bernstein and published by Oxford University Press, is just terrific -- smart essays dealing (finally!) with and exploring the fact that poetry is experienced as a spoken and social thing as much as a read thing. Anyone know if there are essays looking at the potential effects of stage fright on reception of a given poem? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:50:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Jennifer on Republicans MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII = why i'm dead meat, by jennifer Republicans ooze from their heads what is left of soul's rubbish i could not stand to be in a room with one of them they are objects for me, they reek of flesh gone sour i would be a lichen to their rock, corroding their violent granite they would kill everyone with guns and they are all white men every last one of them, no matter what drear affirmation white men filled with dead pus: they stomp the children of the poor, rape pollution laws, guarantee we'll drown the world in poison. we're raped with rusted guns from world war two three four while they fight the righteous fight against women sex longing holding dead children on sticks to slap us with, banner banner big money big money i couldn't stand to party with righteousness i couldn't stand to fuck righteousness but their holes are closed they have no holes, shit leaks from their mouths, piss leaks from their eyes, they write vomit they are a real danger, never forget this, behind words are guns and mobs and real men, you never forget a real man when you look into his dead dead eyes, when you see a Republican on the road, kill it, it is not quite human - Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 16:17:22 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Word Express Mention MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit What small press publishers are actively publishing & reading experimental fiction? In particular, presses which are not buried by years of yet to come out mss. There used to be Dalkey Archives & Fiction Collective. Guess Ive been out of touch with it too long. ___________________________________ does anyone have an eaddress for douglas rothchild or someone actively involved with setting up readings at the zinc bar ___________________________________ the last few weeks during the muck & suck of poeticslist's growing pains, Ive been simultaneously recovering a ms which I began while in high school. It is the first book of what eventually became a long poem in 17 books called SAMSARA CONGERIES. it is really the only work of mine which remains unpublished because no one publishes long poems anymore. the section I am at work on now is called RAW. SWAY. ALOUD. and derives from an obituary I found on microfiche in the local Wisconsin Rapids Tribune. This natty little obit was the gem that inspired the whole complex of volumes. About a very modern Modoc man named Shacknasty Jack: SHACKNASTY JACK A touching obituary notice Again we are called upon to perform the painful duty of announcing the death of one who, if not altogether [word unknown, blotted out] was chief among a fraction of thousands of spirits who are not yet perfect. We refer to "Shacknasty Jack," the genial, whole-souled, or perhaps (considering his mixed parentage) we would say, half-souled, copper-colored gentleman, who recently died peacefully and in pieces, in his little lava bed. Jack, "poor fel," did not wrap what little drapery he had about him and lie to pleasant dreams, but his demise was hastened by a seven-inch shell that entered and exploded in his diaphragm, ruining his digestive apparatus that had never been disturbed by banquets of roast dog, salt horse, washed down by copious draughts of fiery, untamed benzine and needlegun whiskey. As we recall the virtues of the deceased, our pen unconsciously drifts into mourning, and we are led to exclaim: Oh Shacknasty, thou hast left us, No more horses wilt thou steal; But twas Gillem that bereft us, He can all our sorrows heal. First we heard it was old Schnochin, The heard twas Scar-Faced Charles But the latest news, Shacknasty, Says tis you have quit the earth's snarles, Gone, but not forgotten. Friends of the family invited to attend—covered carriages for all who wear gloves. Born of poor but honorable parents, "Jack" manifested at an early ago those traits that in after years made him famous, and would in time have sent him to Congress if his soul had not been shelled out of his ephemeral shell by a cast of iron namesake. He had served his tribe as tax collector, president of the baseball club, and was about organizing a "YOUNG RED MEN'S HORSE PLAGIARIZING ASSOCIATION," when he felt a sensation of goneness of the pit of the stomach, and was gone. Possessing many of the virtues that marked the Credit Mobelier operators, Shacknasty was almost as generous as the increased salary voters, who oly drew their back salary to pay off the public debt, and the news of his sudden death will cause a thrill of anguish in many a bosom—anguish that he was not permitted to die longer and slower by inches. —reprinted from the Journal of American Bureau of Mines Grand Rapids Tribune Grand Rapids, Wood County, Wisconsin Saturday, August 30, 1873 ___________________________________________ This obit spurred me, then a curious high school lad, to research the life of this man & perhaps write thru his words & the transliterated Modoc language, a poetic fantasy of what his life must have been. After contacting the Modoc tribal roll (they had been moved to Norman, OK from the lava beds of Eureka area of northern CA) I discovered that according to them no one had ever existed by that name. As far as I was concerned, all the better. I later came to the conclusion that he was the portmanteau creation of 2 other well know Modoc personalities, Shacknasty Jim & Captain Jack. All of the above is simply to preface the question, to all those who have created their own history of texts, how do they honor their own lost, forgotten, neglected mss, particularly ones from another time & place, texts that are informed by another time's poetics, a different school of poetry & most certainly a past generation's dreams? -- ________________________________________________ I can't get it out of my head that Charles B has tried to read all of the posts. I would never want to be made accountable for my actions if that was something I had done. postalage post haste _______________ still wrinkling my thoughts for ways to make a poetics of hypertext project manifest front channel....as an exploration in a semi public workgroup. one of the most encourage list experiences Ive had of late was watching the texts stream thru the poetics etc list, completely taking advantage of the broadcast nature of a list, sort of an editorial voyeurism, but more provocative. the key factor for me is that there has to be a concrete & accessible body of work that comes out of it. most probably a mini-website, as archives are not useable as a functional group hypertext. _________________ Miekal And ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 17:15:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: erasing MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Of syllables and words I sing, Of scribbling and eras---. "The Perfectionist" He sat up at nights in a rage, A-rub-rub-rubbing at his page. "The Suitors' Discovery" 'Listen, something's got to be done: Every night her weaving's undone!' "Savage In-dig-nation" The antic horde were hell-bent on razing The Tower, and it fell down, erasing "Pop Art" Daffy's upset that the Hand defaced him, So to clear things up the Hand erased him. "On Some Shells Found Inland" Some whole, most broken, but all bleached By the light of the end they've reached. "The List Remains Behind" Into the space of the gods who departed, Some laughed, some cried, some sighed, and some farted. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 17:36:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Baratier's Silliman question In-Reply-To: <367134BE.99B19204@megsinet.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I feel weird about this, because I'm unclear on whether it constitutes an uncouth "frontching" of a backch--plus, I didn't save the bc and now must paraphrase. BUT, David, the sequence: Simon mentioned Hejinian as a L=A=N=G poet; I mentioned that I didn't think so; he asked why & who was if not she; I tried to answer re: Hejinian but (frontch) deferred to someone like Ron or anyone more in the know as to who IS because (this is what I wrote) I don't know exactly who identifies as a L=A=N=G poet. Ron backchanneled that he didn't think anyone "identified as a Language poet" but that it was a label sort of externally foisted on certain writers, and that Hejinian's recent work is certainly as languagey as any language poet's. I didn't write back to Ron; I really just don't know enough. It was my impression that some folks got together and this eventually culminated in, among other things,_The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_--a book that included folks that identified as L=A=N=G poets. I thought perhaps Ron's different spelling/version, "language poet" might stand for the more casual slung-around use of the word that has developed since those early yrs, and that people didn't identify as language poets, but perhaps some identify as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets (although I'd always used the "equal sign" spelling in my frontch posts). I took it that Ron meant either that, or that I was dead wrong (entirely possible; I read _The L=A=etc. Book_ very long ago), and that it never *was* at some point a conscious "movement" or "set of ideas" or "set of people." At the time I didn't know why Ron backchanneled that response, as it was Simon who originally wanted to know "who the L=A=N=G poets are, if not Hejinian." Since it seemed designed to inform and not to "get personal," I don't think it's wrong, or too wrong, to paraphrase it here, now... em ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 18:31:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Don't all call me Archibald Cox at once (or even James G. Farley) In-Reply-To: <01be2479$4f759020$38c754a6@blwczoty> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Jordan Davis wrote: > So, just to be > clear, is this now > a moderated list? Just > want to know what > I'm posting to, and > whether I can expect > messages I (or anybody > else on the list) sends > to be delivered. DEAR HILLARY RODHAM WHATEVER SIGRETTI: No, you cannot expect your messages necessarily to reach the list. Henry had two that were erased because they did not pass muster and I have had one that has disappeared from my screen this afternoon and has not resurfaced in this esteemed and ringing piazza, and yeah it's a little fucking irksome, nor furthermore has my POLITE query about where in Ultima Thule my post went been answered. Wondering if you'll get this, Guttapercha B. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 19:56:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Posting to the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In reply to recent queries, there has been no change in the structure of the list. The Poetics List is edited and will remain so for the forseeable future; however, please be aware that all posts sent to the list by subscribers go immediately to the list, *without exception*. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:44:42 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: Re: "Deep Image" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Daniel, You should search the POETICS archive. I have a memory of Jerry Rothenberg who is on the list posting something on the term. Robert Kelly I remember as a list member although not heard from for a long time. Wystan > Am wondering if anyone on this list can point me to essays which analyze > the "Deep Image," particularly if such essays look at the > "movement" in an historical perspective -- i.e., by looking at the > magazines "Trobar" and/or "Pictures from the Floating World" and their > complicated relationship to/reconciliation of "outsider" poets like R. > Kelly and "academic" poets like James Wright. You can backchannel me at > . Much appreciated. > > Also want to say that the book _Close Listening_, ed. Charles Bernstein > and published by Oxford University Press, is just terrific -- smart essays > dealing (finally!) with and exploring the fact that poetry is experienced > as a spoken and social thing as much as a read thing. Anyone know if > there are essays looking at the potential effects of stage fright on > reception of a given poem? > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 21:18:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: urban space MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Simon, as a poet intensely fascinated by urban spaces & structures, here are = some books I've found most helpful & interesting: City of Quartz by Mike Davis Flesh & Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization by Richard = Sennett (Sennett in general good read) Cities by Lawrence Halprin Design of Cities by Edmund N. Bacon Angst: Cartography by Mojdeh Baratloo & Clifton J. Balch The Life & Death of Great American Cities by Jane Alexander (not sure on = author name, someone stole my book,as it is irresistable read) Lost Cities by Vittoria Calvani Architecture without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky (not precisely on = urban planning, but I think deals with unexpected urban beauty) The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable, by Robert Harbison Big City Primer, John Yau Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino Paris Peasant, Louis Aragon There was some eco-magazine out for a while, Terra Verde? Terra Infirma? = Can't remember exact name, but had some great essays on particular urban = topics, especially in one issue called "Wild City." There was also a = feminist magazine (I'll try & look it up--scribbled it down somewhere) = in the 80s that has a super issue on women & urban spaces--really = interesting essay on woman who designed gardens in Washington DC, = counterpoint to huge pointy monuments... And a digression: on the whole List debate, I am a digester & mostly = lurker who frequently deletes the entire thing unread, so missed the = initial sparks. But somehow this resultant explosion has opened up the = List more for me--made me feel that it is growling & moving, even if = every step is not perfect for everybody. I haven't reconciled how I feel = about someone being cut off the list, but must admit that the list now = feels less monotonous, more names, voices cropping up here & there, more = breathing space ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:54:28 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: Re: Baratier's Silliman question In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dear Emily, Ron Silliman also frontchannelled along related lines Nov.18. when he referred to a Poetry Flash of 1979 as the first use of the 'language poets' label. That sort of local knowledge is invaluable. My first encounter was in 1980 when I bought 6 issues of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine from Sandollar books. Ron doesn't refer to the magazine, which pre-dates the Poetry Flash issue and is surely the source for the label. ( The L=book is of course an anthology of pieces from the (by that time defunct) magazine.) The equal signs between the letters stretch serve to stretch the title across the top of the front cover Lyn Hejinian contributed to number 3, (1978), no 7 (1979), is a featured writer in number (1979 and she is reviewed in number 11 (1980) and number 13 (1980) in which Bernadette Mayer review's My Life. In so far as the contributors to the magazine made up a community of shared interests, she is clearly a member of that community. To identify that community by the name of the magazine between whose covers they were gathered seems quite reasonable to me. Wystan Ron > backchanneled that he didn't think anyone "identified as a Language poet" > but that it was a label sort of externally foisted on certain writers, and > that Hejinian's recent work is certainly as languagey as any language > poet's. > > I didn't write back to Ron; I really just don't know enough. It was my > impression that some folks got together and this eventually culminated > in, among other things,_The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_--a book that included > folks that identified as L=A=N=G poets. I thought perhaps Ron's different > spelling/version, "language poet" might stand for the more casual > slung-around use of the word that has developed since those early yrs, and > that people didn't identify as language poets, but perhaps some identify > as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets (although I'd always used the "equal sign" > spelling in my frontch posts). I took it that Ron meant either that, or > that I was dead wrong (entirely possible; I read _The L=A=etc. Book_ very > long ago), and that it never *was* at some point a conscious "movement" or > "set of ideas" or "set of people." > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 16:39:18 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: Re: God Bless the Tumors, the Boils and the Blisters In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Gabriel Gudding wrote (in part) > > I was going to reserve this 30 min's of freetime tht I now have for > posting a few more thoughts on the THEORY OF SLAPSTICK POETICS. But the > news of Henry's departure has so saddened me I am moved to write a > meta-poetics commentary. > Some have said CB is killing an essential part of this list with his > interventions. > > I have even gone so far as jokingly to call CB a controlling prig. > > One or two of us have however gone on to compliment CB on his open-minded > and fair attitude (I am one of these). I compliment CB on his open mind. Dear Gabriel, This so-called Slapstick Poetics of yours, it really seems to have made an impact. I'm not sure I quite grasp it, as you have had precious little to say theoretically about it. But let me try it myself and you can tell me how I'm going,ok?: Gabriel Gudding is an abusive, insulting, humourless, garrulous no- count poseur ( I'm sure I wrote poster?) so say some people. Not frontchannel mind you. And not me. I love him. He's so fine. Some say his failed attempts at humour which simply end up giving gratuitous offence is doing damage to the sense of community on which the success of the list depends. But not me. I did not say it. I did not. I love him. He is an honourable man. Others say his posts are hilarious, challenging, cheeky. Not me, however. Is this how it goes, Gabe? And where does it go from here? I am not sure of the point of saying gross, stupid, things about a person and then nice approving things about them, except that it is rather liberating and such fun and gets up people's noses, so perhaps you could go into this in more depth. Thanks. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 22:47:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Wilson Subject: Re: urban space >The Life & Death of Great American Cities by Jane Alexander (not sure on author >name, someone stole my book,as it is irresistable read) Jane Jacobs, who's generally a superb writer on urban space/economies. Carl W. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 22:59:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: miss priss speaks up (ahem) ok, i've been saying this backchannel, i think a bit frontchannel, but i'll say it straight out now and those of you who disagree or feel pointed at are welcome to email me about it. 1) alan s. and i have discussed this a bit -- those of you who feel this list is in some sort of terrible shape, awash in censorship, mean posts, etc., you are being awfully spoiled and naive. this isn't a bad thing -- people who are demanding (even if because from privilege and naivete,) while annoying, are often helpful -- their demands and expectations help set and keep up standards. but as a quick reality moment, in my not-even-that-extensive list experience, poetics is a HAVEN of subject-focused, intelligent, witty, pleasant posts. i have NEVER seen flames of the ilk i've seen elsewhere. without verbatim quoting, suffice to say i've seen other lists/bulletin boards with posts of MUCH lower levels, routinely, despite other posters of erudition and charm; i'm talking about posts with vitriolic, namecalling, swearing, just plain dumb/missing logic and schoolyard rhetoric. and i mean schoolyard, as in "you *%$(*&^% )%$(* your mother is a )@#)(*." if you have difficulty believing this, take a few hours and browse around on poetry bbs and listserves. this list is amazing; please stop selling it short. 2) i am just plain sick and utterly tired of the backchannel, backstabbing, cowardly complaining going out to charles/joel. if you have a beef with someone's post, instead of writing joel and charles about how someone is a blah blah blah and their posts are blah blah blah and please revoke their membership to the country club and we wouldn't want the kaffirs getting the wrong idea and heavens they're offending the mem sahib, just, for heavens sake, get a spine and write the person whose posts bug you DIRECTLY telling them their posts bug you and why. i.e. start a dialogue with the person you have a problem with and take responsibility, up front, for what bothers you. there is more than one person on this list with whom i have done this and i've never had an impossibly terrible experience. in some cases, i've made a new friend. in all but one case, poster and i came out of it with each having gotten some insight. it is totally unfair, burdensome, and i'm sorry, but i think, cowardly and irreponsible to pester joel and charles with these sorts of complaints. i could see it in case of actual danger -- at one point on this list, someone was sending mailbombs, both to list, and when i wrote them about something else, to me. that is the one contrary instance. in that case, i did drop a note to j&c to the effect that so and so was mailbombing not just list, but me. joel and charles both got very upset and immediately wrote to make suggestions and offer support. that is the only situation i can think of at moment when i would complain, backchannel, privately, to them about something i might not take up directly with person offending me. this complaining about so and so's posts not being up to scratch to charles and joel just reminds me of the gossip and throatcutting of a petty middleclass country club. having had a peripatetic (metaphorically) childhood, i have had occasion to see a group of petty bourgois, as one example, debating whether so-&-such REALLY belonged in club because at s&s's party, toward the end of the evening, someone saw s&s pouring store-brand liquor into namebrand bottles. said group delegated someone to complain to manager of club. can anything be more petty and disgusting? if so, i have no wish to hear about it. just as in that instance, i probably would have asked s&s if they had run out and would like me to make a liquor run if i thought that was the case, or if i thought they just didn't want to waste expensive alcohol on drunken people, or didn't have the money to spend, shrugged and left it alone so, in the instance of posts one doesn't like, there are, as has been said, numerous simple remedies. we don't have to be suburban and complain they are "ruining the neighborhood"; the delete key is democratic and available to all. or one can discuss the matter directly with person involved -- life is open to varied and multiple interpretations, no? do you ALWAYS know what someone meant, exactly, by a post? lacan/deconstruction/lacan/deconstruction... 3) more than once, i've heard complaints and distress by women. things it revolves around are a) post by woman being ignored by subsequent male posters, or issues therefrom being attributed to another poster (male); b) long windy posts appearing to exist primarily to quash and abash female poster-of-origin on topic, or respondant; c) posts dismissive of women and women's issues. i've heard it enough that i believe it. i speak from some abashment as a frequent poster (am perhaps inherently a noisy, tough lot) but even so, have much sympathy for other, less thick-skinned sisters. and am saddened and pained by each gentle, sad note i have received (and there have been many) backchannel thanking me for posting on thus and such (especially women's issues, but also by newbies) and mentioning a personal difficulty/diffidence/ discomfort that prevents frontchannel mention. suggestions: all (not just men), could we be more sensitive to source of issues/questions/posts? careful not to misattribute/obliterate anyone's (especially women's) portion of debate in issue? an effort to respond not just to the windy, like me, but the shy and short posters? an effort to be especially welcoming to women/newbie posting? as a subnote, there is among women (i think anyway) an elaborate and exquisite ritual of mutually affirming sarabande, of placing any critique/comment in a context of affirmation, compliment, reassurance. i would refer you all, for particularly adroit and lovely examples of this, to any post by maria damon. i think for women, one learns to be careful and respectful. for some, what feels like normal posting may feel, to women, like rude and dismissive and disrespectful response. all i can say is, whenever i read a maria damon post, i invariably feel soothed, interested, and utterly awed by her grace. could we all try to take on some of that care and respect? i'd love to see this tendency toward carefulness used to elevate and better posting, rather than dismissed. the lovely and gracious and noisy and always-perfect e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1998 20:15:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: ack-farewell (a confessional poem) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Silvio's Consolidation of Philosophy" Written to esteem the common sort of index thought your laughter I love any Flora angry crime he perplexed he would explain: "I be sick with seeing" "Destroy their being" "Hearse be vexed" some end that here tears be poured out in store make playn thyn hert that it be not knotted that the tulips may have share for some late fault on death beds better stone dear boy these assemble not my lovely boy help help I see it faint how shall breath hold out wind tide no it is an ever-fixed mark I took pen in hand, wrote: 'quit vain-spent mine gold drum sleep should not help harm no fire less forged mind love doth mark where I rest file dream-name your mind balm be plaints found may move in Time click and sweet spot I had not gone hence' from _"A Miscellany"_ (Meow Press, 1998) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 23:33:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Baratier's Silliman question In-Reply-To: <4676601F05@artsnov2.auckland.ac.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Gotcha. I owe you an apology, Simon (and whoever else listened): Hejinian's a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet. Plus, I've just heard bc that she refers to herself as one to this day. Sorry if I misled or put you on the defensive. And thanks, Wystan, for clearing it up. em On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, Wystan Curnow wrote: > Dear Emily, > Ron Silliman also frontchannelled along related lines > Nov.18. when he referred to a Poetry Flash of 1979 as the first use > of the 'language poets' label. That sort of local knowledge is > invaluable. My first encounter was in 1980 when I bought 6 issues of > L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine from Sandollar books. Ron doesn't refer > to the magazine, which pre-dates the Poetry Flash issue and is > surely the source for the label. ( The L=book is of course an > anthology of pieces from the (by that time defunct) magazine.) The > equal signs between the letters stretch serve to stretch the title > across the top of the front cover > > Lyn Hejinian contributed to number 3, (1978), no 7 (1979), is a > featured writer in number (1979 and she is reviewed in number 11 > (1980) and number 13 (1980) in which Bernadette Mayer review's My > Life. In so far as the contributors to the magazine made up a > community of shared interests, she is clearly a member of that > community. To identify that community by the name of the magazine > between whose covers they were gathered seems quite reasonable to me. > > Wystan > > > Ron > > backchanneled that he didn't think anyone "identified as a Language poet" > > but that it was a label sort of externally foisted on certain writers, and > > that Hejinian's recent work is certainly as languagey as any language > > poet's. > > > > I didn't write back to Ron; I really just don't know enough. It was my > > impression that some folks got together and this eventually culminated > > in, among other things,_The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_--a book that included > > folks that identified as L=A=N=G poets. I thought perhaps Ron's different > > spelling/version, "language poet" might stand for the more casual > > slung-around use of the word that has developed since those early yrs, and > > that people didn't identify as language poets, but perhaps some identify > > as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets (although I'd always used the "equal sign" > > spelling in my frontch posts). I took it that Ron meant either that, or > > that I was dead wrong (entirely possible; I read _The L=A=etc. Book_ very > > long ago), and that it never *was* at some point a conscious "movement" or > > "set of ideas" or "set of people." > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 23:35:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eurydice@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Big Allis Information Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I'm a smidgen loathe to post this, since I'm not otherwise taking part in discussions lately, and also because I posted heaps of Big Allis information several months ago, but as it was especially requested (and I'm thrilled by the interest), here goes. The initial contact for subscriptions and related matters is me: Deirdre Kovac 20 Douglass Street, #3 Brooklyn, NY 11231 Eurydice@aol.com The initial contact for submissions and related matters is: Melanie Neilson 11 Scholes Street Brooklyn, NY 11206 As for contents--the most recent issue, Big Allis 8 (lukewarm of the presses), featues a selection of work by writers in Great Britain and Ireland (guest edited by Fiona Templeton), namely: Caroline Bergvall, Karlien van den Beukel, Andrea Brady, Miles Champion, Ken Edwards, David Kinloch, Sarah Law, Tertia Longmire, Helen Macdonald, Rob McKenzie, Drew Milne, Catherine Walsh, John Wilkinson, and Aaron Williamson. The other contributors to this issue are: Bruce Andrews, Graham Foust, Bob Harrison, Noah de Lissovoy, Alison Lune, Heather Ramsdell, Lisa Robertson and Christine Stewart, Juliana Spahr, Stephanie Strickland, H. T. (Heather Thomas), Rodrigo Toscano, and Liz Waldner. A single issue is $8 (there was a special "poetics et alia" offer through Halloween for $6--which could perhaps be extended through the upcoming holidays if someone asks), and a two-issue subscription is $16. I think that covers all the bases. Many thanks to Patrick for the enquiry. (Considering throwing my hat into one other fray or another some evening when there's more hours in the day.) Best, Deirdre Kovac ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 00:31:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: "Deep Image" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Daniel Kane wrote: > Am wondering if anyone on this list can point me to essays which analyze > the "Deep Image," particularly if such essays look at the > "movement" in an historical perspective -- i.e., by looking at the > magazines "Trobar" and/or "Pictures from the Floating World" and their > complicated relationship to/reconciliation of "outsider" poets like R. > Kelly and "academic" poets like James Wright. You can backchannel me at > . Much appreciated. Ah! wish there was such a work -- been trying to get a grad student to do a diss on exactly this subject for years now. But it hasn't happened yet, and I don't know of anything specifically on DI except for bits and pieces here and there, for example some of the early pages in Paul Christensen's book on Eshleman. What you can however get ahold of is the raw material, i.e. the essays & correspondence re Deep Image. Essential in looking at that event is however the fact that what you call the "outsider", i.e. Robert Kelly (& Jerome Rothenberg. whom you don't mention) were in fact the "insiders" (Yes, I know how you are using the term in your query) : "Deep Image" as an _appellation controlée _was taken over after the fact (& the brief duration) of the initial burst of thought & writing about that idea by the "academics" like James Wright -- & this happened, I believe, via the one outsider momentarily close the the original DI poets, namely Iron John hisself. The hijacking of the name (which the original conceivers of the trademark had indeed by then if not renounced, at least left behind as not only being of limited use qua poetics but also because of an unease or unwilligness to create a 'movement' with the usual avant-gardish manifestos, etc.) has now gone down in lit-crit so that references in trad lit histories (if indeed they do mention it) to DI will cite the latter pale imitators. So that, the texts needed to look at to get a sens of DI are indeed foremost the issues of Trobar & Floating World. The first issue (1960) of Trobar, for ex., is poetry rather than statement (i.e. the horses rightfully in front of the cart) and includes work by Antin, Duncan, Economou, Eshleman, Kelly, Rothenberg & a few more. Issue 2 (1961) has the same minus Antin plus Rochelle Owens, Seymour Faust, Armand Schwerner and poets (only liminally or not DI) such as Blackburn, Creeley, Dorn, Jones (now Baraka). It also has Robert Kelly's statement "Notes on the Poetry of Deep Image." This statement is a response to Rothenberg's writing on Deep Image in issue # 2 of The Floating World. Issue #3 of Trobar has a similar line-up of poets and Rothenberg's essay "Why _Deep_ Image?" Next important gathering on DI is in Kulchur #6 which prints an exchange of letters between Rothenberg & Creeley (reprinted in Rothenberg's volume of essays "Pre-Faces"). There were some other letters (notably a Denise Levertov letter I have not been able to locate). Issue #7 of VORT (the Antin/ Rothenberg issue) has excellent interviews with both JR & DA that bring up the matter of DI. (It also prints a useful essay by Kevin Power called "An Image is an Image is an Image" and Eric Mottram's excellent "Where the Real Song Begins"). Vort #8 has a Schwerner interview which also addresses AS's connections to & thinking about DI. Then there is Robert Kelly's "Statement" from, I believe, 1968, published as a pamphlet by Black Sparrow. Diane Wakowski, also an early DI participant, has a small essay called "Jerome Rothenberg's Deep Image" -- and her Sparrow #3 issue, "Form is an Extension of Content" also helps to configure the issue. That's all I have energy for tonight -- Pierre -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 22:47:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: Baratier/Silliman/origins of Langpo as term Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron I'm sure is accurate in identifying 1979 as first use of "language poetry" (?language writing?) as a term for that poetry now known by that name. I think, though, that the zine L=A=N etc started up in '78? There is also Michael Davidson's title "The Poet as Language" for a piece he published in _Credences_ zine in 1975 on the book _Tight Corners_ . Btw, I assumed that it was L=A=N etc because of the care required to move back and forth, typing, from uc to lc to uc, etc. That was token of a care in reading same. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 08:50:47 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: Baratier's Silliman question - Post-Lanpo For clarification. Thank you for the interesting information about Lanpo and esp the origins of L=A=N the symbol. I realise that you were talking about the position of Lyn Hejinian in aligning herself to a group with shared interests, but by the same token of inclusively, does the same postulate mean there are no writers who could be considered part of that "movement" if not in the original mag? Are they "Post-Lanpo" or "Post-L=A=N" etc. Perhaps with the inclusion of many of the experimental techniques in mainstream poetry collections, we should use "After Lanpo" as a description, and save Post-Lanpo for the cutting edge a-g. Jim Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 Click on this link to visit my site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 14:58:16 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale Smith Subject: Readings in Austin / The Hat (if this gets through...) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain The second of our monthly readings took place on Saturday night in Autin, Texas, with Roberto Tejada reading a selection of his work. His investigation of "rhetoric" as a tool for expressing the greater complexities of experience revealed a transmundane whisper within physical objects worthy of critique and desire. He pastes passages from Bataille next to the Joys of Cooking, from which he details the evisceration of an eel, the soft belly revealed for gutting once the surface-layer has been removed. He is a gracious reader, kind to his audience even as his poetry borders the limits of Texan sensibilities. Luckily, in the mouth, words move faster than many can comprehend. Such is the depth of his imagination: powerful, 'real' and expressed at high velocity. Afterwards, of course, the usual rounds of tequila, beer and wine were consumed in the unusual, "unseasonable" open air. Several of us decided that evening to begin a reading group centered on Hamlet's Mill. Have any of you listees read this book? I'll keep you posted on this series, as it promises to make sense of apparently contradictory elements of science and myth. Finally, I wrote a post on Friday for delivery to the list, but through some kind of intervention, it never arrived. It was a review of The Hat, edited by Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar. I suggest checking it out because this first issue is comprised only of women, having been published by men. The quality of writing varies, but it is especially interesting to read compared to the recent Moving Borders Anthology. The writing in The Hat is motivated by various complex yankee anxieties of who and what women are. J. Spahr's piece addresses the issue of gender specific pronouns in the process of revealing a kind of "love" poem to some equally, distant being bound in the process of internal re-imagination. Her lines are expressed according to syllogistic logic, direct but complicated by other syntactic "movements" of repetition and rhetorical positions. "So this," she writes, "is what is meant by the 'seeking that takes place between prelanguaged and languaged states, before and behind the 'I.''" And then a few lines later: "Or I or he or she am or is trying missing or mixing things up. Thanks for the directions." Juliana's insistent position that we examine and articulate the complexity of gender and human construction is valiant, moreso since her critique has tightend here, for me, becoming more direct and less hesitant. Although firmly entrenched in the socio-cultural, her energy appears to come from another place entirely, but other readers can determine that for themselves. With 20 pages, Kimberly Lyons receives the most space in this issue. The poems are sharp, angular, focused on naturally occuring phenomena. Objects lie in juxtapositions that create imaginative possibilities. Some might find only colors and shades here; others only sentimental attachments. But the phrasing and rhythm, the space around the lines-- these things create a radiation of event that swells up from within the poem: Trees fill the window and light is thin, holds its dust. On the bar last night I saw Three martinis, trembling triangles. Nancy said this is the first time I've felt happy. big white trucks. I guess everybody goes there at least once. The line breaks and injambment play with meaning. There's a strangeness here that resists explanation. There's a sense of revelation without opaque self-consciousness. You can see why the editors chose so many pieces from her. Janice Lowe address race directly in her poem, "The Summervilles of Pickens County." She resists theorizing the assumptions and details of racial encounter by addressing the details in language that live "in the mouth." Although her use of the little 'i' is annoying, the coloquial articulation of this poem builds a powerful address. i tell the black ones calling me red you wanna be red like me nigger the white ones you redder than me you gotdam cracker all this is turning me into a kind of peckerwood nigger i don't like for people to be black and greasy at the same time i prefer yellow women for lovemaking some have said all my children have lightskinned mothers of course i'm a race man Witness the velocity of those lines, the build-up and speed. Like many of the pieces in this collection, the concerns of the social are delivered in a language that feels threaded to other agencies of expression. This only complicates and increases the emotional trajectories aimed against the dominate regimes of the social. Anyhow, it's a magazine worth checking out. Poems by Catherine Barnett, Brenda Coultas, Tonya Foster, Greta Goetz, Lisa Jarnot, Carol Mirakove, Ange Mlinko, Cynthia Nelson, Hoa Nguyen, Alice Notley and Prageeta Sharma are also included. Contact Jordan if you're interested. The Hat is cool. Dale ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 07:15:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: Readings in Austin / The Hat (if this gets through...) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Dale, your post reviewing The Hat made it through to me. Randy Dale wrote: ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 07:43:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: urban space In-Reply-To: <01BE2482.99B24C60@mid-qbu-nqm-vty133.as.wcom.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Marcella, With this interest in space, you might like a book from a symposium a few years ago. Thebook is MAKING WORLDS: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality, ed. by Susan Hardy Aiken, Ann Brigham, Sallie A. Marston, & Penny Waterstone, pub. by U of Arizona Press in 1998. It is described as follows: MAKING WORLDS brings together feminist activists, artists, and scholars to address a series of questions that resonate with increasing urgency in our global environment: How is space imagined, represented, arranged, and distributed? What are the lived consequences of these configurations? And how are these questions affected by gender and other socially constructed categories of "difference" -- race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, nationality? Not specifically about urban space, but includes that, and gives a differently gendered approach than that of most authors in the list below. charles At 09:18 PM 12/10/98 -0500, you wrote: >Simon, > >as a poet intensely fascinated by urban spaces & structures, here are some books I've found most helpful & interesting: > >City of Quartz by Mike Davis >Flesh & Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization by Richard Sennett (Sennett in general good read) >Cities by Lawrence Halprin >Design of Cities by Edmund N. Bacon >Angst: Cartography by Mojdeh Baratloo & Clifton J. Balch >The Life & Death of Great American Cities by Jane Alexander (not sure on author name, someone stole my book,as it is irresistable read) >Lost Cities by Vittoria Calvani >Architecture without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky (not precisely on urban planning, but I think deals with unexpected urban beauty) >The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable, by Robert Harbison >Big City Primer, John Yau >Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino >Paris Peasant, Louis Aragon > >There was some eco-magazine out for a while, Terra Verde? Terra Infirma? Can't remember exact name, but had some great essays on particular urban topics, especially in one issue called "Wild City." There was also a feminist magazine (I'll try & look it up--scribbled it down somewhere) in the 80s that has a super issue on women & urban spaces--really interesting essay on woman who designed gardens in Washington DC, counterpoint to huge pointy monuments... > >And a digression: on the whole List debate, I am a digester & mostly lurker who frequently deletes the entire thing unread, so missed the initial sparks. But somehow this resultant explosion has opened up the List more for me--made me feel that it is growling & moving, even if every step is not perfect for everybody. I haven't reconciled how I feel about someone being cut off the list, but must admit that the list now feels less monotonous, more names, voices cropping up here & there, more breathing space > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:04:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Day Subject: Re: urban space Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I've often loitered over "The Poetics Of Space" - a title and book which nicely conflates your topic and this list - by Gaston Bachelard, Maria Jolas (tr) - but never bought it. I think I shall. See for reviews. # > # >And a digression: on the whole List debate, I am a digester & mostly # lurker who frequently deletes the entire thing unread, so missed the # initial sparks. But somehow this resultant explosion has opened up the List # more for me--made me feel that it is growling & moving, even if every step # is not perfect for everybody. I haven't reconciled how I feel about someone # being cut off the list, but must admit that the list now feels less # monotonous, more names, voices cropping up here & there, more breathing space Change will do you good..mmm..mm... Roger ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:17:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: Baratier/Silliman/origins of Langpo as term Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I have heard that the title for L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E was designed by Ray DiPalma; curious to know whether this is so. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:14:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Final (Hopefully) Note about Insult Thread MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII CHARLES, PLEASE DON'T ERASE THIS! (joke) Why I Have Been So Virile & Insulting: 1). I began these skirmishes more than 3 or 4 weeks ago in dinky annoyance at the unflaggingly petulant and oppositionalist (a)mentality that was then in vogue on this list (I'm sure never to return). This was the Pinsky/Howe-Stern=Gerontion thread, heightened then for me by MP's injection of Intolerance-etc. 2). Devising an experiment, I did, with gestures bombastic, heighten my rhetoric daily, the purpose of which was to eventuate (yes I use it as a transitive verb) a call for Tolerance or Moderation or Open-ness (i say we hyphenate all double consonants) -- this in part having been effected. My attempts to upset this list's petulant equilibrium were intensified in commentary to Perloff in brilliant contravocality to her insufferable advocacy for an increased intolerance in this company. Said rhetoric has continued to heighten. 3). I am now told many have left this list because of said racier intragroupal-insulting rhetoric, which is bearing some of the finest argumentative techniques we have (and bristling with them furthermore): irony; satire, humor; atopical disquition, ad hominem, attribution of improper, foolish or otherwise ludicrously incongruous attributes of character and intellect (name-calling), and the use of a contemptuous tone and diction. Most of which intentions have already been posted publicly. I would make a bomb. (joke). Purpose?: Direct idiotic avant-garde pukery inward. Mine was a moral and a merry war. 4). My rhetoric was High, Frothy, & Exciting, yes. Very blurtive & potent. At times, devastating. Perhaps I should have directed my attacks against the gestalt otherwise known as "The List"; instead I chose to attack some of its core members, including the list owner. I thought this a more effective method to turn The List's knee-jerk scorn inward, and in many ways, it turns out, this does constitute a more "family-oriented" approach, keeping things personal. I saw -- as an arriviste will -- the Hodgepodge of this list as a Hegemony curled up like a Hedgehog. I needed to attack the Prominent Personalities curled in its underbelly, rather than all the barbs and spines on its dorsal side. Doing this (I am told) "outed" the uglier aspects of these personalities: someone suggested to me b-c just how closely all this parallels Wizard of Oz, in which our Dorothy (yours truly) crushes ruby-slippered critic with house-dropping rhetoric and goes on to waltz and pout her way to the unveiling of Wizard (cb) behind curtain (bad gender parallels in that sorry, but the anecdotal isn't necessarily apocryphal). Since that time people ahve been asking me in helium voice, "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?" Be that as it may, please note: 5). I took great pains to be bombastic and exaggerated -- not only to mock the earnest, but to underscore my purposes and keep Enemy guessing as to my intentions, but ALSO TO BE FUN, PEOPLE. I tried to work in caricatures not with effigies: those of you who missed this, please take a vacation. 6). My target was not Dignity but Vanity. 7). THERE IS A GREAT DIGNITY TO THIS LIST. It should be proud of itself; I am proud to be a part of it: you cannot know how much I appreciate Emily's post regarding Stein, how much I love to read these archives, how I enjoy the tiffs, what a great kick I get out of the PERSONALITIES of McGrand and Billy Little of Mairead Byrne and the poster formerly known as Henry Gould. I respect the generations represented here: the long and noble "struggle" [ahem, MP] this list represents and I respect what its subscribers have given to American letters for, in some cases, 50 years. 8). I felt compelled to attack LIST VANITY for sake of LIST BOINKY. 9). If I however had known this forum was SO delicate, so brittle, so unlike kentucky fescue, so OVERLY serious and earnest in its own self-regard, I certainly would not have posted what I did FOR a. A cowboy does not ride upon a cat b. A pig does not gallop in a pot c. A man will not surf on a puddle Once again, I thank you for your boinky. I hereby lay down my cudgels. But I reserve the right to use my ligneous atlatl every so often. Be well and write however the fuck you want. -persona non gaga PS, ONE LAST THING: I love Charles Bernstein, he continues to teach us a great deal. But it is a hard love. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:15:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: urban space MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII In addition to the books/essays already mentioned, you should also (I would say "first") look into the work of Raymond Williams, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, David Harvey, Lewis Mumford, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and Walter Benjamin. Lefebvre's THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE is especially important. I have an essay on the early history of urban poetry in English coming out in a collection to be published late next year from University of Arizona Press; the book will probably be entitled The Nature of Cities, and will feature essays on the relationships of literature to urban environments. Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 10:52:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Re: Baratier's Silliman question In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Someone said here recently (was it Ron?) that a language poet was anyone who had ever been publicly accused of being a language poet. Thus I have a favor to ask: would someone please accuse me of being such? Then I can count myself among this illustrious group. I'm not sure what a non-referential language would be. When Silliman writes a line like "teaching Reagan to count backwards by eights" (I'm quoting from memory probably inaccurately) does the word Reagan not refer* to the former president? Same problem with non-signifying or non-syntactical--this would be like saying a non-linguistic language. Sure, we can reject a sort of facile "reference" theory of language that people pretend to believe in while they are *accusing* people of being language poets. Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 09:03:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: miss priss speaks up (ahem) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" it would be merveilleux si nous reponde a chaque posting we'd like to respond to mais miraculous akin to anti-gravity though it's long overdo for me to say how much i delight in the majority of your postings eliza and pause in thought over them you add a very positive energy a hopefully contagious bouyancy poets in general women men transgenederd les het celibate poets at large are more often such sensitive plants easy to bruise even the blustery oaf poets are easy to hurt some lay awake waiting for offense to apear in their dreams. The last page of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment is useful here, i believe it's called the genesis of stupidity. The anti-paranoia squad requires me to say over 50% of questions i've posed have been totally ignored by all 677 lurkers and their loved ones but don't worry i'm going to do the same to each and every one of you if it takes me to the fourth millenium Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:56:56 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eileen Tabios Subject: Re: 3 questions re A. Sze poem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hello. This is my first post to this list. I am woman, too. In response to the 3 quedstions about Arthur Sze's poem, I thought I might as well ask Arthur what he would say about them (I didn't mention it was being discussed on this list because, if I understand this list's protocol, we're not supposed to tell non-list members what's being discussed here? Anyway, below is what Arthur would say about the 3 questions. Eileen p.s. C. Bernstein had suggested I join a couple of months ago. How interesting you all are (I mean that positively, not objectifyingly) -- none of you are "gray." ------------------------------------------ > I am reading Arthur Sze--"Redshifting Web." In that sequence he has > these three lines: > > Instead of developing a navy, Ci Xi > ordered architects to construct a two-story > marble boat that floats on a lotus-covered lake > > Does anyone know this story? Who Ci Xi was? How I might spell his name > to have more luck finding out who he was? Where to look to find the > story? > 1: Ci Xi is the pin-yin spelling, used throughout China now, of the late Empress Dowager of the Ch'ing Dynasty. Instead of allocating her funds to develop a navy to help counter threats from other countries, Ci Xi lavishly spent a fortune to develop a two-story marble boat that could float on water. The boat exists and is part of the Summer Palace in Beijing. In Chinese culture, the boat is seen as a symbol of supreme lavishness and as an attempt to avoid the pressure of reality. > Question 2: > In another part of the poem, he has this line: "as a lobster mold > transforms a russula into a delicacy." What is a "russula"? 2: A "russula" is the genus name for a series of mushrooms that have gills and chalky white stalks. Some russulas are edible, others can cause severe stomach upset. A lobster mold usually attacks a russula or lactarius mushroom; it covers the mushroom and transforms it. The new lobster mushroom is not only edible; it's an extraordinary delicacy. I'm thus using the lobster mushroom as an example in nature where something can be transformed into something astonishing. > Question 3: > I have figured out what a redshift is (more or less). Does anyone know > if there is such a thing as a redshifting web--astronomically, > cosmologically, referentially to the universe outside the poem--, or is > Sze writing to his poem? > 3: In our understanding of the cosmos, it is now clear that, as Heraclitus once said, "everything is in motion." Galaxies that are traveling away from the earth, which is of course also moving, send out sources of light that are bent toward the red end of the spectrum. So, redshift is an image of the expanding universe. I wanted to connect the infinitely large (cosmological redshift) with the infinitely small (a web), so I created the phrase "the redshifting web" as the title to my book. It connects the very far to the very near. It's thus an image of a poetics of an expanding cosmos, but also implies that the poet is like a spider that creates webs with words. Thanks for relaying this response. Very best, Arthur ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:11:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Re: Final (Hopefully) Note about Insult Thread In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think Gabriel Gudding might have been the only one laughing at his own *humor.* Insulting people is not inherently funny, nor is experimenting to see how long it will take for others to lose their *tolerance* for such insults. Just because you claim to be funny or ironic doesn't mean others will take it in that spirit. It's like someone telling a joke and laughing him/her self. Neither particularly moral nor merry. And please don't accuse me of lacking sense of humor. I laughed so hard at story of firecreacker in trombone valve that I gave myself an asthma attack. Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:15:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Posting to the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks, anonymous voice, for the note. I am confused by the apparent contradiction between the list being edited and all posts being forwarded immediately. My confusion increases when Henry tells me two of the posts he sent before he unsubscribed were not forwarded. Please clarify. Jordan Davis Poetics list wrote: In reply to recent queries, there has been no change in the structure of the list. The Poetics List is edited and will remain so for the forseeable future; however, please be aware that all posts sent to the list by subscribers go immediately to the list, *without exception*. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:27:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: Thanks for implications Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" My thanks for the responses to the "french abstract lyric" question. It's interesting, to me, to have a rather general term for a "form" be defined so precisely, albeit with variance based on who's doing the defining, in a (some) French poetic context(s), when I've only really run across the term in question as an allusive gesture towards an unnamed horde of young American poets. In one sense I was already aware of the possibility of an abstract lyric via Celan, as Doug writes, where the human impulse behind the poem remains transparent despite the reconfiguring of the lyric form & literal content into something wholly other. But on the other hand it's somewhat sickening to realize that there's another term in the air that anyone can use to corral a bunch of poets into definition for the sake of furthering an argument or theory. There's also something wrong with the designation of writing by Americans as falling under the label of "French" & then that label being put forward as demonstration of a problem in American poetics. I'm not looking to assign blame in writing this, or to kickstart another boring polemic dispute. It does seem to me sometimes, however, that much of what qualifies these days as poetic discourse is overly dictated by the freedom to assign labels to people, poems, forms, etc. & it's hard not to do so often enough, when the topic of conversation is constantly reduced to "what is Language poetry" or "what is New York School poetry" & placed in terms of a, some, any opposition (or as if those questions are actually crucial). Other than what they seem to mean for the purposes of editing anthologies I tend to think of these things as largely meaningless, mainly 'cause it seems that if I don't I won't see anything very clearly. Oh well. Thanks in advance for bearing with. Anselm Berrigan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:40:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Final (Hopefully) Note about Insult Thread In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT There's no accounting for taste though, I thought the trombone story was kinda tragic. And I definitely rendered Gudding boinky laughs. On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, MAYHEW wrote: > I think Gabriel Gudding might have been the only one laughing at his own > *humor.* Insulting people is not inherently funny, nor is experimenting to > see how long it will take for others to lose their *tolerance* for such > insults. Just because you claim to be funny or ironic doesn't mean others > will take it in that spirit. It's like someone telling a joke and laughing > him/her self. Neither particularly moral nor merry. And please don't > accuse me of lacking sense of humor. I laughed so hard at story of > firecreacker in trombone valve that I gave myself an asthma attack. > > > Jonathan > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:44:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David Erben (Art)" Subject: Reggae William Blake Comments: To: UB Poetics discussion group MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jah Wobbble has just released a CD, "The Inspirations Of William Blake," that includes a reggae version of The Tyger. Does anyone know of any other reggae versions of Blake? Romantic poetry? Victorian? I'm also reminded of a alternative version of "The Emperor of Ice Cream" I heard once in New Orleans. Unfortunately, I never learned who the group was. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:45:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Jonathan Mayhew is a Language Poet MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jonathan Mayhew is a Language Poet (cap's and everything)... So it's nice that he posted the short discussion of referential (not!) language...citing the line about teaching Reagan to count backward. I agree that it is very hard to claim non-referentiality for a work of poetry, and not be dead wrong. There is the very non-normative use of words, but as in JM's example, and as in relatively non-linear writing from the Cantos and Stein on down to most of what i see in the little mags today, most non-normative writing has distinct thematic resonances. There was a debate about this among several @lanta poets two nites ago..one feels that "lack of aboutness" is one of the main faults in the contemporary poetry he sees coming out now, when it doesn't quite work. Others thought that that was not the main problem.. I would add that this poet has published some VERY non-linear, and disjunctive work himself. So while superficially his point sounded like some of the critiques that've been articulated well here in the past, as by H. Gould and Joe Safdie, he was really saying something different, not just insisting on the communicative value of consevative form. Anyway, i disagree: most of the stuff i see coming out, if it fails to have sufficient focus on a "theme" or "subject", that seems to have as much to do with poor or unrealized writing, as with any intent to be abstract or nonreferential... A good example here might be Clark's The Little Door Slides Back. This book has been much praised and it has lots of fascinating stuff, and shows flashes of exciting and brilliant writing. But (this is tentative, as i'm still in the process of going over it and clarifying what i think) much in the book seems to overreach and to try to write in too many rapidly shifting ways, and to accomplish too many ideational/narrative clusters, with writing that's too unfocused, not sharp-edged, that's kind of mushy, not sufficiently worked-over and alive to the ear. These parts would probably fall under my friend's critique as "lacking aboutness," but i think the real problem is a need to tighten the writing. Anyway that shouldn't be taken as a reasonable review of Clark, obviously: that i hope to do later; but a gesture at the book, which others might look at to see what i think i'm saying... This referentiality stuff is a tricky bizness, sez i.. Welcome to the (Lang.) club, Jonathan! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 09:21:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: Baratier/Silliman/origins of Langpo as term Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The typography of "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" also served, whether this was the intent or not, to distinguish the pub. from its cousin, the linguistics journal _Language_. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:02:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: Final (Hopefully) Note about Insult Thread In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Might as well 'fess, up Guelph-Ghibelline, your raucous posts of late are really components of an MFA-thesis-in-progress which will be published (or "eventuated," as we say in Mondo PostPoMoBelmondo) in the year 2000 by Roof Books (intro by Bob Perelman), corretto? True, you might have to work in some images of gorges and sunsets to appease us locals, but why not? It's a twee country, after all. Too voyeuristic to unsubscribe, Fred M. >CHARLES, PLEASE DON'T ERASE THIS! (joke) > > Why I Have Been So Virile & Insulting: > >1). I began these skirmishes more than 3 or 4 weeks ago in dinky > annoyance at the unflaggingly petulant and oppositionalist > (a)mentality that was then in vogue on this list (I'm sure never to > return). This was the Pinsky/Howe-Stern=Gerontion thread, > heightened then for me by MP's injection of Intolerance-etc. > >2). Devising an experiment, I did, with gestures bombastic, heighten my > rhetoric daily, the purpose of which was to eventuate (yes I use it > as a transitive verb) a call for Tolerance > or Moderation or Open-ness (i say we hyphenate all double > consonants) -- this in part having been effected. My attempts > to upset this list's petulant equilibrium were intensified in > commentary to Perloff in brilliant contravocality to her > insufferable advocacy for an increased intolerance in this > company. Said rhetoric has continued to heighten. > ... -persona non gaga ******************************************************** 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: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:52:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aviva Vogel Subject: Deep Image - Original Materials - Inquiry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I was getting more and more excited reading someone's message about the original materials that might be used for a "deep image" dissertation, and with a system-freeze and a newly-installed AOL, I lost the message permanently. Would someone be generous and forgive this pedestrian plea and forward the message to me? Thanks, Aviva ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:21:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: recommended readings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII of late reading, the following have been particularly interesting: * _Arshile_ (#s 3,4,5, & 10) * _Third Wave: The New Russian Poetry_, edited by the former Kent Johnson and Stephen M. Ashby. U Mich, 1992 * _The Book of Insults, Ancient and Modern: An Amiable History of Insult, Invective, Imprecation & Incivility (Literary, Political & Historical) Hurled Through the Ages & Compiled as a Public Service by Nancy McPhee_ by Nancy McPhee, St. Martins, 1978. A definite must for all Americans. * _The Projectile Throwing Engines of The Ancients_, by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, a 1973 American reprint of a 1907 British version. Great drawings. * _The STrange Lives of Familiar Insects_, Edwin Teale, 1964. Great photos, spiff drawings, great insect melodrama told in breezy style. Ever wonder how far the common housefly can travel in one day? It's all here. * _Insect Stories_, Vernon L. Kellogg. Henry Holt, 1910. A collection of 12 true tales about the miraculous doings of insects. * _Little Lives: The Story of The World of INsects_., Julie Kenly. 1938. A good, if somewhat romantic, look at some of the more famous insects (eg, flies, cockroaches and bumblebees). * _The Senses of Nonsense_, Alison Rieke, Iowa, 1992. A clear and down-to-earth study of nonsense in Joyce, Stevens, Stein, and Zukofsky. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. gg ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:58:17 -0700 Reply-To: emgarrison@uswest.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "E.M. Garrison" Subject: Re: Posting to the list..and a Query. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ive had posts that came thru late and garbled. I believe its a technical problem, somewhere along the line, much as in the spring of this year when there was a breakdown (major server)on the east coast. This showed as difficulty sending or recieving email to or from europe. Communications do occasionally break down. Duh. As to the editing, (feel free to correct me if I am mistaken) I believe that this means to stay close to the subject, not introducing, say.....Plums! into the subject matter, or remain relevant. This is of course difficult to say the least..so many ..many subjects and posters..it is almost impossible.My own opinion ? More rope, please. I want to be in charge of my own hanging, spectical and all. Anyone out there knit? Mairead, please continue to raise your voice !! I dont always have time to respond..though I want too....Time In very short supply here. If I did have the time, I would try to say much as you have said..though I know I would not do it half so well.My hat is off to you. You speak eloquently for many of us. Bless the Irish!.. in us all.... Gabe. Hard post, Dude. You were coming across as emotionally dishonest. It just simply doesnt work, especially from a poet. That is the beauty of language. You can be as rude as you like. But be real. When you are, your words shine...dont go stomping off either.As Henry..and Kent, have done. there is nothing to be gained, and you would be sorely missed.As they are. We are all adults, and know when banter is working. We Know.And enjoy it, or dont. I like it myself. If something offends me, I function as my own editor. delete. I was so pleased to see the support that Mairead received from the "guys" in response to her post. Gender equality does indeed exist on this list. Thanks, Guys...Your support is appreciated..and not lost in the roar of words. Im new here. Every day. Not always time to post.Standard disclaimer for misspelled words, apologies for any stepped on toes. QUERY: Does anyone know of any list functioning as a sounding board for work in progress? Please backchannel me. All time and effort is appreciated, and I thank you in advance. Peace, beth --------------------------------- Jordan Davis wrote: > Thanks, anonymous voice, for the note. I am confused by the apparent > contradiction between the list being edited and all posts being forwarded > immediately. My confusion increases when Henry tells me two of the posts he > sent before he unsubscribed were not forwarded. > > Please clarify. > > Jordan Davis > > Poetics list wrote: > In reply to recent queries, there has been no change in the structure of > the list. The Poetics List is edited and will remain so for the forseeable > future; however, please be aware that all posts sent to the list by > subscribers go immediately to the list, *without exception*. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:46:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Emperor a la Nordine In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm also reminded of a alternative version of "The Emperor of Ice Cream" I heard once in New Orleans. Unfortunately, I never learned who the group was. <<< Ken Nordine has a fabulous riff on "Emperor" on one of his recent albums--I believe it's on /Devout Catalyst/, which has guest perf-poet Tom Waits on one track and guest guitarist Jerry Garcia on several. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 15:58:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: ADOPT A "POET" In-Reply-To: <23B6D811C54@as.ua.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Poetics list-- I will be in San Francisco (for a job interview) from Dec. 25th until early on the 30th, and am looking for a place to crash, a couch, a floor even. I will be clean. I will do your laundry or make icecubes or mow your lawn or whatever errands you may wish to devise for me (I will sing for my supper if you have a piano, and even be a brilliant conversationalist if you're into that sort of thing). I know it's unreasonable to expect that any single person (or couple or trio) would be able to put me up the whole time I'm there--but if I can get enough people to say that I wouldn't be too much of a pest on any single night, I could alternate--- I am especially worried about where I would stay xmas night, being that there's no room at the inn, etc. If anybody has any room--or any leads on anybody who might--for any of these 5 nights, I would deeply appreciate it. I will owe you one-- I will let you stay at my place if you happen to be in NYC, and if I get the job I'm interviewing for, I will even offer you money somewhere down the line..... (i hope such requests are not inappropriate for the list-- i--for one--would like to see more of these!)... sincerely, Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:15:34 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Jonathon Mayhew is a language poet Comments: To: jmayhew@EAGLE.CC.UKANS.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I believe it was "counting backwards by sevens," a standard part of the mental status exam given in psych emergency wards every day (the president for whom I was named could not pass this test). [Another question on the list is to name the last six presidents of the US, but a few years back the APA decided that the omission of Gerald Ford would not count as an error since so few Americans seemed to know that he had been president.] I agree that there is no such thing as non-referentiality. It's a term like non-narrative that is its own self-oxymoron. (The unfolding of meaning in time, the only definition of narrative that makes any sense to me, occurs even in the single letter poems of Joyce Holland's "Alphabet Anthology." Every letter has a beginning, middle and end, although Grenier is the only poet I know who seems to be able to manipulate this effectively.) On the use of the "=" in the name of the journal to which Wystan referred, I've always presumed that it referred back to Saussure's conception of difference as the governing principle of language (dont be so sure, as CB would say). Tho I never did figure out the "/" in the magazine M/E/A/N/I/N/G. Has anyone noticed that what's happening in Congress right now isn't an impeachment but a coup? Ron ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 16:20:12 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Brennan Subject: Fwd: news that stays news Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part0_913411213_boundary" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_913411213_boundary Content-ID: <0_913411213@inet_out.mail.aol.com.1> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII --part0_913411213_boundary Content-ID: <0_913411213@inet_out.mail.BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU.2> Content-type: message/rfc822 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Content-disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from rly-zb04.mx.aol.com (rly-zb04.mail.aol.com [172.31.41.4]) by air-zb03.mail.aol.com (v53.20) with SMTP; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:55:04 -0500 Received: from BROWNVM.brown.edu (brownvm.brown.edu [128.148.19.19]) by rly-zb04.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with SMTP id NAA04318 for ; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:55:02 -0500 (EST) Resent-Message-Id: <199812111855.NAA04318@rly-zb04.mx.aol.com> Message-Id: <199812111855.NAA04318@rly-zb04.mx.aol.com> Received: from BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU by BROWNVM.brown.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R4) with BSMTP id 5365; Fri, 11 Dec 98 13:55:10 EST Received: from BROWNVM (NJE origin AP201070@BROWNVM) by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 8543; Fri, 11 Dec 1998 13:55:11 -0500 Resent-Date: Fri, 11 Dec 98 13:54:52 EST Resent-From: Henry Resent-To: Joe Date: Fri, 11 Dec 98 13:43:21 EST From: Henry Subject: news that stays news To: Joe Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Joe, can you forward this to the list? Thanks - Henry Dear Poetics List, Just to clarify: 1. I agree with everybody that list-hogging is bad for the list. 2. I was not consistently the high poster each month. The few times I was asked to slow down, I did. 3. I left the list not out of frustration but because the "review" status I was put under led to unexplained censorship & hidden editing of the list. I could not participate in that. Could you? 4. The new diversity & plurality of postings to the list is great. If I can further that by remaining in exile, fine. Remember, I recommended these things - more people participating, more careful listening to topics of messages - back in November, before anyone else. I find that hilarious. 5. My last official post to the list was a poem about thanksgiving. So happy holidays one & all. Do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe in the Invisible Hand? Better be good! - Henry Gould --part0_913411213_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:21:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Eliza Jen Juliana & Concerns or erase Comments: cc: js@lava.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Responding having read some into the archive. Am I one of Joel's "bailures"? Don't know. Appreciate the girl wagon that has been somewhat acknowledged. I had told Joel privately that I'd "BE BACK", just LIKE Arnold Schwarzenegger w/ a review of Meow Press's '98 publication, Thrum by Noemie Maxwell, which I read quickly, tenderly, and excitedly, a new writer for me, a prose that gets the words to change their typical stance as noun or verb, something that fascinates me as I think about what is narrative or not-- --but that I'll put in a future issue of Outlet, with 200 copies planned, I don't know if my thoughts on this book would get more or less readership there or via this here channel. !!!: I must protest, and perhaps too much, that Mark, when he posted our "entire" b/c "conversation" did not actually post its entirety, nonetheless I will leave this quote from Eliza to stand in for my feelings on that subject >>i must point out a delicious irony: as a woman, >>am too often treated to persons overendowed with entitlement who feel it >>is encumbent upon them to "explain" what i have said, speak FOR me, and >>in so doing, completely ignore what in fact i HAVE said. >--Eliza Mc Grand And I , copying Juliana, am not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings -- tho mine have been knocked about here --- and on third thought, "HURT SO GOOD", gentlemen of the judiciary committee, think about the fact that it does seem to be a climate that girls abandon, and maybe the climate's changing, and I don't know how to act proper, I just know I need to spend my time on WRITING!! set to nomail, set to bratty, Outlet 3 'll be out in March happy hols, the gentlelady from California yields,,,,, Elizabeth Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 17:28:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: SEMCOM:, Books: Semiotics (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This might be of interest to readers here. Alan =========================================================================== SEMCOM >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ==================================//is an online bulletin primarily for dissemination of semiotic, semiological, discursive, linguistic, visual and allied information pertaining to the study of signs. It is solely owned and operated by Alan C. Harris Ph.D. and is distributed free of charge to members of the Commission on Semiotics and Communication, National Communication Association, members of the Semiotic Society of America, and other "fellow travelers" who request the service. . . // [If you would like to be included in the SEMCOM list, please reply or send a note to alan.harris@csun.edu with the command, "add SEMCOM", in the body. tia, a.] =========================================================================== From: LINGUIST Network From: AnneGodfre@aol.com Subject: The Written Poem: Semiotic Conventions From Old to Modern English Huisman, Rosemary (University of Sydney); The Written Poem: Semiotic Conventions From Old to Modern English;Available from Cassell;Hb.: 0 304 33999 7; US$75.00/ 45.00 This book defines a focus of interest: contemporary poetry and its historical construction as a 'seen object', and uses current literary and social theory to facilitate its study. Thus the book contains matter of relevance to practising poets, to those engaged in literary studies and to those with a sociolinguistic interest in the English language, especially in relation to technical and social changes in language technology and literacy. Part One discusses the use of graphic, that is visual, conventions in contemporary poetry in English. How do we recognize 'a poem' (including apparent contraventions, such as the 'prose-poem')? Once a poem has been recognized, what are the interpretative conventions brought into play for reading it? And especially, how has the spatial arrangement on the page become 'meaningful' in its own right for much contemporary poetry? The last question, of the semiosis of the 'seen poem', is discussed at length, with numerous examples from individual poems. For a consistent descriptive vocabulary for 'discourse' and 'genre', a model of language and social context, derived from the work of the linguist M.A.K. Halliday and the sociologist Basil Bernstein, where relevant, is explained and used. Part Two explores questions which have been brought to the fore in Part One. What is the origin of the line as the primary generic sign of poetry? How does the potential for seen, rather than spoken, meaning emerge? It particularly focuses on changes in manuscript conventions from Old to Middle English poetry, on the comparitvely late significance of print for poetic discourse, on the change, in an increasingly literate understanding of 'literature', from a social to a personal understanding of poetic meaning from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. If what has been regarded as an object, 'the poem', is an outcome of the social processes of textual interpretation and production, so too is what has been regarded as 'the subject', that through which meaning is authorized. AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW. EMAIL: sales@cassellexport.demon.co.uk LINGUIST List: Vol-9-1746 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 18:29:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Lennon Subject: urban space Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" I'd also recommend Rem Koolhaas's _Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan._ (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994): left"Not only are large parts of its surface occupied by architectural mutations . . . utopian fragments . . . and irrational phenomena . . . but in addition each block is covered with several layers of phantom architecture in the form of past occupancies, aborted projects and popular fantasies . . ." Walter Benjamin, "A Berlin Chronicle," "A Berlin Childhood," "Moscow," "Marseilles," "Naples," "One Way Street," etc. (in _Reflections_ [New York: Schocken, 1978]; _Moscow Diary_ (Harvard UP, 1986). Rilke, _The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge_ (Vintage, 1990). Mike Davis has a second book out---also on L.A.; I can't recall the title though. >Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 21:18:09 -0500 >From: Marcella Durand < >Subject: urban space > >Simon, > >as a poet intensely fascinated by urban spaces & structures, here are = >some books I've found most helpful & interesting: > >City of Quartz by Mike Davis >Flesh & Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization by Richard = >Sennett (Sennett in general good read) >Cities by Lawrence Halprin >Design of Cities by Edmund N. Bacon >Angst: Cartography by Mojdeh Baratloo & Clifton J. Balch >The Life & Death of Great American Cities by Jane Alexander (not sure on = >author name, someone stole my book,as it is irresistable read) >Lost Cities by Vittoria Calvani >Architecture without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky (not precisely on = >urban planning, but I think deals with unexpected urban beauty) >The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable, by Robert Harbison >Big City Primer, John Yau >Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino >Paris Peasant, Louis Aragon ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 21:18:56 -0500 Reply-To: BANDREWS@prodigy.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: BETSY ANDREWS Subject: Re: boo-boo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I like this poem quite a bit. ---------- > From: A. Jenn Sondheim > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: boo-boo > Date: Tuesday, December 08, 1998 3:27 AM > > == > > > boo-boo > > When I die, I want to take you with me, > I want to take ten of the ten, and fifteen of the fifteen, > And I will wear the dreary blue-blue you have given me - > There will be one atom left, to placate the dreary vacuum, > One molecule grappled by cell-counts sloughed and scrambled, > Tissue rent asunder, organs corroded, soul's debris abandoned - > And I will wear the blue-blue, I will wear the overcoat and ring, > Carnelion round my neck, magnetite across my throat, and singing - > Your name - as I am torn asunder, the fifteen dreary words, > The ten lost and forlorn colors, the fifteen dying notes, > The ten corroded sites - you Blue-Blue, wear my overcoat - > You Blue-Blue wear my ring - placate my death with dreary yours - > What a vacuum here, and souls of dying atoms split asunder > Stumble just beneath you Blue-Blue, taking me abandoned - > > > _____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 19:20:12 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: God Bless the Tumors, the Boils and the Blisters MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yeah, but he does it so much better than you, Wystan. Did your folks name you after the Auden. I was named after my grandfather. He was a swineherd.---Carlo Parcelli Wystan Curnow wrote: > > > Gabriel Gudding wrote (in part) > > > > I was going to reserve this 30 min's of freetime tht I now have for > > posting a few more thoughts on the THEORY OF SLAPSTICK POETICS. But the > > news of Henry's departure has so saddened me I am moved to write a > > meta-poetics commentary. > > > Some have said CB is killing an essential part of this list with his > > interventions. > > > > I have even gone so far as jokingly to call CB a controlling prig. > > > > One or two of us have however gone on to compliment CB on his open-minded > > and fair attitude (I am one of these). I compliment CB on his open mind. > > Dear Gabriel, > This so-called Slapstick Poetics of yours, it really seems to > have made an impact. I'm not sure I quite grasp it, as you have had > precious little to say theoretically about it. But let me try it > myself and you can tell me how I'm going,ok?: > > Gabriel Gudding is an abusive, insulting, humourless, garrulous no- > count poseur ( I'm sure I wrote poster?) so say some people. Not > frontchannel mind you. And not me. I love him. He's so fine. > > Some say his failed attempts at humour which simply end up giving > gratuitous offence is doing damage to the sense of community on > which the success of the list depends. But not me. I did not say it. > I did not. I love him. He is an honourable man. Others say his posts > are hilarious, challenging, cheeky. Not me, however. > > Is this how it goes, Gabe? And where does it go from here? I am not > sure of the point of saying gross, stupid, things about a person and > then nice approving things about them, except that it is rather > liberating and such fun and gets up people's noses, so perhaps you > could go into this in more depth. Thanks. > > Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 23:14:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Reggae William Blake In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've heard a reggae version of The Tyger. Not sure if it was Jah Wobble, but it was outstanding. My wife was listening to it on the radio and she called for me to come in, knowing how much I love Blake. We just stood transfixed in front of the receiver. It was a lovely moment I won't forget. Steven On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, David Erben (Art) wrote: > Jah Wobbble has just released a CD, "The Inspirations Of William Blake," > that includes a reggae version of The Tyger. > > Does anyone know of any other reggae versions of Blake? Romantic poetry? > Victorian? > > I'm also reminded of a alternative version of "The Emperor of Ice Cream" I > heard once in New Orleans. Unfortunately, I never learned who the group > was. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 23:21:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: Poetics Suggestion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit There *is* something pleasant about reading your own posts I have to admit, it's a little like enjoying the smell of your fingers. Then, too, there is the way that this venue seems to encourage a degree of exhibitionism. It's not that the people who post very frequently aren't often interesting, but when a small minority of subscribers is continually determining the tone of the List the same things are always being said. *Here's a suggestion*: why must subscribers receive their own posts back from Poetics? Perhaps someone could provide a convincing justification for this, but from my point of view, it's not at all necessary & deprived of that "pleasure" I think a lot of the problem with over-frequent posting to the List would abate. -- Anyway, looking forward to seeing this in my mailbox in a few minutes. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 21:14:14 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Posting to the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List wrote: > > In reply to recent queries, there has been no change in the structure of > the list. The Poetics List is edited and will remain so for the forseeable > future; however, please be aware that all posts sent to the list by > subscribers go immediately to the list, *without exception*. Wha!? Clarify! Clarify! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 00:27:06 -0500 Reply-To: fperrell@JLC.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F. W. Perrella" Subject: New at: The Literary Review and North American Review - Web Del Sol MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New at The Literary Review: http://webdelsol.com/tlr The Fall 98 issue has a new batch of work to keep you thinking - check out The Dance School, by Manfred Wolf, or Summer Garden, by Laurie Byro. The North American Review has new material, too: http://webdelsol.com/nar Two works you may want to see there: Goodnight Irene, by Corrine Clegg Shales, and Goddess of Desire and Paris West, by Judith Shatnoff. Enjoy - ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 16:49:21 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale Smith Subject: The Hat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I read Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar's first issue of The Hat this morning, which I like for its focus and consistency of tone and 'spirit.' Two male editors publishing a first issue with only women is quite notable and the results are not what I expected. (Hoa came into my room last night with a stack in one hand of poetry submissions from men and in the other ONLY one piece from a woman). So, I understand building an issue of women's writing is no easy task. To find a grouping of work that corresponds or echoes internally is difficult enough. Restricting that to a particular, traditionally under-represented gender, is moreso. Lisa Jarnot's mix of high and low "tones" produces a lyric composition that dips into the literal revelation of her experience--emotional, cultural and intellectual. She writes: In New Haven all the lights go on across the sun, and for millennia those who kiss fall into hospitals, riding trains, wearing black shoes, pursued by those they love, the Chinese in the armies with the shiny sound of Johnny Cash, and in my plan to be myself I became someone else with soft lips and a secret life The movement of phrases builds speed, injambing the lines to form a poetic structure that "sounds" like a poem in the classic sense. That is, her tone is elevated (as is the subject, I think) but the pieces, the fragments of life drawn in, are personal, popular, or trivial: mundane pieces elevated through the transmundane song of the poet. In 'Moo is Om Backwards' Jarnot offers a similar song of heightened musical sensitivity that works if you don't mind the repetition and cuteness of its mooing cows and "daisies in the fields." Still, even the repetition (increased to abstraction), roots itself in song. It is a goofy song and I for one demand more goofiness from poetry! There is an expressiveness here worthy of mention, especially in this cynical domain. Janice Lowe's poem 'The Summervilles of Pickens County' foregrounds racial concerns in an intense way. Although her use of the little 'i' is an annoying tick, she breaks the polite surface of the usual composure and repression surrounding such issues. She writes: i tell the black ones calling me red you wanna be red like me nigger the white ones you redder than me you gotdam cracker all this is turning me into a kind of peckerwood nigger i don't like for people to be black and greasy at the same time i prefer yellow women for lovemaking some have said all my children have lightskinned mothers of course i'm a race man Attention to coloquial speech ("gotdamn cracker") and an emotional velocity that is specific to theme and location allows for the tension of this poem to expand out beyond theoretical concerns of race into actual perceptive rendering of the embodied word. Kimberly Lyons short-lined poems attend to perceptions of event and object, executed with the confidence of a poet: elegant, tight, sonorous, commanding delight from those (like me) who find it hard to give. Prone to 'realistic' perception rather than forced abstraction, these poems radiate a lyric charm and sympathetic interior that makes her voice vulnerable to charges of naivetee and empty chatter. On the bar last night I saw Three martinis, trembling triangles. Nancy said this is the first time I've felt happy. Big white trucks. I guess everybody goes there at least once. Sutured is that kind of medical word. August just whitens things down into themselves. It's not the paratactic stanza jumps that bother me, but the occasional weight one word is forced to carry, words simply not worthy of the emotional depth conveyed in her phrasing. Still, 'overall,' a fine, (and by far the largest grouping here--20 pages), selection of poems. Juliana Spahr closes The Hat with a single poem called 'Poem.' It addresses the yankee anxieties of the pronoun (the List covered this territory some weeks ago) in a direct, syllogistic address from "Albany or maybe Honolulu." One fine day one woke up and found one's self gone. But one didn't leave the boys behind. One didn't leave the girls behind. One didn't end nothing or it. So one called out: mix with [generic pronound deleted]; mess with [generic pronound deleted]. Or I or he or she am or is trying missing or mixing things up. Thanks for the directions. This self-proclaimed "love poem" might be void of lutes and forlorn troubadors, but it is a kind of offering of the self, however guarded by the playfulness of syntactic play. This sophisticated piece plays with the implied meanings and reverberations of syntax and word-choice native to Spahr's socio/cultural concerns. But you'll have to read it for yourself to see the playful layers she weaves. There are many other pieces worthy of mention but I am exhausted as are you, dear reader, I'm sure. So check out The Hat. Its editors have made something that is new to me, revealing an aspect of women's writings overlooked b ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 08:54:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: Poetics Suggestion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 12/11/98 11:23:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, JDEBROT@AOL.COM writes: << There *is* something pleasant about reading your own posts I have to admit, it's a little like enjoying the smell of your fingers. Then, too, there is the way that this venue seems to encourage a degree of exhibitionism. It's not that the people who post very frequently aren't often interesting, but when a small minority of subscribers is continually determining the tone of the List the same things are always being said. *Here's a suggestion*: why must subscribers receive their own posts back from Poetics? Perhaps someone could provide a convincing justification for this, but from my point of view, it's not at all necessary & deprived of that "pleasure" I think a lot of the problem with over-frequent posting to the List would abate. -- Anyway, looking forward to seeing this in my mailbox in a few minutes. >> no, Jacques, no! if we didn't receive our own posts then I'm afraid (very, very) that would cause the list to implode. I think that the satisfaction of getting your own post back IN A FEW MINUTES helps compensate for the weeks or months of waiting to hear back from editors. with the list we can create a baby and see it born instantly- Guaranteed! (well, given recent history, almost guaranteed). in the welcome message we are urged to consider the list a form of PUBLICATION more than communication. not only that but we are ARCHIVED! Whew! heady stuff. I considered sending this backchannel, but... Mr. Randy Edward Prunty I ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:02:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: urban space MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Brian, Charles, et al thanks for reading suggestions--the quote from "delirious new york" has = me, well, delirious. I thought Henri Lefevbre wrote on insects--my = family has some lovely old books by him with intricate drawings? Am I = thinking of other? What books did he write on urban/space/cities? I will definitely look up Making Worlds--after reading the feminist = issue on space/architecture by yet unnamed journal(too many little = pieces of paper about, too many scribbles) in friend's house, had me = hungry for more.=20 best- M ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 08:04:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: Re: The Hat/women writers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dale, hoa, & other editors: thanks for the description of The Hat. You mention that Jordan and Chris (two boys) haved edited an issue of a magazine with all women poets. Why is this a surprise? While it may be unusual, I think it is only as one famously male's male's male would say, "apropos." Women, generally, are doing much more interesting writing these days, and have been since the 70s. Not that there aren't useful boy-originated poets, but in my opinion, these last few decades have been really marked by this tendency. Representation of women by male editors is another issue, and leads people, for instance, to say that 'language poetry is male dominated,' when in fact if you look at the writing this isn't true. As far as all-women issues of magazines, whether edited by men or women: Are you suggesting that using some fairly restrictive criteria of editing that one would end up with anything but the same? Is it something that has to be set aside, like "this is our mission" or "no boys allowed" etc.? this came up at the now historic New Coast conference in buffalo back in 93. When discussing this issue, the over representation of men by men in presses and magazines, one editor said that the problem was really that women didn't send in their work, while men are quick to submit work for consideration. Some people have said (sorry for lack of specifics, I don't mean to sound like Henry Hyde) that there aren't as many women writers so they get published much easier, become more sought after and therefore, somehow (and I find this one hilarious) more difficult to get to send work to mags and presses. The implication being here that women have more choices and that there is a "shortage" of women's writing...when in fact this simply couldn't be further from the truth. In my experience as an editor, you can't wait for the writing you want to publish. So, with a few exceptions, unsolicited writings are generally male and generally not what I'm looking for. Dale, your description of Hoa's showing you the pilo submissions by men and the lone submission by a woman further strengthens what i like to call the "receptical theory of editing"--if you provide a trash can, it is likely to filled up. Which isn't to say that unsolicited work can't have a place in the development of a literary community, or a publishing sequence, whether a periodical or chapbook series. I'm only trying to say that such methods are limited. I used to think that the gender-limit on such editing projects was problematic. As a form of editing, like my fantasy of a moderated listserv (which, if I get my way, will become a reality) such limit-oriented projects have their place. This was originally the focus of Chain and there are many projects out there that tend to focus on women's writers. I've stated that this doesn't need to be arbitrary, but it often is. I now kind of like that arbitrary restriction, and have toyed with that in planning future series of the meow press chapbooks. We all have these restrictions anyways, so why not extend them to fit a whole class of people: like white boys, or just boys in general. Where maybe once I would be offended by such editorial specificity, now such CENSORSHIP excites me, and I mean that honestly, sincerely (in case that was ever in question). Because I don't feel that it is censorship, but rather an editor's perogative. Anyhow, all that aside, I am currently reading manuscripts for books scheduled to be published next summer -- and while for me there are a few interesting male-dominated writers out there, I would like to invite the women on the poetics list to send either manuscripts or proposals for manuscripts (of poetry, prose, or for monograph critical pamphlets) to: po box 948568 la jolla ca 92037 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 08:20:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: Re: The Hat/women writers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit i wanted to respond to myself in public and suggest that i didnt mean that i was going to use the women-only restriction for the editing of meow press. while that is certainly an emphasis (especially during my current reading), that more has to do with the writers i like being women for the most part, and i am currently actively in contract talks with some very interesting writers who happen to be women. so my plea to poetics for submissions is an invitation, not the focus of my research. as far as "arbitrary" restrictions, I don't mean to suggest that such projects as Chain or Outlet are anything resembling arbitrary. I do mean to suggest that I may use such an arbitrary restriction in the future, as has been described on this list: only poets with relatives in Michigan, etc... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 11:21:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: report to the committee... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've just emerged from a long, often frustrating week of posting folks backchannel re the recent (and apparently ongoing) list controversy... please, don't *any* of you feel you're being singled-out here... if you've heard from me backchannel, *any of you*, it's probably fair to say that you can multiply whatever you've heard from me by 10 or 20 anyway, and that this gives some idea of the amount of backchannel conversation i've been having... perhaps you've been in the same boat as me... whatever the case, i will risk, again, a bit of overweening sincerity in trying to convey what i've learned... i think it's fair to say that, as these backchannel conversations have proceeded (and in some cases, escalated), my thinking and writing has at times been tortured, gnarled (as i will no doubt give evidence of *here*)... i suppose this is b/c i've been at some pains in trying to present something like the whole *me*---which, in my view, impinges upon my full(er) understanding and articulation of the more conflicted aspects of the recent ruckus... i.e., mixed feelings and motivations i might have, why i might have them, how my more personal relationships with some of you influence my judgment, trying to account for my relationships, trying to be objective *and* considerate---an apologia at times, at other times simply a (self-)confrontation... i've been told, by some, that they are in complete accord with what i'm saying... i've been told, by others, that we remain worlds apart, and that in fact my motivations as a mediator (if you will) have been murky, impure, compromised in ways that i seem unable or unwilling to grasp... in addition to some troubled sleep patterns, i've emerged from the last week, all told, with the same conclusion about these spaces that i came to some six years ago: that it would be wrong to take what is said here, on the list (or even in one-on-one communique)---however well-intended, however mean-spirited, however apparently moderate---as the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... ((and yes---i mean to imply that this all, for me, resonates with the ongoing judicial "hearings," which have rapidly devolved imho into an attempt to railroad clinton out of office, as some of you have suggested... a reality, imnsho, far more pressing than what goes on on this list))... the reason why i observe (allege?) that the truth (as above) is not to be had quickly, or completely, or without reservation: we are more than the sum total of our words, and esp., our words in these regions... i don't believe for a moment that one can obtain some unmediated, disembodied truth, and i certainly don't believe one can obtain same simply by virtue of *this* sort of exchange... if i *did* believe this, kass and i might have decided upon marriage online, so to speak... albeit there turned out, in our case, to have been much truth exchanged in our months of courting (as it were) online---in addition, i should say, to certain miscues (i am potentially much mouthier and obnoxious f2f, as any who know me well can bear witness to)---there was additional truth to be gotten from spending time with each other... and of course there has been more truth exchanged since we began living together, a process that will (i hope!) continue as time passes... to me it is in fact the assumption of something remaining to be understood that provides me with a tentative, provisional, but nonetheless necessary grasp of something called "truth"---and leads me, i would like to think, to some operating conception of what is just, and fair... as, i would trust (but which may not be the case), such an assumption might lead each of you... i find as a result of my transactions, then, that it's necessary not to leap to judgment, that it's necessary to try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt... were we dealing with what appeared, more clearly, more certainly, to be (e.g.) neo-nazi behavior, i might not advocate such care, such thoughtfulness... ((and here again: one of the problems with the recent impeachment hearings, imnsho, is that the republicans, in treating the current articles of impeachment as having the same gravity as the watergate articles, are insidiously citing watergate-inspired words in justifying their actions))... ((well even here, you can see how one can get oneself into all sorts of trouble---i would seem to be aligning those who are against me (against charles, to cut to the quick) with the republicans... i.e., with conservative, right-wing thinking (apologies to you republicans out there)... nothing could be further from what i intend---and in any case, and as i've said to some of you backchannel, the left has always proved itself expert at tearing itself apart... nevertheless there is, i think, a certain positive and instructive correlation here with the flawed logic of the republicans---which of course is a politically *motivated* logic, in their case... though not so in the case of those who consider themselves, sadly, my ethical "adversaries" in the recent poetics brouhaha... clearly i believe the impeachment hearings crucial enough to risk confusing with the controversies of this list... just as clearly, i believe it to be a great mistake to assign to anyone *here* a strictly insidious intention, such as "censorship," thence to argue strictly on the basis of such an assignation---which is what, i respectfully submit, i believe my most adversarial "adversaries" have done... and of course they believe me in this regard to be part & parcel of the general 'corruption,' ETC.))... let me not lose my own point in the muddle of this post: i think listening, and listening generously, brings certain rewards over time... i am not calling for more "moderate" (adj.) posts---we can rock & roll, sure, of course... self-moderation, as i understand it, simply means that, whatever one is about, one listens (to oneself, among others) in contributing to whatever this list is, and is in the state of becoming... how else can one envision this list actually working as such?... i must admit to being at somewhat of a loss if what i'm saying here seems idiosyncratic in its appeal to putting a bit of (a bit of) faith in our capacity for creating a vital communal (and certainly not homogeneous) gathering, one predicated on goodwill... anyway, i hope what i've said here makes some small amount of sense, and will prove modestly useful as we continue together, and apart, in such uncertain times... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 17:33:23 -0000 Reply-To: suantrai@iol.ie Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: Re: urban space MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > From: Marcella Durand >I thought Henri Lefevbre wrote on insects--my family has some > lovely old books by him with intricate drawings? Am I thinking >of other? What books did he write on urban/space/cities? Perhaps you are thinking of J. H. Fabre, author of "The Life of the Fly", and discoverer of larval dimorphism. He and his family, having joined the first and last member of a line of processionary moth caterpillars, took it in shifts once to observe them marching round and round the edge of a barrel for an entire day until the circle broke up in exhaustion. Randolph Healy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 12:47:41 -0500 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: Lyn Hejinian MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit "They used to be the leaders of the avant garde, but now they just want to be understood, and so farewell to them."---Lyn Hejinian -- ÐÏ à¡± á ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 11:57:04 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: listserv gratuties MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit PRAYER TO KUMUSH Our father on high living: Your name all revere your mind come to every one us Here too on earth in the same manner be done just as on high is done To us this day bread give you Not us wicked render you equally as our men-kindred love You keep off from our hearts thoughts good our heart make you You alone power you heart strong perpetually great of Kumush Thus well [from the Modoc] ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:16:04 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: new address, & Lyn MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >>"They used to be the leaders of the avant garde, but now they just want to be understood, and so farewell to them."---Lyn Hejinian<< Right. And "as for we who 'love to be astonished,'" Lyn's a language poet. My e-address changed today, so I may have missed some backchannels (Joel kindly fwded me the missed frontchs). They were all out of lukewarmmail, so here's where I'm at. Thanks. em ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 13:31:51 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: origins of Langpo as term In-Reply-To: <199812120507.AAA15284@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII jacques debrot asks of dipalma's involvement in the naming of L=A=... i understand that charles bernstein bounced the name Language (no equal signs) off of steve mccaffery, and steve suggested "Pegatext(e)" as an alternative. assuming that aldon nielsen and ron silliman are both correct -- that the equal signs served both to distinguish this project from the linguistics journal and to emphasize the differential nature of the saussurean signifier -- one wonders what would have been the comportment of a burgeoning (so-called, or even post-) "P=E=G=A=T=E=X=T=(E) poetry"! t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the life in things. -- Gilles Deleuze ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 13:45:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: <199812120507.AAA15284@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII interesting the way that poetry gets mobilized in the endgame of this whole thing: shippers quotes longfellow, clinton receives poetry from an old dear friend -- can anyone identify the lines from clinton's statement yesterday: "the moving finger writes and having writ moves on..."? (the rest of the quote actually resonates somewhat with our thread on erasing) also that berman (d-ca) would, in his opening statement, refer to the president's efforts to "deconstruct" words: continues to amaze me how that term has migrated from the highly specialized discourse of continental philosophy, through an (american) academic elite, and into our common parlance to mean simply "render ambiguous"... t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the life in things. -- Gilles Deleuze ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 14:15:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom--Clinton's quote yesterday comes from the Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat, and I too thought about in relation to our erasure thread, although the emphasis in this case is really on the *impossibility* of erasure: with the passage of time itself troped as a kind of writing. Here's the passage in full: The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 13:56:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" that's from the rubayat of omar khayyam. At 1:45 PM -0500 12/12/98, Tom Orange wrote: >interesting the way that poetry gets mobilized in the endgame of this >whole thing: shippers quotes longfellow, clinton receives poetry from an >old dear friend -- can anyone identify the lines from clinton's statement >yesterday: "the moving finger writes and having writ moves on..."? (the >rest of the quote actually resonates somewhat with our thread on erasing) > >also that berman (d-ca) would, in his opening statement, refer to the >president's efforts to "deconstruct" words: continues to amaze me how >that term has migrated from the highly specialized discourse of >continental philosophy, through an (american) academic elite, and into >our common parlance to mean simply "render ambiguous"... > >t. >tmorange@julian.uwo.ca > >------------------------------------------------------------------------- >There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is >the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the >life in things. -- Gilles Deleuze >------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:12:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment do you suppose the bill bought ms. monica a copy of rubyat as well? you know, leave sof grass is just not the same to me now. has acquired a slightly hackneyed feel, like the proverbial convenience store single-red-rose of the (seemingly extinct these days) date. how odd. poetry used to be written to court, has become one of those trite truisms, but one seldom if ever sees it employed to such purpose these days (or not where i hang out). on one hand, one hopes (ever solicitous of sales opportunities) that the bill's gift choice might spark a fad, but on the other, begin regurgitating hairballs at the thought of all those kalil ghibran and rod mckuen books changing hands... if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you buy him/her? my vote for today: if i was flush for money and time, might get oxford complete richard hart lovelace. or june jordan's _haruko_, or new hoa nguyen or e. treadwell or dodie bellamy or judy roitman book just so i could 1) get a look at them myself; 2) support fellow listafarians; 3) get points for being at least imaginative! e ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:41:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: a phillytalks thot MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's a tiny incomplete ill written thought on the subject of the materiality of format and on dialogue, using PhillyTalks 8. > Of interest to me over the course of the newsletters has been how each > poet-pair "dialogues"; it reflects, in a way, "deeper" aspects of each poet's > work and - to use a dated Olsonian word - "stance." Bruce Andrews takes > the occasion of contributing to # 8 to reread all of Rod Smith's work, > and to write a "reading" of it (a strategy Bruce has used in many > responses to other poets). As those will know who have read Bruce's > piece in the newsletter, Bruce takes lines from all of Rod's poetry > and orders them anew as sentences, then adds bracketed > metacommentary in between some of the sentences. The sentences > are organized into prose chunks that Bruce then supplies his own > titles to. The titles match-up with familiar categories in Bruce's > poetics: representation, nonrepresentation, mediation, praxis, and > so on. Bruce's "dialogue" with Rod's work, then, is formal, in the > sense that "Rod Smith" is wholly "read" through a grid of Bruce's > poetics -- it is "dialogue with Rod," on Bruce's terms. The terms > are, in fact, the fifteen terms of Bruce's latest writing project, "the > millenium project," which he read from the other night, terms which stem > from his "Tips for Totalizers" essay in _Paradise & Method_, an essay > that was formulated, he says, during the writing of _Lip Service_ > (unpublished). Bruce calls his piece on Rod, "Aerializing." > > He mailed it to Rod (Bruce does not use email). > > So, Rod had to respond to Bruce. Rod's response to Bruce and contribution > to the newsletter is poetry, and a piece called "introduction" to Bruce > Andrews's writings. Rod could have read Bruce through a grid of Rod's > poetics, if Rod's poetics were in some sense structural like that. But > that Rod reads Bruce already occurs by default, formally, in Rod's poetry. > The lead poem by Rod, in the newsletter, a funny poem, "Taboo gratitude," > is marked "for Bruce." Especially when Rod read his work the other night > here in Philly, I could hear an Andrews-like organizing of minimal units > of maximally-differentiated sound (which is not as apparent on the > page, since Rod uses spacing and linebreaks, which emphasize > single words and phrases, whereas Bruce's prose fuses sounds in a > more apparent way due to the words' proximal syntactic relations). > What Rod somewhat thematizes, as an additional component to > "dialogue" understood as formal influence, is gratitude (in his lead > poem's title, and in the very idea of an essay as "introduction"). Rod > presents an affect, that he addresses to Bruce, but also > problematizes, as in some sense a "taboo" affect. Is this gratitude as > much directed to Bruce as to what Bruce represents when he > theorizes poetry through his theoretical grids? Is there some > nostalgic return, in the title, "Taboo gratitude," to a memory of > theory's role in poetry, for Rod--as in his book title, _In Memory of > My Theories_? Affect in Rod's poetry generally is perhaps in some > sense a reflexive realization of a _fall_ out of "theory" and into > something that has no name as such, but is full of affect. In this his > poetic affect is not simply a return to the New York School. The > extremes in Bruce - of linguistic "mess" (a good word Rod uses in his > intro) and ideational structure - find a middle ground, in some > non-middle-road sense, in Rod's work. > > So, I think one could extend from their sense of dialogue, a sense which > results from material constraints on their practices (that Bruce does not > have email, that Bruce mails a completed piece to Rod, partly becuase he > does not have email, which makes correspondence easier, etc) to think > about their work in general. One little point. Formally, how can one *not* > feel at least in a minour but systemic way, other than flattered, if one > were Rod, and received one of Bruce's essays incorporating all of one's > work (the "Aerializing" essay)? Almost as if Bruce's version of > "dialogue" admits, affectively, one type of response: gratitude. But > flattery is not necessarily a productive poetic affect to write from, and > is in a way taboo for practicioners, and especially to Bruce's practice as > he writes about it by means of his grids. Anyway. Something like that. I'm very grateful that noone has felt outraged to have never received the Phillytalks newsletter, or to have received it only sporadically. Not only is PT a moderated forum, small as it is; it is also "censured," and thwarted, and edited, daily, and in the very love-labor of its production, by such factors as costs of mailing and distribution, reproduction of the page as material surface of inscription, curation, editing, proofing, etc. And in none of these aspects is it unique. louis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:53:03 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: labels and referentiality In-Reply-To: <199812120507.AAA15284@juliet.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII anselm writes of how a formal description (altho arguably "abstract" suggests to me something of content as well) of french verse is / can be applied, largely exclusively, to current american poetics, and further suggests that this is done as something of a convenient labelling of (or "coralling") such work, "that much of what qualifies these days as poetic discourse is overly dictated by the freedom to assign labels to people, poems, forms, etc.", and that such labels are ultimately pretty meaningless. i agree with these sentiments and suggest an approach to labelling as an heuristic, as a way of furthering investigation within a milieu or frame of reference -- a frame which should, in the last instance (and with apologies for the heideggerian-derridianism), be held under erasure. as i suggested earlier, i take "abstract french lyric" to refer to the work of albiach, royet-journoud, et al. but who is meant when this is applied to current american work? i certainly don't have an exhaustive list, but for me, i can take, as example, two to whom this label might apply: gale nelson, claire needell. how might this label apply to these two writers? well, there's a sparseness to their work, a kind of evacuation, an "abstraction" from (pulling away from, removal from), for lack of a better term, poetic reference. "shall we avoid analogy?", the french dictum asks, and the practical answer leaves the barest of referents both semantically *and* visually on the page. now why apply this label, aside from the obvious answer that it seems an appropriate albeit very general level of descriptive poetics. well for me, it's an heuristic, it gets me going in a direction, it situates the writing within a milieu, so if someone were to ask me what the work of gale nelson or claire needell is like, i might be able to give her some sense of how i read them by referring to an "abstract lyric like that of albiach or royet-journoud." however, beyond the general descriptive level, there is also a more material level at which this milieu can be seen to work. nelson and needell are both published by burning deck, which publishes english translations of much "abstract french lyric poetry" and is owned and operated by the waldrops who themselves translate much of this work for other presses like awede, post-apollo, etc. now obviously delimiting such a milieu can only get us so far: nelson and needell do work that can't be contained within these descriptive and material levels; burning deck publishes work that similarly cannot be contained. i could further complicate things by adding another writer to the two already mentioned, namely barbara guest, whom i think, from fair realism to defensive rapture and finally quill solitary apparition, moves progressively into a more evacuated poetics -- reinforced materially by the fact that while the first of the two above-mentioned books are from sun and moon, the third is from post-apollo (albiach's most recent english publisher); and perhaps undermined materially by the bulk of guest's prior work in the manner of the "new york school". the danger in labels, i think, comes when they are used less for heuristic purposes and more for value judgments. i think the "abstract french lyric" tag, applied to current american work, can be and is used (as anselm suggests) in a belittling or pejorative sense. now in another context, mark prejsnar writes: most of the stuff i see coming out, if it fails to have sufficient focus on a "theme" or "subject", that seems to have as much to do with poor or unrealized writing, as with any intent to be abstract or nonreferential... let me say i admit the gist of what mark is saying here: there is a real danger to simply taking up uncritically what albiach or any other writer does. i dont agree that "un-poor" or "realized" writing must demonstrate a "sufficient focus" on theme or subject. but this is a whole other matter. my problem is this: i can delimit a milieu of abstract french lyric tendancies in current american poetics, one which i think can be resonably and objectively challenged, and which can only get you so far until you start dealing in specifics; but i wonder how to delimit "poor or unrealized writing"... whether it's "abstract" and "french" or, to take mark's example, jeff clark. and i mean this as a sincere question -- my jury, like mark's i think, is still out on clark's book. and tho i like mark's description of why the clark book does not work for him, i don't wish to take up that book again cuz i posted on it some months ago and have not revisited it since. i'd rather work it from this abstract french lyric angle, and pose the question this way: how does one decide when a current american abstract french lyric is "successful" and when it is not, when it is simply abstract or nonreferential for abstraction's and nonreferentiality's sakes? (i'll hint at my initial answer: i don't think we have sufficiently developed criteria for this yet beyond the "gut level"...) (the same question applies, for me, to so-called post-language poetries as well, provided you pick terms other than "abstract" and "nonreferential" for your scope...) thanks and bests, t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 13:19:14 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale Smith Subject: The cat in the hat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain There is some weird tech glitch in the Listserv system because my original post of the Hat review was sent by me to the List on Dec 4, only to reach the List on Dec 12? In the interim, I rewrote the post and sent it on the 7th. That one didn't go public until the 10th. Another post on the same subject went immediately from my machine to the list on the 9th. Hopefully this will explain some of the repetition. Joel, I am surprised two male editors produced an issue of women's writing. Aren't you? I don't see that every day. And what prompted the reviews I wrote was the writing within, which is exciting, and provides a rich contrast to the recent Moving Borders Anthology, which to me is limited in its presentation of women's writing. (How do you determine value, by the way, in a poem? How do you navigate (moderate?) your editorial decisions?) In addition to using your "receptical theory of editing" (which I value because of the strange, long-shots that arrive out of nowhere), we solicit a good amount of work. And even when we solicit work from women we rarely receive as much as we had hoped. Although I don't share your egalitarian heart, I'm hip enough to read the conflicting and contradictory motivations and struggles for and against participation in a scene that desires experiemental art for political and social transformation. On one hand, sheer numbers strengthen the political movements, but at the loss of qualitative production. That quality, like value, varies for all of us, I think. And how our values (aesthetic and/or politic) are exchanged on the poetic market reveals the limits of our toleration. What Marjorie Perloff brought up some weeks ago is key to this. One can be tolerant of cultural struggles and intolerant of aesthetic practices that are used by some members of cultural groups to whom one is sympathetic. Anyhow, this concerns represenations of the social, which I am interested in because, as an editor, these conflicts proliferate around me. Poetry has much wider concerns and its reality is limited by discourse in social environments. Dale ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 13:30:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dan raphael Subject: Re: Baratier's Silliman question - Post-Lanpo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit At Bowling Green State, either fall of 74 or winter of 75, i took a class taught by ray dipalma that covered works by andrews, coolidge, silliman, & dipalma. dont remember what the name of the course was, but the term 'language poetry' definitely came up in that class. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 17:02:04 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: The cat in the hat omnibus MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit my post called Word Express Mention still hasnt come thru to my computer tho others have responded to it, so at least some people have seen it. would be nice to clear this up, tho it does produce some facinating aleatoric results m ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:16:14 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dale Smith Subject: Addendum to the Cat's Hat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Joel, I didn't mean to suggest that you or anyone else is packing pages of journals, chapbooks, books etc just for the sake of diversity, as if no selection, or qualitative decisions were being made. I think aesthetic decisions are being made all the time, decisions that are shaped by the dominant voices of the "avant-garde." What is your selection/solicitation process? How do you manage experimental product while living up to your own self-generated demands of art & cultural/political transformation? For me the issues consist of: aesthetics--is this a poetics you respect; quality--how does an individual piece, even if it represents an aesthetic position you identify with, stand up to your own singular demands, and if it doesn't, what validates its inclusion in your journal; human diversity--does my journal reflect a range of human variety; impact--how will these pieces stand up in the cultural market, what will they represent of my process and spirit. More importantly, to what level, if any, have I produced a work of active dissent focused many places at once. I'm not interested in a journal's reception so much as its circulation of thought and emotion. Part of this is an active process. I am seeking all the time. The process is also passive; work falls out of the aether to challenge and confront my own good opinions. I get confused when discussing the way certain groups are represented, because it's not my position to represent, but to reveal, in any way, the very complex diversity of human composition through the agency of poetic expression. I am dedicated to women's writing, but I don't make it my crusade; it's not a banner by which I wish to gain acceptence or approval from anyone. I wrote: >On one hand, sheer numbers strengthen the political movements, but at >the loss of qualitative production. That quality, like value, varies >for all of us, I think. And how our values (aesthetic and/or politic) >are exchanged on the poetic market reveals the limits of our >toleration. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 16:17:52 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Academy of the Future MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain I'm a little behind in catching up with the Poetics List, & this may already have been responded to, but the "academy of the future" line is from the title poem in _Rivers & Mountains_. I'm pretty sure that "feminine, marvelous & tough" is not from any FOH poem; the line appears in _The Sonnets_ by Ted Berrigan, & may appear in other poems by Berrigan as well. Mark DuCharme >Could someone let me know what poem the line "The Academy of the Future is >Opening its Doors" is from -- an Ashbery poem, I know, but which one? And >if you know for sure that the line "feminine, marvellous, and tough" is >"originally" from F. O'Hara, could you let me know which O'Hara poem it >is? Please backchannel responses to . Much appreciated. > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 16:43:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you buy > him/her? Michael Palmer's _Sun_ Leslie Scalapino's _Considering How Exaggerated Music Can Be_ Ronald Johnson's _Ark_ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 20:01:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: non-referential poems for your consideration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm sorry, I don't remember who it was, but someone earlier expressed doubt about the possibility of non-referential poems, or something like that [I have been deleting faster than Gabe Gudding shoots from the hip, I mean lip, lately, so I cannot recall the particular thread]. Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is 'referential'? Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe All mimsy were the borogoves And the mome raths outgrabe. [this is from memory; hope I got it right]. OR, from Hugo Ball [not from memory]: KARAWANE jolifanto bambla o^ falli bambla grossiga m'pfa habla horem e'giga goramen higo blioko russula huju hollaka hollala anlogo bung blago bung BlAGO BUNG bosso fataka ue ueue ue schampa wulla wussa o'lobo hej tatta go^rem eschige zunbadq wulubu ssubudu uluw ssubudu tumba ba- umf kusagauma ba - umf I think that there is *a lot* of non-referential poetry out there. I also think that there is a lot of non-referantial non-poetic discourse out there as well. For example, when I slip on a banana peel and fall painfully on my ass, and as a result shout out "FUCK" in indignant anger, the utterance, it seems to me, is non-referential. Am I wrong? GT ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 17:59:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" As to the Carroll, you got it right, and the reference--what he's sending up--is one of the genres derived by romantics from the Childe Ballads (La Belle Dame Sans Merci is an examole of an allied genre--all are a sort of folksy medievalism): the epic hero ballad. Apparent here in the metrics, and confirmed as such later in the poem. The Ball derives I think from subSaharan linguistic forms, but it speaks less to me. Years ago I heard Linda Parker read her "non-referential" poems and was profoundly moved. They seemed to me to be at the edge of having explicit content, although there were no recognizable words. Either my reaction was physiologically conditioned--that certain sound combinations produce certain reactions--or there was a referentiality in the sounds themselves. It would be interesting to tease out the referentiality if that's what it was, but I haven't done so. At 08:01 PM 12/12/98 -0500, you wrote: >I'm sorry, I don't remember who it was, but someone earlier expressed doubt >about the possibility of non-referential poems, or something like that [I >have been deleting faster than Gabe Gudding shoots from the hip, I mean >lip, lately, so I cannot recall the particular thread]. > >Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is >'referential'? > >Twas brillig and the slithy toves >Did gyre and gimble in the wabe >All mimsy were the borogoves >And the mome raths outgrabe. > >[this is from memory; hope I got it right]. > >OR, from Hugo Ball [not from memory]: > >KARAWANE >jolifanto bambla o^ falli bambla >grossiga m'pfa habla horem >e'giga goramen >higo blioko russula huju >hollaka hollala >anlogo bung >blago bung >BlAGO BUNG >bosso fataka >ue ueue ue >schampa wulla wussa o'lobo >hej tatta go^rem >eschige zunbadq >wulubu ssubudu uluw ssubudu >tumba ba- umf >kusagauma >ba - umf > >I think that there is *a lot* of non-referential poetry out there. I also >think that there is a lot of non-referantial non-poetic discourse out there >as well. > >For example, when I slip on a banana peel and fall painfully on my ass, and >as a result shout out "FUCK" in indignant anger, the utterance, it seems to >me, is non-referential. > >Am I wrong? > >GT > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 22:17:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit << if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you buy > him/her? >> Trimmings, Harryette Mullen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 20:25:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is >'referential'? > >Twas brillig and the slithy toves >Did gyre and gimble in the wabe >All mimsy were the borogoves >And the mome raths outgrabe. Well, for starters, "brillig" refers to a time of day (approximately 4 pm) and "slithy toves" refers to toves that are both slippery and lithe. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 00:48:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: <5be6b959.367331dc@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > << if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you > buy him/her? >> Creeley For Love Di Prima, Dinners and Nightmares ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 22:08:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Re: The Hat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I find this to be an interesting, yet odd problem. At Lipstick Eleven, we receive numerous submissions from women. But don't forget, you can always solicit work if you're having problems with "representation" in your mix of writers. Publish women and more women will follow. Kathy Lou Dale Smith wrote: > > I read Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar's first issue of The Hat this > morning, which I like for its focus and consistency of tone and > 'spirit.' Two male editors publishing a first issue with only women is > quite notable and the results are not what I expected. (Hoa came into > my room last night with a stack in one hand of poetry submissions from > men and in the other ONLY one piece from a woman). So, I understand > building an issue of women's writing is no easy task. To find a > grouping of work that corresponds or echoes internally is difficult > enough. Restricting that to a particular, traditionally > under-represented gender, is moreso. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 00:45:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: <5be6b959.367331dc@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ><< if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you buy > > him/her? >> > >Trimmings, Harryette Mullen _A Gentle Northern Winter_ by George Stanley George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 10:27:22 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment -----Original Message----- >> << if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you >> buy him/her? >> > Obsession - Ramsey Campbell Men are from Mars etc.. Drums At New Brighton (1999) - Jim Bennett (well I would) Jim Click on this link to vote for my site. http://conline.net/vote.mv?id=1780 Click on this link to visit my site. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/ "Poetry is what the future makes of it." John Garner ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 09:12:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is >>'referential'? >> >>Twas brillig and the slithy toves >>Did gyre and gimble in the wabe >>All mimsy were the borogoves >>And the mome raths outgrabe. > >Well, for starters, "brillig" refers to a time of day (approximately 4 >pm) and "slithy toves" refers to toves that are both slippery and lithe. I don't think so. 'Brillig' in fact is simply filling certain slots [metrical, syntactic, narrative, etc.] in a linguistic structure, a machine, or if you want a poem. Maybe those of us who have a vague sense of the history of the language can detect a Germanic suffix in the sequence '-ig' at the end of 'brillig'. With that in mind, as well as the phonic association with 'brilliant' and maybe even memories of Old French, we still wouldn't know that this is a word in English except for its position after 'twas'. The point, I think, is that we could put ANYTHING in this slot, and as long as it satisfies all the relevant metrical, syntactic, and narrative requirements, it would WORK. That is, it would mean "a time of day (approximately 4 pm)", or something similar. The same applies to 'slithy' and 'tove' and in fact to all of the other so-called reference words in the poem. Speak of erasure. Carroll has erased all reference here, leaving only the function words that have value only within a given linguistic system. We recognize the '-s' at the end of 'toves' as a plural marker. It is a very familiar morpheme in English, of course. But it has no reference to anything outside of the universe of the English language. Neither does 'twas'. As Mark Weiss suggests, it WOULD be interesting to tease out the so-called referentiality here, if that is that it is. GT ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 09:49:10 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit << >Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is >>'referential'? >> >>Twas brillig and the slithy toves >>Did gyre and gimble in the wabe >>All mimsy were the borogoves >>And the mome raths outgrabe. Leonard Brink writes: >Well, for starters, "brillig" refers to a time of day (approximately 4 >pm) and "slithy toves" refers to toves that are both slippery and lithe. George Thompson writes: >> I don't think so. 'Brillig' in fact is simply filling certain slots [metrical, syntactic, narrative, etc.] in a linguistic structure, a machine, or if you want a poem. ....Speak of erasure. Carroll has erased all reference here, leaving only the function words that have value only within a given linguistic system. We recognize the '-s' at the end of 'toves' as a plural marker. It is a very familiar morpheme in English, of course. But it has no reference to anything outside of the universe of the English language. Neither does 'twas'.<< It seems that more than nouns and adjectives are referential. "did" refers to a sense of curiousity or a statement that something has happened. "all" refers to inclusivity. "were" refers to the past. and so on. so it seems to me that this poem still is referential even if the lexical words are as George says. And maybe the question should be REFERENTIAL FOR WHOM? If Leonard says that "brillig" refers to 4pm for him, then I guess it does, though it apparently does not for George. Randy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 08:04:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: charles alexander Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:48 AM 12/13/98 -0500, you wrote: >> << if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you >> buy him/her? >> Phyllis Webb, Naked Poems Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:26:17 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 13 Dec 1998, George Thompson wrote: > Speak of erasure. Carroll has erased all reference here, leaving only the > function words that have value only within a given linguistic system. We > recognize the '-s' at the end of 'toves' as a plural marker. It is a very > familiar morpheme in English, of course. But it has no reference to > anything outside of the universe of the English language. Neither does > 'twas'. Tove is my wife's name. A fairly common Scandinavian female name. Slippery, someone said? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 11:01:59 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Jennifer on Republicans MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is great Alan. Have you seen Star Trek "Insurrection?" The bad guys are stretching their skin trying to stay young and every time they become enraged over not getting their way, blood spurts out of tears in their forehead. A. Jenn Sondheim wrote: > > = > > why i'm dead meat, by jennifer > > Republicans ooze from their heads what is left of soul's rubbish > i could not stand to be in a room with one of them > they are objects for me, they reek of flesh gone sour > i would be a lichen to their rock, corroding their violent granite > they would kill everyone with guns and they are all white men > every last one of them, no matter what drear affirmation > white men filled with dead pus: they stomp the children of the poor, > rape pollution laws, guarantee we'll drown the world in poison. > we're raped with rusted guns from world war two three four > while they fight the righteous fight against women sex longing > holding dead children on sticks to slap us with, banner banner > big money big money > i couldn't stand to party with righteousness > i couldn't stand to fuck righteousness but their holes are closed > they have no holes, shit leaks from their mouths, > piss leaks from their eyes, they write vomit > they are a real danger, never forget this, behind words > are guns and mobs and real men, you never forget a real man > when you look into his dead dead eyes, when you see a Republican > on the road, kill it, it is not quite human > > - Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 08:26:31 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >>Twas brillig and the slithy toves >>Did gyre and gimble in the wabe >>All mimsy were the borogoves >>And the mome raths outgrabe. Re:syllables/sounds that refer: "The Red Pencil"'s an obnoxious little daily column squeezed onto *The Washington Post*'s Comics page, written by "wrytor@aol.com." A month back or so, "wrytor" laid down the line on the sounds of words & what they trigger. The sounds in "melody," it was written, make more people "smile" than the sounds in "thatched" (there was no evidence of a survey, of course). "Wrytor" went on to suggest that it would "behoove poets" to choose words with sounds that "people like" when crafting their poems. Most "atch" words were on the short-lived list I kept of words I liked for their sounds. "Melody" certainly was not, & "lily melody" sure made me grunt when a friend ran my name through an anagram program. Separately: a linguist I know is currently working on a book about nonsense words "in English." His not-so-ambitious thesis is that nonsense words written by English writers don't (or rarely do) contain sounds that aren't already "acceptable" or "recognizable" to the English reader/speaker. And that we tend to make "bad-guy" aliens, if they're speaking a language (written by an English speaker), which translates to "if they're speaking nonsense," sound vaguely like speakers of languages from whatever country "we're" ("nation-wide") most afraid of or pissed at when the language/nonsense is created. Germans, Russians, etc.; he's got all the proof needed there. The "sounds already acceptable" applies to the Carroll; as another lister (which?) pointed out, that makes "The Jabberwocky" at *least* refer to the English language. And it was written for English readers. I'm curious as to whether Carroll's poem (surely the book it appears in must've been) has been translated into another written/spoken language: anyone know? I'm curious as to how nonsense words are represented in signed languages. Simply spelled out in the letters of the signer's country? Are there any "nonsense words" peculiar to signed languages? Anyone know? Yet another lister (forgive me, I'm stil learning this new e-mail acct & can't retrieve the msg while composing) wrote "My wife's name is Tove...Did someone say slippery"? Did someone on the list? If so, I missed it. Carroll said *slithy*. As much as I hate to admit anything to "wrytor," it seems as if sounds & syllables *do* refer, if only because readers are tempted to *make* them refer. The Bernstein quote that started off the whole non-referentiality hubbub makes *more* sense in this context: "the reader's misplaced urge to 'make sense' of poetry." Replace "poetry" with "nonsense." I know I've always gotten a swampy, slippery feeling from that first stanza of "Jabberwocky," even when I became aware that it was intended as a send-up. I've also always "felt" that the nouns "refer" to creatures/animals: mome raths, toves, borogoves...not inanimate objects, I suppose, because of the verbs, the "fact" that the nouns are verbing. Yet "outgrabe" could easily be read as an adj., say "All pink were the borogoves, and the mome raths grey." Yet I've never read it that way, never "felt" it that way. I'm in no way prepared to agree with "wrytor" that the sounds of words are "pleasant" or "unpleasant" in & of themselves. If more people like the sounds in "melody" than in "thatched," I'd call that a response to what the words, not the syllables, refer to. Or at least, I would very much *want* to. Yet the sounds in "The Jabberwocky" combine in such a way as to give me an overall sense of "swampiness," and I'd be interested to find out if others out there have "felt" this "sense," or another sense--say, an urban one. Or "felt" no "sense" at all--felt the words entirely non-referential. It pisses me off that I'm not capable of "not getting a feeling" about the sense of those words & syllables, that I'm a captive of referrals, that "slithy" might make me hear "slippery" and "slimy" and think "slithy" a *stronger* "English word" for making me feel both those two words and something else--say the excitement, or say the nausea, of an unrecognizable word... ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 16:24:41 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Lawrence Upton." Subject: Writers Forum Comments: To: british-poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Writers Forum has over 800 publications out in print but is not on the net. On its behalf, here are some recent additions etc * All orders / enquiries to New River Project, 89a Petherton Road, London N5 2QT * COLLABORATIONS FOR PETER FINCH by Lawrence Upton & Bob Cobbing, ISBN 0 86162 784 9, Writers Forum, October 1997, having been out of print for some months, has been reprinted. This is an offshoot of the Domestic Ambient Noise, parts of which was first published by Object Permanence # 8 * DOUBLE REFLEX by Bob Cobbing & Lawrence Upton, ISBN 0 86162 844 6, December 1998; £1.00 plus p & p * DEAD ROADS YOU'LL NEVER USE AGAIN by Lawrence Upton & Bob Cobbing, ISBN 0 86162 845 4, December 1998; £1.00 plus p & p * DAN DIPTYCH ISBN 0 86162 846 2, Writers Forum, December 1998, 75p plus p & p - This is the text used in the performance Alaric Sumner wrote about the other day ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 12:22:14 -0500 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: syllable-sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In disagreement with Emily, I'm convinced that there are naturally- pleasant sounds. There is research, I'm fairly sure, to corraborate this, but I'm going by experience and vague memory of a lot of reading in or near the subject. I think the "euphony" of "ah," "oh" and "ooo" is widely-recognized and follows from these sounds being baby- sounds, and unbelligerant; "aah," "ih," "eh" and similar sounds are normally associated in nature with threatening sounds, or sick sounds. Compare a baby's cooing with adult rage or the sound of someone barfing. Similarly with consonants: sibilants sound "nicer" than harsher sounds (the name of which escapes me)--because harsher sounds are more usually part of growls, etc. Also, "nice" sounds are generally, perhaps always, easier to say than harsh ones. For the same reason, I contend that there are naturally harmonic chords, though this gets into the structure of the human auditory system. Primary colors, too, are naturally more appealing than secondary colors. So, the argument comes back, why do I prefer lime green to blue. Because we mature out of simple, natural "good taste," especially those of us who are artists, or aesthetically-sensitive. Too much of a good thing equals boredom, so we come to like discord as a hedge against boredom. There are all kinds of further complications I don't have time to get into. Just wanted to throw out the cocktail-party- level preliminaries. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 09:47:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" ><< >Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is > >>'referential'? > >> > >>Twas brillig and the slithy toves > >>Did gyre and gimble in the wabe > >>All mimsy were the borogoves > >>And the mome raths outgrabe. > > Leonard Brink writes: >Well, for starters, "brillig" refers to a time of day >(approximately 4 > >pm) and "slithy toves" refers to toves that are both slippery and lithe. > >George Thompson writes: >>> I don't think so. 'Brillig' in fact is simply filling certain slots For what it's worth, I wasn't just gyring and gimbling. If memory serves, it was Lewis Carroll who said those words referred to those things. Mimsily, Leonard ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 12:38:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: The Hatters Comments: To: Dale Smith In-Reply-To: <19981205004922.10609.qmail@hotmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Everybody is making an assumption that Chris Edgar is a male... It isn't like her name is Edgar Chris ----------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 09:59:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: seducers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> << if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you >> buy him/her? >> > > Vita Nuova Dante Amores Ovid Catullus by Louis Zukofsky Twenty Love Poems Pablo Neruda Gypsy Guitar David McFadden Art of Love Kenneth Koch Kathy Goes To Haiti Kathy Acker g. John Berger Hermetic Definitions H. D. More Pansies D.H. Lawrence Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 10:26:12 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: syllable-sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Bob G wrote: >>>sibilants sound "nicer" than harsher sounds (the name of which escapes me)--because harsher sounds are more usually part of growls, etc. Also, "nice" sounds are generally, perhaps always, easier to say than harsh ones.<<< But do sibilants sound nicer to speakers of all, or even most, languages? The German "Ich" sounds a bit like someone gagging, but its "Gott" sounds firm and strong compared to "Dieu"'s 'boneless string of vowels.' French is so smooth that (oh forgive me, French posters) it can sound like someone murmuring English in her sleep. A British friend tells me that after a year in Russia, English sounds choppy, clumsy, disjunct. Nice sounds are easier to say than harsh ones for whom? Those whose languages do not include many harsh ones...(?) >>For the same reason, I contend that there are naturally harmonic chords, though this gets into the structure of the human auditory system.<< Oh, Bob, we *do* disagree! Play nothing but atonal music for a month or so and it sounds "correct" in the body; my old electronic music prof actually felt (at least, I believed it when I saw it) physical pain if one played a C-major chord on the piano. I've felt a bit queasy on hearing them after lengthy forays into non-harmonic listening. I'd hate to chalk up my preference for such music to my "good taste," to having become bored with more "natural" chords...I chalk it first to (assigned) immersion, and not-too-long after that, a feeling/conviction that *it* was what was "natural" (read: sounded good) to me now. Did I need to be immersed in harmonic music before it felt "right" to my body? I have no idea; I was immersed in it before I was born, and while a cooing baby...one more question for the wild boy of Aveyron... I'm glad for your good arguments for disagreement, though; I even agree with some of 'em. No question that I'd rather hear a cooing baby than a puking adult. But what if adorable babies sounded like puking adults, and puking adults sounded like cooing babies? At any rate, it's all tangled up in referentiality & nature vs. nurture & heavenly labia, oops, -ls, in a world of gutturals. And whatever the oops purports, I'm one of those who thinks "it's" a choice... best, em ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 22:37:05 +0000 Reply-To: toddbaron@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Todd Baron /*/ ReMap Organization: Re*Map Subject: Re: The Hat/that women writers write to wear MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit J Kuszai wrote: > > dale, hoa, & other editors: > > thanks for the description of The Hat. You mention that Jordan and Chris > (two boys) haved edited an issue of a magazine with all women poets. Why > is this a surprise? While it may be unusual, I think it is only as one > famously male's male's male would say, "apropos." Women, generally, are > doing much more interesting writing these days, and have been since the > 70s. I want to second J's response here and once more sugest to those that haven't to GET (now!) Margy Sloan's MOVING BORDERS anthology: 3 decades of innovative writing by women. As I continue to read through it I am moved by the language of the poets here--from the amazing Neidecker piece to Diane Ward to Cole Swenson to Waldrop to....the end of the alphabet. ----- By the By--what was anyone's reaction to the New York Times Magazine article on Laser Tech. detective work (2 weeks ago--sunday) on Emily Dickinson's letters and poems regarding her sister/in/law/lover etc and/or the rest? The article focused on the "personal" as overriding the public art of Beethoven (or his privates--his love life as evidenced by hair strands and the DNA test that might prove he had syph.) and Emily Dickinson's "external" life as evidence by new laser "readings " of her work..... ------ yours, Todd Baron (ReMap) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:01:40 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Lawrence Upton." Comments: To: british-poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Apologies. I didn't quite manage to write the following in English - COLLABORATIONS FOR PETER FINCH by Lawrence Upton & Bob Cobbing, ISBN 0 86162 784 9, Writers Forum, October 1997, having been out of print for some months, has been reprinted. This is an offshoot of the Domestic Ambient Noise; parts of it were first published by Object Permanence # 8 All orders / enquiries to New River Project, 89a Petherton Road, London N5 2QT, UK. Send s.a.e. / i.r.c. with enquiries please ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 04:20:04 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: schuchat Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > << if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you > > buy him/her? >> > O'Hara, LOVE POEMS (TENTATIVE TITLE) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 13:29:17 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Nelson Subject: the words of cb MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Oh list, A few day ago, as days do, a Mr. charles bernstein posted a rather long mentioning of various things. I was rather, then rather empty that day. So to eleviate things or other things I took some of his words and hid them. I kept the others that seemed to fit together best in the following badly fitting inter-textual poem: I don't have a title: can they suggest or is that a throat problem. (possibly: a title?) (Oh, and this is just part one, enjoy as enjoy goes) This is untrue, the subscriber going numerous past, the end while the two or one were twice detailing correspondence. But I haven't, because I considered at a certain point. You realize matter into something ideological a disservice=20, indeed serious=92, accusation= might. Even such a formidable as the end would be not clairvoyant. The more obvious conclusion might have=asked to observe as four consolidating. Their posts realize a second else. Unambiguously manifest she or he no intention abiding by the basic. Decisively. You are wrong. Gabriel Gudding's status has never been. And his ability directly is the same as anyone reading would aware. There was the assumption. Considerable and providing are guilty of something and, er, know to find ways. I realize those and most do something=again. They spoke of the list being tone, tended or scolding and ignored. Hectoring tones described to me, over and again, the space for one thing. I was committed Having the list be=even the tiniest amount. Intervention, the most unassailable grounds, and compliance, the stated firestorm The fact is -- I realize. Anyone else=irony. Here. The few men address about=the needs and those who want an unlimited I. history rather number by exactly Belligerent is anyone in one way or another. People rarely focused on recently. The tendency is however. It= is but also the of=to. things being what things being, Jason Nelson ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 15:31:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: pseudo-reference MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I didn't mean to suggest that all language is referential (in my post that helped get this thread going), just that this wasn't a useful discriminator for L=a=n=g poetry (e.g. all language poetry is non-referential). Yvor Winters wrote about psuedo-reference apropos of certain lines of Eliot and other modern poets. In other words, you can refer to something that doesn't exist and for which there is no context for the reader to identify. L. Carroll was doing something similar--by syntax "brillig" has to refer to a time of day or season of the year, etc.. In some sense the reader* wants* this to be referential, even in absence of specifiable referent. Blue psuede-shoe-referentiality. Where can I get a copy of The Hat? I have deleted original announcement if there was one. Also, in my misremembering of teaching Reagan to count backwards by sevens I had substituted 8, associating this number with his two presidential terms (8 years)--another sort of pseudo-reference perhaps. Also I remember an essay by G. Davenport on Olson's Kingfisher--to the effect that several individuals who had recommended him the poem in the strongest possible terms had no idea what it was about referentially--for example no one could tell him who "Fernand" was. Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 16:18:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Zauhar Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment (pomes fer cortin') In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19981213080445.007b9370@theriver.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > At 12:48 AM 12/13/98 -0500, you wrote: >> if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you >> buy him/her? James Schuyler, the Selected or the Collected. David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago "Opaque melodies that would bug most people, Music from the other side of the fence." --Captain Beefheart ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:40:29 -0500 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: syllable-sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Back to you briefly, Emily: I would guess that sibilants (and "silibants" wasn't a typo, but I saw it was wrong as soon as I saw myself quoted, so I guess there's hope for me) initially sound nicer to all human beings, and maybe even mammals. But language is hugely complex, and expressiveness much more important than euphony. My bottom-line point, strongly on nature's side versus nurture, is that we start in all sensory modalities with simple near-universal likes, and grow away from them into various levels of complexity. Gustatory likes seem this way, though influenced by each person's physiology. In music I suspect all humans initially prefer chords whose component notes are in a simply harmonic relation to each other. Maybe the ratios would vary from one culture to another, but not the fact of simple ratios. I'll bet that truly atonal music is an acquired taste in all cultures. I'm sure repetition is the basis of pleasure--and of boredom; so some but not too much repetition is best. A note an octave above another would initially seem most pleasurable to a baby, I believe, once the baby has become bored with the second note's repetition. Nice sounds are easier to say than harsh ones for whom? For everyone. I'm just referring to how much one has to open one's mouth and shape it, etc., to say a sound; by this criterion, vowels are more pleasant than consonants--except for a cat's purr, of course. Sibilants are easier to say than--still can't recall the word. Metric verse is initially more pleasurable than non-metric, all else kept equal. But there's the danger of boredom. And the problem of losing other values through over-concentration on meter. Sure, acquired tastes eventually feel natural. And the too-simple unpleasant. I remember working at a place that played a muzak station; fifty employee and I remember feeling rather superior because only I and a grad student in music who was working there part-time complained about it. It really did make me almost physically ill. I even purposely turned on the computer press (back then big and noisy and I wasa computer operator) because I preferred its sound to that of the "music," most of whose melodies I liked! And I still have trouble believing people who tell me that pop music is just noise. To me its problem is that it's too innocuous, too much the predictable opposite of noise. I think if puking adults sounded like cooing babies do now and happy babies sounded like puking adults do now, we would naturally hear puking sounds as pleasant, cooing as unpleasant--except for the klinker that cooing is an easy sound to make (the long o, I would say, is the easiest sound to make, then the u in cooing--and both, come to think of it, come into play when one is hurt), so babies by my reasoning would not naturally make puking sounds to express content, nor puking's sounds (biologically "chosen" to alarm others into helping, I believe, and thus not likely to be innocuous) likely to be simple coos. No more. Too complicated for less than a book--and easier access to more research, etc., than I have!!! --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:22:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>>Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is >>>'referential'? >>> >>>Twas brillig and the slithy toves >>>Did gyre and gimble in the wabe >>>All mimsy were the borogoves >>>And the mome raths outgrabe. >> >>Well, for starters, "brillig" refers to a time of day (approximately 4 >>pm) and "slithy toves" refers to toves that are both slippery and lithe. > >I don't think so. 'Brillig' in fact is simply filling certain slots >[metrical, syntactic, narrative, etc.] in a linguistic structure, a >machine, or if you want a poem. > >Maybe those of us who have a vague sense of the history of the language can >detect a Germanic suffix in the sequence '-ig' at the end of 'brillig'. >With that in mind, as well as the phonic association with 'brilliant' and >maybe even memories of Old French, we still wouldn't know that this is a >word in English except for its position after 'twas'. The point, I think, >is that we could put ANYTHING in this slot, and as long as it satisfies all >the relevant metrical, syntactic, and narrative requirements, it would >WORK. That is, it would mean "a time of day (approximately 4 pm)", or >something similar. > >The same applies to 'slithy' and 'tove' and in fact to all of the other >so-called reference words in the poem. > >Speak of erasure. Carroll has erased all reference here, leaving only the >function words that have value only within a given linguistic system. We >recognize the '-s' at the end of 'toves' as a plural marker. It is a very >familiar morpheme in English, of course. But it has no reference to >anything outside of the universe of the English language. Neither does >'twas'. > >As Mark Weiss suggests, it WOULD be interesting to tease out the so-called >referentiality here, if that is that it is. > >GT But I can _picture_ all of this! In fact, if I could draw, I could draw a picture of all this. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:27:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman In-Reply-To: <19981213162632.29799.qmail@hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Separately: a linguist I know is currently working on a book about >nonsense words "in English." His not-so-ambitious thesis is that >nonsense words written by English writers don't (or rarely do) contain >sounds that aren't already "acceptable" or "recognizable" to the English >reader/speaker. And that we tend to make "bad-guy" aliens, if they're >speaking a language (written by an English speaker), which translates to >"if they're speaking nonsense," sound vaguely like speakers of languages >from whatever country "we're" ("nation-wide") most afraid of or pissed >at when the language/nonsense is created. I was listening to NPR the other morning when someone speaking an indigenous Indonesian language came on --- you know, the 10 second snippet before the translator starts in --- and I thought of course! the bar scene in star wars! that's where they got it from! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 19:30:59 -0500 Reply-To: Gwyn McVay Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: syllable-sounds Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <3674425D.5256@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >A note an octave above another would initially seem most pleasurable to a baby, I believe, once the baby has become bored with the second note's repetition.< This being the case, then why don't infants flip for /West Side Story/, with that octave jump on "Ma-RI-a"? Gwyn, just another alto singing the boring part for the sake of harmony ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 19:36:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: the bar scene In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>indigenous Indonesian language came on --- you know, the 10 second snippet before the translator starts in --- and I thought of course! the bar scene in star wars! that's where they got it from! Judy, Lucas is not shy about sampling Earthling languages; in the non-climatic climactic battle scene in the last of the three movies, Lando Calrissian says something urgent to his fish-jowled copilot, who responds in some genuine African language, I want to say Swahili--"Ten thousand herds of elephants are standing on my foot!" Combine that with the Star Trek episode about a planet of beings who speak only in metaphor, and you're off. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 18:01:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: "My NAME is Alice, but-- " MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit "It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. "What does it mean?" "MUST a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully. "Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: "MY name means the shape I am--and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.' * "Of course you know your ABC?" said the Red Queen. "To be sure I do." said Alice. "So do I," the White Queen whispered: "we'll often say it over together, dear. And I'll tell you a secret--I can read words of one letter! Isn't THAT grand! However, don't be discouraged. You'll come to it in time." * OED: 'slithy, a.1 Obs.1 ? var. of sleathy a. 1622 W. Whately God’s Husb. ii. 116 We make no great matter of the lower degrees of sinne, and so grow slithy, and fashionable, and dead in our confessions. slithy (_______), a.2 Also †slythy. [Presumably a blend of slimy a. and lithe a.] A word invented by ‘Lewis Carroll’: ‘smooth and active’ (‘Carroll’, 1855, 140) and popularized esp. in phr. slithy toves from Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Also in subsequent allusive uses. 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 Twas bryllyg and the slythy [1871: slithy] toves Did gyre and gymble in the wabe. 1920 ‘K. Mansfield’ Let. 27 Sept. (1928) II. 48, I watched him [sc. a lizard] come forth to-day–very slithy–and eat an ant. 1928 A. S. Eddington Nature of Physical World xiii. 291 Eight slithy toves gyre and gimble in the oxygen wabe; seven in nitrogen. 1937 G. Frankau More of Us 2 While the free-versifier gyres and gimbles The slithy tove–with his own ‘private symbols’. 1960 H. Marchand Categories x. 368 Lewis Carroll’s slithy.., chortle..have become common property. Shakespeare’s glaze (f. glare and gaze) has not. 1981 Time Out 20­26 Mar. 54/1 Pity the slithy toves of academe. tove (____). A factitious word introduced by ‘Lewis Carroll’ (see quot. 18552). Quot. 18551 also occurs in the first verse of ‘Jabberwocky’ in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) i. 21. 1855 [see slithy a.]. 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 142 Tove, a species of Badger. They had smooth white hair, long hind legs, and short horns like a stag: lived chiefly on cheese. 1928 [see slithy a.]. 1937 G. Frankau More of Us 2 While the free-versifier gyres and gimbles The slithy tove–with his own ‘private symbols’. gyre (________), v. poet. Also 5, 7 gire. [ad. L. gyrare, f. gyrus (see prec.).] 1. trans. To turn or whirl round. rare. c1420 Pallad. on Husb. i. 327 The side in longe vppon the south, let sprede..gire hit from the colde west, if thow conne. 1628 Bp. Hall Rem. Wks. (1660) 25 With the spightful Philistim, he [the Devil] puts out both the eyes of our apprehension and judgement, that he may gyre us about in the Mill of unprofitable wickednesse. 1885 G. Meredith Diana Crossways xxii, She was out at a distance on the ebb-sands hurtled, gyred, beaten to all shapes. † 2. To revolve round, compass. Obs. c1420 Pallad. on Husb. x. 203 September is with Aprill houris euen, ffor Phebus lijk in either gireth heuen. 3. intr. To turn round, revolve, whirl, gyrate. 1593 Drayton Eclog. ii. 71 Which from their proper Orbes not goe, Whether they gyre swift or slow. 1598 Yong Diana 10 When to the west the sunne begins to gyre. 1633 P. Fletcher Purple Isl. ii. xxxvii, A..groom..Which soon the full-grown kitchin cleanly drains By divers pipes, with hundred turnings giring. Ibid. iv. viii, Round about two circling altars gire In blushing red. 1808 J. Barlow Columb. iii. 785 Mutual strokes with equal force descend..now gyring prest High at the head, now plunging for the breast. 1814 Southey Roderick xii, The eagle’s cry, Who..at her highest flight A speck scarce visible, gyred round and round. 1871 ‘L. Carroll’ Through Looking-Glass i. 21 ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. 1920 W. B. Yeats Demon & Beast in Coll. Poems (1950) 210 To watch a white gull take A bit of bread thrown up into the air; Now gyring down and perning there. 1930 E. Pound XXX Cantos xxv. 114 Three lion cubs..which born at once began life and motion and to go gyring about their mother. 1951 S. Spender World within World v. 283 The bomber was gyring and diving. Hence 'gyring vbl. n., revolution, gyration. 'gyring ppl. a., revolving, whirling, gyrating; also, encircling, encompassing; whence 'gyringly adv., with revolving motion. 1575 Laneham Let. (1871) 18 With sundry windings, gyrings, and circumflexions. 1590 Peele Polyhymnia 36 At the shock The hollow gyring vault of heaven resounds. 1594 J. Dickenson Arisbas (1878) 72 One colour teinteth all, Turrets, doores, and gyring wall. 1598 — Greene in Conc. (1878) 150 Wind-tossed waues which with a gyring course Circle the Centers-ouerpeering maine. 1635 Quarles Embl. iv. ii. (1718) 193 This gyring lab’rinth. 1635 Heywood Hierarch. ii. 63 They [the Heavens] alter in their gyring more or less. a1640 Day Parl. Bees (1881) 76 The massie world..That on Gyreing [so MS.] spheares is hurld. 1659 Torriano, A-gironda, giringly, about and about. wabe (____). A factitious word introduced by ‘Lewis Carroll’ (see quot. 18552). 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 The slythy toves Did gyre and gymble in the wabe. Ibid. 140 Wabe, (derived from the verb to swab or soak). ‘The side of a hill’ (from its being soaked by the rain). 1871 — Through Looking-Glass 24 The slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. mimsey (______), a. dial. Also mimsy, mimzy. [f. mim a.: cf. clumsy, flimsy, tipsy.] ‘Prim, prudish; contemptible’ (E.D.D.). Lewis Carroll’s mimsy, which may be an invented word, has influenced all subsequent uses. 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 All mimsy were the borogoves. Ibid. 140 Mimsy, (whence mimserable and miserable). ‘Unhappy.’ 1880 Antrim & Down Gloss., Mim, Mimsey, prim, prudish. 1895 S. Christian Sarah (ed. 4) 262 She is no mimzy miss to be scared, or a reed to break if you lean your hand on it. 1911 C. Mackenzie Passionate Elopement xxi. 186 Four shillings and sixpence, ma’am, for a little mimsy book not so thick as the magick history of Jack the Giant Killer. 1920 D. H. Lawrence Touch & Go 6 Good plays? You might as well say mimsy bomtittle plays, you’d be saying as much. 1933 W. de la Mare Lord Fish 171 Treading mimsey as a cat. 1934 Times Educ. Suppl. 24 Mar. p. iv/2 A people unimaginative enough to accept a mimsy and scrannel ‘P.R.’ in place of the organ music, the soul-uplifting harmony of ‘Proportional Representation’. 1936 Punch 10 June 650/1 ‘It’s the glamour of it,’ sighed Josephine. ‘Whenever I smell a programme I go quite mimsey–honestly I do.’ 1937 ‘N. Blake’ There’s Trouble Brewing i. 24 An affected mimsy sort of voice that she reserved presumably for cultural pronouncements: Nigel preferred her normal, unmitigated boom. 1956 J. Cannan People to be Found vii. 91 With horror they had seen the lawns of the Botanic Gardens torn up and replaced by a mimsy pseudo-Elizabethan rose-garden. 1963 Times 8 Feb. 14/3 Moreover his interpolated variation in the first act, danced to the normally unused andante of the pas de trois and consisting largely of slow pirouettes en attitude, looked as mimsy as the borogroves [sic], and could not be regarded as successful. mome (____), a. A factitious word introduced by ‘Lewis Carroll’ (see quot. 1855). Also occurs in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) i. 21. 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 All mimsy were the borogoves; And the mome raths outgrabe. Ibid. 140 Mome (hence solemome, solemone and solemn), ‘grave’. 1960 M. Gardner Annotated Alice 195/1 ‘Mome’ has a number of obsolete meanings such as mother, a blockhead,..none of which, judging from Humpty Dumpty’s interpretation, Carroll had in mind. 1970 R. D. Sutherland Lang. & Lewis Carroll vii. 149 Humpty Dumpty is reporting the generally accepted meanings... The information he imparts is ‘as sensible as a dictionary’... He admits some difficulty with mome. rath (____, ___), n.2 A factitious word introduced by ‘Lewis Carroll’ (see quot. 18552). Quot. 18551 also occurs in the first verse of ‘Jabberwocky’ in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) i. 21. 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 All mimsy were the borogoves; And the mome raths outgrabe. Ibid. 140 Rath, a species of land turtle. Head erect: mouth like a shark: the fore legs curved out so that the animal walked on its knees: smooth green body: lived on swallows and oysters. outgrabe (_________), v. A factitious word introduced by ‘Lewis Carroll’ (see quot. 18552). (In quot. 1903 used for ‘outdo’, after the style of out-Herod, etc.) Quot. 18551 also occurs in the first verse of ‘Jabberwocky’ in Through the Looking-Glass (1871) i. 21. 1855 ‘L. Carroll’ Rectory Umbrella & Mischmasch (1932) 139 All mimsy were the borogoves; And the mome raths outgrabe. Ibid. 140 Outgrabe, past tense of the verb to outgribe. (It is connected with the old verb to grike or shrike, from which are derived ‘shriek’ and ‘creak’.) ‘Squeaked.’ 1876 — Hunting of Snark v. 50 The Beaver had counted with scrupulous care, Attending to every word: But it fairly lost heart, and outgrabe in despair, When the third repetition occurred. 1903 Sat. Rev. 7 Feb. 164/1 Deadmanship! wrote..Dr. Shrapnel..; and the word is fit to stir the jealous admiration of Carlyle or even Lewis Carroll. Indeed Dr. Shrapnel ‘outgrabed’ them both. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 21:07:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" First of all, it was not Lewis Carroll who suggested that 'brillig' means 'four o'clock in the afternoon.' It was Humpty Dumpty. Now, this is the same egg who assured Alice that 'glory' means 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you' [Gabe Gudding, are you listening?]. When Alice questioned this meaning, H.D., of course, replied ['in a rather scornful tone'], 'When *I* use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' Seems like a lot of this list has the same theory of semantics that H.D. has. Me, I'm with Alice on this one. I know the difference between meaning and reference, for example [as for Carroll, he was rather close to Alice too, on this occasion as on others, and in fact I think he was teasing us about 'brillig']. We are flirting with an interesting phenomenon here, though, as Jonathan Mayhew suggests in talking about pseudo-reference. He suggests that the reader *wants* 'brillig', etc., to be referential. I don't question Judy Roitman's ability to _picture_, even draw in great detail, in response to Jabberwocky. I think I can too. That's one of this poem's great charms. But my point is that this picture that we see, that we want to see, so well, has been accomplished by a Rube Goldberg machine, I mean a poem, that has no real-world referenece in it. We have recognizable meter and rhyme and stanza shape. We have utterly regular and standard syntax and grammatical structure. We have standard narrative conventions and cues at all of the right places. But, I think, we have no reference. Tristan Tzara PROMISED that if you use one of our now old-favorite cut-up techniques to generate a random poem, 'THE POEM WILL BE LIKE YOU.' What? Is this magic? Is it psychoanalysis? Is it poetic genius? No, none of those. It is, in my view, the autonomous play of language in our heads. To be more precise, it is the play of the phonemic, morphological, metrical, syntactic, etc., rules of a linguistic system that governs our minds far more strictly and pervasively than Charles Bernstein governs our list. To toss in another big gun: as Heidegger also said, Die Sprache spricht [not us]. Language is one of those voodou loas that ride us, is my point. Now I'll listen for a week. seasons cheers to one and all [Henry too] GT ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 22:34:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Subject: Announcing a new electronic journal . . . MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII L A G N I A P P E poetry and poetics in review Edited by Graham Foust and Ben Friedlander now available on-line at http://writing.upenn.edu/~foust/lagniappe.html Issue no. 1 (Fall 1998) features an essay on sound and visual poetry by Michael Basinski and includes reviews by Chris Alexander, Carla Billitteri, Steve Evans, Benjamin Friedlander, Graham Foust, Brian Lampkin, Linda Russo and Robert Zamsky. Books reviewed include: Kevin Killian, _Argento Series_ Elaine Equi, _Friendship with Things_ Alice Notley, _Mysteries of Small Houses_ Barrett Watten, _Bad History_ Thomas Pepper, _Singularities_ Cole Swenson, _Noon_ Anselm Berrigan, _They Beat Me over the Head with a Sack_ Peter Jaeger, _Stretch Conflates_ Lisa Robertson, _Debbie: An Epic_ Theodore, Pelton, _Malcolm and Jack_ Mary Margaret Sloan, ed., _Moving Borders_ Mark Scroggins, ed., _Upper Limit Music_ Deadline for submissions for issue no. 2: February 1, 1999 E-mail queries to: foust@acsu.buffalo.edu or bef@acsu.buffalo.edu Send material for review to: Graham Foust or Ben Friedlander Department of English 306 Clemens Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 23:24:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Nagler Subject: Re: Louis Carroll, Hugo Ball, etc Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit On the subject of nonsense words, there's a fascinating chapter in Friedrich Kittler's book _Discourse Networks:1800/1900_ that discusses nonsense words emergent function for psychophysics in the late nineteenth century. Kittler discusses the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus who conducted some of the first empirical research on memory by forcing himself to memorize strings of nonsense syllables (which he generated combinatorially) for hours every day for years, in order to quantify the amount of data a mind can retain. In this process, Ebbinghaus began losing his experiential memories as well as his ability to speak his native language: "For the sake of a few formulas, Ebbinghaus sacrificed (as Nietzche did for the desert) his subject of knowledge (psychophysics). Dizzy, numbed by all the syllables, his mind became a tabula rasa." But then, interestingly, Ebbinghaus performed the same experiment using, instead of nonsense syllables, cantos from Byron's Don Juan. He found that it made no difference to mnemonic retention whether he used nonsense or sense. "From this point of view it almost seems as if the difference between sense and nonsense material were not nearly so great as one would be inclined a priori to imagine." What is important in this is that meaning and nonmeaning (referentiality and non referentiality) become equal, as far as the mechanics of our perception is concerned. "If the difference between sense and nonsense dwindles, then the kingdom of sense -- that is the entire discourse network of 1800 -- sinks to the level of a secondary and exceptional phenomena." According to Kittler, the view that psychophysics could destroy the exotic mystery of meaning had great repercussions in the ways people conceive of culture and language, and especially poetry, in this century. "Instead of the classical question of what people would be capable of if they were adequately 'cultivated'', one asks what people have always been capable of when autonomic functions are singly and thoroughly tested." So, in a certain sense, interest falls away from culture, and lands on the body's own intelligible, involuntary posessions, its limits, its unconscious, etc. From this point on, the point of "truth" becomes the body which is in the process of "breaking down" ,"losing its faculties", going insane. Poetry (especially the poetry discussed in this thread: Louis Carroll, Hugo Ball; as well as Christian Morgenstern and others) latches on to this "truth of the body", and begins to imitate it. This is why Kittler says that much of the literature after 1900 is a "simulacrum of madness". Not that I agree with everything Kittler says, but I am intrigued with the question of whether we can think of any writing that strikes us as nonsense as referring to a state of communication which is in some sense "insane"; a state which might give us a window into what we might think of as pure material, pure body, not because it really is more material than everyday, rational communication, but because it reveals to us the essential equanimity of the two. Chris Nagler ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 23:19:43 -0500 Reply-To: BANDREWS@prodigy.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: BETSY ANDREWS Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > if you were going to court a beloved, what poetry book would you buy > > him/her? > Christina Peri Rossi's EVOHE ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 00:12:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Garrett Kalleberg Subject: TF7(b) Comments: To: Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Due to technical difficulties... Some of you may have experienced some problems with viewing the cover to this issue of The Friend. This was the result of an effort to begin to incorporate sound into the journal. Most of the problems have since been resolved, and I hope you will return again. (Internet Explorer users will probably still not hear any sound, but should no longer see any error messages.) Feel free to write me if you continue to have difficulties - the more specific you can be about what the problem is, what browser & version no. you are using, what platform and what kind of a machine, &c. the better. http://www.morningred.com/friend/1998/12/cover.html Thanks very much, Garrett Garrett Kalleberg mailto:editor@morningred.com The Transcendental Friend can be found at: http://www.morningred.com/friend ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 00:10:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: MLA Session, Letter Sensations and Embodied Life (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (sorry for the repetition - Alan) MLA Session, Letter Sensations and Embodied Life from Ann Weinstone re: Our MLA session in San Francisco. Forwarded with permission. Please come if you can. A slight outline of my own contribu- tion follows. ====== Dear Colleagues, I am writing to let you know about an upcoming Special Session at this year's MLA. Letter Sensations and Embodied Life seeks to open a different kind of conversation about writing and biological life. We want to ask, in the wake of poststructuralism, how we can begin to speak about the effects of language on embodied experience. How do bodies and language transform each other? Does the body speak or write? Do letters live? In "Sensible Letters," Vicki Kirby connects Saussure's fascination with anagrams, clairvoyancy, and trance induced glossolalia to current discour- ses of artificial life. Her reading suggests that the letter may be pos- sessed by a life force of its own that extends well beyond conventional ideas about the ontology of language. Alan Sondheim's "Is There a Body in This Text?" opens up notions of phys- ical and psychical constitution to consider interpenetrations of avatar, fleshly, and on-line entities. Ann Weinstone's "On the Junk Beam" suggests strategies of aliteracy that might helpfully mutate current poststructuralist/bioinformatic intensifi- cations of the adequation of writing and making. Jeffrey T. Schnapp will serve as chair. The session is number 599 and will take place on Tuesday, December 29th, 1:45-3:00p.m., Union Square 21, San Francisco Hilton. Hope to see you there! ====== (My rough outline.) I'd like to talk on "is there a body in this text, is there a text in this body" - using a number of approaches, depending on the time: 1 talking about the projection/introjection of emotion on the Net (whose emotion?) 2 talking about 1/2/3/other person on chats etc. (representations of the constituted body as usual) 3 ytalk, ICQ, and the (dispersed) space of the body 4 my own work with jennifer, julu, nikuko as system interrupts, resonances - _effusions_ 6 considering the future of the Net as 'seamless virtual reality,' the interpenetrations and mixups on the Holodeck - Jennifer writing Alan, jennifer-function, body-function, quantum-logic superimpositions I will be working from notes/outline, not a completed paper - the relation of the body to speech is integral for me - ___________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 01:04:28 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: syllable-sounds In-Reply-To: <199812140501.AAA19156@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 13 Dec 1998, Emily Lloyd wrote (describing somone else's project): > And that we tend to make "bad-guy" aliens, if they're > speaking a language (written by an English speaker), which translates to > "if they're speaking nonsense," sound vaguely like speakers of languages > from whatever country "we're" ("nation-wide") most afraid of or pissed > at when the language/nonsense is created. Germans, Russians, etc.... for the ancient greeks, peoples who spoke other languages were collectively referred to as "hoi barbaroi," literally, people who sound like they are saying "bar bar" -- hence, barbarians. t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 02:19:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: "My NAME is Alice, but-- " Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" rachel that was quite the poem thank you the electronic equivalent of livingston loews rove to sanido Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 12:27:15 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alaric Sumner Subject: the performance Alaric Sumner wrote about Comments: To: POETICS%LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU@sun2.mhs-relay.ac.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Lawrence Upton wrote: >DAN DIPTYCH ISBN 0 86162 846 2, Writers Forum, December 1998, 75p plus p &p= - >This is the text used in the performance Alaric Sumner wrote about the >other day Actually, I had posted the review to British Poets not Poetics on the grounds that it was a UK event. However, since it has now been mentioned here, it might as well appear here too (sorry to those of you on both lists). (Explanation: DAN =3D Domestic Ambient Noise, an ongoing series of 300 collaborative books of visual performance texts produced in the form of a Theme by Bob or Lawrence which is then varied by the other. Domestic Buoys =3D one of many nicknames for the duo.) >The Domestic Buoys (Lawrence Upton and Bob Cobbing) gave a short but >entertaining reading at SubVoicive, London, on the 1st Dec. which was >added to by many involuntary noises from the audience (including a >delightful fit of giggles from one thoroughly engaged member). > >Upton began by explaining the DAN affair to us (aware there were some in >the audience who were not regulars on the 'scene') but following an >"interruption" by Cobbing (posed as a deliberately incoherent question) >this language soon merged into sounds (though recognisible language still >frequently burst through). Upton's inventiveness seemed an easy (in the >sense of 'competent' not 'facile') access to surprising himself within a >large frame of sound and language (bounded only by the formats that he >sets himself within the DAN project). Cobbing's abilities in timing were >fully evident (sound poet as brilliant stand up comedian?) but the layers >of sensitive sonic material weaving in and out of the sonic environment >and in particular in and out of Upton's work produce subtleties of >relation, tone, texture, text. The precise relation of visual material >(the DAN DIPTYCH score they were using) to sonic/performance material is >one I have often found difficult, but on this occasion (as yet unanalysed) >my memory of the performance and my memory of the visual work seem >surprisingly consonant. Though at the time amusement seemed the most >prominent aspect of my response, as I write this I am rehearing/seeing: >Bob's subtle use of his beer mug to change tone; Lawrence's "he wipes his >nose" followed by Bob's amusing/intricate use of the hanky as a sound >source; Lawrence's weave of word and sound; and am left with much more >subtle textures that I am continuing to revisit. Alaric Sumner ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 08:43:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcella Durand Subject: dyslexic urban flies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Thanks Randolph--you're absolutely right, it is J.H. Fabre and what = drawings! Every thorax, every sensitive hair in magnified insectecoidal = glory! As I remember (and all 666 people on this list have gotten to see = how wonderful my memory is, particularly regarding author's names--see = "why people lurk"), the writing was pretty intricate as well. (backchannel whisper: got chapbooks, they're beautiful) best, Marcella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:14:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Seems like a lot of this list has the same theory of semantics that H.D. has.<<< George Thompson has called my attention to the eerie coincidence of initials between Humpty Dumpty and Hilda Doolittle. Gwyn McVay General Motors Good Morning ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:52:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: syllable sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain & re: Tom Orange's barbarians: A few months back I was in a Dunkin' Donuts and the guy in front of me ordered six barbarian cremes. em ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:21:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: Reggae William Blake MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Erben (Art) wrote: > > I'm also reminded of a alternative version of "The Emperor of Ice Cream" I > heard once in New Orleans. Unfortunately, I never learned who the group > was. Probably a completely different thang, but Roger Reynolds composed a "The Emperor of Ice Cream" for voice and... I can't recall. He also wrote an orchestral response to "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror." Tangentially, Laura -- Laura Wright, Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 ----------------------------------------------------------- "Speech keeps strangling itself, but wisdom has not come." --Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 09:41:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: non-referential poems for your consideration MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Thompson wrote: > > Would anyone claim that the following stanza from Lewis Carroll is > 'referential'? > > Twas brillig and the slithy toves > Did gyre and gimble in the wabe > All mimsy were the borogoves > And the mome raths outgrabe. > Martin Gardner, in _The Annotated Alice_ gives a translation of this. It goes something like: It was midday and the smooth badgers Were boring holes in the hillside... This, like Finnegan's Wake, is multi-sense as opposed to strict nonsense. No matter what any writer intends, though, we will find references where we will. -- Laura Wright, Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 ----------------------------------------------------------- "Speech keeps strangling itself, but wisdom has not come." --Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 11:40:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: <19981214155242.20734.qmail@hotmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Bob Grumman wrote: "the long o, I would say, is the easiest sound to make, then the u in cooing" There's a moment in Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" when he claims that "r" is the "most producible consonant." Since the claim comes at a rather hyperbolic moment, when Poe is arguing that on the basis of sound alone no other word than "Nevermore" could have served for the refrain of "The Raven" (the long "o" also figures here as "most sonorous vowel"), I hadn't really given it much serious thought. But one of my students this semester made a convincing case for its validity by making dog-like grrrrrrowling noises in his throat. steve ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 12:27:43 -0400 Reply-To: mjk@acsu.buffalo.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mike Kelleher Subject: The Shining MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all. I am thinking of using Stephen King's _The Shining_ for a comp course next semester and was wondering if anyone had read it and what their thoughts might be - I'm trying to decide if it'd be worthwhile to read the book as opposed to just showing the movie, or if doing both would be useful. Any comments, b/ or f/c, 'd be apurshiated. Truly, Mike ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 11:41:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: Louis Carroll, Hugo Ball, etc In-Reply-To: <1bc0f7c5.367492e3@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Many thanks to Chris Nagler for a most interesting post, but I would like to point out that context does matter to some people's memories. In fact some of us (I'm one) can not only only remember in context, but sometimes can only remember the context and have to reconstruct the rest. Ebbinghaus' experiment tells us a lot about the way Ebbinghaus' memory worked, and, unfortunately, considering the great sacrifice he made, not much else. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 12:06:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Bob Grumman wrote: > >"the long o, I would say, is the easiest >sound to make, then the u in cooing" > >There's a moment in Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" when he claims that >"r" is the "most producible consonant." Since the claim comes at a rather >hyperbolic moment, when Poe is arguing that on the basis of sound alone no >other word than "Nevermore" could have served for the refrain of "The >Raven" (the long "o" also figures here as "most sonorous vowel"), I hadn't >really given it much serious thought. >But one of my students this semester made a convincing case for its >validity by making dog-like grrrrrrowling noises in his throat. steve But to a singer, r is one of the most difficult sounds to make. m & n are so much easier. Even percussive consonants (b, p, t etc.) are easier because they are impossible to actually _sing_, they are just punctuation. long o followed by ah are easy; there is a trick to eeee & when you know it eee becomes easy. long u is okay, short i (as in it) and similar vowels are hard. Anything that closes the throat is hard. (Like, say, "hard"). "By the rude bridge that arched the flood" (Emerson, we had to memorize it in fifth grade) is one of the hardest lines to read out loud I know. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:21:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Balestrieri, Peter" Subject: seducers/Billy Little MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Just wanted to say what a great list I think Billy's assembled here. Especially Zukofsky, McFadden, and Acker. Billy, you seduced me long ago with your erudite posts that come a courtin' with sexy language that goes to the head. And the heart. Tambien for Alan Sondheim whose work would be great for wooing the Right One. As long as they weren't Republicans. Pete Billy wrote: Vita Nuova Dante Amores Ovid Catullus by Louis Zukofsky Twenty Love Poems Pablo Neruda Gypsy Guitar David McFadden Art of Love Kenneth Koch Kathy Goes To Haiti Kathy Acker g. John Berger Hermetic Definitions H. D. More Pansies D.H. Lawrence ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 10:42:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: MLA Poetry Event Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Listmates, it may not be too early to post this, as some of you will be leaving your desks and heading for San Francisco very soon. Event # 375. A Poetry Reading by David Bromige, Lyn Hejinian, and Leslie Scalapino, 5:15-6:30 p.m., Monday Dec.28, Franciscan Room A, San Francisco Hilton. THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.(v.p.1272, "Special Events," for verification). While I'm at it, let me mention also Event # 181, "The Poetics of Robert Duncan," 8:30-9:45 a.m., Monday Dec. 28, Parlor 9, Continental Ballroom, San Francisco Hilton. Session Leader : Burton Hatlen. Panelists: Robert Bertholf ("Serial Form in RD's 'Medieval Scenes'"), Devin Johnston ("'Sublime Undoing' :RD and the Metaphysics of Dictation"), and David Bromige ("A Poetics of Delivery : RD's Reading of 'Moving the Moving Image'"). My paper looks at an article I published in 1975 on Duncan's 1970 reading aloud of this poem (Passages 17), focussing on the excerpts from the "Perfect Sermon or the Asclepius" included in that poem; and at Duncan's letter to me in response to this article ("You've centered in on one of the most tricky intents in Passages for me too. And one I still feel so uncomfortable about that I avoid tackling it"). My paper concerns much else besides : a turn in a literary friendship, the tedding-out of two sets of poetics, an Oedipal interlude, foreshadowings of Poetry Wars to come; gender, class, behaviorism and free will, ancient Greek Egypt, 19th Century Britain, and USA 1970's. NOT OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. (Would give 'em nightmares!) I'll re-post this Xmas Eve or near as dammit. David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 14:06:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Interesting paradox here. "R" is an easy sound to make in a kind of crude, animal-like grrrrrrowling way, but difficult to make when singing, projecting, articulating. This doesn't reflect well on Poe's arguments vis a vis "Nevermore." It might also be pointed out that when dogs sing, which happpens quite often in my neighborhood, they go for the "oooooooo." steve On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Judy Roitman wrote: > >Bob Grumman wrote: > > > >"the long o, I would say, is the easiest > >sound to make, then the u in cooing" > > > >There's a moment in Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" when he claims that > >"r" is the "most producible consonant." Since the claim comes at a rather > >hyperbolic moment, when Poe is arguing that on the basis of sound alone no > >other word than "Nevermore" could have served for the refrain of "The > >Raven" (the long "o" also figures here as "most sonorous vowel"), I hadn't > >really given it much serious thought. > >But one of my students this semester made a convincing case for its > >validity by making dog-like grrrrrrowling noises in his throat. steve > > > But to a singer, r is one of the most difficult sounds to make. m & n are > so much easier. Even percussive consonants (b, p, t etc.) are easier > because they are impossible to actually _sing_, they are just punctuation. > > long o followed by ah are easy; there is a trick to eeee & when you know it > eee becomes easy. long u is okay, short i (as in it) and similar vowels > are hard. > > Anything that closes the throat is hard. (Like, say, "hard"). "By the > rude bridge that arched the flood" (Emerson, we had to memorize it in fifth > grade) is one of the hardest lines to read out loud I know. > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! > Math, University of Kansas | memory fails > Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." > 785-864-4630 | > fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Note new area code > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 14:35:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: syllable sounds MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Since Spicer has not been mentioned in nigh on a couple of weeks now: "Drugs" from "Homage to Creeley" The bell went "rrrr" And we both went "rrrr" And there was a beauty In talking to him. But angel-talk howls At the edge of our beds And all of us now Are partners of hell. For the crocodile crys Every tear that we know And our tears are our blankets Wherever we go. ______________________________ As the explanatory notes to this section and others make clear, the Alice books figure prominently here (in hell). Spicer's take on the costs of language use is complex enough to swamp his little poem-boats, and I'm not a fast enough bailer. Those fluent in Martian may be able to help out.... Gary R. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 14:01:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Someone asked on the list last week if Ray DiPalma designed the title L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE. I had heard Ray tell how this came about, but= wasn't sure I could report it accurately, so I send him a post asking him to relate the story once again. Here's his reply to me. >Dear Charles, > >Thanks for asking. As I've explained for friends in France (& recently for >someone at the NY Public Library Berg Collection) who had asked how the L=3DA=3DN=3D >thing came about, I should be able to do it succinctly here=97 > >Around the time the magazine was in its late planning stages (1978) I went= up >to Charles' then apartment on Amsterdam Ave to have lunch with him. When I >got there he told me that he & Bruce were thinking about calling the= magazine >Language=97but he wanted to put something between the letters of the word. = I >immediately sat down at his IBM Selectric II and typed L=3DA=3DN-G=3DU=3DA= =3DG=3DE. I >told him "There's the name for your magazine and a logo as well." It was= as >instantaneous as that. =20 >[Bruce once told] me at a party=97after the magazine had been >going for around a year or so=97that he especially liked what I had done because >when the magazine was now mentioned in some other print context its name= took >up so much space on the page. (That's certainly NOT what I had in mind when I >created the configuration). =20 > >Remember, 1978 was pre-computer days for all of us & the IBM Selectric II= was >the high tech writing machine=97Charles, at the time, was the only one of= us >(Bruce, Steve McC, Ron, me) who owned one. So I liked falling by his place >from time to time and occasionally improvising as well as typing drafts on= my >own work on his machine. (The writing of the LEGEND collaboration was also >underway at this time. So we were all in touch a great deal either in person, >thru the mails or over the phone. LEGEND, by the way, is another work for >which I provided the title. But that's a whole other story.) =20 > >I finally got my own IBM Seletric II in 1980 & worked directly on it when >drafting new poems. I also began to explore its possibilities for creating >graphic works and pushed the limits of the machine's typographic aspects. >From '84-86 I did a large series of pieces called UCCELLI that derived from >very close typing of specific letters from particular fonts (frequently >changing the type balls) while advancing the platten by hand. A lot of= hand- >eye work involved in balancing the progression through a slowly unfolding >lettristic space both on the vertical and horizontal. It was quite like >working at a loom. Later cut-up (and further manipulated on a xerox= machine) >sections of UCCELLI appeared in a work I did called TEXT & OCCULTATION= which >appeared in a magazine called "Central Park" in the mid-late '80s. Pages from >UCCELLI proper have never appeared in print & as far as I know my wife >Elizabeth is still the only person to have seen them. They are too wide to fit >into a filing cabinet, so I must have them stored flat in a box somewhere. > >All the best-RAY > > =20 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: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:07:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Drake" Subject: OUTSIDE THE HAT MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii fun stuff! > > >This just in! > >My new poetry collection just went online. > > Outside the Hat > >(replete with animated graphics & music, and yeah, a few poems) >is now available at: > >http://www.chbooks.com/online/outside_the_hat/ > >It's published by Coach House Books. A print version will follow in the new >year. > >Hope you enjoy it. > >Gary > > > >_____________________________________________________________________ >Gary Barwin, Ph.D. >Program Director/Composer >Composers in Electronic Residence > >escargot post: 178 Glen Rd. Hamilton ON CANADA L8S 3N1 >pharyngeal post: (905) 525-7545 >eek mail: barwin@interlynx.net >telepathy: >_____________________________________________________________________ > >Barwin website: http://www.maltedmedia.com/barwin/ > >Composers in Electronic Residence Website: >http://www.edu.yorku.ca/ciermain.html >_____________________________________________________________________ > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:42:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: f.y.i. (hidden injuries of class department) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MTV Apologizes to Teen for Bad Edit MTV Apologizes to Teen for Bad Edit HAMILTON, N.J. (AP) _ A teenage boy who won a nationwide contest to interview a rap group on MTV says the cable channel aired a segment that was horribly out of tune. The 24-hour music network has apologized to Bradley Jenkins, and agreed to redo a segment that the family claims portrays them as destitute and unhappy. ``When you look at the tape, it looks like my life is really bad and my family is really broken,'' the boy told The Times of Trenton in Monday's editions. ``It was supposed to be a really positive experience for me and it turned out to be really horrible.'' Jenkins was chosen to interview the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. The network boiled down 20 hours of film into a 12-minute segment that showed a down-and-out family and a teen lifted from despair by the group's positive message. Bradley's father, Walter Jenkins, said he and his wife were so upset by the segment that they missed several days of work. They said worried relatives from as far away as Oklahoma started calling the family to ask if anything was wrong. ``I can't put into words how totally disappointing this thing is,'' Walter Jenkins said. ``How could they do that? Maybe they've got this one editor with a tabloid mentality or something.'' MTV producers and editors called the family last week to apologize. They also re-edited the segment to remove the embarrassing parts. ``We want to make people happy,'' MTV spokeswoman Marnie Malter said. ``We want this experience to be wonderful for everyone. We think it's a terrific episode that presents Brad in a positive light.'' Bradley plays varsity football, baseball and basketball at Steinert High School, and is a member of Future Business Leaders of America. His grades are in the A and B range, and he sometimes performs as an actor in Princeton's McCarter Theatre. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 15:32:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: this needful thing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" By the way -- just got an undergraduate paper with citations to both your book and Vince Gotera's -- which the student turned up with no prodding from me -- so the work IS getting around -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 15:40:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: Re: this needful thing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" OK -- that message was for Michael Bibby -- sorry -- By the way, if you check out the footnotes to the Starr Report you'll find Lewinsky's thankyou note to the President for the copy of LEAVES OF GRASS -- a hoot in itself -- The Report also describes VOX as a book about phone sex -- I suppose that's true enough, in the same sense that GREAT GATSBY is a book about Long Island -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 18:31:12 +0000 Reply-To: archambeau@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College/Lund University, Sweden Subject: Query: De Man & Comment: Perloff MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit So here I am back in Illinois for a month, and I've left the books I need 4,200 miles away in Sweden. So: I'm looking for the passage where Paul De Man, comparing himself to Derrida, says that the difference between them is that "I can do nothing without a text" (or words to that effect). Anyone know where to look? By the way -- there was a fascinating talk by Marjorie Perloff and Charles Bernstein at the Museum of Contemporary Art a couple of days ago, with a couple of listees in the audience. Although the title of the talk referred to "the future of poetry" much of the talk had to do with the past, with the 20 year history of language poetry. Bernstein began with a slide of cro-magnon man making cave paintings in a dreary cavern and the comment "this was the state of poetry before my magazine -- you can see the poets struggling with the problem of the personal lyric." Best send-up of "heroic langpo" I've witnessed. Also good to hear in the after-show schmooze that Marjorie is co-writing a book on poetics with Steve Fredman and Gerry Bruns, two of my profs from Notre Dame. Should be of interest to a lot of listees -- Fredman's "Poet's Prose" was a really fine book, and Bruns' "Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language" deserves to be read by more people. Joe Amato -- you were there. What'd you think? Herr Doktor Bromige -- I'll send the pictures of Bjuv, Sweden as soon as they're developed. Bob Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:28:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Boris Vian's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" TamTam Books E-Mail: tosh@loop.com Monday, December 14, 1998 PRESS RELEASE TO CONTACT: Tosh Berman e-mail. tosh@loop.com I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES BY BORIS VIAN (1920-1959) ISBN 0-9662346-0-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-80958 Translated from the French by Boris Vian & Milton Rosenthal 200 pp. $17.00 The most talked about novel of the year in Paris in 1947 was the work of an American black writer, but he was not Richard Wright. The book was published in French as J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, by Vernon Sullivan. The English title would be "I Spit on Your Graves", but as was expected in a preface by the book's translator - Boris Vian, again - Sullivan had no hope of seeing his work published in his native country. For one thing, it was obscene, containing many descriptions of sexual acts. For another, it was extremely violent, and the violence was that of a black against whites. "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes" charts the erotic adventures of a light-skinned Negro, Lee Anderson, after he takes up a job managing a bookshop in the small Southern town of Buckton. Like Joe Christmas in Faulkner's novel Light in August, Lee is light enough to pass for white. He becomes fixated on two sisters,but his desire to dominate them sexually is morbidly, fatally, connected to a need to obtained vengeance on behalf of his darker-skinned brother, a victim of white violence in the past. Seducing a series of white girls with pathologically inspired energy, Lee revels in a private revenge (they do not realize he is a Negro); but it is not sufficient to satisfy him, and in the end he murders both sisters, before being killed himself by a police bullet. According to the translator, Sullivan's light skin would have enabled him to live, like his protagonist, among whites, but he preferred 'les Noirs'. While "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes" became highly successful, Sullivan remained an enigma. In fact, this Afro-American novel was a hoax. The book had been written in French, and 'Sullivan' was a ghost. His real name was Boris Vian. Taken from PARIS INTERZONE by James Campbell # "Published in Paris in 1946 as a thriller loaded with sex and blood, allegedly censored in the US and "translated" into French, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes --I Spit on Your Graves-- was a pure mystification, but also a direct homage to American literature and movies, by a young author, Boris Vian (1920-1959). More deeply, it was also a violent attack on racism by a jazz fan who had already befriended many black musicians and was to become the closest French friend of Ellington, Davis and Parker. The novel became a best seller in France and established a scandalous reputation for Vian. But for the past forty years, Vian has become one of the most famous writers of the mid 20th Century, as his hoax of 1946 is only one example --provocative and outrageous, though powerful and meaningful -- of his prolific production: novels and short stories, plays and songs." -Gilbert Pestureau "In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an America even more amazing than the land he has never visited. I Spit on Your Graves is the first novel to put quotation marks around the 'hardboiled' --a vivid and startling performance." -J. Hoberman "To Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by." -Jim Krusoe I Spit on Your Graves is available through: Small Press Distribution at Small Press Distribution 1341 Seventh Street Berkeley, CA 94710-1409 800-869-7553 Also at Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobel, and through your local independent bookstore. End of Press Release ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 18:39:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: three items... In-Reply-To: <199812140426.XAA128088@pimout4-int.prodigy.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" for one's beloved?... i'll be a bit old-fashioned... dover puts out a nice little boxed-set of "great women poets" in four volumes (costs but $5-6)... it might do the trick... incl. is christina rossetti, _goblin market, and other poems_ elizabeth barrett browning, _sonnets from the portuguese, and other poems_ edna st. vincent millay, _renascence, and other poems_ emily dickinson, _selected poems_ ------ i'll sneak this in here, b/c i think it's important and urgent enough: the move-on website that tom o posted a while back is now set up for those so inclined to sign a petition to congress (with notification to their congressperson) that censure is the way to go, and that impeachment is not (the way to go)... takes no more than half a minute... go to http://www.moveon.org/ to sign the petition... ----- about _the shining_: i view the film, anyway, differently than i once did... but one aspect worth looking for, i think, is the effect of isolation/solitude on the writing process... that is, the film might be understood as making a good (if completely over-the-top) case for collaboration (in the most general sense) as an essential aspect of the composing process, requiring some 'input' from outside the writer's consciousness... in the absence of which, you go NUTS (which of course leads to the question of cerebral architectures etc.)... i haven't worked any of this out, and it's certainly a stretch for me to say so (esp. given that i haven't 'explained' the apparent haunting embedded in the plot)---but i have to admit to getting a kick out of nicholson's reaction whenever shelly duvall interrupts his typing... most of you who've lived with another writer can probably relate---which is not to say that, in the end, we all don't *need* interruption as such... well anyhow... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 18:57:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Query: De Man & Comment: Perloff In-Reply-To: <3675596F.2D46@lfc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" bob & others, kass and i had a ball listening to marjorie and charles... i mean, *listening* to marjorie and charles!... the two are obviously comfortable talking with each other, and in public, and this made for an engaging performance---incl. charles's reading poetry from his new book, just out on u of chicago p and highly recommended (by me), _my way_... as to substance: i found their talk both accessible and provocative, exhibiting far more intellectual reach than i generally enjoy at such well-attended public events... as you know, bob, i posed a question afterward re the relationship among poetry, theory and the arts... i don't know if we ever got around to the last part of my question... but marjorie's ruminations as to how statements of poetic intent have become rather de rigueur these days (and not all that useful, in her opinion), and charles's collapse of the "theory vs. [poetry, e.g.]" distinction into the (passionate, writerly, readerly) *essay* form---while reserving, as i heard him, a somewhat privileged place for philosophical discourse itself---well, their exchange provided food for much thought on this end, anyway... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 20:52:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Boris Vian's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Tosh wrote: > TamTam Books > > E-Mail: tosh@loop.com > > Monday, December 14, 1998 > PRESS RELEASE > > TO CONTACT: Tosh Berman > > e-mail. tosh@loop.com > > I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES BY BORIS VIAN (1920-1959) > ISBN 0-9662346-0-X Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-80958 > Translated from the French by Boris Vian & Milton Rosenthal 200 pp. $17.00 > yes indeed, though I don't know this translation, (well, Vian himself was involved, so it should be good) the book is highly recommended -- one of the absolute hits of my adolescence -- sent me straight to the classic amerikan klassik krime writers. Don't know if the other two great Vian novels are available here (_L'Ecume des Jours_, the Foam of the Days, or something like that, which has a wonderful character called Jean-Saul Partre, and _L'Automne à Peking_, Autumn in Peking) -- if not, hey, Tosh, what you're waiting for? (_L'Ecume_ has a major prop -- a cocktail-piano, where every string, besides creating sound, is attached to a bottle that pours, so that you can create a wild range of cocktails, depending on the tune you play). Pierre -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 18:53:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Boris Vian's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thank you Pierre for your kind attention to Vian. And yes, I do plan to publish the other Vian books. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 23:58:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: New Hejinaian/Scalapino from Edge Books Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Announcing publication of _Sight_ by Lyn Hejinian & Leslie Scalapino 112 pages, perfectbound. $10.00 postpaid to poetics subscribers. Regularly $12. Checks to: Aerial/Edge POBox 25642 Washington, DC 20007 AERIAL/EDGE complete listing They Beat Me Over the Head With a Sack, Anslem Berrigan, $5. Integrity & Dramatic Life, Anselm Berrigan, forthcoming January '99, $10. the julia set, Jean Donnelly, $4. Marijuana Softdrink, Buck Downs, forthcoming 1999. World Prefix, Harrison Fisher, $4. Metropolis 16-20, Rob Fitterman, $5. perhaps this is a rescue fantasy, Heather Fuller, $10. Sight, Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino, $12. Late July, Gretchen Johnsen, $3. Asbestos, Wayne Kline, $6. Stepping Razor, A.L. Nielsen, $9. Errata 5uite, Joan Retallack, $8. Dogs, Phyllis Rosenzweig, $5. Aerial 9: Bruce Andrews, Rod Smith ed., forthcoming February 1999. Aerial 8: Barrett Watten, Rod Smith ed., $15. Aerial 6/7 featuring John Cage, Rod Smith ed., $15. Aerial 5 featuring Harryman/Hejinian, Darragh/Retallack, Rod Smith ed., $7.50. On Your Knees, Citizen: A Collection of "Prayers" for the "Public" [Schools], Smith, Brown, and Wallace, eds., $6. Cusps, Chris Stroffolino, $2.50. Nothing Happened and Besides I Wasn''t There, Mark Wallace, $9.50. Orders to: Aerial/Edge, POBox 25642, Washington, DC 20007. Add $1 postage for individual titles except _Sight_. 2 or more books postpaid. They have this peaceful but wild existence -- where everything's disturbed in it, but not by them --Leslie Scalapino There may be no animal boundary -- just the stream and the pleasure that lies in it --Lyn Hejinian ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 00:46:18 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: Bernstein/Perloff in Chicago In-Reply-To: <199812150501.AAA04675@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII joe, could you elaborate on the positions articulated here? i'm not quite clear on what's being said... thanks, t. tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ---------------------- "marjorie's ruminations as to how statements of poetic intent have become rather de rigueur these days (and not all that useful, in her opinion), and charles's collapse of the "theory vs. [poetry, e.g.]" distinction into the (passionate, writerly, readerly) *essay* form---while reserving, as i heard him, a somewhat privileged place for philosophical discourse itself---well, their exchange provided food for much thought on this end, anyway..." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 23:00:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd ever heard was "cellardoor". George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 00:08:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: bernstein/perloff: orange question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > charles's collapse of the "theory vs. [poetry, e.g.]" distinction into the >(passionate, writerly, readerly) *essay* form- Apologies for the length of the ensuing. I have excised it from a considerably longer, complete piece. Without a substantial portion, the effects will not be apparent. MY POETRY David Bromige, 1978 My poetry does seem to have a cumulative, haunting effect--one or two poems may not touch you, but a small bookful begins to etch a response, poems rising in blisters that itch for weeks, poems like ball-bearings turning on each other, over & over, digging down far enough to find substance, a hard core to fill up the hand. It's through this small square that my poems project themselves, flickering across the consciousness, finally polarizing in the pure plasma of life. The reader grows impatient, irritated with my distancing style, coming at him in the rare book format, written under not one but two different kinds of dirty money, & knowing me to be an english teacher. "The Protestant Poem" & the prose piece "He Was" typify my tendency to write over-elaborated series of possibilities which become arid & abstract. It's possible for even the best current poetry to sink into oblivion without wholly justifying itself through such an absolute renunciation of mediocre success. "The Protestant Poem" & certainly, "He Was," are not arid, they're great (except maybe, "kaleidoscopic world"). My poetry is "curiouser & curiouser" as it makes a descent into the rabbit-hole where descent becomes the subject of the poem's concern.... At this point, then, we begin to glimpse what is the profound vocation of the work of art in a commodity society : not to be a commodity, not to be consumed, not to be a vacation. Isn't this the piece talking to itself, hoping to be overheard, & contradicted. Because, the interest evident in the construction, rhythm of the sentences, obviates the need for the content. (Not to deny the feelings, of course). And I, as you probably do _not_ know, am a sucker for children in pain. If you allow Cezanne to represent a third dimension on his canvas, you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty in the spaniel's eye. I really don't think I'm demanding too much. The idea that poetry is good fora person & should be choked down like a horse pill is ridiculous.... Bernstein composes using a vocabulary which at all points (nearly) proposes itself as the other--this vulnerability, constantly expressed, is a sign of what (why does he insist on it?)--yet "what I want to call attention to is that there is no natural writing style" which of course is exactly what Barthes was sayiong in '53, _non_ ? These are the poles & what moves the piece is that there is no resolution, point of equilibrium. Here too, the problematic mode proposed as a strategy for composition, as such--this whole body of poems is a big jump forward for me, in that I'm no longer writing "just poems," each work is somehow myself.... The constant erasure of signs for presence leaves the poem an interstitial agent in the service of intentionality, & the uncertainties & doubts which Keats saw as the essential condition for poetic creation become the characteristics of generation in any form. The non-instrumental, which gives instance of what stands for itself & so not a call to revolution or a representation of the struggle & how it is peopled, but an instance of it (product, the unalienated or re-integrated itself : while still putting off (& on) other myths of "presence" which turn on a misunderstanding of how language operates & how we operate in it, which is to say no e,y,e,s). The blurb on the book says the usual blurb-things. "David Bromige writes carefully, with _pleasure_ --which is the point." Well, which _is_ ? I am the author of previous books, which is the point. A stunning achievement. Good images ("as carefree as a coffin-nail commercial"), & often a good use of language."Still there" is a remarkably clear, beautiful poem. The poem ceases to be a process of discovery. You go to step on the boardwalk & it's rotten. I try to transcend my petty anger & bring you into an area of engagement under the rule of Poetry. Notes are made along the way toward a remembered edifice. Even a divine physics cannot make categorical thought-determinations of realities intuitable in the plain, ordinary way ; as little as divine omnipotence can bring it about that elliptical functions should be painted or played on the fiddle. The tone is objective, rendered ironic by contrast with the monstrous behavior portrayed. What does the "one who knew this" know?.... In my poetry the search shows, & so do the seams often, but my poetry gains authenticity from its deliberate ruggedness. Bull shit. Everywhere there is the tension of an incomplete sentence, an ambiguous antecedent, an unnatural act, an illogical causality. A sentence, as the expression of a complete thought, is not natural & does not exist in nature. Is not natural & does not exist in nature. The prose pieces are of a deft, deadpan order, hinting at more than they state. It's difficult to say whether this prose makes too much ordinary sense, for it is less zany & irritating than _Tender Buttons_ --as if that were some kind of discus mark set in 1911 for extra-syntactic competitors. Yet is it teasingly nonsensical when it is most clipped & aphoristic....A slight, simple poem is slight & simple, & for A.R.Ammons there's no getting away from that. I've been thinking lately about some sort of code of ethics for reviewers. Everywhere the ceremonies of the Phallus are rehearsed, questioned & continued. It is that agonizing lust to express with which I can personally empathize....The poet A.W. Purdy was gleeful : I have a very low opinion of the Black Mountain "method" of writing poems (which is partly the exclusion of any other method) & have seen some of David Bromige's reviews of myself & others before. Either poetry is real, real as, or, as Shelley for one believed, realler than, life; or it is nothing, a stupid & stupefying occupation for zombies. Freud's condensation & displacement are figured here in the poet's tasks.... This is just to say I've gained the art & language in which I bring my readers deeper than any consideration of a personality to the awarenss of a living man -- hence in reading these recent books of mine one may find oneself in a solitude & a -- "Tight Corner," I might call it--edge or risk of Being that seems even as it is most mine to be speaking for a depth of one's own inner being. Climb bean sort of is substitute destiny. Extremely useful & succinct on the problem of writing verses literature. Silence amounts to the same thing, recommended for university & large college libraries : _Sign on Librarian's Desk_ R E V E N G E I could never have done it alone. The self to write about the products of the self which the self tries to make as selfless as possible, in order that they may be seen to come from the true self, by involving it with & invoking it for contiguous other selves (readers)...; [etc, etc]. This, in its uncut version, appeared in Perelman & Shaw's _Hills_ , then in _My Poetry_ from The Figures, 1980. This book is long o.p. & Sun & Moon at one point expressed intention to bring it back into print, with an intro by Ron Silliman; the intro has been written, but the reprint, though announced, appears unlikely. I thank you, if you have come this far, for your attention. David ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 07:32:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: syllable sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit George Bowering wrote: > I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd > ever heard was "cellardoor". > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 & I remember some piece of research years ago that found that for most people the euphonically most beautiful word in English was "carcinoma." Pierre -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 08:50:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Latta Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: <367648DE.2732556A@csc.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I used to routinely ask students to list "most beautiful" words (also "funniest"). My favorite response to the former was that of a rather shy woman: "syringe." The only "funniest" I recall was "chum." John Latta ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 09:02:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: MR MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Today is the birthday of Muriel Rukeyser, who wrote: "My night awake staring at the broad rough jewel the copper roof across the way thinking of the poet yet unborn in this dark who will be the throat of these hours. No. Of those hours. Who will speak these days, if not I, if not you?" -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 09:37:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: <367648DE.2732556A@csc.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >George Bowering wrote: > >> I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd >> ever heard was "cellardoor". >> >> George Bowering. >> , >> 2499 West 37th Ave., >> Vancouver, B.C., >> Canada V6M 1P4 >> >> fax: 1-604-266-9000 > >& I remember some piece of research years ago that found that for most >people the euphonically most beautiful word in English was "carcinoma." > >Pierre > And there's the baby named, many years ago in the U.S. South, Poliomyelitis. Or is this just a rural legend? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:41:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shana Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Judy Roitman wrote: > >George Bowering wrote: > > > >> I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd > >> ever heard was "cellardoor". > > And there's the baby named, many years ago in the U.S. South, > Poliomyelitis. Or is this just a rural legend? I heard a legend about an immigrant couple who named their child what they thought was the most beautiful word in the english language-- "diarrhea." I'm actually in love with pharmacological words--my recent favorite is "Propecia," the name of a hair growth drug for men. Zithromax is good, too. shana ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:27:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: syllable sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain That "Asian" must have read the Paris Review interview with Don DeLillo (in the 40th anniversary issue, a few years back) where, in a discussion about the famous "Toyota Celica" passage in _White Noise_, he cites an alleged study that reached the same conclusion. Patrick Pritchett > >George Bowering wrote: > > > >> I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd > >> ever heard was "cellardoor". > >> > >> George Bowering. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 08:46:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Billy Little Subject: Re: Digital Arts and Culture 98 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" any reports from the Digital Arts and Culture conference in Norway? Let go, shirk off the moderate little grace of vain Cupid and grease the silver and lascivious age. His livid qualms dope our cool arrival. Rich poems sag like great nuns; art cheats time's martyrs. --Lisa Robertson XEclogue billy little 4 song st satori, b.c. V0R1Z0 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 11:52:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: MLA Poetry Event In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One of the highlights of the MLA convention later this month in San Francisco is surely the Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino, and David Bromige reading, organized by Burton Hatlen. Not to be missed. It was a treat to read David's "My Poetry" just now on the list: a work I have been totally amazed by since I first read it and David is quite right that "My Poetry" is exemplary of the sort of writing I had in mind in my comments in Chicago the other night. Anyway, back to the MLA: by a cruel quirk of fate, the Poetry Division cash bar and book party is at the same time as the reading and while conflicts are endemic to these conventions, this one is particularly unfortunate. The Poetry Division cash bar and book party follows a reading and conversation with Adrienne Rich, which takes place Monday Dec. 28, 3:30-4:45. The Cash Bar goes from 5:15-6:30. Both events are in Plaza Room A, San Francisco Hilton. The book party is for Rich’s new collection Midnight Savage (Norton) and for Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word, which I edited (Oxford Univ. Press), Imagining Language, ed. Steve McCaffery and Jed Rasula (M.I.T. Press), and Poems for the Millennium, vol. 2, ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (Univ. of California Press). Rich and all the editors will be present. Since the Rich reading ends at 4:45, perhaps those attending the Bromige/Heninian/Scalapino reading can come by Plaza Room A at that time, and hang out till 5:15, when the reading starts, since it takes place very nearby (Franciscan Room A). I think most of us will be there then, and hopefully at least sample copies of the books will be there too -- even if we have to wait for them to set up the bar. Oxford tells me they will be offering Close Listening at a 50% discount at the party (eg: $10). If the book selling is not in place by 5:15, I will take orders and have any books ready, signed by any and all present, by the time the reading is over. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:58:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: submorphemic sememes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This discussion of syllable sounds calls to mind Antin's talk 'the structuralist' with its tale of a red-haired dwarf painter/linguist who writes a poem using only "submorphemic sememes," e.g. phonemes or combinations of phonemes that seem to signify *naturally*. For example gl is the "sememe of visual manifestation" (197), as in glimmer, glance, gloom, glimpse, etc... Also check out Genette's Mimologiques (translated as Mimologics). The Antin piece is in the book _what it means to be avant-garde_ (New Directions 1993). Jonathan Mayhew Department of Spanish and Portuguese University of Kansas jmayhew@ukans.edu (785) 864-3851 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 11:18:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: Bernstein/Perloff in Chicago In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" tom, basically marjorie was arguing that it's become all the rage to fashion one's "poetics" ex post facto, and that in many cases said poetics are neither urgent nor compelling... she referenced, e.g., the collection of such statements at the back of many anthologies of poetry... charles was questioning whether in fact "theory" wasn't itself often used as a way of narrowing---pinching---discourse... he would prefer, as i understood him, to think of the essay form itself as permitting for theoretical speculation---whether by poet or by critic... he did reserve a place for philosophy as the proper site of more rigorous thought (as opposed, that is, to theory)... perhaps it will help if i clarify a bit why i asked my question: it seems to me that an argument can be made that what distinguishes much of the more oppositional/alternative/non-mainstream writing is a willingness to theorize one's "craft" (i use the latter with some skepticism intact---the word often constitutes the alpha & omega of theoretical speculation on the part of more conventional writers for whom (e.g.) de man's "resistance to theory" is already theoretically excessive)... jed rasula has argued this vis-a-vis the beats, and i think the same might be said of language poetry-writing (though might not be said, perhaps, of more populist poetic forms and events)... how academic and professionalizing forces figure into the question of "theory" (note quotes here) is a matter i'll leave open for the moment... suffice to say that, when i used the term, i do not mean to delimit theory in popperian terms (i.e., falsification etc.), and that "theory" is certainly a commodity in academe these days (albeit not the commodity it was even a decade ago)... so to suggest that "theory"---a basic self-reflexive quality, a challenging of one's own assumptions---need not be so constraining, and yet is at the same time an important part of one's practice, situates one somewhat contra certain academic work, and at the same time, contra certain artistic presumptions (e.g., "just feel it")... the question remains though: since theory as such constitutes a literacy (as we've known it thus far) completely tied-up with print literacy, and since any move toward the visual (or the aural) takes us away from the latter (not in a strict sense, but generally)---how might we "theorize" (note quotes again) our poetic articulations so conceived w/o forcing visual-aural work to tow what is in essence a literary line?... how do you theorize words/images/sounds w/o selling images and sounds short? (a picture is worth a thousand etc.)... nothing exactly "new" here, nothing unprecedented, and nothing that hasn't been the focus of all sortsa discussion... but i think it's becoming more and more topical, esp. in light of our electronic media... and i could, too, toss around words like "hybrid," "creolized," even collage, etc., to point to possible ways of addressing this issue... but worth thinking through, i think, however one does so... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 11:43:44 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Re: MLA Poetry Event MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Bernstein wrote: Oxford tells me they will be offering Close > Listening at a 50% discount at the party (eg: $10). If the book selling is > not > in place by 5:15, I will take orders and have any books ready, signed by any > and all present, by the time the reading is over. I'll take one. Good to see you writing to the list, C, thought maybe the listbrats had driven you to swear off electronic poetics. miekal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 13:09:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:00 PM -0800 12/14/98, George Bowering wrote: >I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd >ever heard was "cellardoor". > > > > >George Bowering. > , >2499 West 37th Ave., >Vancouver, B.C., >Canada V6M 1P4 > >fax: 1-604-266-9000 Bust him for plagiarism--it was Gertrude Stein who said that (though I can't footnote it at the moment). I'd have to concede, though, it's better than cell door. ho ho ho, Sylvester ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 18:45:11 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Lawrence Upton." Subject: Domestic Ambient Noise Comments: To: british-poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Writers Forum announces the two latest sections of DOMESTIC AMBIENT NOISE by Cobbing and Upton IMBALANCE Bob Cobbing / Lawrence Upton ISBN 0 86162 847 0 December 1998 OF ZERO AND INFINITY Lawrence Upton / Bob Cobbing ISBN 0 86162 848 9 December 1998 Each £1.00 plus postage 190 published so far. 110 to go. All orders / enquiries to New River Project, 89a Petherton Road, London N5 2QT. Enquiries with s.a.e./i.r.c. please --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lawrence Upton's website: http://members.spree.com/sip/lizard/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY in verbal and visual poetry" edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton Writers Forum, London, 1998; 156 pp; ISBN 0 86162 750 4 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 08:45:11 +1300 Reply-To: beard@met.co.nz Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > At 11:00 PM -0800 12/14/98, George Bowering wrote: > >I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful > English word he'd ever heard was "cellardoor". Didn't someone famously state that the most beautiful word in English was "elbow"? But I'd have to agree that "cellardoor" sounds gorgeous: it sounds un-English, perhaps the exotic island of Selador, or perhaps "c'est la d'or". As for me, the two most beautiful words in the English language are "Transaction Accepted". And speaking of syllable sounds & Lewis Carroll, I remember that in Godel, Escher, Bach there are 'translations' of Jaberwocky into French & German, with very strange and revealing results. Does anyone know who the translators were? Cheers, Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 15:08:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: TINFISH reminder Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Just a reminder that the new _Tinfish_ is available. Each cover is--in part--a different weather map of the Pacific (Gaye Chan fished them out of a National Weather Service dumpster); I found one map with two typhoons and a tropical depression. So order more than one and partake in Pacific flux! $5 per and $13 for a subscription to three. They make great holiday gifts, as do our chapbooks (ask backchannel about any of this). I won't be at MLA, but best wishes to everyone who will be, especially those of you in search of employment. Susan Schultz 47-391 Hui Iwa Street #3 Kaneohe, HI 96744 USA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 15:47:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: syllable sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Tom Beard wrote:... I remember that in Godel, > Escher, Bach there are 'translations' of Jaberwocky into French & German, > with very strange and revealing results. Does anyone know who the > translators were? > Putative French by one Frank L. Warrin as published in _The New Yorker_ (1931) und Putatives Teutsch by one Robert Scott, as published in _MacMillan's Magazine,_ 1872. -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 16:19:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: hambone In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can someone please f/c or b/c me email or address info for HAMBONE? thanks. AK ============ Anastasios Kozaitis 274 President Street, #4R Brooklyn, NY 11231 718 596 2198 ============ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 13:30:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pete Neufeld Subject: Re: syllable sounds and reference MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I agree with Jen Hofer's post a few weeks back, where she argued "it is firmly my belief that all words reference." For a word or utterance to truly lack a reference would require, in my mind, that it had no dissimilarity from all other utterances that, through differences, would define it. I mean to say that context seems most important when one reads-- for example-- "brillig" in a poem, in this case, by Louis Carroll. Even it if lacks a clear definition or dictionary entry, it still points towards a possible meaning, even if that meaning might be in permanent abeyance. And we can say all sorts of interesting things about it, what it attempts to do, how it undermines x and y, how it fits the syntax of this or that, and so on. So in the end I would argue that it signifies, and that we demand that it does. I think even something as unrecognizable as Hugo Ball's sound poetry or Kurt Schwitter's _Ur Sonata_ still refer, they re-ferre, literally in the Latin "carry-back, report," (actually a military term all over Caesar's _Gallic Wars_)upon what exactly, I would agree, is clearly open to debate. Even if you can't read Bob Grenier's work, it still signifies, in fact we tend to insist that it does. I find it hard to imagine a non-referential language, the two seem incompatible. As far as sounds and syllables and the men and women who loved them, Shelley voted "syphilis" the most pleasing word to the ear in the language. Pete ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 16:46:02 -0500 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" EMI Stops Production of Nazi Songs COLOGNE, Germany (AP) _ International recording label EMI says it has stopped production of a cassette by German folk singer Heino that contains traditional marching songs the Nazis used during World War II. The cassette, titled ``As We March Side By Side,'' was produced several years ago but never marketed commercially because of EMI's concerns about its content, EMI spokesman Erich Grote said Monday in Cologne. The 60-year-old Heino, popular mostly with older Germans, has been singing folk music since the 1960s. ``As We March Side By Side'' contains songs popular before the Third Reich but exploited by the Nazis as propaganda about the glories of Germany. Heino also sings the German national anthem on the cassette, including the original first verse that was banned after the war. It begins: ``Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles,'' or ``Germany above all.'' The decision to stop production of the cassette followed a German TV report that ``As We March ...'' was being offered for sale by mail order in the extreme right-wing German National Newspaper. ``This was an unpleasant surprise,'' the EMI spokesman told The Associated Press. ``We immediately informed our customers that we would not fill any more orders (for the cassette), because we in no way want to support this kind of product.'' Heino was not immediately available for comment about EMI's decision. The newspaper, published in Munich by politician Gerhard Frey, had been running the mail-order advertisements for about a year, the station ARD reported. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 19:14:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: poetics of impeachment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >>If you were going to court a beloved etc.>> Sadly, strangely, unfortunately, or coincidentally, no one I've ever courted (or been beloveds with) has had a lick of interest in poetry. I'd feel like Alvy Singer pushing death & dying books on Annie Hall. HowEVer, if anyone out there wants to come a'courtin here, I'll be happy to provide an extensive, alphabetized list that'd work at least as well as a backrub-with-motives, beginning, now that Charles mentions it, with *Close Listening* and vol.2 of *Poems for the Millenium*. hankie-droppingly yrs, em ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 19:37:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Amy King Subject: Re: f.y.i. - Heino - I wish I threw rocks back then. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -----Original Message----- From: joel lewis To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Date: Tuesday, December 15, 1998 5:41 PM Subject: f.y.i. >EMI Stops Production of Nazi Songs > COLOGNE, Germany (AP) _ International recording label EMI says > it has stopped production of a cassette by German folk singer Heino > that contains traditional marching songs the Nazis used during > World War II. This Heino truly is disturbed. I've seen footage of performances (70's?) that do not present a "folk singer" of the traditional long hair, acoustic guitar playing, granola in the back pocket genre. Some were quite entertaining, even innovative (a stand in does some karate kicks and flips, really "gets down" for him during one song - a feat only Madonna has replicated since), but a piece I remember vividly was of the suit clad Heino singing to some underage girls while obviously oogling them from behind his trademark sunglasses. However, he does only hold their hands, stroke their shoulders. Not too shabby for a grown man. The old celebration of the respectable drooling perv. He reminded me of the scalely men who "fed pigeons" in the park where my teen girlfriends and I met up to smoke. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 19:08:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Pompeii Subject: welcomed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I feel everything about everything. It seems at some point. Or all at the same time. For instance now. This list. I am certain you are all kind hearted academics. And vice-versa. My fave greek was/is Carneades. He believed in odds to determine his actions and perceptions. Yet was always open to new statistics. Opening. Hi. -js ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 17:52:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: f.y.i. - Heino - I wish I threw rocks back then. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" All my friends tell me that Heino is cool (in sort of a bad retro way). Are there any plans to publish the complete lyrics of Heino? ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 19:03:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathy Lou Schultz Subject: Re: hambone MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hambone Nathaniel Mackey, Editor 134 Hunolt Street Santa Cruz, CA 95060 Anastasios Kozaitis wrote: > > Can someone please f/c or b/c me email or address info for HAMBONE? > > thanks. > > AK > > ============ > Anastasios Kozaitis > 274 President Street, #4R > Brooklyn, NY 11231 > 718 596 2198 > ============ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 22:17:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: lost in translation? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Listees: Having received the following message on U. Penn's LINGUIST listserv, I tried to produce a poem that would lose nothing [well, almost nothing] in translation. It uses [except for "a" and "in"] words which K. S. Chung regards as strong candidates for words recognized pretty much everywhere around the world [though a Turkish student tells me that "curry" doesn't work in her language]. I confess I couldn't bring myself to use "golf," but I did get all the others into the piece. So: the first 'international' poem that loses nothing [asuming it has something to begin with!] in translation: SAUNA neon alleluias! chocolate ninja czar a shock in yoga-jazz curry T-shirt! OK, cocoa bikini! platinum card! --Dan Zimmerman ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:27:26 +0800 From: Karen Steffen Chung Subject: International Words Last August I posted a query regarding 'international' words (LINGUIST 9.1151) like _chocolate_, which seem to end up as phonetic loans in just about any language/culture that is acquainted with the referent concerned. I got quite a few interesting replies, which I've collated below. I'd like to ask a further question here: Does anyone know of a word or words for 'chocolate' in native Mexican/Mesoamerican languages? One correspondent, Antony Dubach Green in Germany, suggested that if any language had a word for 'chocolate' that is not somehow a phonetic loan of _chocolate_, it would most likely be a Mexican language, where chocolate is native (Nahuatl: _xoco_ 'bitter' + _atl_ 'water'). John Koontz gave some very detailed and interesting information on Omaha-Ponca and Teton Dakotan, offering exmaples of non-cognate words for 'tea'. See also the note below on 'coffee' in Amharic from Robert Ratcliffe in Japan. Please reply to me privately if you have any further input on any of the above data. John Koontz offered a useful suggestion, i.e. that maybe one cannot be too absolutist in looking for a word that is a phonetic loan in *all* known languages. His comment: > I haven't thought of any potential international non-food terms. I > wonder, though, if you might not need to be somewhat less than > absolute in identifying such terms. Widespread and crossing the > boundaries of known relationships, or of known origin, might suffice. This makes sense, since words like 'tea' and 'coffee' get pretty *close* to being 'international' words, based on the data collected so far. Heartfelt thanks to: Diana ben-Aaron benaaron@cc.helsinki.fi Sylvia Bendel bendel@soziologie.unizh.ch Bart de Boer bartb@arti.vub.ac.be Gordon Brown gordonbr@microsoft.com Wayles Browne ewb2@cornell.edu John Brownie John_Brownie@sil.org Vassilis Christodoulou spdi@eexi.gr Helmut Daller Helmut.Daller@uwe.ac.uk Radu Daniliuc srdan@assist.cccis.ro Karen Davis kmdavis@erols.com Nancy Frishberg nancyf@fishbird.com Antony Dubach Green green@zas.gwz-berlin.de Earl Herrick kfemh00@tamuk.edu George Huttar george_huttar@sil.org John E. Koontz John.Koontz@Colorado.edu Rina Kreitman kreitman@netvision.net.il Rick McCallister rmccalli@sunmuw1.MUW.Edu Mark Mandel Mark_Mandel@Dragonsys.com Mike Moss mmoss@friko2.onet.pl Mohammed Moubatassime moubtassime@fesnet.net.ma Douglas Mullins mullins@tky2.3web.ne.jp Tara L. Narcross narcross.5@pop.service.ohio-state.edu Lukasz Pielasa lluke@kki.net.pl Robert R. Ratcliffe ratcliff@fs.tufs.ac.jp Carsten Sinner c.sinner@arrakis.es Sijmen Tol bl@konbib.nl Larry Trask larryt@cogs.susx.ac.uk Cristina Varga cvarga@lett.ubbcluj.ro Colin Whiteley cwhiteley@tyco.geis.com Sean Witty wittysan@hotmail.com ____________________________________________________________________ Below follow lists of possible candidates for international words, along with others that failed either the Chinese or another language test, based on the responses I received. I used Mandarin Chinese as a key test since it is a language that tends to use loan translations/calques or original coinings where possible rather than phonetic loans. Possible 'international word' candidates (that pass the Chinese test): alleluia bikini card [the chemical elements] chocolate cocoa curry czar/tsar golf jazz ninja OK sauna shock T-shirt yoga Words suggested that didn't pass the Chinese (or some other) test: alcohol allergy automobile banana calculator catastrophe chess class climate cocktail coffee* (see note below) computer democracy detective diskette elephant fax football garage gas gay hygiene jeans jogging kangaroo karate mama (Japanese _haha_) mass metal microphone muesli music organisation papa (Japanese _chichi_) planet radio rendez-vous rock (music) sex appeal striptease sugar symbol taxi tea** television telephone theater tiger train tunnel video violin xerox zoom (lens) ___________________________________________________________________ Notes *But take Coffee. It is indigenous to the area around the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, that is Yemen and Ethiopia. In Yemen (that is in Arabic) it is called _qahwah_, which becomes _kahve_ in Turkish _kafe_ in Italian _kawfi_ in English _koohi_ in Japanese. But in Ethiopia (at least in Amharic) it is called _bunn_. This word _bunn_ is also used in Arabic to refer to fresh coffee beans, before they are roasted and ground. I hope some Americanist on the list will have an interesting story to tell about chocolate. - Robert R. Ratcliffe **Omaha-Ponca xa'de maN'kkaN 'tea; lit. grass (or herb) medicine' Omaha-Ponca maN'kkaN sa'be 'coffee; lit. black medicine' Teton Dakotan c^haNkhal'yapi 'tea; lit. warmed wood (bark)' Teton Dakotan phez^u'ta sa'pa 'coffee; lit. black medicine (or weed)' Omaha-Ponca and Dakotan are Siouan languages (North America). In Omaha-Ponca there are no words for chocolate or curry, though presumably the English terms would be used, with little or no adaptation. Omaha-Ponca is certainly not without loan words and certain vocabulary fields (dates, numbers, English given names) are normally filled with more or less unadapted English terms. However, I think there is a feeling that such foreign words are expedients rather than naturalized, and in general there is some resistance to loans. They seem to be much less prevalent than in European languages. Calques are more common, often from the old trade pidgin in the case of European items, e.g., ppe'de niN' 'fire water' for 'whiskey' (cf. ardent spirits?) or maN'ze ska' 'white metal' for 'money' (cf. French argent?). - John E. Koontz John.Koontz@Colorado.edu _______________________________________________________________________ Suggested references (heavily weighted toward 'international' words in European languages only): Braun, Peter, Burkhard Schaeder, & Johannes Volmert (Hgg.). 1990._Internationalismen: Studien zur interlingualen Lexikologie und Lexikographie_. Tubingen: Niemeyer. 193 p. (Reihe Germanistische Linguistik; 102) Goursau, Henri & Goursau, Monique. 1989. _Dictionnaire europeen des mots usuels, francais-anglais-allemand-espagnol-italien-portugais_. Saint-Orens-de-Granville: Edition Goursau. Walter, Henriette. 1994. _L'aventure des langues en occident_. Paris: Editions Robert Laffont. Karen Steffen Chung National Taiwan University karchung@ccms.ntu.edu.tw ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 22:38:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Re: welcomed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jessica Pompeii wrote: I am certain you are all kind hearted > academics. Ya got me pegged. dyed in tweed pipesmoker miekal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1998 22:01:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: Announcement - Windhover #2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" The second edition of Windhover is now on-line at: http://home.sprintmail.com/~windhover It features POETRY by: Maxine Chernoff Henry Gould Martha Ronk Stephen Ratcliffe Paul Naylor Sheila E. Murphy Spencer Selby Miekal And & Maria Damon REVIEWS by: Steve Evans Jono Schneider & POETICS by: Kent Johnson Windhover is dynamic i.e. this issue will continue to accept submissions for a few weeks. (The first edition, for those who missed it, is still on-line.) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:04:03 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: syllable sounds and reference MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Shelley voted "syphilis" the most pleasing word to the > ear in the language. > Today my ear is obsessed with "sidereal" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 16:59:04 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Herman Utix. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A young boy (his parents were born in Vietnam) at my children's school (in Sydney, Australia) had a Vietnamese name which unfortunately sounded very rude in English. A teacher spoke to the parents and tactfully suggested that their child would have a less miserable time at school if he changed his name. After considerable thought they agreed, carefully chose a neutral-sounding English name, and registered it by deed poll. The boy wore his new name with pride: Germain Grommet. from John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/welcome.html Homepage: five megabytes of glittering literature, free, at http://www.alm.aust.com/~tranterj/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:53:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: NEW OBSERVATIONS issue on Cultures of Cyberspace (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A new issue of NEW OBSERVATIONS, on Cultures of Cyberspace, is now out, and available from New Observations for $6. Edited by Alan Sondheim, the magazine is 8.5x11, with glossy purplish cover, approx 40 pps. with _a lot_ of text. The writers are from 'all over,' including many from the Cybermind and Fop-l email lists (as well as Future Culture, Poetics, etc.). From the Introduction: "This issue of _New Observations_ focuses on Cultures of Cyberspace - the kinds of exchanges and communities that have grown out of the Net over the past twenty years or so. The oldest document is a reproduction of a dia- gram from a 1972 paper describing failures in the original ARPA network, the ancestor of today's online monster. [...] The illustrations have been chosen as a counterpoint to the texts; they reflect spaces and bodies that are effaced, occluded, ghostlike - in short _uncanny_ spaces that, to my mind at least, parallel the 'feeling' of being online." I must say I'm quite pleased with the publication - which captures a cer- tain aspect of online subjectivity. The articles range from accounts of the phenomenology of email lists to a description of ThePalace, from MUD and MOO analyses to posts from alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb. The writers include Michael Spirito, Miekal And, Ryan Whyte, Eve Andree Laramee, Jerry Everard, John Suler, Caitlin Martin, Adrianne Wortzel, Radhika Gajjala, addicted2words, S. McKenzie, Nick Mamatas, Ted in St. Louis, Jon Marshall, Alexanne Don, Art McGee, Laurie Cubbison, Steven Meinking, Drew Shiel, Paula Davidson, Amy Fletcher, and Guiseppe Iann- icelli. Artists include David Smith, Fanny Jacobson, Janieta Eyer, Emily Cheng, Thomas Zummer, Tyler Stallings, Nancy Haynes, Wenda Gu, Ichi Ikeda, Robert Cheatham, Barbara Simcoe, Kim Mcglynn, and Alice Glenn, among others. You may order it from: New Observations 611 Broadway #701 New York City, NY, 10012 (Single Issue #120, Cultures of Cyberspace) The telephone is 212-677-8561 (fax as well). Email: mail@newobservations.org Subscription for this arts/cultural journal (next issue is on Memory Palaces) is 1 year / 4 issues: $22.00 and 2 years /8 issues: $38.00 Enjoy! See what the fuss is about! - Alan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:24:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: <367648DE.2732556A@csc.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Before my girlfriend/wife Angela knew any Spanish, I used to whisper in her ear, "caracoles," and she had a frisson I loved. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:24:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >I'm actually in love with pharmacological words--my recent favorite is >"Propecia," the name of a hair growth drug for men. Zithromax is good, >too. > >shana The Japanese word "rimbyo" sounds lovely and it means gonorrhea or literally "drip-sickness" George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 01:24:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: syllable sounds In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Bust him for plagiarism--it was Gertrude Stein who said that (though I >can't footnote it at the moment). I'd have to concede, though, it's better >than cell door. ho ho ho, Sylvester Oh, excreta! you're right. I remember reading that not too long ago. I am going to bop that Singaporean. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 06:19:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Posting to the list (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hullo? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 12:15:08 -0500 From: Jordan Davis To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Posting to the list Thanks, anonymous voice, for the note. I am confused by the apparent contradiction between the list being edited and all posts being forwarded immediately. My confusion increases when Henry tells me two of the posts he sent before he unsubscribed were not forwarded. Please clarify. Jordan Davis Poetics list wrote: In reply to recent queries, there has been no change in the structure of the list. The Poetics List is edited and will remain so for the forseeable future; however, please be aware that all posts sent to the list by subscribers go immediately to the list, *without exception*. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 07:42:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: syllable sounds and reference MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Rachel Levitsky wrote: > > Today my ear is obsessed with "sidereal" or as Ed Dorn has it, somewhere, if memory serves: "the inside real and the outsidereal" -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 09:07:26 -0500 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" *** An impeachable offense: As if President Clinton doesn't have enough trouble on Capitol Hill, now he's got problems down under. Er, ah, Down Under. It seems that organizers of Madame Tussaud's traveling wax museum of 110 life-like statues have encountered some troubles in Sydney, Australia. Their guests just can't keep their hands off of the Clinton model's naughty bits, unzipping his pants as a prank. So, Vicky Brown, general manager of the exhibition has ordered Mr. President's fly sewn shut. Prior to her stratagem, security guards were checking on Clinton's state of affairs every couple of hours to "avoid embarrassment," Brown said. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 09:29:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: syllable sounds and reference In-Reply-To: <36779CDD.B44AF4E5@csc.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > Rachel Levitsky wrote: > > > > > Today my ear is obsessed with "sidereal" I have always been fascinated by the sound of Farts (the word, people). I love Dentals and Fricatives. I also love fajitas, which might explain some of my attraction to this word. Ferret is also a perky word and possesses at least one very sharp Dental. Note how the introduction of the words Ferret and Fart radically change the sonic texture of this bit from Genesis. Ferret was wroth with his servants, and put me in a ward in the captain of the guard's house, both me and the chief baker: And we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream. And there was there with us an young man, an Hebrew, an servant of the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret. Ferret sent and called for Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeons: and he shaved himself and changed his raiment, and came in unto ferret. And ferret said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, that thou canst understand a dream. That is when Joseph turned into a fart and was inhaled by degrees. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:47:25 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Lawrence Upton." Subject: Re: syllable sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit |& I remember some piece of research years ago that found that for most |people the euphonically most beautiful word in English was "carcinoma." ye-e--e---ss but at this closeness surely the euphony is tied up with the voice of the individual uttering and the auditor's response to that pronunciation Pierre uttering "carcinoma" would produce a very different set of sounds to... say Kate Adie - a BBC correspondent of great verbal-vocal precision, arising not least from her being half or more Swedish - I am *assuming you will have heard her. In case not, let's say Jerome Rothenberg... or Steve McCaffery - gender balance! or Karen MacCormack or Anne Waldman. All quite different in what they would do with that set of sounds. Given the range of pronunciations /musical effects available to speakers, I don't see how one word could be awarded an unequivocal accolade as the euphonically most beautiful word AND the situation changes when the one word is put with another: cellardoor carcinoma OR carcinoma cellardoor quite different sonic AND stress interrelationships L | |Pierre | | |-- |======================== |Pierre Joris |joris@csc.albany.edu |http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ |6 Madison Place |Albany NY 12202 |tel: 518 426 0433 |fax: 518 426 3722 |======================== |Nomadism answers to a relation that |possession cannot satisfy. | |— Maurice Blanchot |======================== | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lawrence Upton's website: http://members.spree.com/sip/lizard/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY in verbal and visual poetry" edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton Writers Forum, London, 1998; 156 pp; ISBN 0 86162 750 4 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 07:31:10 +0000 Reply-To: arshile@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Salerno Organization: Arshile: A Magazine of the Arts Subject: Joel Oppenheimer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Colleagues: Arshile seeks someone to write a review of Joel Oppenheimer's COLLECTED LATER POEMS, edited by Robert J. Bertholf (Buffalo, N.Y.: The Poetry/Rare Books Collection, SUNY, 1997). Interested parties please backchannel. Mark Salerno ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 10:26:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: MLA/Open to Public Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I neglected to mention in my announcement yesterday about the MLA events that the ones I listed are free and open to the public; and indeed the idea for these events was, in part, to have a few poetry-related events open to poets living in the Bay area: David Bromige/Lyn Hejinian/Leslie Scalapino reading: Monday, 28 December, 5:15pm. Franciscan Room A, Hilton, which is the Ballroom Level, Building 1. Adrienne Rich Reading (followed by conversation): Monday, 28 December, 3:30-4:45, Plaza Room A, Hilton, which is immediately followed, in the same room, by Poetry Division Cash Bar and book party for Rich, and for Poems for the Millennium II, Close Listening, and Imagining Language. Plaza Room A is on the Lobby Level, Building 1 Other MLA events free and open to the public include these five readings, which, remarkably, all take place *at the same time!*: 5:15-6:30 on Tuesday, December 29 in the Hilton (titles for readings are those listed in the program): John Kinsella in Franciscan Room A Hypermeida Poetry/Fiction with Stephanie Strickland & M. D. Coverley in Parlor 2, Continental Ballroom Charles Wright in Continental Ballroom 6 West Coast Native Women's Poetry with Gloria Bird, Janice Gould, Deborah A. Miranda, and Nora Davenhauer in Yosemite Room B Asian American Writers Catherine Liu & R. Zamora Linmark in Union Square 15 and 16 In addition, there is a free reading by Czeslaw Milosz: 12/27, 7pm, Yosemite Room A Another things SF area folks who are not registered might enjoy is the great and large book exhibit. According to the convention program, "MLA convention registrants may obtain free passes to the exhibit hall for guests they accompany in the hall. Persons who are not registered for the convention and who are not guests of registrants may purchase a one-day pass to the exhibit hall for $10. These passes are available near the entrance to the exhibit hall." Well worth the $10, by the way. The book exhibit is in the Grand Ballroom Salon A and B, Building 2, San Francisco Hilton. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 09:03:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laura E. Wright" Subject: Re: syllable sounds/lost in translation? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > OK, cocoa bikini! > > --Dan Zimmerman I can't believe "alcohol" didn't "pass the test"! But I vote, today, for OK, cocoa bikini as having very pleasing shape to tongue and ear. Meanwhile, a two-headed question for any takers: 1) How do you (or do you?) guard yourself / your work against people who are inclined to, for example, question your lover in pointed detail about your sex life after hearing you read? These people, it should be noted, do not question the poet about the work, but the assumed subject/object of the work about itself. 2) If people insist on referring one's work back to one's lover, how to protect the lover (not in a sheltering sense, but a compassionate one) from feeling attacked by the work? (Sorry if this is a bit, I feel necessarily, vague -- but would greatly appreciate any thoughts along these lines.) In minor poetic crisis, seeking extra soothing syllable sounds, Laura -- Laura Wright, Library Assistant Allen Ginsberg Library, The Naropa Institute 2130 Arapahoe Ave Boulder, CO 80302 (303) 546-3547 ----------------------------------------------------------- "Speech keeps strangling itself, but wisdom has not come." --Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 11:13:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Randy Prunty Subject: Re: New Hejinaian/Scalapino from Edge Books Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit hello Rod could you put a copy of Sight in the mail to me and I'll send you the $10? Randy Prunty 1221 Sheppard Dr. Lilburn, GA 30047 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 10:43:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Re: syllable sounds/lost in translation? In-Reply-To: <3677D9EF.852CA104@naropa.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Laura: How incredibly rude! I'm sure Miss Manners would tell your lover to say, politely, "It's actually none of your business" and leave it at that. Why anyone would feel obliged to entertain such questions is beyond me. Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 11:10:49 -0600 Reply-To: jlm8047@usl.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry McGuire Organization: USL Subject: syllable sounds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > >> I recently heard an Asian say that the most beautiful English word he'd > > >> ever heard was "cellardoor". > > > >>Bust him for plagiarism--it was Gertrude Stein who said that (though I > can't footnote it at the moment). I'd have to concede, though, it's better > than cell door. ho ho ho, Sylvester Bust me for laziness, because I won't check the archives either, but I recall that it was Borges who said that his _students'_ favorite expression in English was "cellar door." Could they have been reading Stein? Jerry ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 12:20:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: is a language poet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:15 PM 12/11/98 PST, Ron Silliman wrote: >Has anyone noticed that what's happening in Congress right now isn't an >impeachment but a coup? > I noticed. I think. I've got to write this note quickly though and beat out the lunchtime crowds at Filene's Basement. In new england there is a mechanism in people that aims for the worst in particular situations. For example, if it is cold and raw and ugly outside, one would say to one's fellow, "well, at least it ain't snowing." Or, if there is heavy snow and a tree falls on your house, one would say "well, at least it didn't hit the truck." And so on. So there is a coup in Congress--the sick fruition of an effort begun on Inauguration Day 1992. Well, at least nobody's been shot yet. Ken Starr, he "investigated" a Clinton real estate investement, and no one particularly cared. So "travelgate" came to pass, and no one was impressed. Contributions to the Clinton campaign were scrutinzed but the public lacked enthusiasm. Legions of felt-up associates came forward but no one in power was so shameless as to pretend they were interested in "protecting" women from sexual harassment. Now the leader of the free world, in covering his ass for screwing around, is accused of perjury and will be tried for high crimes and treason. This is all still pretty tame by Roman standards. All public officials know well enough from this day forward not ever to fuck with health care again; no socialization of any industry whatsoever. The trouble is I have no compulsion to defend the guy. The problem is I hate his enemies more than I hate him, and I hate him a lot. The gist of it is there is nothing one can do about it anyway. I guess we'll get what we deserve by christmas anyway. The interesting part is borne out of mandatory passivity. The interesting part is free lessons in double-plus bad speak. Tiberius was a sexual predator too. Clinton is not fit to lace his sneakers. The interesting part will begin once he's gone. Thankfully I am a provincial and have few international associates to be embarrassed before. <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 16 Dec 1998 12:25:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shana Subject: Re: syllable sounds/lost in translation? In-Reply-To: <3677D9EF.852CA104@naropa.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Laura E. Wright wrote: > > Meanwhile, a two-headed question for any takers: > 1) How do you (or do you?) guard yourself / your work against people who > are inclined to, for example, question your lover in pointed detail > about your sex life after hearing you read? These people, it should be > noted, do not question the poet about the work, but the assumed > subject/object of the work about itself. > > 2) If people insist on referring one's work back to one's lover, how to > protect the lover (not in a sheltering sense, but a compassionate one) > from feeling attacked by the work? I'm with Jonathan--anyone who does this is incredibly rude. I can't even imagine this sort of scene taking place. Do people really come up to your lover after a reading, sipping their grocery store wine, and say, "So, you really get off on having that birthmark on your ass caressed?" It seems that a bigger problem would come about when a really ballsy person insists on referring your work back your current lover when the work in question was pointed toward a past lover... I knew there was a reason I don't invite my ex-lovers to readings...Now I'm paranoid. I'm hiding all my lover poems away in a box with a big post-it (tm) note saying, "To be read after I'm halfway across the world." Shana shana@bway.net http://www.bway.net/~shana ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:07:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Pompeii Subject: no buddies buz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I would tell them it is a story. -js ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:18:02 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: syllable sounds/lost in translation? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Laura, How archaic I think. I mean all this talk about non-referentiality and we still need to preface our words when reading and tell people "this is not about you or me." It's the confessional craze the idea that a memoir really is or really is history or accurate or that there is a fact or a real can you believe this bill of goods? Rigaberta Menchu is being hounded by fact seeking academics who are hell bent in rendering her story non-valid. Thank goddess the nobel people got the idea right in their retort to demands her prize be taken away in saying, all writing embellishes, that was not the point. I unfortunately get something similar quite often. Whenever I read the lines "you fucking me, me screaming," men inevitably come up to me all smiles and invitations. I wonder if anything I wrote was heard. And when I read my poem "She said she didn't think my ego was a problem" I've had men following me saying "I just never thought about lesbians that way before" and I think jeez I'm not a poet I'm a social worker. in struggle, Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 10:01:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Ruttan Organization: axess.com Subject: Re: Bernstein/Perloff in Chicago MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think the reason for theory/manifestoes/whatnot, at least at the beginning, was a need to distinguish oneself from the mainstream/what has gone before. You wanted to maintain that you were different from all that other junk, and then someone had the nerve to ask "in what way?" Jack Ruttan, Montreal Joe Amato wrote: > perhaps it will help if i clarify a bit why i asked my question: it seems > to me that an argument can be made that what distinguishes much of the more > oppositional/alternative/non-mainstream writing is a willingness to > theorize one's "craft" (i use the latter with some skepticism intact---the [...] -- http://www.axess.com/users/jackr ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:24:56 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Pompeii Subject: Re: syllable sounds/lost in translation? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit cussing, very satisfying all the shhhhhhhhhhhh -Jesica ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 13:32:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: --==[ ANNOUNCING CYBERCULTURE ]==-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII = (new project - Alan) ANNOUNCING CYBERCULTURE AN ELECTRONIC FORUM FOR THE DISCUSSION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY AND COMMUNITY IN CYBERSPACE We are all dwelling in cyberspace, coursing through the wires, becoming cyborg and becoming human, alone at the keyboard, together online. We are subjects of a realm which offers new ways of envisioning Self and Oth- er(s), and where a global cyberculture is in the process of creation. Cyberculture is devoted to an examination of the new subjectivities and collectivities that are emerging. We are interested in the cultural, political, philosophical and psychological issues engendered, on all levels of the social. The Cyberculture email list is not a community-forming enterprise as such, but a place to discuss culture and community online. The list will remain focused on these topics; it will also be a clearing-house for work-in-pro- gress, calls for papers, and so forth. Some issues that may be relevant: * the formation (or ad hoc re-constitution) and functioning of online communities, such as Quake Clans or MUD/Usenet/e-mail groups; * the place of the political in online communities and the functioning of power online; * work on sex, gender, race, sexual behaviour in relation to online (vir- tual) subjectivity; * the implications of symbolic and technological extensions of the human (cyborg, android theory, etc.); * financing the Net, the production of the Net consumer, and so forth; * the social implications of computer interfaces and operating systems - in other words, the role of the apparatus in online behavior and commun- ity; * and the interactions between online and offline culture (how social/ cultural ideas shape online and offline 'realities'). This will be a relatively open list - posts on all aspects of cyberculture will be welcomed. We stress, however, that our intent is to explore these issues in the broadest sense, within a focused, substantial discussion, with a minimum of distraction. One concern we hope to address is the way in which much theoretical work on cyberspace to date reflects an exclusive, hegemonic bias, thus fore- closing some of the most interesting and radical possibilities for the development of cyberculture. We plan to challenge ourselves and the list members to integrate issues of race, gender, class and multiculturalism in our examinations and theories of cyberspace. ========================================================================== If you are going to subscribe to the Cyberculture mailinglist then --==[ PLEASE KEEP THIS MESSAGE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE! ]==-- The remainder of this message contains the information of how to SUBscribe or UNSUBscribe from the Cyberculture mailinglist. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To SUBscribe, send a message to: LISTPROC@CMHC.COM Do NOT use a subject line. Put the following in the body of the message: SUBSCRIBE CYBERCULTURE Firstname Lastname or go to the following website and complete the form: http://lists.cmhc.com/cyberculture/about.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To UNSUBscribe, send a message to: LISTPROC@CMHC.COM Do NOT use a subject line. Put the following in the body of the message: UNSUBSCRIBE CYBERCULTURE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:34:14 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Day Subject: Re: syllable sounds Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii At 16/12/98 13:47:25, "Lawrence Upton." wrote: # |& I remember some piece of research years ago that found that for most # |people the euphonically most beautiful word in English was "carcinoma." # # ye-e--e---ss # but at this closeness surely the euphony is tied up with the voice of the # individual uttering and the auditor's response to that pronunciation # # Pierre uttering "carcinoma" would produce a very different set of sounds # to... say Kate Adie - a BBC correspondent of great verbal-vocal precision, # arising not least from her being half or more Swedish - I am *assuming you # will have heard her. In case not, let's say Jerome Rothenberg... or Steve # McCaffery - gender balance! or Karen MacCormack or Anne Waldman. All quite # different in what they would do with that set of sounds. Given the range of # pronunciations /musical effects available to speakers, I don't see how one # word could be awarded an unequivocal accolade as the euphonically most # beautiful word # # AND the situation changes when the one word is put with another: # cellardoor carcinoma # OR # carcinoma cellardoor # quite different sonic AND stress interrelationships Indeed. And there has been some research in this area, involving cadences in speech and comparing them between dialects and between different languages, but I can't find it anywhere. The nearest I could get to it was , which might have some sort of Radio 2 link to the topic - phonosemantics, although it doesn't beauty. Or truth, come to that. I've always had a partialness to "quark", although "yellowhammer" seems to be cropping up a lot recently. Roger ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 14:01:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: poetry reading at the DC Arts Center (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII We hope you can join us on Sunday, December 20 at 3 p.m. at the DC Arts Center (2438 18th St. in Adams Morgan, just below the corner of 18th and Columbia) for a poetry reading by SHERRY BRENNAN and P. INMAN. SHERRY BRENNAN's chapbook TAKEN, published by D.C.'s primitive publications, was one of the highlights of D.C. poetry publishing in 1997. Last time she was here, she tore up a poem as she read it, and said certain things over and over without ever repeating herself. Now she's back again for another reading, and those of you who missed her the first time have a chance to not make the same mistake again. Her work has also appeared recently in CHAIN, MASS AVE, NO ROSES REVIEW, and SITUATION. By his own admission, P. INMAN was once described as "a typical language poet/unfeeling in small reviews." In books like RED SHIFT, VEIL, and CRISS CROSS, Inman has invented a poetic language unlike any other, where the lack of conventional referentiality has been replaced by a shifting verbal landscape of fractured phrases and dislocating repetitions that have no intention of getting you anywhere. We hope to see you there and for all festivities afterwards. /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 12:08:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Balestrieri, Peter" Subject: Re: Lost in Translation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Daniel, You forgot to list "Coca Cola," which, according to Ciardi, is the most recognizable word in the world, followed by OK. It would be interesting if a new Esperanto were growing, fueled by advertising and mass media. Pete Daniel Zimmerman wrote: So: the first 'international' poem that loses nothing [assuming it has something to begin with!] in translation: SAUNA neon alleluias! chocolate ninja czar a shock in yoga-jazz curry T-shirt! OK, cocoa bikini! platinum card! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 17:05:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Saddam, Turn on your Radio / TV , Change of Channel MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Baghdad's live now on TV, tracer bullets everywhere. They're going to impeach the President. Saddam plays into the expected narrative - he controls it. Derails the impeachment. The Republicans will call Saddam a Liberal. Everyone fulfills everyone. In both senses, Everything is All Over. "Bombs will hit the ground and people die," quote from the news. Suddenly "incoming" is seen. "Some sort of decoy." "A few moments ago some sort of impact with the ground." Saddam takes his turn at wri- ting the story. The Republicans will take over. Clinton, branded, his skin searing, smoking, turns his hands into buttons, the Y2K problem coming early. "Everything is full capacity." _Stay tuned._ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 17:13:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Iraq Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I presume that you've heard that the USA is now bombing Baghdad and that Trent Lott has announced that he will not support the President's policy. Feeling rather sick to my stomach at present about all of it. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:05:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Special Offer Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello last minute shoppers. Bombs falling, impeachment, Armageddon poetry special! Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series, gift subscriptions. Just send me your address & the recipient's, and I'll send him/her the latest, #38 Anselm Hollo, PEBBLES, and #39 Meredith Quartermain, VEERS. I'll include a personal note, saying the sub is a gift from you, and I guarantee they will get there before the end of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or the Solstice. You can send me the $10 bucks later (sub is a year's worth, 8 issues ppd.) The next two in the series will be going out mid-Jan., so please also send address corrections before I update my mailing list. # 40 will be Jonathan Williams, AMUSE-GUEULES FOR BEMUSED GHOULS, and #41 Rachel Blau DuPlessis, DRAFT 37: PRAEDELLE. Jonathan Williams is Jonathan Williams. Rachel's, a piece of her long poem-in-progress, was written in July 1998 in Umbria, with the bizarre limitations of the format in mind. The Spring duo will be Joan Retallack and Alan Jennifer Sondheim. Cheers, Sylvester Pollet 963 Winkumpaugh Rd. Ellsworth ME 04605 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 19:08:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Shoemaker Subject: The Drop In-Reply-To: <45ff9a31.367830a2@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I hesitate to post this. I wrote it earlier today--title and all--thinking mostly of an odd state of semi-lucid semi-paralysis, and thinking of this state in mainly "personal" terms. Then I went to the gym and got on the treadmill, with all the tvs tuned to the scene Alan has described, the scene of waiting for the bombs to drop, and the poem began to seem in some way "political." The Drop In some ways a limited state of consciousness, as if one were sitting in a sparsely furnished room. Some things are missing from the room, things one might want. But each object present shines in a clear light. This light comes slanting in as if from a high window. Even the swirling of motes in its beams seems a dance of precision and subtle logic. The words stand out on the page, big and few, just as they did in the school days of early youth. Time unfolds slowly, in no hurry. It is almost impossible to think of the future. This liberation is both disturbing and exhilarating. There are things one is supposed to do that will not be done. As always, there are terrible truths waiting. The single moment continues to expand, stretching like a bubble, reaching toward imponderable dimensions. One wonders, idly and without great concern, when it will burst. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 19:18:29 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: wag the dog MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit what happened to the good ole days when the movies imitated reality. we have emetically entered the 21st century. m ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 18:32:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Merle Bachman Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi, excuse my rude frontchannel, please. Does anyone have snail or email info on Merle Bachman? Please graciously backchannel. Thanks Clownily yours, Elizabeth Outlet Magazine -&- Double Lucy Books P.O. Box 9013, Berkeley, California 94709 U.S.A. http://users.lanminds.com/~dblelucy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 21:24:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Garrett Kalleberg Subject: TF7 unsound Comments: To: Poetics List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible". - Alfred Hitchcock The (un)sound cover to TF7 has been moved to a link on the Note page of this issue of The Transcendental Friend, replaced by user-friendly silence: http://www.morningred.com/friend/1998/12/cover.html Garrett Kalleberg mailto:editor@morningred.com The Transcendental Friend can be found at: http://www.morningred.com/friend ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 19:14:26 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Arghh Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain "So there is a coup in Congress--the sick fruition of an effort begun on Inauguration Day 1992. Well, at least nobody's been shot yet." Dan, You were about 4 hours early on that judgment. Or does bombing not count? Ron ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 19:26:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: a change of heart Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" POEM IMPEACH CLINTON I could not have written this poem yesterday ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 00:00:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII = There are cars in the streets of Baghdad with an all-different sky. Some cars there are in Manhattan where I see Baghdad. The whole pretty world is so safe for me, I can go out on the street and eat and walk. Sometimes I can ride on the subway here and there and it is so fun. It is SO FUN! I know that Mr. Saddam cannot reach me here with his Long and Evil Clause! I know we can do anything we want in Irak too and it is so fun! What a wond- erful War when you can Watch it and No one Gets Hurt! Timmy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 01:07:04 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Iraq MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Fuck fuck fuck, I just got home and the list has been my only sort of news since the morning. This is Clinton's rage no? I'll send in a petition in a sec. Susan Schultz wrote: > > I presume that you've heard that the USA is now bombing Baghdad and that Trent > Lott has announced that he will not support the President's policy. Feeling > rather sick to my stomach at present about all of it. > > Susan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 22:02:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: a change of heart Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > POEM > > IMPEACH > CLINTON > > >I could not have written this poem yesterday Impeach him for what? ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 01:23:24 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Iraq Comments: To: mzurawsk@stern.nyu.edu, verde@people-link.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is all I've got so far: I'll send more as I find it. OTHER SUGGESTIONS FOR ACTION From the Fellowship of Reconciliation Please contact: the President (President@whitehouse.gov ), the Vice-President (Vice.President@whitehouse.gov ), the Secretary of State (secretary@state.gov ) and your Senators and Member of Congress and urge them to support UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan to resolve the Iraq crisis. Also, please thank those members of Congress who made public statements against the proposed bombing (Lynn Rivers/MI, John Conyers/MI, Cynthia McKinney/GA and others (General address is http://www.house.gov/writerep/ Congressional Toll-Free numbers: Call during business hours. Ask the switchboard operator for the name of the Representative or Senator you want to bug. Of course, you won't get your elected official, but a staff member. It is a good idea to get the name of any staffer you establish some rapport with so you can ask for her/him in future calls. Also, there is a Congressional web page which will give you information about each Representative or Senator, http://www.capweb.net/directory.html. The toll-free numbers I have used with best success are (in order of infrequency of busy signals): 800-504-0031 888-723-5246 800 522 6721 888-723-5846 800-962-3524 Susan Schultz wrote: > > I presume that you've heard that the USA is now bombing Baghdad and that Trent > Lott has announced that he will not support the President's policy. Feeling > rather sick to my stomach at present about all of it. > > Susan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 01:14:06 -0700 Reply-To: emgarrison@uswest.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "E.M. Garrison" Subject: Query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Is anyone out there aware of a list for works in progress? A sounding board for poets in the wilderness? Please backchan., if so.......... Thanks , beth ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:58:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: Poem of the Day Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" HEATHENS (Freedom Jazz Dance or Dr. Jackle) 1 They Ugly on purpose! 2 They get high off Air Raids! 3 They are the oldest continuously functioning Serial Killers 4 They murder to Explain Themselves! 5 They think Humans are food. 6 They imitate conversation by lying 7 They are always naked and always dirty the shower & tuxedo don't help 8 They go to the bathroom to have a religious experience 9 They believe everything is better Dead. And that everything alive is their enemy. 10 Plus Heathens is armed and dangerous. --Amiri Baraka from _Heathens and Revolutionary Art_ Published in Heaven Chapbook Series #45 White Fields Press for more info: Notbow@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:15:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Special Offer In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, sylvester pollet wrote: > Hello last minute shoppers. Bombs falling, impeachment, Armageddon poetry > special! > Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series, gift subscriptions. Just send > me your address & the recipient's, and I'll send him/her the latest, #38 > Anselm Hollo, PEBBLES, and #39 Meredith Quartermain, VEERS. I'll include a > personal note, saying the sub is a gift from you, and I guarantee they will > get there before the end of Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or the Solstice. Under current (and all) circumstances, you may as well include Ramadan which is due to start about now. Mairead ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:59:50 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: miekal and Organization: Awkward Ubutronics Subject: Re: Query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit E.M. Garrison wrote: > > Is anyone out there aware of a list for works in progress? A > sounding board for poets in the wilderness? > Please backchan., if so.......... no don't b/c, go public, that's a good question ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:59:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Poets of the MLA In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:58 AM -0800 12/10/98, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: >Mark your calendars! > >Poets of the MLA > >Tuesday, December 29, 7:30 p.m. >New College Theater >777 Valencia Street >$5 > >Every year the Modern Languages Association convenes during the last week >of the year somewhere in the world and this year it's San Francisco's turn. >Small Press Traffic has invited many of the finest poets in the world to >read for five minutes apiece, a kind of Supermarket Sweep of the mind. They >include Beth Anderson, Charles Bernstein, Stephen Cope, Benjamin >Friedlander, Loss Pequeno Glazier, Carla Harryman, Pierre Joris, Tan Lin, >Nicole Markotic, Andrew Mossin, Sianne Ngai, Jena Osman, Ted Pearson, Bob >Perelman, Meredith Quartermain, Jerome Rothenberg, Lisa Samuels, Gail >Scott, Lytle Shaw, Chris Stroffolino, Barrett Watten. > >We'll post a reminder closer to the date. wow what a dizzying festyble of semantickle cosmo-chaos. i am expecting my ears to flap off my head and wing their way up to the aether. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 10:28:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: Arghh (rack) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Preface: Here are some personal views of mine shoddily disguised as poetry. It's the only way to sneak them onto the List. Consider Robert Duncan & a Tradition hereby "mentioned." While keeping in mind that I can write this awful drivel without fear of arrest or state violence (violence to me individually), the idea that posting a poem to 666 hypothetical readers, or protesting on the Boston Common later today, or calling a Congressperson, is akin to pissing in the wind. Why get angry about what one won t understand? No sane person actually lives in Iraq. It has taken only a quarter century to apprehend Pinochet. At least now the murders are almost Official. So US began by bombing Baghdad one Wednesday. On Thursday a vote to impeach had been slated. Not thru the president only did we begin bombing for no one in the House questions the act. The right do so belongs to US. And the bombing began well before Ramadan (a compensatory holiday for the heathen who lack christmas, and for this convenient scheduling the NSC claim benignity, a further token of our good will). That the bombing coincides with impeachment proceedings brings media attention to the "highly suspicious" timing of the attack, but no one--not a single voice with the capacity to reach large numbers (that is, the "liberal" media)-- will question the god-given right of US to bomb Baghdad. The major paper in Boston said "Saddam's response was a defiant call to arms" as if defiance constituted defending oneself against what the major paper in Boston called "waves of cruise missiles and bombers" because the US has made it plain for half a century that any attempt to repel US attacks is an act of intolerable rebellion. At 07:14 PM 12/16/98 PST, you wrote: >"So there is a coup in Congress--the sick fruition of an effort begun on >Inauguration Day 1992. Well, at least nobody's been shot yet." > >Dan, > >You were about 4 hours early on that judgment. Or does bombing not >count? > >Ron > > >______________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 17 Dec 1998 10:56:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: general clinton is not a language poet In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19981216122003.0068a350@po7.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The main point--ignore 'em all and tear down the capitalist system. (Yes: i know it takes a while; i'm working on it!!) A coup within the republicrat machine, one right-wing against the other right-wing, gets my blood up even less than it does Daniel's. This approach has the lovely side benefit that you don't have to pay attention (with any degree of personal investment) to Starr, clinton, the much missed Newt etcccc. Of course when someone launches a war to get around impeachment, all bets are off.... But it does illustrate that the existing system is among the most barbaric and irrational of all options... vladimir illyich prejsnar On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, daniel bouchard wrote: > At 01:15 PM 12/11/98 PST, Ron Silliman wrote: > >Has anyone noticed that what's happening in Congress right now isn't an > >impeachment but a coup? > > > > I noticed. I think. I've got to write this note quickly though and beat out > the lunchtime crowds at Filene's Basement. > > In new england there is a mechanism in people that aims for the worst in > particular situations. For example, if it is cold and raw and ugly outside, > one would say to one's fellow, "well, at least it ain't snowing." Or, if > there is heavy snow and a tree falls on your house, one would say "well, at > least it didn't hit the truck." And so on. > > So there is a coup in Congress--the sick fruition of an effort begun on > Inauguration Day 1992. Well, at least nobody's been shot yet. > > Ken Starr, he "investigated" a Clinton real estate investement, and no one > particularly cared. > So "travelgate" came to pass, and no one was impressed. > Contributions to the Clinton campaign were scrutinzed but the public lacked > enthusiasm. > Legions of felt-up associates came forward but no one in power was so > shameless as to pretend they were interested in "protecting" women from > sexual harassment. > Now the leader of the free world, in covering his ass for screwing around, > is accused of perjury and will be tried for high crimes and treason. > > This is all still pretty tame by Roman standards. > > All public officials know well enough from this day forward not ever to > fuck with health care again; no socialization of any industry whatsoever. > > > The trouble is I have no compulsion to defend the guy. > The problem is I hate his enemies more than I hate him, > and I hate him a lot. > The gist of it is there is nothing one can do about it anyway. > I guess we'll get what we deserve by christmas anyway. > The interesting part is borne out of mandatory passivity. > The interesting part is free lessons in double-plus bad speak. > Tiberius was a sexual predator too. > Clinton is not fit to lace his sneakers. > The interesting part will begin once he's gone. > > > Thankfully I am a provincial and have few international associates to be > embarrassed before. > > > > > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > 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, 17 Dec 1998 09:00:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: address query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I need to get in touch with Daphne Marlatt and Gerrit Lansing. (need phone numbers and/or email addresses). If anyone has info could you please backchannel me? Thanks, Lisa Jarnot ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 11:18:04 -0500 Reply-To: levitsk@ibm.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Levitsky Subject: Re: Demos today SF & NYC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Last Update: 12/17/98 WAR ALERT! EMERGENCY DEMONSTRATION IN NYC AND SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, 5 pm, THURSDAY, DEC. 17: DON'T BOMB IRAQ! END THE SANCTIONS NOW! SATURDAY NOON DEMONSTRATIONS: NYC: SW corner 34th & 7th; SAN FRANCISCO: 24th & Mission; and Wash. DC (info to be announced) There will be a demonstration in New York City at 5:00 p.m., Thursday, December 17, in Times Square at 43rd Street and Broadway. The demonstration is sponsored by the International Action Center, Fellowship of Reconciliation, War Resisters League and others. The demonstration in San Francisco Bay Area will be at 5:00 p.m. at the Berkeley BART Station. Call 415-821-6545. Ramsey Clark, of the International Action Center stated, "A new bombing of Iraq will certainly kill hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians. Just because Richard Butler, the chairperson of UNSCOM, contends that he is displeased with Iraq's compliance with UN inspectors, does not give the Clinton administration the rights to carry out a wanton act of mass murder ." For press interviews, information and analysis contact the International Action Center at 212-633-6646. Contact: Deirdre Sinnott, Brian Becker, Sarah Sloan, or Sara Flounders. http://www.iacenter.org/demo1216.htm ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:47:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: Why Impeach Clinton? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tosh's question, which hardly seems worth answering, if he has to ask: for waging an illegal war. Congress has to declare war. True, they never declared war on Vietnam, and it's okay with me if retroactively JFK, LBJ and Nixon are impeached for the same crime.(The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a means to sneak around the constitutional requirement). And since Congress appears to support this illegal war, impeach them, too. Americans make so much of the Constitution--yet Representatives flout it at will. Even the to-me dubious authority to wage war of the United Nations has been flouted this time. And I am ashamed of Britain that they permit their government and armed forces to murder Iraqis to save Bill Clinton's skin. If you know any history, here's another poem: THE WAR OF JENKIN'S EAR THE WAR OF CLINTON'S ASS Kudos to Rachel Levitsky, for being the Conscience of this List, and for keeping Poetic Justice alive. David ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 08:41:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: Iraq Comments: To: Rachel Levitsky In-Reply-To: <36789F88.2569@ibm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII At least a month ago I was only half joking that Clinton would bomb Iraq in time for the impeachment vote, and people who follow Middle East events were quite prepared for the eventuality. The fact that he returned from Israel/Palestine with the Palestinians once again making concessions and Netanyahu once again raising new demands to stall the "peace process" and then goes on to launch war against Iraq -- it's all too stupendous to grasp. Stop the war/stop the impeachment: the coup is getting more and more complex. Have you ever seen so many Republicans object to bombing anyone, much less Iraq? All of this connects to issues of poetics: people were discussing referentiality and nonsense before, and I would suggest that recent political discourse has gone way beyond Jabberwocky. Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 12:06:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: CALL FOR FLOODNET ACTION FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST (fwd) Comments: To: Fop MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE >From the Electronic Disturbance Theater CALL FOR FLOODNET ACTION FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST VITRUAL SIT-IN ON THE WHITE HOUSE WEB SITE Friday, December 18, 1998 FROM 10:00 AM TO 4:00 PM (Washington D.C. TIME) FROM 4:00 PM TO 10:00 PM (GMT- GREENWICH MEAN TIME) http://www.aurorablue.org/projects/rdom/zapsPublic/ddkfoyer.htm ******************************* We oppose the U.S. military attack on Iraq and believe that the timing of this assault is designed to detract attention from President Clinton's impending impeachment hearing in Congress. We do not accept the logic of the White House and the Pentagon that Iraq poses a national security threat. If any country is guilty of harboring weapons of mass destruction it is the United States. We know that the U.S. government views the Middle East as a strategic area because, in part, it is an oil rich region. And we know the United States consistently uses the veil of "national security" as a means to pursue and justify its agenda of global economic domination. We support the skeptical and angry views of the Russian, Chinese, and Iraqi ambassadors to the United Nations Security Council who strongly voiced their opposition to U.S. and U.K. aggression against Iraq. We are saddened by the images on CNN of the innocent people who were injured in the first hours of the aerial bombardment. Moreover, we are aware that these victims are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have either died or suffered greatly since the first Gulf War in 1991 and under U.S. backed sanctions that have existed since then. We support the lifting of sanctions against Iraq. We support the efforts of international human rights organizations, groups like Friendship Across Frontiers, and other sectors of international civil society who have been working for years to help the Iraqi people. We do not support Saddam Hussein but we believe it is not our right as Americans to go beyond merely having opinion. It is up to the Iraqi people, and others in the Arab world, to remove Saddam Hussein from office, if that is their desire and will. We believe the age of imperialism should come to an end. It is quite telling that the imperial power of the 19th century, Great Britain, and the imperial power of the 20th century, the United States, have joined forces alone as we enter the 21st century. In one instance, we agree with a characterization of the United States, made by Iraqi leaders. The history of U.S. military and intelligence intervention, both covert and overt, in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and domestically within sovereign Native American territory, is enough evidence to support the classification of this country as an Evil Empire. We support all efforts to denounce, oppose, protest, and resist the joint U.S.-U.K assault on Iraq, both domestically within the United States and England, in other European countries, in Middle Eastern countries, and throughout the world. We recognize that resistance to the current bombardment of Iraq, and resistance to all future war, will take place in two spheres. One is on the ground, in the streets, in offices, in universities, in factories - in real spaces. The other is on the Net, in what the Pentagon now calls "battlespace.=94 And we support the development and practice of joint virtual-real actions of resistance. We do not believe that only nation-states have the legitimate authority to engage in war and aggression. And we see cyberspace as a means for non-state political actors to enter present and future arenas of conflict, and to do so across international borders. We do not know how long the current U.S.-U.K. aerial assault on Iraq will last. Indications are that it will be short-lived. It may therefore not be an appropriate or strategic moment to attempt to inspire, coordinate, and sustain a campaign of virtual-real actions of resistance. We do feel, however, compelled to take some action. And therefore we will use FloodNet, the same tool we have been using against web sites of the Mexican government, to now make a symbolic gesture of our opposition to the current assault on Iraq. We therefore urge all people of good conscience who have the clarity of mind to oppose these aerial assaults to join us in a ongoing, nonviolent, virtual sit-in on the White House web site. We urge you to join us in a FloodNet Action for Peace in the Middle East. ********************************** Friday, December 18, 1998 FROM 10:00 AM TO 4:00 PM (Washington D.C. TIME) FROM 4:00 PM TO 10:00 PM (GMT- GREENWICH MEAN TIME) http://www.aurorablue.org/projects/rdom/zapsPublic/ddkfoyer.htm The Electronic Disturbance Theater ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 12:01:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Exuent Gaddis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > December 17, 1998 > William Gaddis, 75, Innovative Author of Complex, Demanding Novels, Is > Dead > By MEL GUSSOW > William Gaddis, author of "The Recognitions" and "JR," and a novelist of > immense range, complexity and satiric humor, died Wednesday at his home in > East Hampton, N.Y. He was 75. > Gaddis was one of the most innovative and demanding of writers. His four > published novels stand tall and totemic in the field of modernist > literature. For "The Recognitions," his first novel, in 1955, he was > compared to James Joyce. With other books, critics drew parallels with > Malcolm Lowry and Herman Melville. Aspects of all three and others figured > in his work, but most of all he was, in Cynthia Ozick's words, "an > American original." > Reviewing Gaddis's 1985 novel, "Carpenter's Gothic," in The New York Times > Book Review, Ozick looked back on "The Recognitions" as "the most > overlooked important work of the last several literary generations." It > was, she said, "a vast fiction about fabrication and forgery, about the > thousand faces of the counterfeit, and therefore, ineluctably, about art > and religion." > "Carpenter's Gothic," Ozick said, was an "unholy landscape of a novel -- > an extra turret added on to the ample, ingenious, audacious Gothic mansion > William Gaddis has slowly been building in American letters." In her > judgment the book marked a turning point in his career; admirers hoped > that it would bring him a wider audience. > Despite rapturous reviews and a covey of awards (including two National > Book Awards and a MacArthur "genius" grant), he was not destined to have a > popular readership. He was often considered one of the least read of > important American writers. But his books have become contemporary > classics. > As his reputation grew, he was surrounded by academics seeking symbols and > offering deep analyses of his work. He maintained his equilibrium, saying, > "What can I do if people insist I'm cleverer than I think I am?" > Observing Gaddis at a writers conference in the Soviet Union in 1985, > Louis Auchincloss said that he was "reserved and quiet, impeccably clad, > with the patient composure of a man of the world and the piercing eye of a > wit," and that he spoke "in measured tones of the small sales that the > serious novelist might expect." > Gaddis was born in Manhattan on Dec. 29, 1922, grew up in Massapequa, > N.Y., and went to boarding school in Connecticut and Farmingdale High > School on Long Island. He studied English literature at Harvard > University, and wrote stories, poems, essays and reviews for the Harvard > Lampoon. In his senior year, he was asked to resign from the college after > he and a friend were involved in an altercation with the police. > In New York, he worked as a fact checker at The New Yorker, and spent his > free time in Greenwich Village with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and other > writers of the Beat Generation. Leaving New York, he traveled through > Mexico and Central America, joining insurgents in Costa Rica during a > brief civil war. Subsequently he went to Spain and Africa, gathering > experience and material while working on "The Recognitions." > He continued work on the novel through the early 1950's. Published in > 1955, it weighed in at a hefty 956 pages. It received generally > unappreciative reviews. In a brief one in The New York Times Book Review, > Granville Hicks said that the author had "ostentatiously aimed at writing > a masterpiece," but had written a book that was "no more than very > talented or highly ingenious or, on another level, rather amusing." Gaddis > said the book's reception was "a sobering experience." > It was 20 years before he published another novel, but during the > interval, "The Recognitions" was reprinted in a paperback edition and was > published abroad, and it began building an underground reputation for the > author. To continue his fiction, Gaddis supported himself by teaching and > writing nonfiction on assignment. For four years, he worked in public > relations for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. In 1963 he won a National > Arts and Letters grant and, four years later, another from the National > Endowment for the Arts. > In 1974, "The Recognitions" was reissued in a mass market paperback. Tony > Tanner took that occasion, in a review in The New York Times Book Review, > to extol Gaddis, ranking him alongside Thomas Pynchon as an > experimentalist: "In its scope, its witty-serious use of erudition, its > endless exploitation of the resources available to a modern text, its > brilliant use of language, and, not least, its marvelous humor and range > of tone," the book seemed to him "one of most important American novels > written since the last war." > By the time "JR" was published the following year, Gaddis had achieved the > recognition that had been denied him upon publication of his first novel. > In The New York Times Book Review, George Stade characterized the theme of > "The Recognitions" as "the multiple and paradoxical relations between > recognition and forgery," and said the book had raised the question > whether "all human products and activities are each no more than items in > a series of copies for which there is no original." > The reviewer continued that "as much, and more" could be said about "JR," > and concluded that "no recent novel I know of with anything like the > fullness or accuracy of 'Jr' is at once so inventive and subtle in the > structure of relations among its parts." > The title character of "JR" is an 11-year-old who becomes a wizard of Wall > Street. In a Paris Review interview, Gaddis explained why the character > was so young. "He is in this prepubescent age where he is amoral" and > "dealing with people who are immoral, unscrupulous," he said, "whereas his > good cheer and greed he considers perfectly normal." > Praised by William H. Gass and other writers, "JR" won the National Book > Award. "Carpenter's Gothic" followed in 1985. At 262 pages, it was > Gaddis's shortest work. At the time of the book's publication, the author > said in an interview that there was no underlying scheme to his novels. > "There is an obligation not to bore or be bored yourself in doing your > work," Gaddis said. "If a writer is bored, the reader will be too." For "A > Frolic of His Own" in 1994, a book about plagiarism and intellectual > property, he won his second National Book Award. > In addition to his daughter, a novelist who lives in Asheville, N.C., and > Sag Harbor, N.Y., he is survived by a son, Matthew Hough Gaddis, a > filmmaker in Manhattan. > In "JR," the writer Jack Gibbs is trying to finish a book titled "Agape > Agape." Before his death, Gaddis finished his fifth novel, also titled > "Agape Agape." It is, said his son, an extension of that original idea in > "JR," a novel about "the secret history of the player piano." The player > piano was an early obsession of the author, who considered it to be an > example of a "a nonparticipatory art form." In other words, the new Gaddis > will be about the destructive elements of mechanization and the arts > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 13:34:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: Re: what we deserve Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Dan -- do you think what we deserve is a govt. where the strongest branch by far is congress, which seems likely if impeachment passes in the house, irregardless of what happens in the Senate. The ramifications of impeachment seem densely layered & scary, despite Clinton's lunacy. At 01:15 PM 12/11/98 PST, Ron Silliman wrote: >Has anyone noticed that what's happening in Congress right now isn't an >impeachment but a coup? > I noticed. I think. I've got to write this note quickly though and beat out the lunchtime crowds at Filene's Basement. In new england there is a mechanism in people that aims for the worst in particular situations. For example, if it is cold and raw and ugly outside, one would say to one's fellow, "well, at least it ain't snowing." Or, if there is heavy snow and a tree falls on your house, one would say "well, at least it didn't hit the truck." And so on. So there is a coup in Congress--the sick fruition of an effort begun on Inauguration Day 1992. Well, at least nobody's been shot yet. Ken Starr, he "investigated" a Clinton real estate investement, and no one particularly cared. So "travelgate" came to pass, and no one was impressed. Contributions to the Clinton campaign were scrutinzed but the public lacked enthusiasm. Legions of felt-up associates came forward but no one in power was so shameless as to pretend they were interested in "protecting" women from sexual harassment. Now the leader of the free world, in covering his ass for screwing around, is accused of perjury and will be tried for high crimes and treason. This is all still pretty tame by Roman standards. All public officials know well enough from this day forward not ever to fuck with health care again; no socialization of any industry whatsoever. The trouble is I have no compulsion to defend the guy. The problem is I hate his enemies more than I hate him, and I hate him a lot. The gist of it is there is nothing one can do about it anyway. I guess we'll get what we deserve by christmas anyway. The interesting part is borne out of mandatory passivity. The interesting part is free lessons in double-plus bad speak. Tiberius was a sexual predator too. Clinton is not fit to lace his sneakers. The interesting part will begin once he's gone. Thankfully I am a provincial and have few international associates to be embarrassed before. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 14:01:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Re: what we deserve Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anselm, (is this Anselm's note?) Impeachment in the House won't necessarily make the House the strongest branch. The strongest branch of government over the past couple of years has been the Office of Independent Counsel, a new branch Grafted by the House to Propagate the demise of the Executive branch. And that House branch will likely experience a mighty Shaking when the next election rolls around. By "deserve" I don't necessarily mean the result Stemming from the last few weeks of impeachment proceedings. I mean it will be laid out for us, like an Xmas present under the Tree (and timely too), given by people who make decisions. Even so-called conservatives have conceded that polls exist which show 2/3 of the citizenry do not want the President impeached. But what people want is not at issue. I wonder if the division of votes will be downplayed or spotlighted in the press (i.e., ALL republicans FOR impeachment, ALL democrats and the single rep. who is neither D or R AGAINST). My bet is it will be highlighted, and if nothing happens (i.e., a riot) it will be drawn out. The last time this country had a bona fide impeachment, everyone was living in log cabins. (So the history books tell us.) I hope Clinton sticks it out. I hope he sits thru trial in the Senate and spills his entire bowl of beans. By "deserve" I mean a disavowal of faith in the system, a repugnance for the scope of political discourse in the country (comprising 10 degrees of a circle, if that), an impatience that less than half those eligible bother to vote, etc etc etc Would there be such a clamor today over the bombing of Baghdad if there were not impeachment proceedings going on? I think not. - db At 01:34 PM 12/17/98 -0500, you wrote: >Dan -- do you think what we deserve is a govt. where the strongest branch >by far is congress, which seems likely if impeachment passes in the >house, irregardless of what happens in the Senate. The ramifications of >impeachment seem densely layered & scary, despite Clinton's lunacy. > > > <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 17 Dec 1998 13:15:19 -0500 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: theory and poetics In-Reply-To: <199812160505.AAA08977@romeo.its.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII joe, is the argument, then, that theorizing one's poetics has now become so de rigeur that many such theorizations are not urgent, not compelling, and that the essay that collapses theory-poetry distinctions offers (or at least can offer, as in bromige's case) a more urgent and compelling statement of poetics? (bear with me as i conflate bernstein, perloff, and amato, and please draw distinctions where you see fit...) thanks, t. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:06:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Exuent Gaddis In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Okay, I know I often stick my steel-toed Doc Marten boot in my mouth when I try to fix Latin, but I'm pretty confident about this one. The above subject line should just be "Exit Gaddis," as only one of him, the one and only, passed on to glory. If more than one person leaves the stage at the same time, it's "exeunt," plural, and if everybody splits, "exeunt omnes," everyone's leaving. Goddang, ovary cysts make a gal cranky. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:16:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: joel lewis Subject: f.y.i. (x3) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** Russia may ask Lewinsky for help MOSCOW (AP) - Russian legislators considered a motion Thursday appealing to Monica Lewinsky to help halt the American attack on Iraq. "The State Duma appeals to Ms. Lewinsky to undertake corresponding measures to restrain the emotions of Bill Clinton," said the motion by nationalist lawmaker Alexander Filatov. Lawmakers in the Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, considered including the motion in a broader resolution denouncing the attack on Iraq. But seeking to speed up passage of the resolution, they approved it later Thursday without any additions. There was no separate vote on the Lewinsky amendment. See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2557652490-468 *** Heinz touts benefits of ketchup NEW YORK (AP) - Here's a new reason to pour ketchup on your next burger: It may help reduce your risk of cancer. With anemic growth in ketchup sales, the king of ketchup - Pittsburgh, Pa.-based HJ Heinz Co. - is unfurling a marketing campaign to tout the health benefits of the processed tomato concoction. Next month Heinz will join the growing number of food companies touting the health benefits of their products when it launches an ad campaign to show that its ketchup contains lycopene, an antioxidant which has been linked to reducing certain cancers. The print ads are scheduled for runs in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, USA Today, Health magazine and Prevention. See http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2557646311-63b *** Man held in piranha food choking GLENDORA, Calif. (AP) - A 26-year-old man was arrested after allegedly choking his mother because she didn't buy food for his two pet piranhas. Nathan Ricketts was being held Wednesday on suspicion of battery and possession of drug paraphernalia, Officer John Bur said. Bail was set at $100,000. "He choked her almost into unconsciousness," Bur said. Officers also confiscated two 7-inch-long piranhas that Ricketts had brought into the house earlier this week and placed in a 30-gallon aquarium. He refused to tell officers where he got the bloodthirsty South American fish, which are illegal to own. Wildlife officials ordered the fish destroyed, Bur said. ### ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:23:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: daniel bouchard Subject: Aarrgh// infinity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ... so you see, the question/dilemma is only whether the Chief Executive Weasel craftily staged an attack to divert attention from proceedings on Capitol Hill. It's the timing, the timing. ... the question must never be framed around whether U.S. has the right to bomb a city we've been starving for 7 years. That we may attack anyone (provided they are not strong enough to put up a fight) at any time is unquestionable. Poll: Americans support bombing of Iraq WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans overwhelmingly support President Clinton's decision to order air strikes against Iraq, according to three polls released today. About three-quarters of adults said they backed the action, polls taken by CBS, ABC and NBC showed. About 60 percent in the NBC poll said Clinton's action was warranted, while just over one in four Americans said they thought the military action was timed to delay impeachment proceedings that had been scheduled to begin today. House action on that front has been postponed indefinitely. So far, the decision to take action against Iraq has not changed public opinion about impeachment. In the ABC poll, 40 percent said the House should impeach the president, while 58 percent said he should not be impeached. Those numbers are essentially unchanged from last week. All three polls were conducted Wednesday night. ABC interviewed 510 people and NBC polled 503. Both polls error margins plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. The CBS poll was based on 413 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. <<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 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, 17 Dec 1998 16:27:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: need emailaddress for Rachel M. Daley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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, 17 Dec 1998 14:30:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Quartermain Subject: address query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can anyone provide an email address for Tom Vogel and/or Quarry West? If so please back-channel. Thanks. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 846 Keefer Street Vancouver B.C. Canada V6A 1Y7 Voice : 604 255 8274 Fax: 255 8204 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 14:36:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Trace Ruggles Subject: "degrade" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Has anybody else noticed how much the word "degrade" is being used in reference to the attacks on Iraq? It seems that with each major event there is a word or phrase that somehow describes the thought-form or psychic locale of the whole operation. The whole Clinton affair began with "perjury" and "private life", but it seems ironic that in the definition of "degrade" there is mention of reducing in rank, which is at the heart of the impeachment efforts. Does anybody recall what were some of the other "keywords" surrounding Bush's desert storm? --trace-- degrade \De*grade"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Degraded; p. pr. & vb. n. Degrading.] [F. d['e]grader, LL. degradare, fr. L. de- + gradus step, degree. See Grade, and cf. Degree.] 1. To reduce from a higher to a lower rank or degree; to lower in rank; to deprive of office or dignity; to strip of honors; as, to degrade a nobleman, or a general officer. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 17:44:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Exuent Gaddis In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ave, Gwyn, As a Doc Marten wearer and as Dog Latin writer, I am proud to say that no one caught my gaff a week ago, in which I failed to put "lector" in the vocative case. Vale, Gaga On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, Gwyn McVay wrote: > Okay, I know I often stick my steel-toed Doc Marten boot in my mouth when > I try to fix Latin, but I'm pretty confident about this one. The above ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:47:15 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Divizio Subject: Re: what we deserve MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >The trouble is I have no compulsion to defend the guy. >The problem is I hate his enemies more than I hate him, >and I hate him a lot. MAN........don't you see that THIS IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 16:16:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: Re: what we deserve MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I realize that this is a topic that everyond is talking about. This is not a water cooler. While I appreciate creative and/or critical responses to world politics, the possibilities of using this list for social and political organizing, this here is the kind of use of this list that I personally find to be inappropriate. The bombing of Iraq and the surreal political landscape surrounding it requires more than mindless chitchat. Divizio wrote: > > >The trouble is I have no compulsion to defend the guy. > >The problem is I hate his enemies more than I hate him, > >and I hate him a lot. > > MAN........don't you see that THIS IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 23:57:17 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Bennett Subject: Notice Published January 1999 Drums At New Brighton A new collection of poetry by Jim Bennett Published in the U.K. by Starwood Publishing under the sponsorship of The Seaside Heritage Trust In this new collection of poetry, jim Bennett explores the relationship between people and the places they inhabit, and the effects of modern life in distancing them from the natural world. Drums At New Brighton is an abstract from Painting On Sand, a full collection of poetry due in September 1999 What the critics said about "Lessons and Love", Jim Bennett's 1996-7 Poetry Tour "Amazing images, a real mix of the traditional and the modern." Signpost Christian Festival Magazine "Great stuff... Jim Bennett is an original." Poetry House Mag "A new name a new style... it is "New Metaphysical"... it is a style that deserves to be read widely." John Leyard Advance copies of Drums At New Brighton can be ordered from; GFK Enterprises, 39 Oransay Close, Sycamore Grove, Gt Billing, Northampton, NN3 9HF £3.50 includes the cost of p&p (Overseas £4.75) Past Time - from _ Drums at New Brighton We drove along the lanes that Wordsworth walked Past lakes whipped into white tipped waves, Past fields over which he strode for love, Past gift shops, flower shops, tea shops. Past bookshops selling the collected works. Past his home, his other home and hers. Then to Dove Cottage and the obligatory tour, To see the things he lived with, To hear the sound of creaking beams he heard. To smell the plaster, feel the wooden floor. To see a pen he wrote with And a letter written at this desk. But in it all no sign of him Just spores left in his wake He has gone, heaved anchor sailed off To find Arcadia. Arrived home past nine, Past time collating memories. Then found him lurking in a poem. Leasow Beach - From _Drums At New Brighton_ Wings frozen in rigor flight Soaring into death Elegance hidden by black tar The silent gull lies on the sand Once it lay on the thermals of the world Uplifted by invisible hands Shaping the air with each wing sweep As it sculled across the sky But now encased in death Its sightless eyes, and beak, wide Its final shriek locked in a swollen throat It lies stiff and cold on Leasow Beach We came, as we often do, to find shells, See the pool life, rest our feet on drying sand Instead, we found the gull, A metaphor mummified by waist. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:18:54 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Divizio Subject: Re: what we deserve MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >I realize that this is a topic that everyond is talking about. >This is not a water cooler. While I appreciate creative and/or critical >responses to world politics, the possibilities of using this list for >social and political organizing, this here is the kind of use of this >list that I personally find to be inappropriate. The bombing of Iraq and >the surreal political landscape surrounding it requires more than >mindless chitchat. "Wag the Dog" was kind of like wasting time. The gentleman's comment in question "The problem is I hate the...alot........hate the........hate hate hate.... Yes that's the problem. So OK.....as I get my feet wet here on this list perhaps I'll write something better than watercooler Chit chat. Sorry I'm very busy and too emotive. Humbly, David 2 Divizio ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 20:06:37 -0500 Reply-To: mcx@bellatlantic.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A. Jenn Sondheim wrote: > = > The whole pretty world is > so safe for me, I can go out on the street and eat and walk. david bromige wrote: > > I could not have written this poem yesterday When the car caught on fire at the Blair House: The Park Police rode-up en masse, thinking there was TERRRORRRISM afoot. And the horses were much bigger than the placards with magic-markers. So we fell into retreat. Obtaining the right vector analysis for piss in the wind and cruise mistle-toe. I don't live here anymore. How is it possible? Not to Explode. I don't live here anymore. mc ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 17:38:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Why Impeach Clinton? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Tosh's question, which hardly seems worth answering, if he has to >ask: What's wrong with answering a simple question? > >Even the to-me dubious authority to wage war of the United Nations has been >flouted this time. And I am ashamed of Britain that they permit their >government and armed forces to murder Iraqis to save Bill Clinton's skin. It didn't save Bush's ass when he bombed Iraq. Do you really think it will stop Clinton from being impeached by him (US) r bombing Iraq. I am sorry, but I feel you are wrong on these two points above. The Iraq issue is different from the current Impeachment issue. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 23:52:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Why Impeach Clinton? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David: The same act of congress that established the CIA also empowered the President to issue National Security Decision Directives, basically granting dictatorial powers to the Presidentto initiate military actions without Congressional approval for, I think, 60 days. Clinton doesn't seem to have issued such a directive in this case, but he does have the authority to do so. To characterize his actions, however repellent, as "illegal" doesn't wash. Vietnam, however, clearly fell under the definition of "illegal." I find more disturbing the eagerness to impute the motivation for the present carnage to a Clintonian oilspray-from-the-rear-bumper "Thunder Road" attempt to sabotage the impeachment process. Since when did cincidence translate automatically to cause? Didn't Hume [not to mdention Jung] disabuse us of this nonsense? _Something_ has to work for the guy: "Slick Wilie odomized by the Fortuitous"? Poetic Justice with a smile? I'd rather think so than believe that Clinton -- more right on than any president in recent memory -- would act so heinously. He really seems to believe he didn't perjure himself ["what 'is' is," &c]; why not grant him the benefit of [the? his?] doubt? The law does... The new Speaker's boffed a billion bimbos, evidently, BUT "uh, gee... no one ever asked me about it under oath" [see _asshole_ in the dictionary for his 8 x 10]. That turd wants to weasel on a technicality, but won't let Bill? "Gentlemen, start your engines." AMERIKA {not Clinton -- whaddya think? one gut runs this juggernaut?] has discovered Victor Frankenstein's Social Security card in its wallet and -- after vain [and vainglorious] attempts to remonstrate [don'tcha love that word?] with The Creature -- finds itself a galley slave in a trireme [not kayaking solo] hoping to ram Saddam's Ghost Armada. "Why Impeach Clinton?" Duh: so Gore can't get two terms! ;~( Dan david bromige wrote: > > Tosh's question, which hardly seems worth answering, if he has to > ask: for waging an illegal war. Congress has to declare war. True, they > never declared war on Vietnam, and it's okay with me if retroactively JFK, > LBJ and Nixon are impeached for the same crime.(The Gulf of Tonkin > Resolution was a means to sneak around the constitutional requirement). > And since Congress appears to support this illegal war, impeach them, too. > > Americans make so much of the Constitution--yet Representatives flout it at > will. > > Even the to-me dubious authority to wage war of the United Nations has been > flouted this time. And I am ashamed of Britain that they permit their > government and armed forces to murder Iraqis to save Bill Clinton's skin. > If you know any history, here's another poem: > > THE WAR OF JENKIN'S EAR > THE WAR OF CLINTON'S ASS > > Kudos to Rachel Levitsky, for being the Conscience of this List, and for > keeping Poetic Justice alive. David ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 22:17:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: what we deserve In-Reply-To: <3679749A.5D91@earthlink.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Joel, I couldn't disagree with you more. I was mighty relieved when I found people trying to squeeze out a somewhat coherent response to U.S./U.K. bombing of Iraq. I also have a lot of respect for the people who posted poems to the list today. You know, I have only ever seen the water cooler situation you disparage in movies. Mindless chitchat? How weird it would have been today if no-one attempted to lurch round their great awkward and inadequate craft to at least get in their sights the news of today. Expletives come easy to me when I think of your post. I will desist. Mairead On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, J Kuszai wrote: > I realize that this is a topic that everyond is talking about. > This is not a water cooler. While I appreciate creative and/or critical > responses to world politics, the possibilities of using this list for > social and political organizing, this here is the kind of use of this > list that I personally find to be inappropriate. The bombing of Iraq and > the surreal political landscape surrounding it requires more than > mindless chitchat. > > > > Divizio wrote: > > > > >The trouble is I have no compulsion to defend the guy. > > >The problem is I hate his enemies more than I hate him, > > >and I hate him a lot. > > > > MAN........don't you see that THIS IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM? > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 02:11:48 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc. Subject: water cooler poem MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Ffarewell, the rayn of crueltie! Though that with pain my libertie Dere have I boght, yet shall suretie Conduduyt my thoght of joyes nede. Of force I must forsake pleasure: A goode cause iust syns I endure Thereby my woo, which be ye sure Shall therwith goo me to recure. I fare as oon escaped that fleith: Glad is gone yet still fereth, Spied to be cawght, and so dredeth That he for nought his pain leseth. In ioyfull pain reioyse myn hert, Thus to sustain of eche a part; Let not this song from the estert; Welcome emong my plaisaunt smert. * Lueve tys new spelle checkere. I just moved & am now up and running. New address: David Baratier 3252 Indianola Ave, Apt A Columbus, OH 43202 614-263-7115 Ffarethee & be wyll, David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 00:28:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: address query In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I need to get in touch with Daphne Marlatt >Thanks, >Lisa Jarnot Daphne is being writer in resident at U. Saskatchewan this semester. But maybe she'll be home for Xmas. As far as I know she has never done e-mail. I just lookt, and dont have a Victoria phone number for her, but this last Victoria address: 1281 Denman St., Victoria, BC, V8T 1L7 George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 04:25:46 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: The New Web, Inc. Subject: One more time before it passes MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Contest $500 and 25 copies of the winning chapbook will be awarded for the finest collection of poetry received. Ruth Anderson Barnett will be the judge. Submit up to 32 pages of poetry. Include a cover letter with your name, address, phone number, poem titles, publication credits and a brief biography. Entry fee $7. Make all checks payable to Pavement Saw Press. All entries must be postmarked by December 20th, 1998 for consideration in this years contest. Each US entrant will receive a copy of the winning chapbook provided a 8 1/2 x 11 SASE with $1.01 postage is included, add appropriate postage for other destinations. All manuscripts will be recycled. Send all entries to: Pavement Saw Press / Chapbook Contest / 7 James Street / Scotia, NY 12302 --------------------------- 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 is awarded to the winner. Be well David Baratier, Editor, Pavement Saw Press ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 03:07:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: The poetics of impeachment Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > It didn't save Bush's ass when he bombed Iraq. Do you really think it will >stop Clinton from being impeached by him (US) r bombing Iraq. I am sorry, >but I feel you are wrong on these two points above. The Iraq issue is >different from the current Impeachment issue. Tosh is in agreement with 3/4 of the U.S. population, to whom it is not at all obvious that Clinton ordered these attacks AT THIS TIME as a diversionary and complicating tactic to delay/avoid impeachment. I suppose I am one of those the media has already characterized as *cynical* on this score--although to me it seems more *cynical* of Clinton to kill Iraqis at this time. I'm with Trent Lott (the Trent of yesterday, before he'd read the latest polls). I am reminded of the years in Berkeley in the late 60's, when Berkeley was so much in the news. It appeared to us-all that the war in Vietnam MUST come to a halt very soon--that our protests, which were getting so much ink and so much tv exposure, must somehow spread thru the nation as a whole. How mistaken! No longer resident in Berkeley, I nonetheless listen to its PBS station, KPFA, a great deal, and particularly during such crises as this one. After being all day long tuned-in to speaker after speaker who shares my views, I forget that many people are denied any contact with radical radio (I have no idea how that liberal station what's it's name is handling this issue). One speaker today, an expert on Middle East affairs, whose name I regret I didnt catch, was saying "if you believe there is no connection between impeachment and bombing Iraq, you believe that Santa is coming down the chimney next week and that the fairy came and took your tooth away." I grant you that this was not the reasoned part of his argument. For the reason that I live in a cocoon of radical truth, Tosh's question 'Why impeach Clinton?" [for illegal airstrikes on the civilian population of another sovereign nation] struck me as absurd. I apologize. I have a nose for this kind of political jiggery-pokery, and knew from the start that the Tonkin Gulf Incident was being manufactured in order to widen the war. This turned out to be true--many years later. But perhaps the problem is that I have insufficient respect for authority, which, after all, by its very nature, knows best. I will add that the naivite of even educated Americans, when it comes to foreign policy, fills me with dismay. Here's some more, but different, naivite: I AS IN IMAGINE I as in America I as in Iraq I as in East Timor I as in Indonesia I as in India I as in Pakistan I as in Russia I as in China I as in Libya I as in Israeli I as in Jordanian need I go on? An illegal++ airstrike is murder, is it not? An unsanctioned killing of...of your mother, Tosh, or your wife, or your child. Or mine. I as in Imagine. Maybe because as a child I was bombed (legally, however) by the Germans, I find it impossible to distance myself when even dark-skinned people are being burned and blasted apart. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the USA has not been subject to aerial blitzkrieg. Joel, I hope that this is not one of those "water-cooler" posts you had in mind. IMHO, what happens to the language of truth during such international "negotiations" has a strong connection with poetry and poetics. It feels that w/o Rachel Levinsky and Alan Sondheim, to mention just two, we would be fiddling while Rome burns. Or I mean Baghdad. True, I can't imagine Samuel Beckett posting to the List in protest against American foreign policy, for there seems little to be done, and he was often the first to notice when such was the case. Perhaps mine is a pointless sounding-off, and if so, I apologize again. A d even if the commander-in-chief can be taken at his word,I dont know how you locate half-a-glass of anthrax--enough for us all--with even ten thousand Cruise missiles. Oowww! Damn, but it hurts to be burned! Happy Ramadhan. David ++ thanks, Dan Zimmerman, for the qualification re Clinton not needing Congress to ok the first 60 days of lethal violence against other peoples using our tax dollars i.e. our selves. However, he does require the UN Security Council's okay, and this he does not have. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 06:10:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Joel Kuszai, Take a Vacation In-Reply-To: <3679749A.5D91@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 17 Dec 1998, J Kuszai wrote: > I realize that this is a topic that everyond is talking about. > This is not a water cooler. > mindless chitchat. Joel, If this is the kind of frontchannel list "moderation" thought necessary by the team of list "moderators," I must say that I prefer the old method: Deletion. Just delete the posts that don't pass your obviously high standards of what constitutes Non-mindless chatter [maybe all the posts having to do with Mindless Commerce and Careerist Buttkiss, for instance]. Rather than posting your attempts at moderation in a beery swagger (had you been drinking?), why don't you just abandon your job altogether: you obviously find the work burdensome, judging by this and the last few frontchannels to your Fellow Cop, Charles Bernstein. You and Bernstein can't seem to decide between the Invisible Hand and the Heavy Hand: "Ahh, do I delete Henry's posts or just attack him as a moron?" "Do I delete this new guy's post or just slur a paragraph about mindlessness?" You keep going this way, you two, and this list is going to become as boring as CB's poetry. And that's saying something. Loosen up, Kuszai: you've got the ring of the Office Dead in your voice. Get thee to the MLA, boy: that'll put some spring in your step. Your comment to D was frankly rather piggish, far more "mindless" and indeed more offensive to my sensibility than David's emotive outburst. The US is bombing Iraqis again and you want to diddle about what's an appropriate comment? If YOU can make one, post it. Gabriel ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 07:54:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: Re: Joel Kuszai, Take a Vacation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I wish to apologize for the lack of imagination in my insults to joel and charles this morning: I was at the christmas sherry [Savory & James, Manzanilla {imported}] and had just switched to some port when I wrote that; my liver and pancreas hadn't yet adjusted, sending my brain into a hypoglycemic reeling [any port in a storm]; will try in future to show the muse into my malice. gaga ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:04:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand Subject: joel, ignore creepy posts with your name in subject header hey joel, and list i thought perhaps your response re: water cooler chat might have been better made backchannel and in milder tones, but it was not such an affront to humanity that it deserved gabriels deeply personal, nasty post. i am sorry that appeared on the list. e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:54:26 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ramez Qureshi Subject: syllable sounds arn't quite so loud as bombs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Came across a list of words voted most agreeable to the British ear in a 1980 _Sunday Times_ poll. 1)melody 1)velvet 3)gossamer 3)crystal 4)autumn 5)peace 6)tranquil 7)twilight 8)murmur 10)caress 10)mellifluous 10)whisper No carcenoma! Though, given recent events, i'd be glad to in a twilight hour, whisper it repeatedly, with a melody, into the ears of Mr's Clinto & Blair. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:12:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: Re: "degrade" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit NAKED AGGRESSION At 02:36 PM 12/17/98 -0800, you wrote: >Has anybody else noticed how much the word "degrade" is being used in >reference to the attacks on Iraq? It seems that with each major event >there is a word or phrase that somehow describes the thought-form or >psychic locale of the whole operation. > >The whole Clinton affair began with "perjury" and "private life", but it >seems ironic that in the definition of "degrade" there is mention of >reducing in rank, which is at the heart of the impeachment efforts. > >Does anybody recall what were some of the other "keywords" surrounding >Bush's desert storm? > >--trace-- > >degrade \De*grade"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Degraded; p. pr. & > vb. n. Degrading.] [F. d['e]grader, LL. degradare, fr. L. > de- + gradus step, degree. See Grade, and cf. Degree.] > 1. To reduce from a higher to a lower rank or degree; to > lower in rank; to deprive of office or dignity; to strip > of honors; as, to degrade a nobleman, or a general > officer. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:17:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: The poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well my email system went down when we started bombing iraq, go figure... i was relieved to see around here responses/reactions to this sad event, b/c this is one of the places where i hang out and i like to think you poets and poetry-inclined are all concerned citizens... tom o, from that (now (three day) old) thread: yeah, that's about right, your articulation of things... ---- i don't think clinton should be impeached, and i don't think we should be bombing iraq... so i surely don't think we should be bombing iraq now, and i don't think clinton should be impeached now... as kass would say, lots of political hay being made on all sides of this issue, even as blood is spilled "over there"... and that said: i *do* believe we (the planet earth and its tribal communities) need to devise some sort of international mechanism to remove tyrants (ok?) from "office" (we need international mechanisms for a LOT of things, incl. the environment)... i wish i had all the answers, but i'm positive that the answer is *not* to claim merely that all nations have a sovereign right to kill and torture their own citizens to their leaders' content---which thereby leaves us with the relative luxury of retreating into an apparently non-interventionist stance (while in actuality helping to install puppet regimes ad nauseum)... which is to say, i don't hold for isolationism, real or imagined... personally, i think that a military intervention into iraq using (de facto internationally constituted) ground troups---whose mission was, first and foremost, to remove hussein---would result in many fewer civilian casualties (but of course more military losses on "our" side), and would result in less damage to the iraqi infrastructure, which itself is causing such misery in that poor country... though obviously there's no "perfect" solution in this far-from-perfect world... my two bits' worth, from my swivel chair... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 06:41:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: david bromige Subject: loveliest of syllables, the Sunday Times... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" FOR READERS OF THE SUNDAY TIMES (Britpoetry List, please x-post) This mellifluous melody caressed my ears with its whispers and murmurs one crystal autumn gossamer velvet tranquil twilight: Peace to your sleep, Sunday Times reader, we do not murder to exist. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:29:57 EST Reply-To: Irving Weiss Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Irving Weiss Subject: mail art call MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Forwarding this. If already done so, please excuse. From: "tartarugo" To: "Jordi Riera" , "Jordi Barrachina" = <0535881j01@abonados.cplus.es>, "John Bennett" = , "Johel Cohen" = , "Joachim" , "jjp" = , "Jim Hayes" , = "Jean Michel Espinasse" , "Javier Creus" = , "Jane Marie Chambault" = , "James Durand" , "Jack Kid" = , "J. Lehmus" , "J Felter" = , "Ivana Martinez Vollaro" = , "Isabel Ron-Pedrique" = , "Irving Weiss" = , "industrias mikuerpo" = , "Ina Blom" , = "Illumination Gallery" , "IBIRICO-A.M.A.E." = , "Hugo Sil" , "Hugo = Pontes" , "Hugo Fernandez" = , "Horacio Espinosa" = , "Honoria" , = "Harry Polkinhorn" , "Hale Tenger" = , "Guy Ferdinande" , = "Guy Bleus" , "Gue Schmidt" = , "Group Public Projects" Subject: Mail Art Call Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 19:44:57 +0100 At the end of the exhibitions, a catalogue will be publish and send = to participants. Deadline for the first exhibition (Tarragona): February/28/1999. Send your works to the first exhibition to: Boek861/Taller del Sol=20 Apartado 861=20 43080 Tarragona=20 Spain More information at: http://www.fut.es/~boek861=20 http://www.teleline.es/personal/tartarug=20 http://www.crosset.net=20 http://www.geocities.com/Soho/Workshop/6345/vortice.htm Or writting to the organizers: C=E9sar Reglero Campos// Apartado 861// 43080 Tarragona// Spain=20 Tartarugo//Apartado 822// 36280 Vigo//Spain=20 Montse Forn=F3s// Bail=E9n 199, 2-1-//08037 Barcelona//Spain=20 Hans Braumueller// Osterstr, 98// D-20259 Hamburg// Germany=20 Clemente Pad=EDn// Casilla C. Central 1211// 11000 Montevideo// = Uruguay=20 Fernando Garc=EDa Delgado// Bacacay 3103// 1406 Buenos Aires// = Argentina Jose Emilio Ant=F3n//Atocha 69//28012 Madrid//Spain El=EDas Adasme// Urb. University Gardens 1009 Georgetown San Juan = PR 00927-4822=20 PLEASE, COPY AND PASS AU MA=20 (Acci=F3n Urgente de Mail Art) + Gom@ (Global Organization of Mail Artists) Le invita a participar en la exposici=F3n de Mail Art: =20 Por la libertad en la Ense=F1anza de las Artes: Readmisi=F3n de = Humberto Nilo ( La influencia de los reg=EDmenes totalitarios en la Cultura) T=E9cnica : libre. Formato: A4 No hay selecci=F3n. Las obras no se devolver=E1n. Pasar=E1n a formar parte de los = archivos de AU MA + Gom@ en Europa y Am=E9rica. Se organizar=E1 una exposici=F3n itinerante a trav=E9s de Tarragona = y Barcelona (Espa=F1a), Hamburgo (Alemania), Montevideo (Uruguay) y = Buenos Aires (Argentina). Es posible que el circu=EDto se ampl=EDe = a otras ciudades a=FAn sin confirmar. Documentaci=F3n peri=F3dica. Al final del itinerario se publicar=E1 un cat=E1logo que ser=E1 = enviado a todos los participantes. Fecha l=EDmite de admisi=F3n para la primera exposici=F3n = (Tarragona): 28-Febrero-1999. Enviar las obras a: Boek861/Taller del Sol=20 Apartado 861=20 43080 Tarragona=20 Spain M=E1s informaci=F3n en: http://www.fut.es/~boek861=20 http://www.teleline.es/personal/tartarug=20 http://www.crosset.net=20 http://www.geocities.com/Soho/Workshop/6345/vortice.htm O escribiendo a los miembros del comit=E9 organizador: C=E9sar Reglero Campos// Apartado 861// 43080 Tarragona// Spain=20 Tartarugo//Apartado 822// 36280 Vigo//Spain=20 Montse Forn=F3s// Bail=E9n 199, 2-1-//08037 Barcelona//Spain=20 Hans Braumueller// Osterstr, 98// D-20259 Hamburg// Germany=20 Clemente Pad=EDn// Casilla C. Central 1211// 11000 Montevideo// = Uruguay=20 Fernando Garc=EDa Delgado// Bacacay 3103// 1406 Buenos Aires// = Argentina Jose Emilio Ant=F3n//Atocha 69//28012 Madrid//Spain El=EDas Adasme// Urb. University Gardens 1009 Georgetown San Juan = PR 00927-4822=20 POR FAVOR, COPIA Y DIFUNDE =20 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:59:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: what we deserve In-Reply-To: <3679749A.5D91@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" While agreeing with Joel (and always suspicious of the tendency of my own political ventings to affirm my sense of righteousness and delusion of having taken action), it was Alan Sondheim's early note that alerted me (and perhaps others) to the bombing, for which I am grateful. I would not otherwise have known until the next morning. There is always the issue of language and image. Technocratic gloating in the media is particularly offensive here. But scenes from Baghdad remind us that the people our bombs are killing are indeed human. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:54:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: PotD Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" EVERY MORNING AFTER KILLING THOUSANDS OF ANGELS I I read a boy's poem called "Every Morning After Killing Thousands of Angels" I forget the poem, but the title won't leave me I drink some coffee read a paper read by millions all the misery all the destruction in the world herded into headlines and catch phrases the only part I trust is the financial page a completely blank space governed by the mechanics of capital and pure speculation 2 That boy's mornings and my mornings-- how are they different? 3 But the boy can see the angels' faces 4 What do you do after you kill them? I go out walking Where? To a river with a very big bridge over it Every morning? Every morning while my hands are still bloody 5 I can't kill thousands of angels but I walk a dry path to the beach the hot sky's still filled with sweating typhoon clouds the sea's a later color fall is not summer at the horizon narrow streams run through spaces silted with darkness weak-looking capillaries float on my thin hands: no place to anchor a big bridge 6 Noon at this end of the bridge everything shines shirt buttons decayed tooth an air rifle broken sunglass lens pink shells smells of seaweed river water mixing with the sea sand and as far as my footprints 7 It's my turn now I'll tell you about the world at the far end of the bridge the shadow world things and concepts totally shadow shadows feeding on shadows spreading, radiating like cancer cells decomposing, radiating like cancer cells decomposing organs and drowned bodies green thought swelling and distending medieval markets surging with merchants and prostitutes and monks cats, sheep, hogs, horses, cows every kind of meat on the butcher shop hooks but no blood anywhere 8 So I can't see the bridge unless I kill thousands of angels? 9 What sight excites me most sexually? the bridge has disappeared a riderless black horse crosses the world of light slowly, toward the shadow world but exhausted, it falls crying animal tears but not rotting gleaming directly to bone pure white bone and then to earth and then dawn comes I've got to go out and live after killing killing thousands of angels --RYUICHI TAMURA Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Drake Japan (b. 1923) Ryuichi Tamura was born in Otsuka, a suburb of Tokyo, and he grew up in the black room of a restaurant run by his mother. This was during an era of natural disasters, economic hardship, and militarism in Japan. In an effort, he said, to "break away from the conservativism and anachronism" of his culture, he began writing self-consciously modernist poems in school and fell in with a group of poets who looked to T.S. Eliot's work for inspiration. He studied at Meiji University but before graduation was drafted into the navy during the last two years of WWII. In postwar Tokyo writers questioned all the old values. "We were glad to be the living dead," he has said of that time, "with nothing to lose. We wanted to question the basic principles behind an industrial society based on war and imperialism, I tried to make my poems into holes or windows that would let me see through the indefinable spiritual waste as well as the obvious spiritual destruction." Since that time Tamura has continued to explore alternatives to the industrialized mechanisms of contemporary life. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:42:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jasper Bernes Subject: Re: water cool Comments: To: David Baratier In-Reply-To: <367B0B62.1D61AAC@megsinet.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Please fire cruise missiles at following: ELEGY WITH CROSSHAIRS Science is visiting the Middle East, today; the dollar is the new political dance craze people do in flames. The planes are invisible. A child licks fat snowflakes out of air, here. Were this the tropics, I could--perhaps--scrawl my scent on the street SOS. Instead the man who found my wallet eats nothing, in Mexico. I think of my passport in the landfill and nod. Recursive viral advertisements! like a trace poison leaked worldwide-- a man running back and forth in a field like a crazy wide receiver; a tap drip; a courtyard of exploding pigeons. Someone puts their love in singles and another in empties. The computers are drowning in numbers. I hate surrealism, they say, frothing. They think, logically, that it's a mutilation of a mutilation, a logarithm bending away from the earth's kiss. The computers drown in men's fingers. In their lightning speech, wildly dialing, the word for disease means cure, to touch a scalpel to a star is flower. It's not surreal. It's power. It's a bomb. ---J-)*&# Q. B%@,>( ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:02:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kuszai Subject: please don't bother to backchannel either MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. If it was up to me, I would have deleted you a long time ago. But, since I don't get to do what you want, and you do, I have decided to leave the list. I'm not trying to be dramatic. This list has been a lifeline for me and leaving it is not easy. I appreciated Alan's comments on the bombing and the poetry and critical discourse swirling around it. On the other hand, I do think I was pretty specific about what I objected to. I also noted that I was "personally" opposed to that sort of thing. So, with this in mind, I wish you all well. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:22:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either Comments: cc: kuszai@EARTHLINK.NET In-Reply-To: <367A5283.6B38@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as i've said, i just read through the poetix posts this morning... seems to me joel was responding specifically to >MAN........don't you see that THIS IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM? (by way of example) i don't see joel as the fucking problem... which is not to say i see the above as the fucking problem, either, or even that i see "mindless chitchat" as the fucking problem... i think one fucking problem is when discussion heats up to the point of sending little electronic bombs out across the ether... and i thought joel was trying to say (whatever you make of what he said or how he said it) that perhaps it would behoove us not to be too impetuous, that what we don't need, esp. at this moment in historical time, is to amp up our email to the status of weaponry, defensive or offensive, in order to generate more adversarial exchange... albeit it's true that the events of the past few days are bound to produce just that... come to think of it, maybe many of us *do* need to spend more time at the water cooler... hey, i'm on my way, gonna go soak my head, b/c i can't believe what's happening on the house floor, and in the skies over iraq, and--- best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 11:46:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Lancing a boil MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Enough is enough. Gudding, you may think you are hot shit in a champagne glass, but you are something less than luke warm diarrhea in a dixie cup. An absolute shit for sure. Your insults are unacceptable. Your apologies are unacceptable. Get off this list. -- ======================== Pierre Joris joris@csc.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ 6 Madison Place Albany NY 12202 tel: 518 426 0433 fax: 518 426 3722 ======================== Nomadism answers to a relation that possession cannot satisfy. — Maurice Blanchot ======================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:42:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: The poetics of impeachment Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tosh's question 'Why >impeach Clinton?" [for illegal airstrikes on the civilian population of >another sovereign nation] struck me as absurd. I apologize. I have a nose >for this kind of political jiggery-pokery, and knew from the start that the >Tonkin Gulf Incident was being manufactured in order to widen the war. This >turned out to be true--many years later. But perhaps the problem is that I >have insufficient respect for authority, which, after all, by its very >nature, knows best. When I asked the question "Why impeach Clinton?" I was responding to David's one sentence/poem "Impeach Clinton." At the time I didn't know if he was responding to the Iraq crisis or the ongoing debate in Washington about Clinton's sexual activity. I wasn't sure what David was talking about - so the question was very simple. Impeach him for what? And again, these are two different issues. If you want to impeach him for attacking Iraq - that is one issue. If you want to impeach him for lying under oath about his sex habits - that's another issue. I wasn't clear in regards to what David was responding to >need I go on? An illegal++ airstrike is murder, is it not? An unsanctioned >killing of...of your mother, Tosh, or your wife, or your child. Or mine. I >as in Imagine. Maybe because as a child I was bombed (legally, however) by >the Germans, I find it impossible to distance myself when even dark-skinned >people are being burned and blasted apart. Unfortunately for the rest of >the world, the USA has not been subject to aerial blitzkrieg. Actually a friend of mine - a painter from Iraq, his brother died in Iraq due to the fact that he couldn't get medical aid due to the restrictions placed by the U.S. as well as other Western countries. So yes, I am touched by any forms of violence committed - where ever it is happening in Europe, Asia, or down the street from me. I think ANY airstrike is murder - because someone (almost always) innocent gets killed. best, Tosh ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:54:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hilton Manfred Obenzinger Subject: Re: The poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The attack on Iraq was expected for some time -- particularly that it would occur before Ramadan (a perverse nod towards religious propriety and the fact that the Muslim world would be even more enraged if the bombing was done during the holy month). US policy has been directed towards "containment" of Iraq (and Iran) for some time. There is no expectation (and possibly no real desire) to overthrow Saddam Hussein, simply because there are no compliant "good" dictators to take his place. Bombings and further aggression have been on the agenda for years. It's quite likely that if there was a Republican president in office now exactly the same policy would be carried out -- since there is no substantial difference in policy regarding protecting "our" oil between the two parties. Clinton's bombing MAY be timed to coordinate with the impeachment crisis (although, keep in mind, the machinery has been in place for nearly a month) but the bombing policy has not been invented for domestic political purposes. I say this in response to David Bromige's understandable rage -- but the fact is that Clinton is not being impeached for war crimes but for sex crimes, and while the rightwing impeachment coup MAY have serious implications for foreign policy, it certainly has serious implications for domestic policy, the "culture wars," the rise of the Christian right, etc. (which in turn may create even more dangerous foreing policies, i.e. the return of "Armageddon" mentality to the White House). I just had dinner with an Egyptian novelist last night who remarked on the strangely untenable positions so many people are being put in: he doesn't like Saddam Hussein, but he is no friend of Clinton; he objects to the bombing, but the opposition is dominated by Islamic radicals that he can have nothing to do with -- the contraries go on. Same here: Stop the bombing -- and stop THIS impeachment. As untenable as such a contradictory position may seem. Events swamp poetics; poetics are shaped by "smart" bombs -- so I think it's appropriate to discuss this here. Without insults. Hilton Obenzinger ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:58:10 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen McKevitt Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Hotmail has a wonderful email function. It's called "block sender." I haven't employed it yet, but I imagine it could solve the should I stay or should I go dilemma. >Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 08:02:59 -0500 >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >From: J Kuszai >Subject: please don't bother to backchannel either >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > >Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed >me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. If it was up to me, >I would have deleted you a long time ago. But, since I don't get to do >what you want, and you do, I have decided to leave the list. I'm not >trying to be dramatic. This list has been a lifeline for me and leaving >it is not easy. I appreciated Alan's comments on the bombing and the >poetry and critical discourse swirling around it. On the other hand, I >do think I was pretty specific about what I objected to. I also noted >that I was "personally" opposed to that sort of thing. So, with this in >mind, I wish you all well. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 12:13:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: Lancing a boil In-Reply-To: <367A7922.B268AB7D@csc.albany.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I want to second the motion. The list is losing far too many good people, and Gudding is not one of them. If I want flaming, I can go to alt.flame. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:13:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: please In-Reply-To: <367A5283.6B38@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Goodbye. I'm sorry you're leaving, Joel. I still rather naively want to see this list as something of a team (albeit not one with a specific goal), and though I don't know Eliza and Gabe and George and Rachel and many others and I do know Karen and Joe and David and Juliana and many others, I value (or valued, if they're already gone from the list) all their presences here, even if the team is sometimes rather dysfunctional (I've never been on one that wasn't, and I've been on some that coming through aspects of the dysfunction made them stronger). I do know Joel and value his presence here as well as his presence with me in other aspects of our work in poetry and poetics. Thank you, Joel, for all you have given to this list -- your hard work, your good counsel, your honesty, your care. charles At 08:02 AM 12/18/98 -0500, you wrote: >Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed >me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. If it was up to me, >I would have deleted you a long time ago. But, since I don't get to do >what you want, and you do, I have decided to leave the list. I'm not >trying to be dramatic. This list has been a lifeline for me and leaving >it is not easy. I appreciated Alan's comments on the bombing and the >poetry and critical discourse swirling around it. On the other hand, I >do think I was pretty specific about what I objected to. I also noted >that I was "personally" opposed to that sort of thing. So, with this in >mind, I wish you all well. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 09:32:49 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain "And the rude shall inherit the list...." --apocryphal post >Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed >me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. If it was up to me, >I would have deleted you a long time ago. But, since I don't get to do >what you want, and you do, I have decided to leave the list. I'm not >trying to be dramatic. This list has been a lifeline for me and leaving >it is not easy. I appreciated Alan's comments on the bombing and the >poetry and critical discourse swirling around it. On the other hand, I >do think I was pretty specific about what I objected to. I also noted >that I was "personally" opposed to that sort of thing. So, with this in >mind, I wish you all well. > Goodbye Joel. --Mark DuCharme ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 12:56:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Pacifica Radio Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit KPFA, as David must really know, is a part of the independent (no corporate funding) Pacifica Radio network, whose anarcho-founding members in 1949 included Kenneth Rexroth, & it has *NO* affiliation with PBS. News views & frames unavailable even on 'liberal' PBS stations. KPFA has recently made their live broadcasts available through Real Audio on their web page. The programs Democracy Now & Flashpoints are highly recommended. home page: http://www.kpfa.org/index.htm streaming audio: https://swww.igc.apc.org/kpfa/0_e_real.htm Often grim listening. First choice during crises. all best, Charles Smith David writes: << No longer resident in Berkeley, I nonetheless listen to its PBS station, KPFA, a great deal, and particularly during such crises as this one. After being all day long tuned-in to speaker after speaker who shares my views, I forget that many people are denied any contact with radical radio >> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 13:00:22 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: KPFA, ps Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit discussed & turned over yesterday: "does this bombing of Iraq represent the end of diplomacy?" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 13:14:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Joel writes: >>>Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed me are as courageous in person as you are virtually.<<< Dammit, dammit, dammit. Don't you listers who are flaming Joel & Charles realize what an easy position you're in, and what a difficult one they're in? How dare you persecute them for trying to handle as best and as humanly as possible a job like theirs? Especially if, like me, you've only been with the list, say, 1/10th (me, about 1/100th) of the time they have? And yes, I DO think the length of the time commitment they've made deserves your respect. Flamers have made it nigh impossible for Joel or Charles to post their opinions the way the rest of us can. It's like there's a fucking e-paparazzi out there just waiting for C's & J's posts to appear in order to morph them into national-enquirer level post-scandals. Why would you do this to a person? Why would you do this to a person? When I was a closeted, confused, bitter high school student I made quite a reputation on malicious jokes, song parodies, etc. I was excellent at it, far more excellent than I have been at anything since. It's FUN to be a quick-draw, brilliantly biting, genius hurter of people. Having spent my time that way is my only enduring regret. So yes, I understand that you're having a lot of FUN with Charles & Joel. I know how seductive that is; I know the thrill of crafting the perfect put-down. But please, *please* stop it. Stop having fun & start talking about poetics. Maybe that could be fun, too. Probably not as-instantly gratifying fun, I'll grant that. It's work. Gabriel, you, for ex., I know, have a kid. I do not think you'll appreciate the jest if the kid comes home one day after having been verbally brutalized as much as Joel & Charles have been by you. You'll probably want to kick the bully's ass. I don't want to kick anyone's ass or to kick anyone off the list. But I feel physically sick when I think of Joel leaving. He has given, and continues to go out of his way to give, me reasons to post & feel welcome here. Whether or not you've felt, as I have, that Joel is a generous, hardworking, fair & concerned person, you at least, I hope, will agree that *Joel is a person*. Nothing justifies the consistent thrashings you've given to a fellow person. In the same way that nothing justifies the U.S.'s dropping bombs on Iraqi people. With the latter, we can only hope that our voices & vigils will make a difference. With the former, you making a difference is as easy as thinking before you post, and remembering there's a person (or 666 people) on the other side of that post. Stop it; just stop it. Joel hopes he can meet Gabe someday. I hope I can meet Joel someday, to tell & show him in person how much his work, outreach, & thoughtfulness have meant to me and, I'd be willing to bet, the majority of subscribers to this list. Joel, I'm sorry. em ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:23:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Kelley Subject: Re: water cool MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I watched some of the interminable hyperbolic impeachment debate at the gym & came home & had a call from an elderly friend who remarked on how dysfunctional one can get over the holidays & now I've read Charles' measured post regarding the recent rather awful drama of the list, and it seems obvious that even though we have facility with words, sometimes it's best to just bite one's tongue. A certain honor in living with one's emotions rather than blurting them all over. I hope everyone has as peaceful a holiday as possible. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 13:45:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Joe Amato--- sometimes aphorisms and koans are valuable little "bombs" (one would think those who value the "fragment" and think Bruce Andrews is just the bees' knees would appreciate such little "bombs" as you call them) I mean this particular post was posted by somebody who--I think-- had largely been silent before. And despite whatever good intentions might be attributed to JK, it does seem there was an attempt to nip in the bud somebody who was trying to actually bring the discussion of the Iraq crisis to a more meta-level than Bouchard's righteousness (I'm not taking sides on this issue right now-- i.e. is there a difference between hating and hating the haters?) ---- Anyway, I'll shut up now....coz I gotta drink some water and there's no cooler but a sink........ c On Fri, 18 Dec 1998, Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher wrote: > as i've said, i just read through the poetix posts this morning... seems to > me joel was responding specifically to > > >MAN........don't you see that THIS IS THE FUCKING PROBLEM? > > (by way of example) > > i don't see joel as the fucking problem... which is not to say i see the > above as the fucking problem, either, or even that i see "mindless > chitchat" as the fucking problem... i think one fucking problem is when > discussion heats up to the point of sending little electronic bombs out > across the ether... and i thought joel was trying to say (whatever you make > of what he said or how he said it) that perhaps it would behoove us not to > be too impetuous, that what we don't need, esp. at this moment in > historical time, is to amp up our email to the status of weaponry, > defensive or offensive, in order to generate more adversarial exchange... > albeit it's true that the events of the past few days are bound to produce > just that... > > come to think of it, maybe many of us *do* need to spend more time at the > water cooler... hey, i'm on my way, gonna go soak my head, b/c i can't > believe what's happening on the house floor, and in the skies over iraq, > and--- > > best, > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 13:55:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: louis stroffolino Subject: Re: THANK YOU In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "I wasn't born there, perhaps I'll die there...." I would like to express gratitude to several people who have very generously come through with offers to allow me to stay with them--or at least "hang" with them while I am in San Francisco. Specifically Katie Degentesh, Rachel Daley, Pete Neufeld, David Buuck, Chris Nagler and Amar Ravva, Garrett Caples--- In the words of Ron Silliman, you "know the meaning of community" (as does Joel Lewis who has given me a lead on a dentist) again, thanks, I'm looking forward to meeting you (plural)------ Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:08:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Eventually, Gabe will be the only one left MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit And the interest of that conversation will be . . .? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Program in Writing and Rhetoric (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:05:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: The poetics of impeachment In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > Events swamp poetics; poetics are shaped by "smart" bombs -- so I think > it's appropriate to discuss this here. Without insults. > > Hilton Obenzinger > I agree with this...at least up to a point. So let me briefly mention: i have great respect for many of the posts expressing outrage, pain, fuy, depression.... Many have been beautiful and many eloquent. As i've already tossed out (rather bruquely) once, i understand the problem we are facing to be a systemic one and not one of particular evil powerful men. In this respect i feel many of the specific comments made about "why" and "how" we are in this situation, are inadequate. (i'm moved to reiterate this now, because of Hilton's comment that the "right-wing impeachment coup" will have various consquences--he implies it will strengthen the x'n right, cause things to go worse in the "culture wars" etc. ....All of which is surely approximatly accurate. ) My problem with the liberal analysis that folks have offered, both regarding the aggression against Iraq and the impeachment circus, is that they vastly overestimate the importance of clinton and his regime. i submit that no aspect of life in the U.S. was improved by the accension of clinton and his wing of the republicrat struture: **THEY ADMITTED** as much, emphasizing the right-wing character of their agenda. Look at the overall dynamics: of capital's attack on unions, the runaway of US industry to low-wage markets and the reduction of us in the US to primarily a minimum wage postindustrial service economy, the hostility to any politics of liberation (continually attacked in the media as "pc"), the furious destruction of what was always a laughably minimal US welfare structure, the disappearance of affordable housing, the smashing of affirmative action, the breath-taking rapidity with which (due to social policies and corporate strategy, working together) income and affluence and free time are polaraizing between a tiny upper 12 percent and the majority of people...who are becoming something close to a peon class, disenfranchised and inactive. If our culture, poetic and otherwise, is to have any chance of breathing, i would argue that we need to understand where the violence and social problems are coming from: they do not come from the republican wing of the republicrat structure, and this is why (in contrast to Hilton's eloquent posts) i do not feel that the "impeachment coup" is anything but a distraction. The right wing (of which clinton is an important leader) wants most of all for citizens to think the impeachment nonsense **matters**. It does not. It is alternatives to the republicrat monolith that will give hope to democracy and the public sphere in US life. Not imagining that slick Willy and the "Democrats" are our friends.... Mark P. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:19:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jessica Pompeii Subject: Why are Americans Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit so afraid of adversity? Thanks for the mean posts once in awhile. I am bored shitless. Linguistics and show-offs don't = poetics. The best writing I know is about personal relationships, it always ends up a metaphor for politics. Let it ride.... -Jessica ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 13:32:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either In-Reply-To: <199812181814.KAA11198@law-f71.hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I hope I can meet Joel someday, to >tell & show him in person how much his work, outreach, & thoughtfulness >have meant to me and, I'd be willing to bet, the majority of subscribers >to this list. > >Joel, I'm sorry. > >em Amen. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note new area code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:51:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Lancing a boil In-Reply-To: <367A7922.B268AB7D@csc.albany.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Joel objected to what David Divizio said about impeachment/war and he said so, somewhat insultingly. I objected to Joel's put-down and I said so, with minimal insult. Gabe also objected to Joel's put-down and he said so, very insultingly. (Insult is very much a male sport thus far). Pierre Joris rode in with luke warm diarrhea in a dixie cup: he objected to Gabe's objections and he didn't just say so, he also told Gabe: "Get off this list." Thus far several folks have written in paying tribute to Joel. Now several other folk write in paying vituperation to Gabe. Many of these people take to insults as to the manner born. Problem is: they also try to flex muscle: Get off this list...I second that... Get thee hence, Gabe. Okay, everyone's hot under the collar today, and yesterday (maybe because of powerlessness?). But do you really want to create a mini-list-parody of the parody that's happening in Congress? What we deal with here is language, a dangerous enough property. What does it mean to say "Your insults are unacceptable. Your apologies are unacceptable. Get off this list"? Are you claiming the high moral ground, despite your production of variously temperatured shit? And are these little poetics prose missiles intended to eliminate, delete, annihilate? One speaker after another may well pipe up "I second that" -- eliminate the irritant; just as one speaker after another is standing up in Congress saying the same thing; and those ole cruise missiles, which have just about given up on talk, are just pop-popping with the same message: eliminate him/them. We have words here. We're nobodies in this democracy. Let's use them to the best of our ability, this way and that way and any which way. Let's slip down off the high moral ground. Let's have the discretion to choose our words carefully as individuals. And for the sake of the little gaps between words or the next chapbook or god knows the MLA or whatever you/we guys hold valuable, let's stop issuing marching orders. Mairead P.S. To David Bromige: Samuel Beckett probably would have very little to say about all this (though he was quite a proponent of "insultive poetics" himself, witness "Waiting for Godot"). In some sense, I suppose, the French Government awarded him the Croix de Guerre for keeping his mouth shut. And France was Beckett's "country" only because he allowed it to be. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:01:18 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" chris, hey... i *did* indicate that i didn't think the statement in question was "THE fucking problem"... and i should add, that joel managed in his post to use the word "personally"---have a look at his post again... point is that i was differentiating mself from joel, even as i spoke on his behalf (as it were)... which (i think, very understandable) way of conducting oneself ends up becoming a matter of polarizing forces on the list (listen up, gabe, while you toot that horn of yours)... not wishing to polarize further, chris, i think what you say has to do with how joel went about saying what he said... i still think what he wanted was to nip in the bud what seemed to him (yet another) escalating exchange... but i take your point re nipping a potential contributor, even if i think joel's departure over this matter is downright disheartening, not least b/c i think (as others have indicated) that we owe him our gratitude for all of his work on this list over the years... ---- on another thread: mark p, i do hear what you're saying, believe me, and i respect (as you know) your political acumen... but don't you think, politically speaking, that we've got to support what vestige we have of liberal/left thinking?... i mean, clinton is no utopia, but he's a far sight better than a hard & fast right-winger, no?.... joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 15:26:54 +0000 Reply-To: archambeau@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College/Lund University, Sweden Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Emily Lloyd said exactly the right thing: > Don't you listers who are flaming Joel & > Charles realize what an easy position you're in, and what a difficult > one they're in? List discourse is often read as more hostile and less amusing than it is meant to be, but when it is -meant- to be overtly hostile and insulting, it probably shouldn't be posted. I hope the list survives all this -- I suppose it can, the way most families survive the spontaneous annual reenactments of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf that go under the name of Thanksgiving Dinner. Peace and Goodwill, Bob Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 15:55:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Swinburne MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII just came over as the Unix fortune: Pine finished -- Closed folder "INBOX". Kept all 3 messages. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving, Whatever gods may be, That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. -- Swinburne Ju1lu% b You have no new mail. Ju2lu% Now this seems apropos, but isn't, and that fascinates me. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 12:46:31 +0000 Reply-To: alphavil@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" Organization: Alphaville Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joel, This is Bullshit! Your attack on David D.'s post had the net effect of humiliating a newcomer to the list and if you didn't do it intentionally, it certainly had that effect judging from his followup response. Wher's your apology to David D. Your "water cooler" post had the same cold, calculating, unfeeling tone that Bernstein's purges of Henry Gould had. And don't use the 'Alan Sondheim comments' canard. What Sondheim knows about Post-World War II American history you could put in a paper bag, light on fire and leave on Vernon Walters' front porch. Actually, I take that back; it doesn't reach the level of a prank. The concensus against Gudding on the list sounds like the 'patriotic' concensus for the current institutionalized murder over the skies of Iraq and there are certainly enough sociological studies on the nautre and operation of institutions to explain why this appears so. Admittedly, I stayed out of the Blow Up/Job discussion because, Joel is right. In this venue it could never rise above a media reactive 'water cooler' generalized breast beating. But that's not to say I'd stop it; I'd simply choose not to participate. I would certainly not try to regulate based on the poster's artistry and/or professional position; something that seems to happen with some frequency through the Poetics ministry of information. There was a little blither on this list about Pinochet. But nothing about the tens of millions of dollars that transnational corporations and their stooges on both sides of Congress, in the executive, as well as several intelligence services flooded the Venezuelan elections with in order to defeat Hugo Chavez. All that illegality and immorality failed and we have the makings of another Chile/Indonesia/Brazil/Guatemala etc. etc. that Joel, one can presume, would have arbitrated in an ignorant and passionless fashion after the fact. The Post for Dec. 12 had a headline that read, "Venezuelans Relieved As Chavez Eases Rhetoric." The inquisitive reader is left to wonder if the majority of Venezuelans who voted for Chavez and the 3/4 of the population that are starving, 300+ of whom died in bread riots that led to Chavez's failed coup, are the ones relieved. Of course not. The Post means the 2% Venezuelan elite, transnational corporations and their stockholders and the puppet governments in Washington and Langley that already have an array of contingencies in place if Chavez fails to bow to 'free market democratic principles.' The Post means the people that 'matter', e.g. the ones with money and power, are relieved. This list is too petty to establish a parallel with the above. But its also too petty to provide an alternative. Can you deny there is ass-kissing galore on this list? Haven't any of you read Amato's posts from the Perloff/Bernstein lecture? And wasn't Bernstein's approach either delusional or intentionally contentless, at least as can be determined from what Amato billed as a F/2/F with B. That didn't sound like the parts of the anatomy that were meeting in this instance. And Bernstein had been caught out in some lies. Can you have poetics much less poetry in this atmosphere? Or do you end up with a bunch of nobodies outside their tiny little professional lives deluding themselves about the importance of their essentially meaningless projects. Christ, I'm one fuckin' step away in my bookstore and your discussions would never find resonance there. And so what if Gudding is a better imaginative writer/poet than Bernstein. I've read both guys and that's the way the talent hierarchy falls out in my judgment. But then again, I'm not going to MLA. Further, this makes conversation with Gudding more valuable to me than fraternization with Bernstein, Perloff or Joel for that matter. Joel's not evil enough to, say, conjure up images of Baby Doc getting on a plane for the south of France and the list if it persists in its priggishness won't be worth a damn in the world most of humanity operates in anyway. And its participants will be able to bring less and less to that world as they persist in their bunker poetics, which for all the world smells like a consequence of Langpo. I would never dream of discussing history with you folks. I got a half dozen retired CIA operations guys to scream at in my store. And they come back for more because, and it hurts me to say it, they believe, in their own 'complicated', lesser of two evil ways. I'd never tell them I'm a poet because poetry in its present incarnations is so ludicrous and immaterial, they'd laugh in my face.---Carlo Parcelli J Kuszai wrote: > > Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed > me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. If it was up to me, > I would have deleted you a long time ago. But, since I don't get to do > what you want, and you do, I have decided to leave the list. I'm not > trying to be dramatic. This list has been a lifeline for me and leaving > it is not easy. I appreciated Alan's comments on the bombing and the > poetry and critical discourse swirling around it. On the other hand, I > do think I was pretty specific about what I objected to. I also noted > that I was "personally" opposed to that sort of thing. So, with this in > mind, I wish you all well. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 16:49:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Beyond the Vestiges In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > ---- > on another thread: > > mark p, i do hear what you're saying, believe me, and i respect (as you > know) your political acumen... but don't you think, politically speaking, > that we've got to support what vestige we have of liberal/left thinking?... > i mean, clinton is no utopia, but he's a far sight better than a hard & > fast right-winger, no?.... > > joe > Joe---- i agree with folks who feel that **some** room needs to be left for actual direct exchanges on poetics. So i'll try to be terse. Clinton really has not pursued policies to the left of Reagan and Bush, in a vast majority of areas and issues. He was selected for the demo nomination in the first place because of his profound commitment to crushing unions and working people in Arkansas. i believe very very intensely, that you're increasing the problems we face, when you imagine that the demo wing of the republicrat structure can in any way help us. it is **completely** controlled by big capital; THAT IS WHAT IT EXISTS FOR.. ; in the fine eloquent formulation of Canadian labor scholar and activist Elaine Barnard, the D & R wings of the republicrats **are not parties** (parties are sustained by a mass membership, who have voting rights and determine the party's direction), they are guided entirely by those who have huge amounts of funds, & essentially they function as arms of the government: *they are voter registration mechanisms* ; i shudder a bit at the phrase "liberal/left"...But let me not become contentious over semantics (..there's more than semantics at issue there, but i'm trying to be terse!!) If you wish to "support what vestige we have of left thinking," then please do so!!! One CAN'T do so by "wasting one's vote" (and other resources) in support of clinton and the "demo's", whose agenda is essentially that of the repubs.. I would argue that the vestige we need to support resides in the section of the Left that is trying to build a movement that can reach ordinary people with a politics not beholden to corporate hegemony: the New Party, the Labor Party, the various state and national Green parties, Campaign for a New Tommorow, the Independent Progressive Politics Network (which links many of the parties i've mentioned), etc. tersely (sorta) Mark P. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 16:53:02 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: schuchat Subject: sorry to see you go MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm sorry to see Joel leave the list; I always liked his posts, sensible and good humored. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 17:15:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jenn Sondheim" Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either Comments: To: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" In-Reply-To: <367A4EA7.6AA7@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for the attack. What I know about WWII history? You don't know a damn thing about me or what I know. I love how mean-spirited this list is getting at this point. Let's all flame each other - why not? I found your comments insulting to the extreme. Not that it matters here anymore. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 14:23:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aldon Nielsen Subject: William Gaddis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as if we did not have enough to be sad about today -- while watching the Rev. Falwell (he of $$$$ support for murder in southern Africa) sounding off about impeachment and morality, I couldn't help thinking of the Rev. Ude,,, among Gaddis's more prescient creations -- The LA Times felt compelled to print the obit. under a headline describing Gaddis as an "unread" novelist -- If only all of our unreading were so rewarding -- will be off-line till New Years -- hope to see some of y'all in San Francisco -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 17:24:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Comments: cc: "J. Kuszai" , "nonce@iname.com" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris, I very much support all the points you make in your note just now (by the way, should I continue to cc these note to "nonce") and your approach seems wise to me. I think the quicker you get out the new Welcome Message the better it would be. When do you think you will do this? JOEL AND I WILL BOTH BE AVAILABLE TO HELP YOU AS LONG AS YOU NEED US! I think it would be worthwhile to send out to the new sub that Joel authorized but who did not verify address -- Pompeiij@AOL.COM -- the following note: We very much appreciate your interest in the poetics list. We have not yet received your registration form, as requested. Registration is required of all those joining the list. Please be sure to return this form to us soon that you subscription can be confirmed. I would then send a message to the listserv: quiet del poetics Pompeiij@AOL.COM and only OK sub when you receive confirmation. You might want to wait a bit for this to see what happens, but verification has been in place for over a year and is a sensible policy. But that's up to you. I am not going to reply to "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" because I have already spoken to these spurious points and there doesn't seem anything to gain by it; except that of course some people out there will no doubt believe anything bad said, I suppose -- However, I think restrain remains the best policy for me. I'd hold off on all new subs till after New Year's. *** This should be put on top of the Welcome message for anyone requesting a subscription. No one should be added to the list without getting this back. Thanks for your interest in the Poetics List. Information about the list is provided below and should help you determine if you want to join the list. If you do wish to subscribe, we ask that you register with (the information you provide will be kept confidential). Name: Address (no po boxes please): Phone: How did you hear about the list? What is your interest in the list (be as brief as you like)? Once you have registered with us by replying to these questions (and send your responses as a reply to this message, that is to Poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu) go ahead and subscribe to the list *yourself* by following the instructions below. Charles ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 16:42:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either In-Reply-To: <367A4EA7.6AA7@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Can you deny there is ass-kissing galore on this list? Haven't any of >you read Amato's posts from the Perloff/Bernstein lecture? And wasn't >Bernstein's approach either delusional or intentionally contentless, at >least as can be determined from what Amato billed as a F/2/F with B. carlo, i hope to hell you're not accusing me of asskissing... for one thing, i am, as i've said again and again, friends with marjorie and charles (so yes, please, consider the source when i refer to these two)... bob archambeau can attest to the fact that the following is what i posted him (backchan) when he asked me (on the list) to say something about marjorie's and charles's talk: >wasn't gonna post on the marjorie/charles event, given the recent >shenanigans on >poetix (and my feeble attempt to mediate same), but am >glad you gave me the >opportunity of doing so... naturally, i felt that posting in on the event would be read as asskissing... that said, i'm happy bob gave me the opportunity by coaxing me some, b/c i had a few things to say (albeit not all that much, b/c that's not my m.o.)... anyway, i don't as a rule kiss ass (i like to think i NEVER do, but i probably do in ways i'm not aware of)... in fact, asskissing is the one thing i was taught as a kid NEVER to do... i'm not sure how to go about proving that i'm not an asskisser, which of course points to the beauty of making such an allegation in the first place... but if we ever do get to meet f2f, i'm pretty certain you'll walk away from the encounter firmly believing that i'm anything but an asskisser... yeah, so I sez, i know... my sincere apologies, carlo, if i'm misreading you here... if i'm not (misreading you here), well i've got boundless energy, as you know, to beat the drums with you backchannel about this sort of bullshit... /// joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 17:41:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: what is intention? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" OK -- now I have done it. Since Joel's resignation today I have been scrambling to pick up the administrative details of the list, despite feeling very leery about the whole state of affairs here, and wanting myself to bow out of this situation, I had hoped more gracefully than I appear to be. I am trying to find someone to take over the management of the list, something I cannot continue to do. Meanwhile, I am trying to follow up the list maintenance issues left unresolved, including the question of unconfirmed list registration. Unfortunately, my last communication on this was sent out over the list instead of privately, but I suppose it expresses my extreme personal frustration with the situation. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 15:13:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: Beating pens into swords at the water cooler Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" And the blue ribbon award for free speech goes to... Joel Kuzsai: >> Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed >> me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. So now we've resorted to physically threatening people who don't agree with us? The list might be a nicer place with a little less testosterone and a little less alcohol. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 15:12:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: chill Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It is an odd culture these lists. I think everyone should read a book or something and just chill for a day or two. ----------------- Tosh Berman TamTam Books ---------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1998 08:26:37 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Divizio Subject: Re: please don't bother to backchannel either MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Joel, I too noted that you indicated "personally". I hope I'm not the straw.......because it would be a pity if honest naive innocent ignorant emotion...the thing we so cherish MOST were what was pushing you off such an IMPORTANT LIST. This place is about far more than vanity. Hey, take a break......the truth doesn't have to. It's always here. You'll be back. I'm sorry I didn't email you last night if that would have helped......but then again I'm glad I didn't. Real situations bring up real responses......and that's how we move forward........or sideways.....but please don't BACK UP! Sincerely, David 2 Divizio PLEASE backchannel. I've quickly understood what's out there! -----Original Message----- ·ol : J Kuszai ˆ¶æ : POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU “úŽž : 1998”N12ŒŽ19“ú 0:52 Œ–¼ : please don't bother to backchannel either >Gabe, I hope we can meet someday. I hope you and others who have flamed >me are as courageous in person as you are virtually. If it was up to me, >I would have deleted you a long time ago. But, since I don't get to do >what you want, and you do, I have decided to leave the list. I'm not >trying to be dramatic. This list has been a lifeline for me and leaving >it is not easy. I appreciated Alan's comments on the bombing and the >poetry and critical discourse swirling around it. On the other hand, I >do think I was pretty specific about what I objected to. I also noted >that I was "personally" opposed to that sort of thing. So, with this in >mind, I wish you all well. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:46:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Poetics List Reorganization Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My doctor tells me I need more rest But I know the quiet is killing me We are presently reorganizing the Poetics List and will be announcing our new format shortly after New Year's. No further posts to the Poetics List will be sent out until our reorganization is complete, so please don't send any post to the list in the meantime. Sorry for any inconvenience & best to all the holidays to all! Charles Bernstein