========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 12:11:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Barbara Guest Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Barbara Guest celebrates her birthday this Wednesday -- both a great occasion for her and for American poetry. In honor of Barbara's birthday, we have created a Guest homepage at the EPC: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/guest This page was edited by Anna Reckin, of the Poetics Program at UB. I would be happy to forward any birthday greetings to Barbara that are posted on the list, or backchanneled to me, on Wednesday morning. Happy Birthday, Barbara! And hope you USAers are all enjoying Labor Day Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 10:53:44 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Fogarty Subject: Re: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: <399B2F66@webmail2.gwu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Hi all, is there any chance that the article in Lingua Franca could be posted to the list for clarity as I don't have access to it. If it's on the web, perhaps the URL could be posted for the benefit of us all. Cheers, Peter ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 23:18:45 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Poultry & Business Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Here's an ironic counterpoint to the Lingua Franca article. From the "Knowledge at Wharton" website at Penn. Ron ----------------------- "Poems Are Long Journeys In Risk" For more than 25 years John Barr has pursued parallel lives as a businessman and a poet. A long-time senior executive at Morgan Stanley, 10 years ago he founded Barr Devlin Associates, an investment-banking boutique active in the natural gas industry. The firm was acquired three years ago by Societe Generale. Barr also is president emeritus of the Poetry Society of America, the oldest poetry association in the U.S., and the author of several books of poetry. The most recent is "Grace," an epic poem based largely on the monologues of Ibn Opcit, an imaginary Caribbean poet and gardner. Barr is part of a long tradition of poet-businesspeople, whose best known representatives include T.S. Eliot, an international banker, and Wallace Stevens, an insurance executive. In a recent conversation with Knowledge@Wharton, Barr spoke about business and poetry-and how each of his worlds energizes the other as long as the two don't collide. Knowledge@Wharton: Could you begin by talking about your business activities? Barr: I spent 18 years at Morgan Stanley as a partner in charge of the public utility practice in the investment banking division. Some 10 years ago, in 1990, I retired and with a couple of partners, we started our own company, Barr Devlin Associates. We continued to do financial advisory work providing merger and acquisition advice to U.S.-based utilities that were dealing with new trends in that industry by merging or restructuring themselves. We were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I sometimes compare our small company to one of those pretzel vendors in Manhattan who is on the right street corner, where everybody wants a hot pretzel. We were in the thick of action in the mid-1990s, when almost all the utility companies in the U.S. wanted to merge. We continue to be in that business and have been investment bankers to half of all the largest deals. There have been almost 20 mergers so far among our utility clients. We could feel the utilities merger market being transformed in 1997. Deals were changing from stock-for-stock to cash-and-stock transactions, and as a boutique we could not offer the financing service of a large balance sheet. In addition, the utilities merger business was becoming international, with European utilities starting to look at U.S. utilities. Again, as a New York-based boutique, we could not take advantage of that business. So we began to talk to a handful of prime international banks, which all showed an interest in us, and we were very pleased in 1998 to be acquired and become a part of Societe Generale (SG). We are now in our third year with them, all my partners have remained in the business, and we have SG's balance sheet and global platform together with the Barr Devlin franchise. We have been doing a lot of business. Knowledge@Wharton: What transactions have you done recently? Barr: Duke Power-or Duke Energy as it is now called-is a major utility company. In 1997 it used us as financial advisors when it merged with PanEnergy, the second largest gas pipeline company at that time. That merger produced what continues to be the largest utility company in the U.S. It was a great adventure and a benchmark transaction. More recently, we were hired by Enron to sell their utility in Oregon, called Portland General. Closer to home, my partners and I represented Northeast Utilities in Connecticut when the company merged with Con Edison several months ago. That merger will create the largest utility in the Northeast. We have also done smaller transactions all over the country and in Europe. It's been busy. Knowledge@Wharton: Has poetry kept you equally busy? Barr: Until the 1990s I had published my poetry in small magazines, but I hadn't published any books. The 1990s became a major publishing time for me-I published six books between 1989 and 1999. That started with a series of three limited editions or fine press editions. Those books in 1997 were combined into a trade press edition called "The Hundred Fathom Curve," which was published by Story Line Press. In 1999 I published "Grace," which was a major departure from my prior writing. Knowledge@Wharton: One thing that makes "Grace" striking is your use of Caribbean-like dialect in your writing. You say in your introductory note to the book that the voices in "Grace" use the freedoms of dialect to"get away with murder." Could you explain that? Barr: "Getting away with murder" is the perfect phrase for me to deal with the potential discomfort I felt in writing a book which is in black Caribbean language. I'm not black, I'm not Caribbean, and I wasn't invited to write the book. The debate in poetry in the U.S. today centers around books where writers take on personae that are different than who they are. Getting away with murder, for me, was a literary license to invent a dialect that reads like a Caribbean dialect. It seeks the economy and energy of all dialects, in my view. The people in "Grace," like Caribbean people, use words with a high metaphoric content. They don't always bother with suffixes and prefixes-they go for the jugular in terms of efficiency and economy in the way they use language. This is true of all dialects you hear around the world. That is what I was hoping to capture in "Grace." Knowledge@Wharton: You clearly took a big risk writing "Grace" the way you did. How do you manage risk in your poetry and in your business? Barr: There are a lot of great minds-including many at Wharton-who have focused on how you manage business risks of various sorts. The decision by my partners and myself to place our little company within the arms of SG, a larger enterprise, represented one of the ways we chose to manage risk. We saw opportunity from our merger, but we also saw stability in it. As a small company, you are only as good as your next deal. While we did have great good fortune and success as an independent boutique, when we became part of a global business platform-and SG is one of the largest financial institutions in the world-it created a kind of permanence and stability. The cyclicality of our business doesn't have the same effect on SG that it might have on a small business. The merger was the way we chose to manage that risk and also to increase the upside of the business. On the poetry side, how do you manage risk? I think it's not possible to hedge an open commodities position in poetry. Poetry is about risk-but you don't manage it. That is the big difference between business and poetry. Business is always trying to create an asymmetric relationship between risk and reward-you try to get more reward for less risk-and you try and get more than your fair share of return. That is true of asset management, money management and it's true of financial advice-we try to help our clients negotiate the best deal possible in a merger. Poems are also about risk because they embrace the unknown and the uncertain. That is why they have excitement and vitality. Poems are long journeys in risk. People don't write poems because they have figured it all out; they write poems in order to figure it out. A good poem contains and preserves, like an insect in ancient amber, that moment-of figuring something out-forever. That is why poetry cannot seek to manage risk. You can do things technically to preserve the moment of a poem's creation and make it a timeless enterprise. That is what formal poetry is about-the use of rhyme, meter and structure is important to giving permanence to poetry. But it's not about managing risk. Knowledge@Wharton: You once said that you see no conflict between your business and poetic activities because you see both business and poetry as responses of the self to a chaotic world, and that you see yourself as someone who goes around the world transforming that chaos into money and poetry. Could you explore this theme further? Barr: It's still a benchmark of how I view the two strange bedfellows that business and poetry sometimes are. Both draw their water out of the same well. Both in their own ways are efforts to seek to bring order to a chaotic and random universe. Business does it in a way that will produce a profit for the shareholders, if it is successful. Poetry creates an order that I would describe as the capture of understanding. One of the great things we get out of Shakespeare is that once he has articulated something, there's a comfort level that comes from that. It's almost like a talisman. It gives one a feeling of control-not in the sense of a control freak, but of control of the unknown and the uncertain. To me, the act of articulation is a basic human response to feelings of uncertainty and even of fear. That is why in old and ancient literatures, names are so important. If you know a person's name, you have a kind of power over them. Maybe this goes to the primitive tribal fears of having one's picture taken, too. A picture becomes a physical possession of a person's image. There's a moment in the "Odyssey" where Odysseus and his men have been shipwrecked. The mythical Cyclops asks Odysseus his name, and Odysseus replies, "My name is no man." It is that ancient encounter with the unknown, where the first thing you try to do is know how to call it. You find that in Shakespeare, and you also find that in the great ancient literatures. That is fundamental to what you get out of writing and reading good poetry. Knowledge@Wharton: Wallace Stevens was well known as a businessman and as a poet. It is said that he had two compartments in his briefcase: He kept all his business documents on one side, and his poetry manuscripts on the other. In these days of the Palm Pilot, a lot more intermingling is possible. Do you see business and poetry as separate parts of your life, or do they intermingle, with one feeding the other? Barr: I did not know that Wallace Stevens story, but I love it. He was an orderly man-he was a lawyer for Hartford Insurance in Connecticut, and he had a very logical business side to him. But his poetry went the other way. Yes, there is a duality to the two sides of the briefcase. But if the poet-businessperson is willing to let the two sides get close to each other, it is a potential source of great energy for both. What do I mean by that? Thirty years ago, people were not as tolerant about a businessman who wrote poetry. It would have been hard for him to be taken seriously by his clients. But today that is not the case. While I did not advertise my poetry when I was in my twenties and thirties, I don't have any problem with people knowing that now, and they too are fine about it. I think I am probably a better public speaker because of my poetry. I let the poet side of me loose in business situations-not in an irrational sense but in an inventive sense. Imagination can work in any situation it is allowed to. A lot of my work on the business side involves a different kind of creativity, but it is still work of the imagination. Let me now explore the other side of the argument. I think business can be a source of subject matter for a poet. It took me a long time to open all the doors in my life that I did in writing "Grace." That book was written over a ten-year period. I came to the realization recently that there were no people in my poetry for the first 30 years of my writing. I wrote first-person, lyric poetry-and in a lot of lyric poetry there is no one except the speaker and nature, or the speaker and art. There is nothing but people in "Grace." The world of humanity came flooding in for me in "Grace." That's an example of letting the business side-or the world of affairs-enter the poetry. There's a great release in that. Let me add a footnote. I recently came to realize that I decided to leave Morgan Stanley, where I had happily been for 18 years, in 1989. That was the same year I began to write "Grace." Looking back, I think that one was my declaration of independence as a businessman, and the other was my declaration of independence as a poet. Knowledge@Wharton: So you believe that your poetry helps you remain in touch with the imaginative part of yourself, and that contact with your own creativity helps you in business? Barr: Yes I do. There's no question about it. As I said before, it's like drawing water out of the same well. Let me tell you a story to illustrate the power of letting the two sides-business and poetry-get as close together as possible rather than far apart in a separate briefcase. There's a story about the early days of atomic energy, before scientists understood it really well. One American scientist had a game that he played with two halves of uranium. The concept of critical mass is that if you let those two halves come together, it would result in a nuclear explosion. If the two are kept separate, it won't cause an explosion because each half has less than critical mass. Well, this scientist would put these two halves on a table with a geiger counter, and bring them closer and closer together. The geiger counter would soar, and then he would take the two halves away from each other. This is a true story. One day he made a mistake and the two halves got too close together. There was a nuclear flash, and ultimately everyone in the laboratory died from the radiation exposure. But because they were scientists, all of them noted how many feet away they were from the critical mass. Their data was used as raw material in measuring the effect of nuclear blasts. The scientist called what he was doing "tickling the dragon's tail." My metaphor in all this is that if the poet-businessman decides to ticke the dragon's tail-and bring the two hemispheres of business and poetry together-he should let them get close but not too close. If it's done right, it can be a great source of energy. Knowledge@Wharton: At the end of your career, would you rather be remembered for business or poetry? Barr: For poetry. Poetry is forever. Business is about providing for one's family. I've never sought a public reputation in business though if it has come, I have been grateful. But in poetry, you hope not just to create a profit for shareholders. You deal with fundamental questions that have vexed humanity since the beginning-life, death, love and all their variations. I'd love to be remembered as some sort of a poet. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 20:56:37 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: <399B2F66@webmail2.gwu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit mdw: if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. responding to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to internal stimuli. you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I even reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem to continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i neither suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through the entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling out. I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see in most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total purity or total assimilation." you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to internal stimuli. or both. my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. Patrick ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or 'computers are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for their binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly simplistic. pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does show the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or silliman aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is worth reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the mcclatchy quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum (this is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find the range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully and easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that yet. but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity Hello Andrew: I think I was replying as much to Patrick Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit of confusion there, for which I apologize. I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this problem seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the choices are either total purity or total assimilation. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 17:57:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Burning Man MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ron, our daughter's at Burning Man--but she's working Glitter Camp ("for the adornmentally challenged") where folks are rolled in oil and spattered with fairy dust, so I don't know how much language they're processing. Would you like me to ask her something when she gets back? Come to think of it, maybe George and David should have passed on Orono and hightailed it to Black Rock City, where lampshade-wearing hoohah is put to the test. Rachel Rachel Loden http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html email: rloden@concentric.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 21:16:54 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think I agree with much of what Jacques Debrot wrote below-- but why redefine pleasure as "intense feeling?" All intense feeling is not pleasure. I can see intense feeling, or emotive intensity, being considered more important, in a poem, than whether that intesnity is pleasurable or painful; I can also understand how one might derive pleasure FROM an intense negative feeling--but that wouldn't make the latter pleasure, only something from which pleasure could be derived. In my aesthetics figuring out how this could be is important, by the way, the main expression of the question being: what do we get out of tragedy? One thought: tragedy acts as a counter-irritant; another is that an artwork, in containing something painful, or subduing it, produces a kind of pleasurable victory over pain. Anyway, my bottom line is that the ultimate function of art is to give people pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure. Disgust IS the opposite of pleasure. An artwork that elicits only disgust cannot be pleasurable (or desired by anyone sane); art that works with that which disgusts must somehow achieve something pleasurable in spite of that, not FROM it. --Bob G. Jacques Debrot wrote: > > There are valid grounds for identifying LangPo w/ the academy--even if its > presence in most literature departments is practically non-existent, as > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& his > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic distance > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of *demystifying* > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's > soon-to-be, like myself) function, in a sense, as bureaucrats, surveiling & > adjudicating the poem's *real* meaning which, naturally, is never what it > appears to be, as appearances themselves--by reason of the pleasure they > give--are assumed to be misleading (by "pleasure" understand that I am giving > a shorthand for what is really *intense* feeling--the opposite of pleasure > being then, not "pain," but, as Dave Hickey puts it, "the banality of neutral > comfort." The false dichotomy between pleasure & disgust is, by the way, > Sianne Ngai's basic mistake in her recent brilliant essay in _Open Letter_). > In any case, it goes w/out saying , I think, that a lot of awfully boring > Language-influenced poetry (including some of my own) is advanced or > published for *therapeutic* reasons--that is, because it is supposedly good > for us. > > Nothing, however, is more potentially disruptive of the status quo than > pleasure--it's amazing as well as scary, really, what you & I are capable of > getting off on. Pleasure--or beauty, as Dave Hickey has argued too (in > essays that crucially inform this post)--is also *essentially democratic* in > that there is a **vernacular** of beauty or pleasure that enfranchises > audiences and acknowledges their power (& by audience, I don't mean the > ghettoized audience of the poetry world or of academia). Indeed, it is not > criticism that is politically efficacious so much as the assent or "praise" > an audience gives to the persuasive power of a poem--the vernacular of > pleasure or beauty is thus always a quality that is politicized in one way or > another, rather than neutralizing politics (which is what I find so > fascinating about Maria Damon's inclusion, in her book, of the poetry of > women living in housing projects, or, for that matter, about prison poetry). > This is something quite different, I think, from "dumbing down." Still, > poetry can never be politically efficacious unless it moves a non-specialist > or non-professional audience--in the way Pop art did, say. Art, in fact, is > only transgressive, as Hickey puts it, if Jesse Helms says it is: > "Regardless of what the titillated cognoscenti might flatter themselves by > believing, if you dealt in transgression, insisted upon it, it was always the > Senator, only the Senator . . . whose outrage mattered." Helms, of course > may not know squat about art, but his business, after all, *is* rhetoric . > > Of course, there is a lot of LangPo which would be powerfully affective--even > to an uninitiated audience-- but the emphasis has always been someplace else, > too focused, like the academy, on critique, & on a therapeutic model of > aesthetic experience & too suspicious of *content* in its valorization of > transgressive *form*. (But, in fact, a lot of putatively anti-LangPo > poetries are equally therapeutic in intent--the suspicion of pleasure has > almost become reflexive today. Indeed, the return to lyricism typical of a > lot of recent NY School-inspired poetry only strikes me most of the time as > completely & banally comfortable & self-satisfied.) We need poems, in other > words, as ravishingly beautiful & political as Mapplethorpe's _X Portfolio_, > Cindy Sherman's _Doll Photos_, or Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_. > > --Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 21:51:04 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Fwd: assimilation and purity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_ca.9a79e9f.26e06588_boundary" --part1_ca.9a79e9f.26e06588_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --part1_ca.9a79e9f.26e06588_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-path: From: Austinwja@aol.com Full-name: Austinwja Message-ID: <6c.2a94095.26e056b8@aol.com> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 20:47:52 EDT Subject: Re: assimilation and purity To: patrick@proximate.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL for Macintosh sub 28 In a message dated 8/31/00 3:30:31 PM, patrick@PROXIMATE.ORG writes: << >More seriously, though, I think there's value in questioning a little more this apparent binary between "pure" social spaces and "assimilation" into the academy. I frankly think it's a dull discussion in any form, anything even related to it. But perhaps I assume too easily that people understand these issues, and maybe they don't. Maybe many people do need to roll around with the 'sell out/sorta sellout/purely keeping it real' discussion. For me it is a snore. another argument i have some distaste for is the discussion of the inherent value of a binary description. whether something is 2-nary or 3-nary or 1,000,000-nary is morally arbitrary to me. smaller pixels might make for better resolution but they require more and more work to understand and differentiate less and less the more that we have. but morally there's no difference. is there something better about 5 than 2? just because an argument is quaternary doesn't make it better than any binary argument. dichotomy, trichotomy, whatever. if you can tolerate my sense of humor on this issue, then bear with me -- but frankly it seems as if too many people have been reading too many poorly written books on eastern philosophy written by white people who did just a few too many slugs of brown acid in the 60's. "like, binary thinking is bad, man." there's nothing wrong with binary arguments just because they are binary; there's always more to it. i think the moral evaluation of binaries has crept into our thinking as some sort of cultural truism. Back to the subject at hand--the Lingua Franca article doesn't ignore the degrees between the absolutes of purest action and complete selling out. I think it gives clear light to efforts of some people to work within the system and retain some values and yet be willing to flex a little. Such in-between activity takes a considerable amount of confidence and maturity and it embraces the complexity of the world and our lives. And I think that in-betweenness is illuminated by Epstein. >It hardly follows from that point that total assimilation into the academy is the only other possibility. Perhaps I did not make myself clear. From the article it appears that some like Bernstein and Hejinian go into the academy and even flourish there, but all the while they are able to maintain some skepticism of the academic system. This is clearly not *total* assimilation and the article brings this out. And Silliman working for corporate America isn't a complete sellout either (though the article makes it sound like he is in the introduction and then later makes it sound like he isn't). The article makes the point that Ron is publishing on small presses still instead of under the UChicago and Princeton and Oxford academic logos. The range, the spectrum, of pure to sellout is a dull one. Humans want resources. Humans need resources. The combination of want and need for resources ranges widely and its discussion in the realm of poets is absurd. No poets are truly getting rich, no one, at least not from poetry. >> Patrick, I was all set to chime in on this one, but you beat me to it. Quite frankly, I couldn't have said it better. We have to assume that poets eat like the rest of the population, and to that end will require employment somewhere. As for the grandly conspiratorial, fat cat academics who have nothing better to do but oppress our avant garde genius--I've met both of them, and they're sorry. They are now drug free. That's it for me, except to say thank you for your dose of common sense. Best, Bill --part1_ca.9a79e9f.26e06588_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 20:06:49 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: language in lingua franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robert. I disagree, I think that too many magazines avoid clear discusion of theory. McClatchy's stance seems simplistic too me, but it doesnt mean that LangPo (as its being called) or the ideas or practices deriving from it are. The question of "selling out" is complex. But I think behind the reaction against innovation there is a simple explanation. Anything new, in whatever field is either actually, or is felt to be, threatening to the social structure or to what we might (loosely) call the establishment. The Chinese Govt. will have, as one of its reasons to arrest BeiLing, that poets are "dangerous". I say one, there may be others, good or bad.But even in N.Z.,Australia,the U.S. or other countries such as China, most poets of whatever ilk will reject the kind of innovative writing we associate with say Stein, anyone in the L=A=N=G group: or anyone innovative. And innovation and originality are vital. Otherwise there is no development(for better or worse) in any field. So the authoritarians,patriarchs, or the traditionalists are usually in opposition to new styles or ideas and are often dour and timid persons. They fear change of any kind. People "fear" poetry: even the less "strangified" writing is seen as dangerous. Is this new? No. Its very old and is part of a continuous struggle between the new and the old. Pound's dictum to make it new still holds. Not to is to give up. But lets not become fixated on LangPo. There are ways of writing that may be influenced by these writers that may go past it: as long as there is not a reversion to simplistic traditionalism (often by critics or writers who write in a manner that is "realistic" or "straight from the heart", and which "tells something" (when it could be told better in formal, or explicative prose), then new ideas will spark interesting and exciting literature. What might be problematic is where we "take" these innovations and new writing, and what are our motives and so on. The implication seems to be from many of the responses to McClatchy is that its all "old news". Well things dont change that fast: there are many questions that the L=A=N=G poets have raised that are not yet resolved. Other things that might be worth thinking about are David Antin's remarkable "talk poems",the British experimantal poets, and also the way, or to what extent LangPo is of influence outside the U.S. I came across it in 1992 at Auckland University. But I certainly think it would be bad to relent or weaken on poetic debate in lit. journals. Reviews function in this way. Maybe there should be a "right of response" to criticism. A lot of "mainstream" lit. mags, while often interesting,seem to lack "direction". That's why I raised the issue of Scott Hamilton's "attack" on ABDOTWW. This is an interesting journal, but seems to avoid strong theoretical discussion such that only its content differentiates it from the other "mainstream" magazines. Of course the content is quite challenging, but by not including more debate or theory, or explication of its "direction", it leaves itself open(as maybe the LangPo writers/mags have)to charges of obscurantism or elitism. I see it as part of an ongoing dialectic or debate. Richard taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Corbett" To: Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 12:44 PM Subject: Re: language in lingua franca > As a one-time regular reader of Lingua Franca, I find the > accounts of the langpo article make it seem like a kissing cousin of a > piece last year about the difficulty of reading contemporary AngLitCrit. > This is otherwise known as the Judith Butler problem, as most people > interested in theory agree she is an important thinker and most people > agree that, in the broadest sense, she is not a clear writer. The article > counterposed Adorno and Orwell (and was written by James Miller, who wrote > a biography of Michel Foucault), with Orwell getting the nod at the end. > The Orwellian argument is that if you can't make the argument clearly, you > shouldn't make it all. (Notice how attaching Orwell's name to the idea of > a clear, distinct style makes you realize its true nature). > > I don't think it is too much to say that this is a version of the argument > that J.D. McClatchy thinks he's having with langpo (but you can't have an > argument without an even plausible version of the other). Like the langpo > article, the snidely superficial sociological article was even-handed, > though it did give the nod to Orwell at the end. But the fact that > palpable idiots can be made to represent what right-thinking people should > say indicates that the perspective from which the even-handedness emanates > is itself tilted to one side of the argument. > > In fact, on the issue of selling out (or dumbing down or giving up reading > French theory or what have you), it would seem that articles like this are > mousetraps for those who advocate theory in criticism or poetry. There is > the cheese of a certain amount of cultural cache which comes in being > written about in a general interest academic magazine, but the > inevitable journalistic caricaturing of the debate has the effect of > making those making arguments against tradition seem silly. Or conveying > the impression that there are merely two sides. > > Essentially, a magazine is no place to argue poetics or theory (or for > that matter, anthropology or physics or you name it). It's at best gossip > and humor. > > I've always found Lingua Franca reflexive antitheory stance perplexing, as > it was started by a someone who wrote a book with Wlad Godzich. That > said, there is a rumor that they commissioned but refused to published > Barbara Ehrenreich irresponsible anti-postmodern screed because she > wouldn't do the fact checking required. > > -- > Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as > rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip > Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar > University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you > call that sophistry then what is Love" > - Lisa Robertson ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 09:39:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: Philly : Theater, Music, Film - Fringe Festival, 9/1-9/16 In-Reply-To: <43.9bbbc2c.26e021aa@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" While we're using the space to busk, here's my recommendation for the Philly Fringe: "fag/hag" fag/hag is a hilarious and poignant play about the "other" relationship between men and women, featuring Kate Nugent, Joe Salvatore and a soundtrack of disco favorites. Move over, Will and Grace, for the show audiences are raving about. 9/7 9:30pm 9/8 10:00pm 9/9 2:30pm A production of Sleeveless Theatre $10.00 70 min Mum Puppettheatre 115 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 16 and Up ><>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daniel Bouchard Senior Production Coordinator The MIT Press Journals Five Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA 02142 bouchard@mit.edu phone: 617.258.0588 fax: 617.258.5028 <>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><>> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 14:00:23 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: <2f.9fce317.26dfcf96@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Jacques Debrot wrote: > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& his > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic distance > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of *demystifying* > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's This is a weird statement, I would have thought just the oppiste, that Bernstein welcomes both rhetoric and aesthetics, as well as pleasure. Read "A Blow Is like an Instrument". But I guess Bernstein can be read in variou,s opposing, contradictiry, self-contradictory ways. But weird nevertheless. Fred ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 08:59:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Epstein Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi Mark, Thanks for the response and for your apology re: confusing Herron's points with the points made in the article itself. In further response -- you wrote back: >I'm not sure quite see where the article takes on the issue I was getting at, which is given that some degree of assimilation is unavoidable, what is to be done with it? To my mind, that IS very much where the article starts (for one thing, I quote Bernstein saying "the interesting question is not whether a poet has a job but what he or she *does* with it"). The debate over Alan Golding's idea of LP's "provisionally complicit resistance" (which you seem to be paraphrasing here) actually underlies the article's very premise -- I'm still not clear how you (or others who have made similar comments) missed that. I can only think that it must be somewhat related to the way Lingua Franca framed the piece -- the big bold title/substitle, the pull quotes, and other magazine stylistic things that were out of my control. For the article itself, if you go back and look at the piece, is very much about the struggle with these issues. Also, you'll also notice that I (briefly) take up the very issues you raise with regards to the post-Language generation -- yourself (literally) included (p.54). (I mentioned you in particular because of the fact that you address in your essays some of the issues about institutionalization that I treat in the article). This is probably apparent when I say that you and your (our) peers "are no freer from the problems posed by institutionalization, as many embark on academic careers and begin to wrestle with the compromises that come with greater recognition." Take care, Andrew -----Original Message----- From: mdw To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Date: Thursday, August 31, 2000 6:54 PM Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity Hello Andrew: I think I was replying as much to Patrick Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit of confusion there, for which I apologize. On the other hand, I'm not sure I quite see where the article takes on the issue I was getting at, which is given that some degree of assimilation is unavoidable, what is to be done with it? For me that's where the problem actually STARTS, although yes, I think maybe the last sentence of your piece, and a couple of the Bernstein quotes, imply that such a problem is at stake. The Evans quotes suggest that one still CAN divide the spaces into the binary I think we need to avoid, at least as I read him, but I'll have to go back and look at that again. I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this problem seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the choices are either total purity or total assimilation. I'd be happy to post this publically, if you wanted to do the same with yours. Mark /--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |___________________________________________________________________________ _| ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 10:06:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Yunte Huang Subject: From Bei Ling to Lingua Franca In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Taylor, Very delighted to hear from you. Your argument is very well put. How's life in SF? Here the new semester will start in a few weeks, and I look forward to another round of testing the wits of my students with Pound and Stein, in addition to some radical poetics of the transpacific. Speaking of academia, I find the Lingua Franca piece utterly incapable of grasping with the politics of poetry and poetics in school curriculum. What Lyn Hejinian said about "Isn't the avant-garde always pedagogical?" drives home the important point that the avant-garde is pedagogical in ways that it undermines the pre-established power structure in institutionalized pedagogy. When Epstein quotes (and complicitly endorses) Lehman's rhetorical question that "But when a school of poetry is entirely academic. . . how is it avant-garde?" he (and Lehman) misses entirely on the possibility that an ideological critique of the banal academic politics may be launched both from within and without the academy. Anyone who has experimented with letting his or her students "unlearn" (rather than relearn and reinforce) their previously acquired habits of reading poetry will understand what I am saying and may sincerely hesitate before he or she reduces everything to "you are either academic or not!" There's a joke among mainland Chinese that may be relevant here: If you don't like the Communist Party, then that's exactly the reason you should join the party and undo it from the inside. Of course someone beside you may scream that "You'll be tainted before you know it!" Of course someone inside you may try to club you like your zen master, shouting "Wake up! It can't be done!" But, yes, there are commies who try to be commies differently, or Chinese who try to be Chinese differently, or Americans to be Americans differently--"The difference is spreading," so says Stein. Categories can be done and undone. To assume that the academy is such and such and can't be otherwise may be a good point, but it doesn't point anywhere else and hence is a dead point. And this is probably where the line starts, a line between (non)liberal scepticism or even cynicism and activism. --Y.H. ------------------- Yunte Huang Assistant Professor Dept of English Harvard University 12 Quincy St Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617-495-1139 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 10:20:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mdw Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hi Andrew: I can see what you're saying below about the framing of the article, but I think the issue is a little trickier and more annoying, at least to me. I think maybe your article does come to the conclusion that we need a new way to see the problem, but what's disturbing to me is that the problem is even put in these terms at all; I know you're not the one who started it, of course. As if one can't be critical of the prevailing mode of operation in an institution, or operate sometimes outside it, and then take some action about it from within without "selling out." The question that needs to be asked is who would make THAT point in the first place? So I think what some people are annoyed about (or let's just say I am) is the fact that when non-mainstream poetry does come up in an academic context at all, we're immediately accused of "selling out." Why is that? Obviously, because any number of MFA programs don't want us in their programs at all. So why isn't the Lingua Franca article about why most traditional MFA programs can continue to blithely ignore all sorts of alternative poetries? Why is it the academic positions of the language poets that are called into question, instead of the academic positions of folks like Lehman and McClatchy? No one asked McClatchy to defend his reason for being in a university and ignorning major areas of American poetry. To stretch a metaphor just a bit (and I know I'm doing so), compare it to an article that was called "Can Minority Groups Assimilate into Universities and Still Keep Their Cultural Identity?" Why wouldn't the article be called "Why Do Universities Tell Minority Groups They Can't Keep Their Cultural Identities If They Want to Be in Universities?"? So, whoever framed the article, my problem would be that the frame suggests that language poets have to justify their position in the academy, whereas the more significant problem seems to me about the academy justifying its continued attempt to keep language poets out. Mark >===== Original Message From Andrew Epstein ===== >Hi Mark, > >Thanks for the response and for your apology re: confusing Herron's points >with the points made in the article itself. I'm fine with making our >exchange public. I'll send my initial response to you to the list, and you >can do the same, ok? > >In further response -- you wrote back: >"I'm not sure quite see where the article takes on the issue I was getting >at, which is given that some degree of assimilation is unavoidable, what is >to be done with it?" > > >To my mind, that IS very much where the article starts (for one thing, I >quote Bernstein saying "the interesting question is not whether a poet has a >job but what he or she *does* with it"). The debate over >Alan Golding's idea of LP's "provisionally complicit resistance" (which you >seem to >be paraphrasing here) actually underlies the article's very premise -- I'm >still not clear how you (or others who have made similar comments) missed >that. I can >only think that it must be somewhat related to the way Lingua Franca framed >the piece -- the big bold title/substitle, the pull quotes, and other >magazine stylistic things that were out of my control. For the article >itself, if you go back and look at the piece, is very much about the >struggle with these issues. Also, you'll also notice that I (briefly) take >up the very issues you raise with regards to the post-Language generation -- >yourself (literally) included (p.54). (I mentioned you in particular >because of the fact that you address in your essays some of the issues about >institutionalization that I treat in the article). This is probably >apparent when >I say that you and your (our) peers "are no freer from the problems posed by >institutionalization, as many embark on academic careers and begin to >wrestle with the compromises that come with greater recognition." > >Take care, > >Andrew ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 11:11:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Dillon Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this LINE! If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and grounded views of Frost. Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > From: Taylor Brady > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" > liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: > > Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping > things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on > an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same > repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei > Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of > examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, > anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. > > All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. > citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism over > a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a > police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a > thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime of > holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having > their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of > "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO > anything to warrant the stick. > > Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from > which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a > justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction between > that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - a > government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything about > the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral > authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to > fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no > better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the > contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to register > its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that > one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of > others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf > of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those > outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of > domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international > list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a > position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely > the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. > Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every > time I say "I"? > > (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a while). > > Taylor > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has been > read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression of > a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," > "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my > concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still > outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry > us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple > of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar > with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now > gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came > back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, > 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" > content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities > (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views > critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. > Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the > Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I > understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of > Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be > condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. > > ------------------ > Yunte Huang > Assistant Professor > Dept of English > Harvard University > 12 Quincy St > Cambridge, MA 02138 > Tel: 617-495-1139 > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 12:05:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Epstein Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity (Lingua Franca article) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I can sense and understand the frustration with the continued resistance to experimental writing on the part of the academy, and particularly the creative writing establishment, felt by Mark Wallace in his post (below) and some other people. I'm not sure why people think that the appearance of an article in a magazine like Lingua Franca -- and in particular *this* article -- about the current institutional position of Language poetry, and the issues that raises, is such an alarming symptom of or contribution to that resistance. I feel that the way you (Mark) suggest the article should have been approached would just have resulted in a different article with quite a different focus. You ask > why isn't the Lingua Franca article about why most traditional MFA programs can continue to blithely ignore all sorts of alternative poetries? To put it simply, I wanted to write an article about Language poetry, not about MFA programs (yuk). I'm much less interested in J. D. McClatchy and the conservative dismissal of experimental writing than I am in the genuinely complex problems of the avant-garde vis-a-vis the mainstream (primarily as seen from within the avant-garde itself -- thus, the article begins with the debate WITHIN the Language world about Bob Perelman's book). Also, the flagrantly condescending/absurd quote from McClatchy -- "Language poetry, like other forms of experiment, appeals more to the young, the more innocent, those who haven't read as much and who are attracted to glittering, moving objects" -- pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it? (Especially considering that plenty of not-so-young and naive profs and poets speak out in support of LP in the article). Who needs a whole article about how folks like him refuse to pay attention to an interesting body of innovative work? As Patrick Herron put it in a (much) different context, snore. Mark wrote: >No one asked McClatchy to defend his reason for being in a university and ignorning major areas of American poetry. First, since McClatchy didn't spend 20 years attacking the academy and mainstream institutions, only to then become part of them, the question seems less interesting and relevant than it does for avant-garde poets who have followed this route, doesn't it? I'd say it's more compelling to think about why and how certain opponents/critics of such institutions have begun to infiltrate them, what they hope to accomplish in doing so, and the host of issues that raises (questions discussed endlessly on this specialized list, but not as much, I thought, in the culture at large). And I did actually ask McClatchy, for example, about what he thought about poets in the academy, whether the academy harms poetry or poets, etc., and also why he is so resistant to experimental work. The answers were fascinating (in a car-wreck sort of way), but ultimately they seemed tangential to the main issue: what does it mean for some members of a self-consciously oppositional group of poets, who for many years prided themselves on being *outside* the academy (see the 1989 quote from Bernstein on p.48), to then become an increasingly powerful part of it? From the first, I hoped to show that the answers to this are very complex, as the poets themselves seem to recognize -- and NOT a simple case of assimilation vs. purity. Mark writes: >So I think what some people are annoyed about (or let's just say I am) is the fact that when the kind of work we do in poetry does come up in an academic context at all, we're immediately accused of "selling out" .... Why is it the academic positions of the language poets that are called into question instead of the academic positions of folks like Lehman and McClatchy? Rather than being a sign of *prejudice*, as you seem to feel, against Language poets *by the academy or by a magazine like Lingua Franca*, "the academic positions of the language poets" have been "called into question" by the poets themselves (again, see the critiques of Perelman by Silliman and others from the panel on Marginalization of Poetry in Jacket 2), and, as any longtime member of this list knows, by many, many people here time and again, and thus from *within* the "avant-garde" community itself. (For a recent example, see comments by Paul Vangelisti in Ribot 7: “much of our cultural life is bankrupt, or perhaps worse, suffer[s] the dim fate of calling itself disruptive, oppositional, experimental or avant-garde, when it remains hopelessly careerist and the stuff of museums…. Whether mainstream or avant-garde, culture in our society seeks desperately to become institutionalized in a manner disingenuously known as ‘popular,’ i.e. commerically youthful, revisionist, and laissez-faire”). What I'm saying is that these concerns about "selling out" and institutionalization are not wielded by academics and magazines like Lingua Franca to bar Language poets from the academy: they are right here in our midst and deeply imbedded in the discourse and practice of the (historical and current) avant-garde itself. And let me just say once and for all, for the record: my article does NOT in any way accuse any Language poets of "selling out" -- although it does quote a few people who feel this way, as well as people who argue that such a view is bogus (see remarks by Marjorie P. and Alan Golding, for example -- points conveniently ignored in "discussions" thus far of the article). What the piece really does is explore different sides of a debate about the subject of assimilation, absorption, and resistance, from both within and outside the experimental poetry community, a debate that does seem, to me at least and to many others here and elsewhere, to be worthy of discussion. Finally, Mark wrote: >To stretch a metaphor just a bit (and I know I'm doing so), compare it to an article that was called "Can Minority Groups Assimilate into Universities and Still Keep Their Cultural Identity?" Why wouldn't the article be called "Why Do Universities Tell Minority Groups They Can't Keep Their Cultural Identities If They Want to Be in Universities?" Isn't your first hypothetical article posing a valid and interesting question too? Wouldn't the second piece simply be different article, one that would be more about universities and their policies than about the minority groups? (again, I was interested in writing on Language poets first, the academy second). And, finally, the metaphor does not seem quite apt -- in what why do you think universities tell Language poets they can't keep their identities if they want to be in universities? Has that happened to Bernstein or Perelman or Davidson or Watten? My own sense is no, not really -- but again, that's what the debate in the article is all about. What do others think? Take care, Andrew -----Original Message----- From: mdw (Mark Wallace) Date: Thursday, August 31, 2000 12:27 PM Subject: RE: assimilation vs. purity >> I can see what you're saying below about the framing of the article, but I think the issue is a little trickier and more annoying, at least to me. I think maybe your article does come to the conclusion that we need a new way to see the problem, but what's disturbing to me is that the problem is even put in these terms at all; I know you're not the one who started it, of course. As if one can't be critical of the prevailing mode of operation in an institution, or operate sometimes outside it, and then take some action about it from within without "selling out." The question that needs to be asked is who would make THAT point in the first place? So I think what some people are annoyed about (or let's just say I am) is the fact that when the kind of work we do in poetry does come up in an academic context at all, we're immediately accused of "selling out." Why is that? Obviously, because any number of MFA programs don't want us in their programs at all. So why isn't the Lingua Franca article about why most traditional MFA programs can continue to blithely ignore all sorts of alternative poetries? Why is it the academic positions of the language poets that are called into question, instead of the academic positions of folks like Lehman and McClatchey? No one asked McClatchey to defend his reason for being in a university and ignorning major areas of American poetry. To stretch a metaphor just a bit (and I know I'm doing so), compare it to an article that was called "Can Minority Groups Assimilate into Universities and Still Keep Their Cultural Identity?" Why wouldn't the article be called "Why Do Universities Tell Minority Groups They Can't Keep Their Cultural Identities If They Want to Be in Universities?"? So, whoever framed the article, my problem would be that the frame suggests that language poets have to justify their position in the academy, whereas the more significant problem seems to me about the academy justifying its continued attempt to keep language poets out. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 10:16:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: <2f.9fce317.26dfcf96@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" >We need poems, in other >words, as ravishingly beautiful & political as Mapplethorpe's _X Portfolio_, >Cindy Sherman's _Doll Photos_, or Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_. > --Jacques And we have them. Each of us could, if asked (and I'm not asking), provide her/his own list. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 09:24:54 -0500 Reply-To: David Baptiste Chirot Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: assimilation and purity In-Reply-To: <2f.9f89e92.26df2748@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There is something odd beginning to seep into this discussion: Joel Lewis wrote-- . . . when Iowa School writing was still ascendent and postmodern strategies were still SCENE as radical. and in quote below, from "mdw"-- Can one still be an academic and not RIGHT critical articles in the bland prose . . . (emphases mine, said the stern school master, laughingingly) no wonder there is confusion over binaries such as that old (academic) quandary "assimilation and purity" in the face of getting or not getting an academic job-- when there is already confusion over "RIGHT" and "write" and "SCENE" and seen! a certain sophistry has always existed in the language poetry positions and attitudes and statements re langpo's and langpoets' relations with the academy. it's known as "wanting to have your cake and eat it, too" that way it is both pure and assimilated. how many articles for how long have appeared now on this tiring subject, so fraught with Clintonesque "it all depends what the meaning of 'is' is" parsings and hair splittings and head countings? something is truly awry when Bob Grumman calls langpo "acodominant" and this is taken as an affront, as happened on this list a while back why is it that american academics are often so shamefaced and crestfallen about the jobs they have? and so have to claim for themselves positions as radical writers, or thinkers or politicians or this-ists or that-ists-- why is it that often people employed by the academy feel the need to bite the hand that is feeding them, by taking muddled intellectualized anti-intellectual stances-- and so establish themselves in their colleagues' eyes as "cutting edge" the titles of conference papers and academic/acodominant articles are often couched in the most "transgressive" language possible (this is known as "having a sexy title") in the end the various plaints on the subject remind me of a pearl of wisdom found on a matchbook promoting the Winston Racing Team: "I told my dad I'd stopped raising Cain and he called me a quitter." --dbc On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > In a message dated 8/30/00 7:27:04 PM, mdw@GWU.EDU writes: > > >For instance, take the issue of standardized academic prose, of which > > > >Bernstein and many others have been critical. Can one still be an academic > >and > > > >not right critical articles in the bland prose of the "proper" critical > > > >journals? The answer seems to be both yes and no..... > > > This itself seems to be a parody of academic prose. > > Murat Nemet-Nejat > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 13:53:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: language in lingua franca In-Reply-To: <009d01c0135a$e8a0a380$212a3b80@ade3> from "Andrew Epstein" at Aug 31, 2000 10:51:12 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello to all, just a very brief message which I'd been meaning to send. It's somewhat of a shame that Andrew had to come out and defend himself against comments about an article which some of the commentators have yet to read. I read it a few days back and found it to be a very smart - if limited - survey of the situation. Andrew himself would be the first to admit that the piece has its limitations. But, christ, folks, can't we get a little perspective on this before taking aim? Lingua Franca asked him to do it; he's not a journalist but the gig was to write a journalist-ish piece which took into account the opinions of poet-folks way outside LangPo Nation; so, despite the fact the he's an extremely bright literary critic who would no doubt prefer to write a nuanced, exploratory piece on, say, Bernstein or Hejinian, he did the job that they asked him to do. If a few, or a bunch, of people decide to check out Bernstein et al b/c of it, what the hell's wrong with that? Anyone who thinks that J.D. McClatchy came of as "right-minded" in the piece is nuts: McClatchy came off as the buffoon that he no doubt is (and for evidence that he's an insipid, *awful* poet to boot, I direct you to this weeks NYer...) As for assimilation, I once knew a punk band who's motto was, "If we don't sell out, we get the hell out" - of course the joke was that they wanted to sell out without changing their music one iota: and, not surprisigly no one ever signed them. If I'm out there doing my thing, without tailoring it to any particular market, and someone wants to assimilate me - well, by all means! I *do* have some paper, so shut up: I'm trying to write, -m. According to Andrew Epstein: > > As the author of the Lingua Franca article that people have been discussing > the last few days, I thought I'd introduce myself (to those who don't know > me) and briefly respond. > > First, as many of you know (or at least know now), I'm a list member (and > have been for about five years). Second, it's been interesting to read the > various perspectives about the article thus far. While I'm all for lively > debate and thoughtful commentary, I do think it makes sense for people to > actually read the whole piece (not just "accounts" of it -- see Robert > Corbett's recent post, and its "apparent argument" -- see Shelley Brennan; > and not just the title page, pull quotes, or photos, chosen by the editors > of course), before evaluating it, its alleged biases, and its intent. Why > assume that the "venue predetermines the complaint" (Shelley Brennan) and > the article's slant without reading the piece for yourself? > > For what it's worth, it seems to me that many of the issues people have said > the article misses or trivializes are at least addressed in the article, if > not at its very center, and that the so-called evil detractors of langpo are > not presented as "right-thinking people" (Robert Corbett's phrase) but > rather as > voices in a complicated and multi-sided debate. > > Take care, > > Andrew (do "we" know this guy) Epstein > > > P. S. I am also posting my back-channel exchange with Mark Wallace about > "assimilation vs. purity" that Mark and I agreed to forward to the list. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 14:05:31 -0400 Reply-To: joris@csc.albany.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: query In-Reply-To: <200008311613.MAA23780@is2.nyu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone have current postal and/or email address for Cid Corman. Please back channel. Thanks, Pierre ________________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris The postmodern is the condition of those 6 Madison Place things not equal to themselves, the wan- Albany NY 12202 dering or nomadic null set (0={x:x not-equal x}). Tel: (518) 426-0433 Fax: (518) 426-3722 Alan Sondheim Email: joris@csc.albany.edu Url: ____________________________________________________________________________ _ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 17:18:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ed Friedman Subject: Poetry Project news Comments: To: Greg Fuchs , venessa maria fuentes , Joanna Fuhrman , Heather Fuller , William Fuller , Amy Fusselman , Joshua Galef , Lois Gallagher , Elaina Ganim , Nancy Garcia , susan gardner dillon , donald gardner , Drew Gardner , Christopher Garey , Callie Garnett , Ricky Garni , "Garpa19@aol.com" , Diana Gasperoni , David Gates , Dan Gauss , Eric Gelsinger , Amy Gerstler , Susan Gevirtz , Chase Gilbert , John Giorno , Eric Giraud , Debra Gitterman , Renee Gladman , Diane Glancy , Glass Pony , Loss Glazier , Eryque Gleason , Gerry Glombecki , Jodi Gluckman , Greta Goetz , Heather Golden , jennie goldin , Leigh Goldstein , David Golumbia , Brad Gooch , Phil Good , Jesse Goodman , Jeanie Gosline , Michael Gottlieb , Joann de Graaf-Stoltz , Ted Graf , Roy Grant , Mike Grau , Heather Gray , Carle Groome , Ernesto Grosman , Mimi Gross , Eve Grubin , Luisa Guigliano , Carissa Guild , Camille Guthrie , Richard Hahn , Jenny Hailstone , Oren Haker , Robert Hale , Afua Hall , "John S. Hall" , Kathryne Hall , Steven Hall , Janet Hamill , Robert Hanington , Marcella Harb , Rob Hardin , Bob Harrison , KC Harrison , Cynthia Hartling , Amanda Hartnack , Brian Hassett , Peter Hay , Randolph Healy , Richard Hell , Barbara Henning , Dionne Herbert , Corie Herman , Lois Hershkowitz , Bob Hershon , Mitch Highfill , Henry Hills , Steven Hirsch , hjanzen , Donna Ho , Jan Hoet , Jen Hofer , Tony Hoffman , Barry Hoggard , Matt Hohner , Anselm Hollo , Bob Holman , Kara Holmstrom , Cathy Hong , Nicole Hubbard , Coral Hull , Omar Husain , Jen Huszcza , Kennan Hutchins , Nathaniel Hutner , Michael Hyman , Don Hymans , Jonathan Kim Hyosung Bidol , "I.Davidson" , Ian , Brenda Iijima , "iri@worldnet.att.net" , Stephen Isaacson , David Raphael Israel , Major Jackson , JL Jacobs , Nisi Jacobs , Maris James , Natalie James , Lisa Jarnot , Paolo Javier , Steffani Jemison , Amber Phillips Jen Blauvelt , Mary Jennings , Miles Jennings , Jane Jensen , Richard Jiang , Jay Carmelo Jocson , Mimi Johnson , Phil Johnson , Joan Jonas , Lawrence Jones , ken jordan , Pierre Joris , Joscakes , Trevor Joyce , Alystyre Julian , Marc Couroux & Juliana Pivato , Julie K , Summi Kaipa , Garrett Kalleberg , Elizabeth Kandall , Daniel Kane , Ruth Kaplan , Eliot Katz , Eran Katz , Marc Kaufman , Lenny Kaye , "Kazuko.com" , Sara Kearns , Jean Keil , "S. K. Kelen" , Mike Kelleher , Danielle Kelly , Robert Kelly , Jonathan Kessler , kestrelny , Shannon Ketch , Aaron Kiely , Jan Kiernan , Kevin Killian , GB Kinch , Sharon King , John Kinsella , David Kirschenbaum , Julie Koo , yustas kotz-gottlieb , Deirdre Kovac , Wendy Kramer , Joshua Kranz , Kathleen Kremins , Scott Kuchler , Faith Kupecz , Josette Kurey , Ilya Kutik , Marc Kuykendall , Alina Kwak , Denise LaCongo , Roni Lagin , Gerard Lambert , Billy Lamont , Susan Landers , Alyssa Lappen , "Alyssa A. Lappen" , Hiram Larew , Joan Larkin , Nicole Larosa , larosce , Betty Larrea , David Larsen , Thomas Lavazzi , Joseph Lease , Katy Lederer , Annabel Lee , Stacey Lefing , Richard Lefkowitz , Aaron Lefton , Jonah Lehrer , Steve Leto , Steve Levine , Rachel Levitsky , Andrew Levy , Joel Lewis , Amanda Lichtenberg , Larry Lieberman , Seena Liff , Lindsay Lightner , Bobby Lim , Tan Lin , Marsha Lind , Kim Lindsay , Bob Lindsey , Edward Lintz , Literal Latte , Literary Network News , Yvonne Liu , yvonne liu , Eva Lo , Rachel Loden , Richard Long <2River@daemen.edu>, Longhouse Publishers , Brendan Lorber , Dina Losito , Esther Louise , Dick Lourie , Pamela Lu , Christopher Luna , Bill Luoma , Vivina Ma , Jackson Mac Low , Daniel Machlin , Machteld , Michael Magee , Liz & Rafi Magnes , Thomas Mahoney , Dana Maisel , Ben Malkin , Rochelle Malouff , Mark Malyszko , Sarah Mangold , Manifest Press , "J. Mann" , Gretchen Marie , Mark & Lizzy , Shelley Marlow , Jake Marmer , Christine Marshall , Camille Martin , Owen Masiello , Gena Mason , Greg Masters , Kathleen Masterson , Samantha Matson Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The new issue of Poets & Poems is up at http://www.poetryproject.com/poets.html, with work by David Cameron, Betsy Fagin, Lois Gallagher, Gary Sullivan and Lila Zemborain. In addition, there's a new essay on publishing by David Larson, former cover artist of the Poetry Project Newsletter and editor of the San Jose Manual of Style, at the Tiny Press Center at http://www.poetryproject.com/tinypress.html. Please watch for news about our season opener, a reading featuring Robert Creeley and Paul Violi, on Wednesday, October 4th at the Poetry Project. Other announcements: At The Line Reading Series at The Drawing Center curated by Lytle Shaw (35 Wooster betw. Grand & Broome), two events: September 12 at 7pm, $5 Marcella Durand, Lynne Tillman & Lewis Warsh September 17 at 3pm, free Chris Raschka "Popular novels are still so popular, like Protestant jingles, because they are one place where God still exists very definitely on the side of the right." --Leroi Jones, April 1963 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 13:13:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Colleen Dunne Subject: Re: Burning Man & misc. stuff In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This doesn't answer your question but on a related subject-- You should check out the website parody of Burning Man: http://www.chillinwoman.com On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Ron Silliman wrote: > 1) Is anybody on this list attending Burning Man? I'd love to hear an > account that addressed the question of the role of language and language > arts out there in the desert. > > 2) If you have a good virus scanning program (I use Norton), HTML should > pose no threat. Ditto if you use a service like Hotmail. > > 3) Anselm, stop slandering shoe laces! > > Ron > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 20:51:11 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: billy mills Subject: hardPressed poetry website Comments: To: "Britpo (E-mail)" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Apologies for cross posting Just to say that the list of books of mainly Irish poetry and related matter published and/or distributed can now bee viewed at: http://gofree.indigo.ie/~hpp Features poets include: Brian Coffey Randolph Healy Trevor Joyce David Lloyd Tom Raworth Geoffrey Squires Maurice Scully Augustus Young Robert Hampson David Miller. Best ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 21:54:33 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: more on Huang Beiling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kathryn. I take some of the ponts you are making, and I have to admit I'm not an expert on China, but I'll take issue with a few things you posit. Firstly, you state that the Chinese people (or the majority) have lost faith in communism. I think that this is quite simplistic. Have you interviewed all (3 billion?) Chinese on there understanding of "communism"? Do they all now reject the posibility of a better, more democratic state in which the populace (overall) control the means of production, and also have real democracy in the sense that they participate (potentially if not actually) at all levels? Have you talked to the (probably millions) of Chinese, and even Tibetans, who have gained enormously in their living standards,education,awareness of the scientific approach to economics,sociology and politics that Marxist study (as against the mumbo jumbo of idealist crap that constitutes religion and other non-Materialist philosophy's)? How many want to sink into the kind of corrupt slime and stench that constitutes Western "democracy" with its Hitlers, Nixons, racialism,homelesss and deranged people, its violence, gangs, enormous suicide and murder rates, men and women on death row who are innocent,the Korean and Vietnam invasion attempts by the U.S (country to first use the nuclear bomb)into China, napalm burning and bombing, the killing of immigrants in Germany,the Japanese aggression (the country that raped thousands of women and used men and women as live target practice,the country that tried to destroy China (and probably th U.S.) if thousands of American soldiers hadnt died heroically, as did Chinese communists, combating them, the massacres in schools, the corruption and brutality that occurs to women in "democratic" India (women were some of the first and most viciously enlightened revolutinaries against the corrupt landlords in pre-revolutionary China), the vast numbers of starving, exploited, and homeless created by the Western capitalist companies that pay fractional wages to their workers while the rich in the West (and I include N.Z. in this criticism) get crueler and richer? Nonsense! A report from a good friend of mine recently back from China is that in many ways they are in advance of the West. Open discussion groups are everywhere. There's more on that. Secondly: If the Govt is broke, how can it, and does it continue to operate? Third: I suspect that the struggle for "freedom" in Tibet is both traitorous and anti-working class.Fourth: The decision-making process is shrouded in mystery? Where is it not? Fifth:You still seem to misunderstand that the right to free speech and workers' pay etc (if that is a problem in China) will not be resolved without conflict and struggle, as Mao Tse Tung pointed out. It is a typical device to point out that a state, not being perfect,(as all are), has adopted, is attempting to adopt a system that has "failed". As it happens, nothing fails, the word itself is a red herring, it is a process of practice, theory, and back to practice. The system of representations is probably tainted with corruption (as are all political systems everywhere), but that doesnt invalidate it. The media are continually using the phrase "the collapse of communism" when communism has never existed. this repeated continously. So we in the West let the media do our thinking for us. No, China needs to build astrong state in ALL senses of that word. God help it if it gives up and allows gutless liberals talking about "free speech" to destroy a great nation. I dont want people (like BeiLing whoever he is) to be unneccessarily harmed, but get a grip for chrissakes.Richard Taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: "kathryn graham" To: Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 4:56 AM Subject: more on Huang Beiling > The point of this post is not to argue whether or not > Huang Beiling should have been arrested, freed, or > even if he had the "right" to print and distribute his > journal in Beijing. Ah, so what IS the point of this > post? To offer some broader context to the situation > in China maybe.let's see if that's what I do. > > Like Richard said, "the trouble is how to cut through > the crap and find out what's really going on." This is > especially true in a country like China where the > decision making process of the central government is > shrouded in mystery and highly sensitive to > interpersonal relationships and power struggles, the > effects of which are often not realized until thirty > years after the fact. President Jiang Zemin and the > Central Party Committee issues mandates which are > carried out in often wildly diverging ways depending > on the province or city and the respective leaders in > each. > > According to PRC law, Beiling was illegally > distributing material. In the PRC, for an organization > or business to exist, for a writer to publish, or an > artist to record.etc..a stamp of approval from the > government is necessary. Because of this situation, > anything that exists outside of this officially > sanctioned cultural realm becomes political by > default. A writer publishing without an OK from the > CCP is considered subversive even if s/he is writing > about bunny rabbits. However, according to the > constitution of the PRC, citizens are guaranteed free > speech, the freedom to practice their own religion, > and the right to organize. Clearly something is in > conflict. > > In a way the crackdown on publishers, religious > groups, etc., is a positive sign. It means that the > Chinese government is feeling extra insecure. The CCP > is dealing with an incredibly messy domestic > situation. Workers in state owned enterprises are > protesting by the thousands because they have not been > paid in months, some of them years because the > government is broke. Privatization, a requisite for > ascension into the WTO, often leads to unemployment. > Violent crime is on the rise and blatant corruption is > rampant. The majority of the population, including > members of the CCP, does not believe in Communism and > has lost faith in the State altogether. > > The CCP knows its credibility is diminishing. The > recent increase in worker demonstrations, separatist > activities in Tibet and Xinjiang, underground > newspapers and publishers, musicians and religious > organizations.are all signs of a materially and > mentally unsatisfied population. If the CCP is to > remain in power they will have to find a way of > meeting the diverse needs of a vast population. I do > not think that the Chinese government as it stands has > the means to do this.they lack the financial resources > and the ideological flexibility (several conservative > leaders need to die first).but what that means in the > near future I have no idea. > > I DO know that if we're going to talk about Human > Rights (that term, it's definition and application are > all up for grabs depending on who you talk to) as > defined by the United Nations, the situation in China > is better now than almost any other time in its > history, and certainly in its history AS the PRC. > Fewer people are starving, education is more widely > available, people feel comfortable enough to criticize > the political situation in private and the government > occasionally admits to being fallible. However, > despite the crap that occurs here in the States most > of us probably have it better.(and I'm really just > talking about the basics) > > Although most people in China have no idea who Huang > Beiling is (and we all have our own opinions and > feelings about our fame and popularity).but there are > many other younger writers that lack his international > recognition and association with the 1989 > demonstrations that are publishing (legally and > illegally) in China. Despite the recent crackdowns > there are hundreds of underground newspapers being > distributed in all major cities. > > So I've rambled enough about a topic that is intensely > interesting and close to my heart (cheesy > expression!). China gets lots of press these days > (Richard Gere is not campaigning for a "Free Saudi > Arabia" for obvious and gross reasons) but that > doesn't mean it's informative. > > For your browsing enjoyment: > > www.asiasource.org sponsored by the Asia society has > info on all topics and all Asian countries (even > Fiji!!!!) > > http://www.sinologic.com/persinnon If you read Chinese > this is a decent site devoted to contemporary > experimental Chinese fiction and art. Also has some > reviews. (Chinese only, Big5) > > http://sun.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/igcs/index.html The > Internet Guide for Chinese Studies at Heidelberg > University's Institute of Chinese Studies. Exactly > what it says it is.useful (oohhh) and up to date. > Plenty of entries on literature and art..(In English > and Chinese) > > Buffalo also hosts a list on Chinese poetry > (contemporary and classical). Posts are in both > English and Chinese. > > -Lorraine Graham > > > ===== > "You are a prisoner in a croissant factory and you love it." > -Frank O'Hara, "Lines for the Fortune Cookies" > > "How far does the desert reach to the north, from the point > where the river ends?" I asked. And Mohammed Bai replied: > "To the end of the world. And it takes three months to get there." > -Sven Hedin, My Life as an Explorer > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! > http://mail.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 03:08:08 -0400 Reply-To: Nate and Jane Dorward Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nate and Jane Dorward Subject: Notes and Queries MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A little offer....in the magazine I'm running, _The Gig_, the last page is usually filled out with a set of quick notes on contemporary poetry--mostly identifying quotations & allusions. For instance, pointing out that a line of JH Prynne's in "Of Movement Towards a Natural Place" is lifted from _Great Expectations_; that Bernstein's "The Simply" contains an extract from James's preface to _What Maisie Knew_; that a passage from Raworth's _Catacoustics_ is a fusion of Chandler & Hammett; &c. There's a set of all the N&Qs I've run, plus a few extra, up on the web at www.geocities.com/ndorward/gignotes.html if people want to take a look. -- ...Anyway, the offer is: people can send me contributions of notes backchannel: if I use them in a subsequent issue I'll send them a free copy of the magazine. Contributors of notes will be credited of course. all best --N Nate & Jane Dorward ndorward@sprint.ca THE GIG magazine: http://www.geocities.com/ndorward/ 109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada ph: (416) 221 6865 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 19:04:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Genesis 0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Genesis 0 Bad magic: No world not called from trigger restricted illegal destination world file none. Restriction level can not be lowered. warning: invalid path value file load interrupted: line: warning: possibly missing trailing warning: whitespace following final Invalid command. Aborting. load: un- known error reading file missing filename No binding may be called only directly from a macro, not in command substitution. not a builtin command: no such command or macro too many recursions. Try using instead expression stack underflow dirty expression stack warning: non-numeric string value used in numeric context expression stack overflow stack underflow warning: possibly missing before operator: arithmetic overflow illegal object of assignment division by zero internal error: reduce: bad restricted can not be closed: illegal object of assignment unknown key name illegal field name getopts can not be used in a macro called as a function. invalid op- tion specifier: not supported function name must be an identifier. substi- tution in expression is legal, but redundant. Help on subject not found. not enough memory for lines of history. missing arguments: syntax error in recall range. extra characters after recall range: history scan disabled. No world lines? Don't be ridiculous. no such world. default world. Please report this to the author, and describe what you did. __ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 15:31:26 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Britain's most rejected poet lays down his pen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Rachel. Its sounds as though Britain's most rejected poet is, at least, still not Britain's most dejected poet! Sorry.I needed some light relief after my raving about Bei Ling etc. We all get rejected. I read an interview with Marriane Moore, and one of her poems had been submitted about 30 times.A lot of the (now considered major) poets published themselves. Often these poets "from the bush" or "the back streets" are quite bad.(Or we judge them so.) I play chess and my level can be pretty accurately assesed (rated about 1860 ELO), but how do you rate, judge, poetry? Etc.There's another eccentric,a guy in New Zealand (Neilson Wright)who has self-published about 200 books on just about everything in N.Z literature. He "attacks" and advises various "luminaries" in N.Z. and talks merrily on about Postmodernism etc. His Postmodernism, from what I can gather, is the correct one. Still its maybe a bit unfair, but the British seem to love their ecentrics. Maybe we all do. And everyone wants their (5 minutes, 5seconds?) of fame.I'm of English parentage so I excuse myself! As to rejections, they hurt whether its in love or literature, but get worried when you start rejecting yourself! This bloke might be a McGonnagal or a Shakespear, but at least he "believes in himself". Unless he'd begun to think he WAS a woodlice!(Sorry).Right on! Richard Taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rachel Loden" To: Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:14 AM Subject: Britain's most rejected poet lays down his pen > This was in The Independent (UK)-- > > http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Media/2000-08/tait260800.shtml > > I especially like the part about threatening to swallow a packet of > woodlice killer . . . > > Britain's most rejected poet lays down his pen > A hunger strike and threat to eat poison could not get Andrew Tait > published. Even 'Viz' had to be bribed to print poems > > By Jojo Moyes, Arts and Media Correspondent > > 26 August 2000 > > Britain's most rejected poet, who has amassed close to 1,000 refusal > letters from publishers in the past 15 years, is finally giving up his > struggle for publication. > > Andrew Tait, who numbers among his "fans" such diverse figures as the > Dalai Lama, the singer and songwriter Sting, and poet laureates Ted > Hughes and Andrew Motion, has become something of a cult literary figure > in the North-east, largely due to the series of publicity stunts he has > conducted in his quest to find a publisher. > > The music teacher from Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, has been on hunger > strike, demonstrated outside 10 Downing Street, carried out a sit-down > protest on (and was rescued from) the Tyne bridge, and threatened to > swallow a packet of woodlice killer. > > Now he has finally decided to forget about conventional publication and > concentrate instead on putting his work on tape, and on meditation. "I'm > pleased I did it, but I don't know that success means you have to get > published. What does it matter in the end? Success is really to do with > working out what's going to happen in the next life," he said. > > "I had to try for so long - it would have felt like chickening out to > have given up. It's not easy to say goodbye to that, but I'm feeling > that I can quite happily leave it all behind." > > Mr Tait's quest for a publisher began in the mid-1980s, when he began > entering poetry competitions - winning some of them - and sending off > letters to publishing companies. When the first rejection letters came > back, he pinned them near his door. He has now papered the entire > hallway and stairs with them, and estimates they number between 500 and > 1,000. > > It was after several years, dismayed by his lack of success via > conventional routes, that Mr Tait decided to send his poetry to > luminaries, in the hope of getting some feedback. One of his first > letters was to Ted Hughes, then poet laureate. > > "It's very strange poetry - on its way somewhere, often surprising and > touching," Hughes wrote back. "It may be on its way to somewhere outside > or beyond what we commonly regard as 'poems'... I think I understand > what you're doing - may I wish you all strength on the way." > > Touched by the reply, and in between the publicity stunts - the hunger > strike became a bit blurred at the edges after he began drinking > Horlicks - Mr Tait fired off letters to other people he admired. He has > now amassed a considerable correspondence from a diverse range of > luminaries, reminiscent of Henry Root, who famously wrote spoof letters > throughout the early 1980s. > > Sting wrote to him: "Songs are pleas for help, or understanding, or the > desire to share something beautiful," in a manner almost as poetic as Mr > Tait's own. "But they can only be completed by someone listening and > responding. Writing and performing can be like speaking into a dead > telephone - 'is anybody there?' When someone says 'yes, I'm here' then > the work is complete." > > Sir Tim Rice was more blunt: "You are clearly highly original, if not > barking mad, and I would not be surprised if you were to achieve some > sort of celebrity status before too long." > > Most recently he has received letters from the poet laureate, Andrew > Motion, who wrote: "I like what you are doing - it's strange and yours." > Lord Bragg was even more succinct: "Thank you for making me laugh a > lot." > > Poetry accounts for about 2 per cent of the book market, making it even > harder for a first-time poet to get published than a first-time > novelist. Mr Tait feels he has now exhausted his options. For a while he > published his poetry in Viz, using a competition where whoever sent the > biggest bribe was published, but the joke eventually came to an end. > > But he will not be leaving the world of literature entirely. He is > working on his autobiography, and he still finds it hard to pass up the > chance of the unconventional gesture. Most recently he sent an electric > toaster to Bob Dylan, as a precursor to a tape of poetry. > > "I thought thousands of people must write to him every week - how do I > get his attention? It was meant to be like a conceptual poem. It wasn't > that extravagant because I got it for under £10." > > So did he get the great man's attention? "Yes. His manager wrote to me > asking me not to send the tape." > > -- > Rachel Loden > http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html > email: rloden@concentric.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 13:44:20 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: China Rave and Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_003B_01C01676.3A525480" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_003B_01C01676.3A525480 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable To All, My last email about China was fired off in my "rave" mode that I = seem to sometimes flip into. So (esp Kathryn) please dont be too = shocked. I'd probably argue just as forcefully the opposite case = against, say, an extreme "Left Wing" view of China.Sometimes even get = angry when people agree with me! I dont even know if I care about = politics or I just like disagreeing. I seem to be always (or often) = arguing the toss when I should be listening to people more. I'm not as = grumpy as I sound or as fanatical. I just a have a kind of "devil's = advocate syndrome". Take what I say with a pinch of salt.My daughter = reckons I dont know how to communicate and she gives me a time limit = when I'm on the phone!Mind you all my kids know I'm a bit crazy but my = daughter reckons i'm the best and funniest dad. S I'm proud of that but = not my raving.I want to send some poetry or whatever I write but I keep = responding to these political issues. They're important, but it = sometimes all seems as though its not me talking.So, plenty of salt and = other condiments. Regards, Richard Taylor. ------=_NextPart_000_003B_01C01676.3A525480 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
To All, My last email about China was = fired off in=20 my "rave" mode that I seem to sometimes flip into. So (esp Kathryn) = please dont=20 be too shocked. I'd probably argue just as forcefully the opposite case = against,=20 say, an extreme "Left Wing" view of China.Sometimes even get angry when = people=20 agree with me! I dont even know if I care about politics or I just like=20 disagreeing. I seem to be always (or often) arguing the toss when I = should be=20 listening to people more. I'm not as grumpy as I sound or as fanatical. = I just a=20 have a kind of "devil's advocate syndrome". Take what I say with a pinch = of=20 salt.My daughter reckons I dont know how to communicate and she gives me = a time=20 limit when I'm on the phone!Mind you all my kids know I'm a bit crazy = but my=20 daughter reckons i'm the best and funniest dad. S I'm proud of that but = not my=20 raving.I want to send some poetry or whatever I write but I keep = responding to=20 these political issues. They're important, but it sometimes all seems as = though=20 its not me talking.So, plenty of salt and other condiments. = Regards,=20 Richard Taylor.
------=_NextPart_000_003B_01C01676.3A525480-- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 13:33:51 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Fifty words for snow job Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Another illusion bites the dust - or the snow - from: Lingua Franca (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio National) October 3, 1998 "Prepositions" Jill Kitson: Welcome to Lingua Franca. This week: preposition hunting in the Brisbane suburbs, with grammarian, Geoff Pullum. ... Geoff Pullum is a linguist who is also a satirist. The author of many books and articles, he is probably best known in linguistic circles for his essay collection, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, published in 1991, which contains title like 'Here come the linguistic fascists' and 'The linguistics of defamation'. The title essay explodes the popular myth about Eskimos having lots of different words for 'snow'. They don't apparently, and, says Geoff Pullum, 'no-one who knows anything about Eskimo, (or more accurately about the Inuit and Yupik families of related languages spoken by Eskimos from Siberia to Greenland) has ever said they do.' - John Tranter, Jacket magazine from John Tranter Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/welcome.html Ancient history - the late sixties - at http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/tranter/index.html ______________________________________________ 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 Registered to collect and remit GST - ABN 11 583 268 217 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 13:40:20 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: more snow jobs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed More on snow, from: york@mbcrr.dfci.harvard.edu (Ian A. York) Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams,alt.folklore.urban Subject: Re: Words for Snow Date: 25 Sep 1995 20:41:32 GMT ... The Pullum essay is in turn based on Martin, L. 1986. "Eskimo words for snow": A case study in the genesis and decay of an anthropological example. American Anthropologist, 88:418-423 And now, on with the show -) --begin quotation-- Speaking of anthropological canards, no discussion of language and thought would be complete without the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English. They do not have four hundred words for snow, as has been claimed in print, or two hundred, or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine. One dictionary puts the figure at two. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen, but by such standards English would not be far behind, with snow, sleet, slush, blizzard, avalanch, hail, hardpack, powder, flurry, dusting, and a coinage of Boston's WBZ-TV meteorologist Bruce Schwoegler, snizzling. Where did the myth come from? Not from anyone who has actually studied the Yupik and Inuit-Inupiaq families of polysynthetic languages spoken from Siberia to Greenland. The anthropologist Laura Martin has documented how the story grew like an urban legend, exaggerated with each retelling. In 1911 Boas casually mentioned that Eskimos used four unrelated words for snow. Whorf embellished the count to seven and implied that there were more. His article was widely reprinted, then cited in textbooks and popular books on language, which led to successively inflated estimates in other textbooks, articles, and newspaper columns of Amazing Facts. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum, who popularized Martin's article in his essay "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax," speculates about why the story got so out of control: "The alleged lexical extravagances of the Eskimos comports so well with the many other facets of their polysynthetic perversity: rubbing noses; lending their wives to strangers; eating raw seal blubber; throwing Grandma out to be eaten by polar bears." It is an ironic twist. Linguistic complexity came out of the Boas school, as part of a campaign to show that nonliterate cultures were as complex and sophisticated as European ones. But the supposedly mind-broadening anecdotes owe their appeal to a patronizing willingness to treat other psychologies as weird and exotic compared to our own. As Pullman notes, Among the many depressing things about this credulous transmission and elaboration of a false claim is that even if there *were* a large number of words for snow in some Arctic language, this would *not*, objectively speaking, be intellectually interesting; it would be a most mundane and unremarkable fact. Horsebreeders have various names for breeds, sizes, and ages of horses; botanists have names for leaf shapes; interior decorators have names for shades of mauve; printers have many different names for fonts (Carlson, Garamond, Helvetica, Times Roman, and so on), naturally enough ... Would anyone think of writing about printers the kind of slop we find written about Eskimos in bad linguistics books? Take [the following] random textbook ..., with its earnest assertion "It is quite obvious that in the culture of the Eskimos ... snow is of great enough importance to split up the conceptual sphere that correspond to one word and one thought in English into several distinct classes ...," Imagine reading: "It is quite obvious that in the culture of printers ... fonts are of great enough importance to split up the conceptual sphere that corresponds to one word and one thought among non-printers into several distinct classes ..." Utterly boring, even if true. Only the link to those legendary, promiscuous, blubber-gnawing hunters of the ice-packs could permit something this trite to be presented to us for contemplation. - John Tranter, Jacket magazine from John Tranter Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/welcome.html Ancient history - the late sixties - at http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/tranter/index.html ______________________________________________ 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 Registered to collect and remit GST - ABN 11 583 268 217 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 14:14:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Mudlark | Catherine Daly MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message came to the administrative account. - T. Shaner --On Monday, September 04, 2000, 12:09 AM -0400 "William Slaughter" wrote: " New and On View: Mudlark Poster No. 27 (2000) " " Catherine Daly | Make Up " " Catherine Daly lives in Los Angeles where she teaches UCLA Extension's " online poetry workshop. Her own poetry appears regularly on page and " screen. You can find it by following the leads and links on her home page " at members.aol.com/cadaly. " " Make Up is made up of nine poems: Lipstick, Colorway, I Could Have Danced " All Night, Maybelline is L'Oreal is Lancome, Galactic Glow, Science, " Scent, Perfume, and Gloss. Come have a look. " " 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: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 21:08:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Vidaver Subject: Drone, cackle, threnody: a round table discussion of Comp. by Kevin Davies (Vancouver) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Drone, cackle, threnody, duct tape, expression, pasta, glaze, the skull bones of snipers: a round table discussion of the book Comp. by Kevin Davies with Clint Burnham Gerald Creede Peter Culley billy little Dorothy Trujillo Lusk George Stanley & Reg Johanson, moderator at the Kootenay School of Writing 201 - 505 Hamilton Street Vancouver BC 604-688-6001 www.ksw.net Sunday, September 10, 2pm Free Copies of the book are available from KSW , Small Press Distribution , or the publisher, Edge Books . See also PhillyTalks #15, Kevin Davies and Diane Ward in conversation: ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 14:11:46 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GasHeart@AOL.COM Subject: Philly : Theater, Music, Film - Fringe Festival, notes from the fringe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This was sent to me (josh) by mark lord....thought i'd pass it on...... he is looking for actors to help with this large project, (see below) also thought i'd mention i saw The Wounded Body at Christ Church, and it was pretty cool i also liked the Visual Fringe storefront window at Larry Becker gallery and worth mentioning is that the Cabaret is at 211 Race st, around the back!, it is the Lithograph Building at 2nd and Race And the show, In The Shadow Of The Glen will probably be pretty good, it is at the ericson gallery, 53 N. 2nd st., 9/2, 9/3, 9/9, 9/15, 9/16 at 7pm $10 (pg. 42 in the guide) -Josh _________________________________________________________ Thanks for the kind words re: ACROSS. For the record, there are about 35 sites--and everyone in the audience sees em all. There are, though, four different actors playing the main character...and the audience divides into 4 groups, each group following one character. So there are four different (complementary) structures for the piece...and four somewhat different conceptions of the main character (played by David Warner, Maggie Siff, Katie Figueroa, and Mario Cotto). If people want to see it multiple times, the 1st time is 15$, the second is 10$, the third is 5$...and the fourth (and all subsequent) show is FREE. I'm also looking for a few actors to substitute for some ACROSS folks who have commitments to be in other shows. If you know of anyone who's interested, they can email me, or call BIG HOUSE @ 215-601-1165. Again, thanks for helping get the word out. mark Mark Lord mlord@brynmawr.edu Director of Theater Bryn Mawr College ________________________________________________________________ oh, yes, don't miss seeing dancer Megan Bridge in Beautiful Human Lies and Situation(soundscore by Peter Price), part of a triple bill at the National Dance Showroom at 113 n. 2nd st., sat. 9/2 at 10:30, sun. 9/3 at 4:30, tues. 9/5 at 9:30 -josh _____________________________________________________________ and from jodi sperling.... "Trapeze Disrobing Act"--this is a dance in which I playfully shed layers of clothing while dangling from and executing tricks on a trapeze. the piece was inspired by a similarly-titled 1901 Edison film! the clothes I use are all "found" items (found, that is in my closet). the only thing I bought were the socks. the tuxedo belongs to my 100-yr-old grandfather. part of a triple bill at the national dance showroom at 113 n. 2nd st. 9/7 7:00pm, 9/8 8:30pm, 9/9 4:30pm, 9/10 9:30pm __________________________________________________________ well, that's all for now.....see you at the fringe! josh cohen GasHeart@aol.com ... ... ... . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 12:43:46 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Harriet Zinnes Subject: Re: Barbara Guest MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Very happy birthday to you, Barbara, as I remember good talks and a special visit to you years ago in the Hamptons. Harriet ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 15:10:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: about chat network Comments: To: "Webartery@Egroups. Com" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Myself and some of the folks at www.webartery.com have just started a new project I thought you might find interesting and perhaps wish to participate in. The Webartery Chat Network idea is pretty simple: each participating artist/site puts up a page on their site that's based on a template chat page. So each artist's site allows them and visitors to their site to enter a common IRC chat room (accessible via the Web or an IRC client such as mIRC or Ircle etc). One such page is at www.webartery.com/webarterychat. We're using a free chat server supplied by the good folks at quickchat.org. IRC chat allows people to converse real-time via typed text. The chat room provides a conduit between the various participating sites. There's a link on each chat page to a page that provides links to the participating sites, all of which are web.art/net.work related. The hyperlink can provide a link from one site to another. But links via a chat network, hopefully, add a special touch to the connection between the sites, a more intimate and living link, conduit, corridor between the sites and also through web.art/net.work. Having a chat room on your own site also allows you to converse with the people visiting your site. Since you can connect to the chat room not only via the Web but also through Mirc, etc., you can set mIRC up to beep each time someone enters the chat room. So you can be doing other things and still be notified when someone enters the room, if you like. It also allows the participating artists to converse with one another informally. When you log on, maybe someone's in the room, maybe not. So it helps communication between artists for collaborative projects together. Chat has also been used for collaborative real time improvisational theatre and other projects (by Janan Platt and others at www.xdrom.com). It's a Web specific form. The folks at Webartery have also done a series of interviews with Web artists in an IRC show called Defib at www.webartery.com/defib. That project ended a few months ago. Net.art/web.art, what have you, is based in this new communications medium. Isn't it ultimately about communication between people? IRC adds a dimension to the communications of 'art', to the possibilities for art/action and for presence on the Web. It will be interesting to see what comes of the project. If you're interested in participating, drop me a line at jim@vispo.com. Regards, Jim Andrews ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 17:45:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cmarti3@LSU.EDU Subject: Lit City Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ---------------------------------- * L * I * T * * * C * I * T * Y * ---------------------------------- is pleased to announce the inaugural year of the LIT CITY POETRY READING SERIES NEW ORLEANS, LA ------------------------------------------ 7:30, Tuesday, October 3 Ellis Marsalis Jazz Club, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) 2800 Chartres LEE ANN BROWN IVAN ARGUELLES ------------------------------------------ 7:30, Tuesday, November 14 Ellis Marsalis Jazz Club, NOCCA KRISTIN PREVALLET HANK LAZER ------------------------------------------ 7:30 Thursday, February 22 Ellis Marsalis Jazz Club, NOCCA LOSS PEQUENO GLAZIER SHEILA E. MURPHY ------------------------------------------ 7:30, Thursday, April 5 Location TBA RAE ARMANTROUT ELIZABETH TREADWELL ------------------------------------------ All events are free and will be followed by a reception. Books by the poets will be available at Maple Street Book Shop, 7523 Maple St. For more information, please email Camille Martin at or call (504) 861-8832. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 10:48:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: derek beaulieu Subject: housepress has moved online MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit housepress (derek beaulieu) has changed email addresses: while i used to be at: housepre@telusplanet.net i have gone cable and now can be reached at: housepress@home.com please update yr address books, feel free to drop me a test message just in case & i look forward to hearing from you ciao derek ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 12:31:29 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Happy Birthday MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Barbara, I hope you remember me. We nearly arranged a reading for you at SUNY Farmingdale where I am the Artistic Director of the Visiting Writers Program. But unfortunately the date proved unworkable. You did send me a signed copy of Stripped Tales for which I will always be grateful. Your message conveyed the hope that we would someday meet. I share that hope. You remain one of my favorite poets OF ALL TIME (with apologies to Mohammed Ali). You're a champ, and I wish you all possible champion sized pleasures. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Barbara!! William James Austin ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 17:22:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Smylie Subject: art show MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit You are invited to attend a preview exhibition: EN PLEIN AIR (an exhibition of pastel sketches done in the Canadian countryside) by Barry Smylie http://barrysmylie.com/galleries/enplein/enplein01.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 13:12:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Organization: e.g. Subject: New and On View: Mudlark Poster No. 27 (2000) MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Apologies for cross-posting and duplicates! New and On View: Mudlark Poster No. 27 (2000) Catherine Daly | Make Up Catherine Daly lives in Los Angeles where she teaches UCLA Extension's online poetry workshop. Her own poetry appears regularly on page and screen. You can find it by following the leads and links on her home page at members.aol.com/cadaly. Make Up is made up of nine poems: Lipstick, Colorway, I Could Have Danced All Night, Maybelline is L'Oreal is Lancome, Galactic Glow, Science, Scent, Perfume, and Gloss. Come have a look. 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: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 21:16:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: assimilation and purity & language in lingua franca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Hi everyone. Murat Nemet-Nejat, I don't think you're being quite fair to Mark Wallace, though three of his sentences taken out of context may strike you as "a parody of academic prose." He's a very fine thinker and writer and the topic (standardized academic prose and how to bend it) is one he's spent a long time thinking about. Isn't this, the Poetics List, the place where he should be encouraged to share his ideas with the rest of us? I've read a lot of nonsense that seems to be academic prose parodying itself, but Wallace is relatively clear and straightforward, except when he wants to be I guess. So, I sympathize with your anger, I just feel it's misdirected in this one instance. Aldon Nielsen, asking about Andrew Epstein "do we know this guy" sounds like we on the List are one big xenophobic clan but maybe you're being ironic about our place in the vast scheme of things. Having read the article in question, I urge all to borrow a copy of "Lingua Franca" and read the piece, otherwise you won't get a clear idea of what Epstein is trying to do, not from the reports here. In a way it's a little unusual for "Lingua Franca" to print such an article, for no one was sued, no one denied tenure, no charges of plagiarism or sexual harassment were brought. The truth is, Epstein consistently treats people with a great deal of respect, and I know, for example, that if they had hired ME to write the article it would have been a good deal bloodier and more sensational. Can't blame Epstein for the sensational lead-ins and pull-quotes invented by the editors. Like Mark Wallace, Epstein is a fine writer and a very good poet. His book "A Possible House" is excellent, romantic, sensual, very evocative and clever, he's like the Helen Frankenthaler of poetry, you just want to sink into that language and lounge. On the third hand I've been reading his article (in "Raritan") about Frank O'Hara's poem "Choses Passageres" and I can confirm he's a terrific scholar. We live in an age of great O'Hara scholarship but Epstein's article ("Frank O'Hara's Translation Game") is simply breathtaking with its combination of thoughtful analysis and the old-fashioned textual research that, in this case, should have made headlines--in this case, Epstein's discovery that, in composing this poem, his only poem in French, O'Hara consulted a particular French-English dictionary that, once newly re-consulted as Epstein does, explains in every instance, from line to line, O'Hara's seemingly bizarre and stilted French expressions. Oh well, enough from me for a while . . . We all know people who used to belong to the Poetics List and then dropped off because they were frightened or humiliated due to the natural heat and disputatiousness of our give and take here. I know I'm on this one other list, "alt-music kylie-minogue," where they're even more vociferous than we are here! But that's because they're talking about one topic all the time, the great genius of the Melbourne superstar Kylie Minogue, not ranging all over the world through all periods of poetic history for their light and limits. -- Kevin Killian At 11:13 PM -0400 8/30/00, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: >In a message dated 8/30/00 7:27:04 PM, mdw@GWU.EDU writes: > > >For instance, take the issue of standardized academic prose, of which > > > >Bernstein and many others have been critical. Can one still be an academic > >and > > > >not right critical articles in the bland prose of the "proper" critical > > > >journals? The answer seems to be both yes and no..... > > >This itself seems to be a parody of academic prose. > >Murat Nemet-Nejat At 9:44 PM +0000 8/26/00, anielsen@lmu.edu wrote: >The September issue of _Lingua Franca_ just arrived with an article >by Andrew (do we know this guy) Epstein on the question of, in the >words of the editors, "Can the McPoem busters enjoy the happy meal >of success?" > >My doctor has ordered me to stay away from such meals -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 10:49:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: owner-realpoetik@SCN.ORG Subject: RealPoetik Nancy Depper Nancy Depper is the author of four chapbooks including "Mouthing" and "Bodies of Work" (Manic D Press). Her work has been published in many literary journals in the US and UK and in 1999 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She can be reached at ndepper@earthlink.net. Sex with Albert Einstein He moves slowly, old as he is, and German. This is not wasted time, though he could be groping with theories of unity but for now, gravity is separate from us. There is no light, we are blind, the unused power of our eyes ringing like black bells. I said: "I don't want to be alone." When his eyes are open, they ask "Are you less alone when you can see me here?" Unify. We are light, almost weightless: the aether he proved didn't exist. But for a time, we believed in it. He sent the Nobel money to his wife. She deserved it: he was not kind to her. She said: "I am starved for love and wicked science is the enemy." I know, my Albert is with me when he is with me, and entirely absent otherwise. Love enters through the mouth. I will love him and starve as well. Some men are married to space. Some men are married to time. Unify. Love is a roll of the dice. It does not cure the need for science any more than science cures the need for love. SSI I learned to get by on luck and spaghetti to hide the earthquake of my revulsion at how much I need their money; I rent my life from these nice ladies at windows "C" and "E", I already knew how to lie. I learned gratitude for they have relieved me of the burden of possessions, my eyes are too big for my bookshelf anyway. I learned to pretend that money in the mail is sexy, to try to relax while knowing that no check equals Apocalypse Next Month, to relax at their surprise inquisitions that dot my life like morse code, just to frisk me for any extra nickels I didn't report to them. You want to know fear see the window ladies when they get mean, their faces dry and whithered as with a weeks sunshine; they hold my cigarette money in the balance. Truth is, I am the infant and they are the tit I suck when they let me and I have not yet grown the teeth with which to bite. Nancy Depper ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 14:29:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Zone: The Poetics of Space MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message came to the administrative account. - T. Shaner --On Tuesday, September 05, 2000, 9:33 AM -0400 "Barrett Watten" wrote: " Just published on-line: "Zone: The Poetics of Space" " On postmodern fantasy, social space in Detroit, and the photography of Stan " Douglas " At: http://www.underwire.net " Also: poetry by Kit Robinson, Lynn Crawford, and Sadiq Bey " Visual art by Valerie Parks and Saffell " " " Barrett Watten " Department of English " Wayne State University " Detroit, MI 48202 " " " Home page: " http://www.english.wayne.edu/~watten/index.html " ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 08:51:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Subject: An affordable copy of Mackey's Discrepant Engagement MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Announcing the latest volume in the series Modern and Contemporary Poetics, edited by Charles Bernstein and Hank Lazer Discrepant Engagement Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing Nathaniel Mackey This highly regarded and frequently referenced work of literary criticism is essential to any study of avant garde poetics. Nathaniel Mackey addresses the poetry and prose of a number of authors not commonly grouped together: black writers from the United States and the Caribbean and the so-called Black Mountain poets. Although they are seemingly disparate, these writers are united by their experimentation with style and form. Mackey, an important contemporary poet and critic, focuses on the experimental aspects of their work rather than on its subject matter or authorship to show that they all share an implied critique of conventional poetic practices. Mackey analyzes the work of Black Mountain poets Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson, African American poets Amiri Baraka and Clarence Major, and Caribbean writers Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Wilson Harris. He Frequently brings the work of these authors into dialogue and juxtaposition, noting the parallels and counterpoint that exist among writers normally separated by ethnic, temporal, or regional boundaries. By insisting that their experimentation unites these writers rather than marginalizes them, Mackey questions traditional notions that underlie conventional perceptions and practice. "Insisting on the political importance of radical innovation without the trappings of intellectual fashion, tempered by an awareness of the historical scale of his assertions, and challenging liberal notions of cultural pluralism and artistic opposition, Nathaniel Mackey makes an important, sophisticated contribution to current debates about cultural diversity and the political relevance of experimental writing." -Contemporary Literature "Nathaniel Mackey has accomplished his task admirably. Discrepant Engagement demands from us an openness to alternative frames of reference and a recognition of the ways in which traditional categories restrict our own perceptions of the potential for intertextuality among cultures, literary schools, races, regions, and rubrics." -African American Review Nathaniel Mackey is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 328 pages, 6 x 9 ISBN 0-8173-1032-0 $24.95 paper SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS LISTSERV 20% DISCOUNT WHEN YOU MENTION THAT YOU ARE ON THE POETICS LISTSERV OFFER EXPIRES 31 May 2001 To order contact Elizabeth Motherwell E-mail emother@uapress.ua.edu Phone (205) 348-7108 Fax (205) 348-9201 or mail to: The University of Alabama Press Marketing Department Box 870380 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0380 Attn: Elizabeth Motherwell www.uapress.ua.edu Mackey/Discrepant Engagement paper discounted price $19.96 ISBN 0-8173-1032-0 Subtotal _________________ Illinois residents add 8.75% sales tax _________________ USA orders: add $3.50 postage for the first book and $.75 for each additional book _________________ Canada residents add 7% sales tax _________________ International orders: add $4.00 postage for the first book and $1.00 for each additional book _________________ Enclosed as payment in full _________________ (Make checks payable to The University of Alabama Press) Bill my: _________Visa _________MasterCard Account number _____________________________ Daytime phone_______________________________ Expiration date _______________________________ Full name____________________________________ Signature ____________________________________ Address______________________________________ City _________________________________________ State_______________________ Zip ______________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 09:45:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Subject: History of Afrocentric Modernism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Please buy this book, read this book, teach this book: Announcing the latest volume in the series Modern and Contemporary Poetics, edited by Charles Bernstein and Hank Lazer Extraordinary Measures Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry Lorenzo Thomas This broad overview by an established poet and cultural critic reveals the rich tapestry of African American poetry as it has emerged over the past century. Basing his study on literary history, cultural criticism, and close readings, Thomas revives and appraises the writings of a number of this century's most important African American poets, including Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, Askia M. Toure, Harryette Mullen, and Kalamu ya Salaam. Thomas analyzes the work of Fenton Johnson within the context of emerging race consciousness in Chicago, contributes to critical appraisals of William Stanley Braithwaite and Melvin B. Tolson, and examines the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout the book, Thomas demonstrates the continuity within the Afrocentric tradition while acknowledging the wide range of stylistic approaches and ideological stances that the tradition embraces. Written with intelligence and humor, his book is itself an extraordinary measure that reflects years of scholarship and opens up African American poetry to a wider audience. "Here is the poet in the catbird seat. Long a maker of literary history, Lorenzo Thomas pauses now to give readers a report of the story so far, his accounting of some of America's most significant poetic past. Seldom has our writing had such an attentive reader. This is not the history you thought you knew, nor is Lorenzo Thomas your grandfather's poet-critic. Thomas's Extraordinary Measures essays a measure of the American idiom as it has sounded in our century." -Aldon Nielsen Loyola Marymount University Lorenzo Thomas is Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston-Downtown. 216 pages, 6 x 9 ISBN 0-8173-1015-0 $19.95 paper ISBN 0-8173-1014-2 $39.95 cloth SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS LISTSERV 20% DISCOUNT WHEN YOU MENTION THAT YOU ARE ON THE POETICS LISTSERV OFFER EXPIRES 31 May 2001 To order contact Elizabeth Motherwell E-mail emother@uapress.ua.edu Phone (205) 348-7108 Fax (205) 348-9201 or mail to: The University of Alabama Press Marketing Department Box 870380 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0380 Attn: Elizabeth Motherwell www.uapress.ua.edu Thomas/Extraordinary Measures paper discounted price $15.96 ISBN 0-8173-1015-0 cloth discounted price $31.96 ISBN 0-8173-1014-2 Subtotal _________________ Illinois residents add 8.75% sales tax _________________ USA orders: add $3.50 postage for the first book and $.75 for each additional book _________________ Canada residents add 7% sales tax _________________ International orders: add $4.00 postage for the first book and $1.00 for each additional book _________________ Enclosed as payment in full _________________ (Make checks payable to The University of Alabama Press) Bill my: _________Visa _________MasterCard Account number _____________________________ Daytime phone_______________________________ Expiration date _______________________________ Full name____________________________________ Signature ____________________________________ Address______________________________________ City _________________________________________ State_______________________ Zip ______________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 02:53:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Tumor Text-Growth MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Tumor Text-Growth ls -la .snapshot/hourly.* | grep ln >> zz; cat zz -rw------- 1 sondheim users 78191 Sep 1 18:56 ln -rw------- 1 sondheim users 77414 Sep 1 13:34 ln -rw------- 1 sondheim users 77136 Sep 1 01:06 ln -rw------- 1 sondheim users 77136 Sep 1 01:06 ln -rw------- 1 sondheim users 78191 Sep 1 18:56 ln -rw------- 1 sondheim users 79589 Sep 2 01:04 ln Violent growth of text/theory file within ~/ home directory of sondheim: seething mass of theoretical debris. Mud-slime of latinate terminologies, ideolectical processes and theoretical debris. Cancer-tumor of explanatory theoretical debris. Viscous liquidity of pruning growth critique of abstractive protocols, languages, and processes, blooming of theoretical debris. _ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:13:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: HTML policy update MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks to the careful objections of John Tranter and other subscribers, which encouraged further research on my part, the list owner and myself have decided that introducing Hypertext Markup Language to the list constitutes too great a security risk for subscribers, being too easy a conductor of computer viri (or viruses, whichever your preference in making the plural). Therefore, as of today we have elected to suspend the use of HTML tags on the list indefinitely. This change will require some assistance from all of you, not only in, as I would recommend, reverting to the text-only digest, but also with regard to compliance. It has in the past been my endeavor, imperfectly executed, not to send HTML to the list; a measure allowed by the fact that the list is moderated. And it was chiefly in response to the increasing number of list messages formatted in HTML, which required manual editing, that I moved to allow the format to be distributed to the list. Now that we have discovered the risky nature of this style of email, I must ask that all subscribers using an 'advanced' email application such as Eudora, Pegasus Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Netscape Communicator and the like specify, in the "Preferences" box of that application (usually under the "File" menu) to send messages in text-only or ASCII format. Those using more basic programs such as PINE or ELM, or stripped-down applications such as Mulberry need make no change. I have requested to the Computing and Information Technology office at UB that they write for me a program that will automatically respond to messages on detection of HTML tags. In the mean time - I say hopefully - I will rely upon all of you for help in keeping the list free of HTML. Thanks, Chris Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- To revert from HTML or MIME digest to text-only digest, send a one-line email message with no "subject" line to The body of the message should contain the following text: set poetics nohtml nomime digest Your subscription options will be updated automatically. If you should experience any difficulties in making this change, please contact me at this address. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:13:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: list disservice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My apologies for the intermittency of list service over this week. The semester has just begun here at UB, and apparently this fact occasioned some confusion as to schedule among those of us who administer the list. I will attempt to catch us up today - and so I should apologize, too, for the sheer quantity of messages that follows. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:13:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Welcome Message updated 08 September 2000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 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 Poetics List Moderator: Christopher W. Alexander Please address all inquiries to . Electronic Poetry Center: =3D Contents =3D 1. About the Poetics List 2. Subscriptions 3. Posting to the List 4. Cautions 5. Digest Option 6. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail 7. "No Review" Policy 8. The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC) 9. Poetics Archives at EPC This Welcome Message updated 08 September 2000. -- Above the world-weary horizons New obstacles for exchange arise Or unfold, O ye postmasters! 1. About the Poetics List With the preceeding epigraph, the Poetics List was founded by Charles Bernstein in late 1993. Now in its second incarnation, the list carries over 800 subscribers worldwide, though all of these subscribers do not necessarily receive messages at any given time. A number of other people read the Poetics List via our web archives at the Electronic Poetry Center (see section 10 below). 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 is a moderated list. Due to the increasing number of subscribers, we are no longer able to maintain the open format with which the list began (at under 100 subscribers). All submissions are reviewed by the moderators in keeping with the goals of the list, as articulated in this Welcome Message. We remain committed to this editorial function as a defining element of the Poetics List. 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. For further information on posting to the list, see sections 3 and 4. below. Publishers and series co-ordinators, see also section 8. 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 8 for details. 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. For subscription information or to contact the moderators, write to . ------------------- 2. Subscriptions Subscriptions to the Poetics List are free of charge, but formal registration is required. We ask that when you subscribe you provide your full name, street address, email address, and telephone number. All posts to the list should provide your full real name, as registered. If there is any discrepancy between your full name as it appears in the "from" line of the message header, please sign your post at the bottom. To subscribe to the Poetics List, please contact the moderators at . Your message should include all of the required information. Please allow several days for your new or re-subscription to take effect. PLEASE NOTE: All subscription-related information and correspondence remains absolutely confidential. To unsubscribe, send this one-line message, with no "subject" line to : unsub poetics *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 receive mail from the Poetics List. To avoid this problem, unsub using your old address, then return to your new address and send this one-line message, with no "subject" line to : sub poetics Phil Spillway Remember to replace "Phil Spillway" with your own name. If you find that it is not possible to unsub using your old address, please contact the editors at for assistance. *Eudora users: if your email address has been changed, you may still be able to unsubscribe without assistance. Go to the "Tools" menu in Eudora, select "Options" and then select setup for "Sending Mail": you may be able to temporarily substitute your old address here to 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 increased quota from your system administrator. (University subscribers may wish to argue that this subscription is part of your scholarly communication!) You might also 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, you may re-subscribe to the list by contacting the moderators at . All questions about subscriptions, whether about an individual subscription or subscription policy, should be addressed to the list's administrative address . Please note that it may take up to ten days, or more, for us to reply to messages. ------------------- 3. Posting to the List The Poetics List is a moderated list. All messages are reviewed by the moderators in keeping with the goals of the list as articulated in this Welcome Message (see section 1). Please note that while this list is primarily concerned with poetry and poetics, messages relating to politics and political activism, film, art, media, and so forth are also welcome. Feel free to query the list moderators if you are uncertain as to whether a message is appropriate. All correspondence with the editors regarding submissions to the list remains confidential and should be directed to us at . We encourage subscribers to post information on publications and reading series that they have coordinated, edited, published, or in which they appear. Such announcements constitute a core function of this list. Brief reviews of poetry events and publications are always welcome. We also welcome discussions of poetry and poetics in keeping with the editorial function of the list. Solicited contributions (by subscribers or non-subscribers) may also appear on Poetics from time to time. The moderators reserve the right to contact any subscriber regarding possible contributions. Send messages to the list directly to the list address: Please do not send messages intended for posting to the list to our administrative address . For further information on posting to the list, see section 4 below. Publishers and series co-ordinators, see also section 9. ------------------- 4. Cautions It may take up to a week or more to respond to your questions or to subscription requests or to handle any other editorial business or any nonautomated aspect of list maintenance. Please do not send attachments or include extremely long documents (1,000+ words) 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. Messages containing attachments will be presumed to be worm- or virus-carrying and will not be forwarded to the list. Posting on the list is a form of publication. However, please do not publish list postings 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" of published materials. As an outside maximum, we will accept no more than 5 messages per day from any one subscriber; in general, we expect subscribers to keep their post to less than 10-15 posts per month. Our goal is a manageable list (manageable both for moderators and subscribers) of twenty-five or fewer messages per day. "Flame" messages will not be tolerated on the Poetics List. In this category are included messages gratuitously attacking fellow listees, also messages designed to "waste bandwidth" or cause the list to reach its daily limit. These messages are considered offensive and detrimental to list discussion. Offending subscribers will receive only one warning message. Repeat offenders will be removed from the list immediately. Please do not put this policy to test! Like all machines, the listserver will sometimes be down: if you feel your message has been delayed or lost, *please wait at least one day to see if it shows up*, then check the archive to be sure the message is not posted there; if you still feel there is a problem, you may wish to contact the moderators at . ------------------- 5. Subscription Options It is possible to receive the Poetics List as separate posts or as daily digests. When you subscribe, the default setting is "regular," meaning you will receive a separate email for each message distributed to the list. Regular: The default option, this is the form in which you will receive the list if you choose no other. With a "regular" subscription, you receive individual postings immediately, as they are OK'd by the list moderator. To revert to this option if you are currently receiving the list in digest form, send a one-line message with no "subject" line to The body of the message should contain the following text: set poetics nodigest Your subscription options will be updated automatically. Digest: With a "digest" subscription, you receive larger messages (called "digests") at regular intervals, usually once per day. These "digests" are collections of individual list postings. Some lists are so active that they produce several digests daily; the Poetics List produces only one, mailed just after midnight EST. Digests are a good compromise between reading everything as it is posted and feeling like the list is clogging your mailbox with a multitude of individual postings. To receive the Poetics List in digest form, send a one-line message with no "subject" line to The body of the message should contain the following text: set poetics digest Your subscription options will be updated automatically. Index: With an "index" subscription, you receive a short "index" message once per day. These "indexes" show you what is being discussed on the list without including the text of the individual postings. For each posting, the date, the author's name and address, the subject of the message and the number of lines it comprises is listed. You can then follow instructions provided in the index to download messages of interest from the server. An index subscription is ideal if you have a slow connection and only read a few hand-picked messages. The indexes are very short and you do not have to worry about long download times. The drawback of course is that you need to maintain your internet connection or reconnect to order messages of interest from the server. You can choose to have the index sent to you in either a traditional format (plain text) or in HTML format with hyperlinks. Using the HTML index, you may click on a link provided with each message to open your web browser to that message in the Poetics List archive. To receive the Poetics List in index form, send a one-line message with no "subject" line to The body of the message should contain, for the text-only index: set poetics nohtml index And for the hyper-link index: set poetics html index Your subscription options will be updated automatically. NOTE!! Send these messages to "listserv" not to Poetics or as a reply to this Welcome Message!! ------------------- 6. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail Please 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 this one-line message, with no "subject" line, to : set poetics nomail You may re-activate your poetics subscription by sending this one-line message, with no "subject" line, to the same address: set poetics mail When you return you can check or download missed postings from the Poetics archive. (See section 9 below.) ------------------- 7. "No Review" policy For the safety and security of list subscribers, the "review" function of the Poetics List has been de-activated. Non-posting subscribers' email addresses will remain confidential. Please do not ask the list editors to give out subscriber addresses or other personal information. ------------------- 8. What is the Electronic Poetry Center? The World Wide Web-based Electronic Poetry Center is located at . The EPC's mission is to serve as a gateway to the extraordinary range of activity in formally innovative writing and digital media poetry in the United States and around the world. The Center provides access to extensive resources in new poetries. These include our E-POETRY library, our links to digital VIDEO and SOUND (including our award-winning LINEbreak series of radio interviews and performances) as well as e-journals such as lume, Deluxe Rubber Chicken, Alyricmailer, and many others, the POETICS List archives, an AUTHOR library of electronic poetry texts and bibliographies, and direct connections to numerous related electronic RESOURCES. The Center also provides information about contemporary electronic poetry magazines and print little magazines and SMALL PRESSES engaged in poetry and poetics. Visit the EPC's many libraries, the featured resources available on the EPC home page, or its NEW listings, where recent additions are available for quick access. The EPC is directed by Loss Peque=F1o Glazier. ------------------- 9. Poetics Archives at the EPC Go to the Electronic Poetry Center and select the "Poetics" link from the opening screen. Follow the links to Poetics Archives. Or set your browser to go directly to . You may browse the Poetics List archives by month and year or search them for specific information. Your interface will allow you to print or download any of these files. Please note that it is possible to toggle between proportional and non-proportional fonts in viewing archived messages; a feature that may be useful to interpret messages reliant on the neat spacing of a proportional font, or that require the "word wrap" feature of same - and useful, too, for aesthetic reasons. To change the display font of an archived message, simply follow the "proportional font" or "non-proportional font" link at the top of the message. -- END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME MSG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:29:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Goethe-Institut co-presents screening of "Paragraph 175", with Panel Discussion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: "Goethe-Institut Reception" Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 12:33:23 -0700 Too Little, Too Late? Acknowledging the Nazi Holocaust's "Other" Victims What: Free Panel Discussion and Public Dialogue When: September 26, 2000 at 7pm (screenings of Paragraph 175 at 5pm and 9pm) Where: Castro Theater, 429 Castro Street, San Francisco Admission: Free to the public Sponsored by the Goethe-Institut, The Jewish Museum San Francisco in conjunction with Telling Pictures / Reflective Image and the screening at the Castro Theater of PARAGRAPH 175, A Rob Epstein / Jeffrey Freidman Film, from September 15 - 28, 2000. San Francisco, CA - Fifty-five years after the end of World War II, public awareness of Nazi persecution remains limited primarily to the suffering of Jews under the Third Reich. Without minimizing in any way the enormity of 6 million Jewish deaths, the historical record cries out for a more complete understanding of organized oppression during Hitler's regime. Alongside Jews in the Nazi Holocaust were homosexuals, people with disabilities (both physical and mental), members of the Roma and Sinti people (formerly referred to as Gypsies), Jehovah's Witnesses, and political prisoners. While their numbers were much smaller than those imprisoned or murdered as Jews, their suffering was equal. In recent years however, serious efforts been made in Germany and in the United States to compensate gay and disabled victims, with Roma/Sinti and other groups barely eliciting acknowledgment in the public eye. The issues raised are deep ones: Does the emergence of further "victim groups" diminish the suffering of Jews? Will the German government be subjected to an endless burden of remorse and reparations? Does acknowledging the "other" victims come too little, too late? (more) To tackle these issues head-on, the Goethe-Institut of San Francisco, The Jewish Museum San Francisco and Telling Pictures / Reflective Image are sponsoring a panel discussion and public dialogue, to be held in conjunction with the screening of the new documentary Paragraph 175, which explores the fate of homosexuals under Nazism. As part of their educational mission, the Goethe-Institut and The Jewish Museum San Francisco have invited scholars and activists to join in a public dialogue on the latest efforts to recognize and compensate non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. Confirmed participants include Julie Dorf, former director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission; Jim Lichti, historian, formerly employed by the Shoah Foundation to focus on non-Jewish victims; members of the Paragraph 175 film team; and additional participants TBA. Peter L. Stein, Director of Exhibitions at the Jewish Museum San Francisco, will moderate the panel. Paragraph 175 is a feature documentary built around personal stories of homosexual men who experienced persecution under the Nazis. Their filmed testimonies tell an epic story, made vivid with evocative images from the period and original, haunting images shot for this film. These are complex individuals-often bitter, but just as often filled with irony and humor, haunted by their memories, but determined to survive. Their collective story fills a crucial gap in the historical record, and is a testament to human resilience in the face of unconscionable cruelty. The film is produced and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The Jewish Museum San Francisco is dedicated to exploring Jewish identity through exhibitions, educational and public programs. To better serve the community The Jewish Museum is building a new home in the Yerba Buena Center arts district, slated to open in 2003. From October 12, 2000 - January 4, 2001, the Museum will feature architect Daniel Libeskind's designs, models and computer renderings of the new building project at its current location on 121 Steuart Street (between Mission and Howard) in San Francisco. For more information on upcoming exhibitions or the new building project, please visit www.jmsf.org or call 415-591-8824. The Goethe-Institut, German Cultural Center in San Francisco, organizes a variety of programs in the arts and humanities, which reflect artistic exchange and promote Germany in all areas of cultural life, creating dialogue, and building upon existing partnerships. The language division offers intensive German courses in San Francisco and Germany, workshops and teaching material for teachers of German. The library serves as a resource center and our homepage includes extensive links to other providers of information about Germany - http://www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco Goethe-Institut San Francisco 530 Bush Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Phone: 415 263-8760 Fax: 415 391-8715 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:31:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: September Readings at The Drawing Center MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message came to the administrative account. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: Lytle Shaw Date: 9/1/00 4:17 PM -0400 Line Reading Series at The Drawing Center Curated by Lytle Shaw (35 Wooster btwn. Grand and Broome) First Events of Fall 2000 September 12th at 7pm Paralleling the Selections Fall 2000 exhibition Line Reading presents Marcella Durand Lynne Tillman Lewis Warsh September 17th, 3pm (Line for Children): Chris Raschka All Line Readings are at 7pm. Admission is $5, and free for Drawing Center members. All Line for Children readings are on Sundays at 3pm and free. For more information call The Drawing Center at 219-2166 Or email Lytle Shaw at shark@erols.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:33:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: query / Levitsky MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 10:40:59 -0400 Hi all, I am looking for concise and straightforward description of metaphor and = metonym for an undergraduate class. Any suggestions? thanks, Rachel Levitsky ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 10:25:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bill Berkson Subject: Re: Barbara Guest In-Reply-To: <200009041612.e84GCKT29230@nico.bway.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Charles -- thank you. I do not have Barbara's email address and would appreciate your relaying the following message to her. Best, Bill ------ Dear Barbara, Here we are. Happy Birthday to you! Love, Bill Berkson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 07:40:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Wolff Subject: Re: Barbara's Birthday In-Reply-To: <200009050406.AAA06777@halo.angel.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Charles, Please wish Barbara a happy birthday from Fence (me and Caroline Crumpacker) and the Poetry Society of America (me and Caroline Crumpacker). And happy Tuesday to you, Rebecca Wolff ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 11:10:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kirschenbaum Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?New_Cecilia_Vicu=F1a_Belladonna*_pamphlet?= Comments: To: subsubpoetics@listbot.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Now available=20 The BELLADONNA* Reading Series at Bluestockings women's bookstore is please= d to announce a new commemorative pamphlet, as part of its Belladonna* Books series, a collaboration between Belladonna* and Boog Literature. Belladonna* 3 Cecilia Vicu=F1a, Bloodskirt, 12 pages, $3 forthcoming Tisa Bryant, Fanny Howe, Eleni Sikelianos Also available postcards kari edwards, "go this way quickly" &=20 "every amerikan amusement park" $1 each; set of two, $1.50 chapbooks (digest size, black ink on ivory paper)=20 Belladonna* 1 Mary Burger, Eating Belief, 12 pages, $3=20 Belladonna* 2 Camille Roy, Dream Girls, 12 pages, $3 All publications are printed in editions of 50, 10 of which are signed by the authors and numbered.=20 Subscriptions 5 unsigned chapbooks, $15 ppd. 10 unsigned chapbooks, $27 ppd. (Buy 9, get 1 free) 5 signed & numbered chapbooks, $25 ppd.=20 10 signed & numbered chapbooks, $45 ppd. (Buy 9, get 1 free) Please note, only 5 signed editions subscriptions are available. Ordering info Add 50=A2 postage/item ordered (excluding subscriptions) Please send check or money order payable to:=20 Rachel Levitsky=20 Belladonna* Books=20 159 Eastern Parkway, Apt. 6K=20 Brooklyn, NY 11238=20 Email: levitsk@attglobal.net for more information=20 Thanks,=20 Rachel Levitsky, editor, Belladonna* Books=20 David Kirschenbaum, publisher, Boog Literature _______________________________________________________ Say Bye to Slow Internet! http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 11:56:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kirschenbaum Subject: Need contact info for a few poets Comments: To: subsubpoetics@listbot.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, I need contact info for the following poets: Tim Dean Sparrow Sara Van Norman Joshua Michael Stewart Thanks. as ever, David _______________________________________________________ Say Bye to Slow Internet! http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:35:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Hamilton-Emery Subject: SALT PUBLISHING TITLES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am pleased to announce the publication of five major new titles: Douglas Barbour "Fragmenting Body etc" 112pp ISBN 1876857021 (only available in the UK and Australia) Anna Mendelssohn: "Implacable Art", 150 pp 37 line art illustrations ISBN 1876857005 Susan M. Schultz "Aleatory Allegories" 120pp ISBN 1876857013 Tom Shapcott "Chekhov's Mongoose" 108pp ISBN 0646395432 and the latest issue of our annual journal: Salt: volume 12 edited by John Kinsella 380pp ISBN 1876857048 Orders may be placed in the UK with Peter Riley Books, ordered through any high street bookshops, or purchased on the world wide web at http://www.amazon.co.uk, http://www.waterstones.co.uk, or http://www.uk.bol.com/. North American orders can be made through all high street booksellers, and online at http://www.amazon.com and http://www.barnesandnoble.com within the next two weeks. Australian orders can be made through any high street retailer or online as above. Anyone interested in subscribing to Salt, can contact me for details at the addresses listed below. Your sincerely Chris _____________________________________________________ Christopher Hamilton-Emery Production Manager Salt Publishing PO Box 937 Great Wilbraham Cambridge PDO CB1 5JX United Kingdom Email: cemery@saltpublishing.com Web: http://www.saltpublishing.com _____________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 21:46:06 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "T. R. Healy and L. MacMahon" Subject: new emoticon? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit my wife, Louise, was expressing some dissatisfaction with the e-habit of indicating irony with and thought up the emoticon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Lawrence Upton Subject: A BOOK FOR TOM RAWORTH MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks to those who responded to my August posting. After a hopefully slight glitch with my email, I am concerned that I have received all responses. If you have not heard back from me by now, please send your message again L ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 23:42:08 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Lawrence Upton Subject: A DAY FOR BOB COBBING - a note to contributors MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A reminder to those who are sending cassette tapes to A DAY FOR BOB COBBING If your tapes are not yet in the post, could you get them in the post please? Please send them by ordinary post - DO *NOT SEND REGISTERED - to Lawrence Upton 32 Downside Road Sutton Surrey SM2 5HP Do NOT send them to the venue L ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 19:05:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Shrine http://nonfinito.de/shrine/ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>>>> >>>>>> http://nonfinito.de/shrine/ http://nonfinito.de/shrine/ http://nonfinito.de/shrine/ >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> t h e s h r I n e >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> by >>>>>> >>>>>> Annie Abrahams >>>>>> >>>>>> Alan Sondheim >>>>>> >>>>>> Reiner Strasser >>>>>> >>>>>> please at: http://nonfinito.de/shrine/ >>>>>> >>>>>> Flashwork by Reiner; Sound / Reading by Annie; Text by Alan; >>>>>> >>>>>> Image by Reiner and Alan >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> i've gone in as far as I could go >>>>>> >>>>>> i can't hear anything (to be chanted by luminous bodies) >>>>>> >>>>>> i stop by the Nikuko shrine >>>>>> >>>>>> i enter to find myself hanging there >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 20:15:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ramez Qureshi Subject: Fwd: Afghanistan Women Comments: To: GetUpStar@aol.com, poetryetc@mailbase.ac.uk, shamoon.zamir@kcl.ac.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_f5.279d246.26e6e6b6_boundary" --part1_f5.279d246.26e6e6b6_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/2/2000 7:36:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Qsofie writes: << >>>Please read this: News and an e-petition about >>>the Taliban. I think it's important, and anyway, you get to use the power >>>of the net for some good: read and sign it!! The government of >>>Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. The situation is getting so bad >>>that one person in an editorial of the Times compared the treatment of >>>women there to the treatment of Jews in pre-Holocaust Poland. >>> >>>Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and >>>have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, >>>even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their >>>eyes. >>> >>>One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of fundamentalists for >>>accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned >>>to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a >>>relative. >>> >>> >>>Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male >>>relative; Professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, >>>lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed >>>into their homes. Homes where a woman is present must have their windows >>>painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent >>>shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for >>>the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those without male >>>relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging on the >>>street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. >>> >>>Depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency >>>levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the >>>suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the >>>suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment >>>for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such >>>conditions, has increased significantly. There are almost no medical >>>facilities available for women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a >>>reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of >>>beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, >>>but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in >>>corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear. One doctor >>>is considering, when what little medication that is left finally runs >>>out, leaving these women in front of the president's residence as a form >>>of protest. It is at the point where the term "human rights violations" >>>has become an understatement. >>> >>>Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, >>>especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone >>>or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or >>>offending them in the slightest way. >>> >>> >>>Women enjoyed relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, >>>and drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The rapidity of >>>this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; Women >>>who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms >>>are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the name of >>>right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or 'culture,' >>>but it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where >>>fundamentalism is the rule. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human >>>existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country. If we can threaten >>>military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of >>>ethnic Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful >>>outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women >>>by the Taliban. >>> >>>STATEMENT >>>In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in >>>Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves action by the United >>>Nations and that the current situation overseas will not be tolerated. >>>Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere, and it is UNACCEPTABLE for >>>women in 1999 to be treated as subhuman and so much as property. Equality >>>and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives in >>>Afghanistan or elsewhere. >>> 1. Angana Chatterji, CA, USA 2. Richard Shapiro, CA, USA 3. Sofia Qureshi, CA, USA 4. Ramez Qureshi, NY USA >>>PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign the bottom and forward >>>it to everyone on your distribution lists. IF you receive this list with >>>more than 300 names on it, 1) please e-mail a copy of it to: >>>sarabande@brandeis.edu >>> >>>2) and PLEASE remove the first 300 names from the copy you e-mail to your >>>friends. Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not >>>kill the petition. Thank you! >>> >> --part1_f5.279d246.26e6e6b6_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: Received: from web27.aolmail.aol.com (web27.aolmail.aol.com [205.188.222.3]) by air-id05.mx.aol.com (v75_b3.11) with ESMTP; Sat, 02 Sep 2000 19:36:14 -0400 Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2000 19:36:09 EDT From: Qsofie@aol.com Subject:Re: Afghanistan Women To: , , , , , Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Unknown Message-ID: <52.336c2f.26e2e8ee@aol.com> >>>Please read this: News and an e-petition about >>>the Taliban. I think it's important, and anyway, you get to use the power >>>of the net for some good: read and sign it!! The government of >>>Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. The situation is getting so bad >>>that one person in an editorial of the Times compared the treatment of >>>women there to the treatment of Jews in pre-Holocaust Poland. >>> >>>Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and >>>have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, >>>even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their >>>eyes. >>> >>>One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of fundamentalists for >>>accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned >>>to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a >>>relative. >>> >>> >>>Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male >>>relative; Professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, >>>lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed >>>into their homes. Homes where a woman is present must have their windows >>>painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent >>>shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for >>>the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those without male >>>relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging on the >>>street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. >>> >>>Depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency >>>levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the >>>suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the >>>suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment >>>for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such >>>conditions, has increased significantly. There are almost no medical >>>facilities available for women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a >>>reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of >>>beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, >>>but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in >>>corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear. One doctor >>>is considering, when what little medication that is left finally runs >>>out, leaving these women in front of the president's residence as a form >>>of protest. It is at the point where the term "human rights violations" >>>has become an understatement. >>> >>>Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, >>>especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone >>>or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or >>>offending them in the slightest way. >>> >>> >>>Women enjoyed relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, >>>and drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The rapidity of >>>this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; Women >>>who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms >>>are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the name of >>>right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or 'culture,' >>>but it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where >>>fundamentalism is the rule. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human >>>existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country. If we can threaten >>>military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of >>>ethnic Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful >>>outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women >>>by the Taliban. >>> >>>STATEMENT >>>In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in >>>Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves action by the United >>>Nations and that the current situation overseas will not be tolerated. >>>Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere, and it is UNACCEPTABLE for >>>women in 1999 to be treated as subhuman and so much as property. Equality >>>and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives in >>>Afghanistan or elsewhere. >>> 1. Angana Chatterji, CA, USA 2. Richard Shapiro, CA, USA 3. Sofia Qureshi, CA, USA >>>PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign the bottom and forward >>>it to everyone on your distribution lists. IF you receive this list with >>>more than 300 names on it, 1) please e-mail a copy of it to: >>>sarabande@brandeis.edu >>> >>>2) and PLEASE remove the first 300 names from the copy you e-mail to your >>>friends. Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not >>>kill the petition. Thank you! >>> >> > >> --part1_f5.279d246.26e6e6b6_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:39:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: RS READING / Maazel MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: "Fiona Maazel" Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 22:54:16 -0400 Next Tuesday, September 12th,=20 poets Billy Collins and Sophie Cabot Black read at the Russian Samovar.=20 256 West 52nd St. 7:00 pm $3.00 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 08:34:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: Barbara Guest's ride cymbal Comments: cc: berstei@bway.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Barbara Guest: When I listen to your poetry I hear the sound of a cymbal being struck. It is one of those much prized "old K" cymbals made in Istanbul, dark and complex in its tessitura. The first impression is one of delicacy, an unworldy and almost unbearable subtlely in the interplay between the brightly articulated sticking pattern and the underlying "wash" or "spread." The beat is elliptical, more implied than stated, for the casual listener perhaps even impossible to discern. Yet to describe this sound as ethereal or rarified would be an oversimplification. It is hard-edged, witty, and luminous, never fragile or brittle. Listening to this poetry is one of the most satisfying aesthetic experiences imaginable. Jonathan Mayhew jmayhew@ukans.edu _____________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 11:48:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mdw Subject: Brian Kim Stefans? MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Does anybody on this list know what Brian Kim Stefans NEW e-mail address is, if there is one? His Random House address doesn't seem to be recognized there. Thanks. Mark Wallace ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 21:04:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bertha Rogers Subject: Update, NYS Literary Curators Web Site, www.nyslittree.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT September, and words are falling as fast as leaves in New York! Take a look at http://www.nyslittree.org. Find out what's happening in literature all over the state! 1. New organizations, new and updated events, new authors for Circuit and Interstate Writers. 2. Remember--your updates must arrive by email no later than the 20th of each month in order to appear on the next month's update. 3. Remember-- we can best serve you if you email your updates in the format shown on the web pages and in Times New Roman, 12 pt. type, no caps, no fancy fonts. This site is brought to you by Bright Hill Press, in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts. Bertha Rogers and Brittney Schoonebeek, working with webmaster Loss Pequeno Glazier, are at your service. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 16:17:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Small Press Traffic Subject: Small Press Traffic is moving Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Small Press Traffic is moving: We're moving this week to glamorous, tidy new digs at the just-completed San Francisco campus of the California College of Arts & Crafts! Most of our events will be held at their Timkens Lecture Hall, and our archive will be housed in their library. Please come see us at 1111 Eighth Street -- near the intersection of 16th and Wisconsin -- And remember, our radical, elegant charm will never change -- except in that change is part of it! And of course change is never easy -- all of us at SPT are deeply grateful to New College for its generosity in hosting us these past five years, a generosity which has made our continued success possible. Our fall reading series begins Friday, September 29 at 7:30 pm with readings by Rae Armantrout and Carol Mirakove. Hope to see some of you there!! _______________________ Elizabeth Treadwell Jackson, Director Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center at CCAC 1111 Eighth Street San Francisco, CA 94107 415/437-3454 http://www.sptraffic.org ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:42:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: query / Levitsky MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 19:41:05 -0400 Hey folks--this is from my friend, writer, poet, visual installation = artist, who lives in provincetown. Any information would be wonderful. = Backchannel Kathe at the address below, thank you. ##Rachel Levitsky -----Original Message----- From: Kathleen Izzo <> >I want to come to NY about the 15th of October for two months and I am = looking for a sublet/room, if you hear of anything. Not too expensive, either a room around $500 or something big enough for me and someone = else round $1000, Brooklyn no problem. backchannel to: kathe izzo at poetgrl@mediaone.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:44:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Double Helix art and performance space events/invitations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: "Double Helix" Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 11:55:25 +1000 PURVEYORS OF ARTAINMENT This is the 1st of what we hope will be many newsletters. For those of = you who have not been introduced to us yet - Double Helix is a licensed = cabaret artspace in the heart of the Fortitude Valley entertainment = precinct in Brisbane, Australia. Our current program includes - film = screenings, dj's, bands, dance, physical theatre, exhibitions with a = focus on art and technology, performance art and spectacle. We currently = operate as a collective of artists who have experience in film = production, visual art, theatre, music and interactive visual systems.=20 =20 You can visit us at 84 Alfred St. Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, Queensland = 4006, Australia. Snail mail - PO Box 172, Red Hill Q4059, Australia. = E-mail - dhelix@netspace.net.au. or Ph: 61 7 3852 4499.=20 WHAT'S ON AT DOUBLE HELIX Thursday 07/09/00 OMO Our regular Thursday queer and alternative disco masterminded by The = Love Machine Corporation with artistic director David Clark at the helm = brings you regular dj's Shame & Dud and their friends. This weeks = performance features The Mad Agents and it's free! 7pm start. Friday 08/09/00 Live music by The Radio Dolls and Sugadust with special guests and dj = Vance Astro infamous for his performances with The Pineapples From the = Dawn of Time. $5/$4 concession. 7pm start. Saturday 09/09/00 Exhibition Openings (see Press Release below and invitation attachments) = 6pm start. Gallery 1 - Co-Installation video performance installation by Freya = Pinney. Gallery 2 - Co-Installation digital manipulations by Di Ball. Gallery 3 - Fa(u)st Woman digitally enhanced photocopy installation by = K A Watson. PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * Mentor Program has a [co]:installation [co]:installation is an exhibition by Freya Pinney and Di Ball in = interconnected rooms at Double Helix, opening Saturday 9 September at = 6pm and continuing until 21 September. The exhibition is the outcome of = their project partnership through the Youth Arts Queensland Mentor = Program. Both works explore notions of transgression between bodies, = text and images and [co]:installation is a satellite event as part as = the Multimedia Arts Asia Pacific (MAAP) festival 2000. Freya Pinney=92s work will present a digitally enhanced performance of = tongue writing, projected and sequenced as a text. The script performed = will involve an exploration of unexplainable moments throughout history. = The silent execution of writing with the tongue as the brush produces = exciting and challenging visual images. Di Ball will use digitally manipulated images to expand her ongoing = "pink bits" project which has involved a long-term process of the artist = mapping her own body in a range of visual imagery. The work in this show = will add an exploration and documentation of the artist=92s life and = experiences past and present to the mapping process.=20 For further information, contact Freya Pinney at = co_installation@hotmail.com=20 Or on phone: 0414 611 323. PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * PRESS RELEASE * FA(U)ST WOMAN - FAST RESPONSE TO DOCUMENTING THE 1ST 3 MONTHS OF EVENTS = @ DOUBLE HELIX K.A. Watson continues her long exploration of the photocopy image = combined with digital manipulation to evoke a distorted, motion filled = sense of the place and the performances which have occured within the = space over the first three months of operation. Based on photographs of = events held at Double Helix, these images show captive moments of action = in black and white - displaying incidences remembered and incidences = unseen as flashes of the recent past. For further information contact Double Helix at dhelix@netspace.net.au=20 or phone 61 7 3852 4499. ALSO ON SATURDAY 09/09/00 INSECTICIDE presents - SOME... "FLY SHIT" Brisbane's FLYest Hip Hop Event!!! (cd's, tapes, bags and other promo giveaways) $6/$5 - 6pm start Local Acts - Lazy Grey - CD launch Writers Anon - tape launch Brothers Stoney Guests - Turntable Jediz (Damage & Sheep) MC's - Snax & Crew Dj's - Sean.B, Bluesabelle, Len-One, Odie and Hams Sunday 10/09/00 Local acts Barland, Swamp Hog and Peter Kroll (acoustic) provide the = ambience from 7pm. Tuesday 12/09/00 The second thrilling fortnightly installment of 'The Return of the = Revenge of It Came From Somewhere Else' - improvised theatre with '6 of = the Best' plus film screenings. 7pm start & $5. Thursday 14/09/00 OMO with more fab performances. Friday 15/09/00 Don't miss Taiyo - local masters of electronic soundscapes and their = friends for an evening of mesmerising live music, dj's and visuals. And don't forget - we also make very fine pizzas and have an original = array of cocktails and adult milkshakes - try our 'Pam Greer' or 'Betty = Page' or maybe you just 'Wanna Be Sedated'. Enjoy until next time. Double Helix. Should you wish to be removed from our list please reply with = 'unsubscribe' in the subject field. Thanks. Apologies for any cross = postings. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:45:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: news / Schultz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: "Susan M. Webster Schultz" Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 19:05:58 -1000 I'm very happy to say that my poetry book, _Aleatory Allegories_, is now = out from Salt in the UK and Australia, with distribution in the USA (dot = coms and Ingram). The cover design is by Gaye Chan, who does most of = the Tinfish covers. Unlike most of her covers, however, all of these = are the same and they never contained food... My next book will likely be titled DEET, after my newly adopted son's = universal word. Sangha (almost 14 mos.)notices everything but = everything and calls it DEET (or DIT or DAT). aloha, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 16:48:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Gestalten MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit i don't believe there has been an announcement about this...So here goes: now out is Gestalten 4 with a lot of interesting work, by such as Marcia Arrieta, Bill DiMichelle, Spenser Selby, Jim Leftwich, WB Keckler, Sheila Murphy, Gian Lombardo, about 14 others well worth a look... AND a special section featuring the work of some members of the Atlanta Poets Group, to wit Maryanne Del Gigante, Rebecca Hymen, John Lowther, Dana Lisa Lustig, Tedd Mulholland, Randy Prunty and James Sanders (oh and me). available from: Broken Boulder Press po Box 172 Lawrence , KS 66044 published annually subscriptions are $4 for 2 issues $7 for 4 issues mark prejsnar @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 16:00:30 -0500 Reply-To: jlm8047@louisiana.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry McGuire Organization: USL Subject: Deep South Festival of Writers-2000 Comments: To: Walt McDonald , Wendell Mayo , William Ryan , William Sylvester , Zach Smith , William Pitt Root and Pamela Uschuk , Writers' Forum , "Whitten, Phyllis" , wiselist , walter pierce MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Deep South Festival of Writers 2000 The Deep South Festival of Writers, one of the oldest and most prestigious writers conferences in the United States, announces its 40th annual fall festival, October 12-15, 2000 at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. 2000 marks the fourth decade of the Deep South Festival of Writers, as well as the centennial anniversary of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. To commemorate the coincidence of these special events, this fall the Festival will showcase Louisiana writers, artists, and the Louisiana setting in literature and the creative imagination. We encourage all patrons of the arts, painters, musicians, book-lovers, bar-napkin poets, and anyone else with an impulse towards artistic expression, to join us in the four-day celebration. Each year, the Deep South Festival affirms the value of literary arts and creative endeavors in Acadiana by featuring public performances, panel discussions, craft lectures, and exhibitions from a host of artists across the nation. By providing local artists and the community at large with nationally and world-renowned artists, the festival commemorates and encourages the urge towards writing and artistic expression. At the 40th Annual Fall Festival, Deep South will present writers in readings and craft lectures in a wide array of genres, from drama to poetry, from fiction to folklore. In addition to these scheduled events, the conference will also feature the following special additions: A dramatic reading of “Interview," an original play by UL resident playwright Dayana Stetco. Paroles et musique, a blend of music and verse performed in French by local Acadian poets. A panel discussion featuring editors from a variety of literary journals, including Transition (Harvard’s international journal), Connecticut Review, Southern Review, Louisiana Literature, and New Orleans Review, among others. A book fair of local presses. A panel discussion exploring the use of folklore in creative writing. A panel devoted to the teaching of writing across all educational levels. Featured participants will include poet Jean Arceneaux, poet Darrell Bourque, short story writer Tim Gautreaux, poet David Cheramie, literary agent Caroline Carney, poet Debbie Clifton, Baton Rouge native and fiction writer Tim Parrish, poet Skip Fox, novelist Ernest Gaines, short story writer Tim Gautreaux, nationally renowned folklorist Henry Glassie, poet Jerry McGuire, poet and translator Burton Raffel, poet Zachary Richard, poet Vivian Shipley, dramatist Dayana Stetco, and editor Michael Vasquez. This incredible line-up of talent will gather together only once: this October in the Deep South Festival of Writers. Don’t miss the opportunity to join in the celebration. For more information, please contact Dr. George Clark at the English Department of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, call 337.482.5481, fax 337.482.5071, or email at: r-gclark@worldnet.att.net. -- ________________________________________________________ Jerry McGuire Director of Creative Writing English Department Box 44691 University of Louisiana at Lafayette Lafayette LA 70504-4691 337-482-5478 ________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 03:48:49 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Massey Subject: Fwd: issue 1: FINDINGTHEWORD MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part1_a0.9561c75.26e8a261_boundary" --part1_a0.9561c75.26e8a261_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --part1_a0.9561c75.26e8a261_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-path: From: Measurelvis@aol.com Full-name: Measurelvis Message-ID: <35.9e80213.26e8a221@aol.com> Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 03:47:45 EDT Subject: Fwd: issue 1: FINDINGTHEWORD To: Derbadumdoo@aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="part2_a0.9561c75.26e8a221_boundary" X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 114 --part2_a0.9561c75.26e8a221_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --part2_a0.9561c75.26e8a221_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-path: From: FINDINGTHEWORD@aol.com Full-name: FINDINGTHEWORD Message-ID: Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 22:53:17 EDT Subject: issue 1: FINDINGTHEWORD MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable To: undisclosed-recipients:; X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Mac - Post-GM sub 55 FINDINGTHEWORD: An E-Zine of Epigrams & Epitaphs, FREE & OPEN TO EVERYONE. This is not the typical magazine where readers and writers are encouraged to= =20 submit their own work. This is a study in listening for the word, feeling=20 word. This is a magazine of the ear. All are encouraged to submit quotes from various sources: books, people,=20 tombstones, etc. Find the word, share the word. And spread the word about=20 FINDINGTHEWORD to other like ears. issue 1, September 2000 CAConrad editor Philadelphia, PA USA ************* "Writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is danger that one will= =20 be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief=20 that impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence." --Alain de Botton, from The Consolations of Philosophy. Submitted by Tabitha Voss, Portland, Oregon, USA. ************* "Words generate their own energy. They move around a lot, especially in subconscious realms. If I Be-Speak certain words, they're in the air, as it were. They're free and available. They have influence, and they follow their own Spiraling paths." --Mary Daly, from QUINTESSENCE, REALIZING THE ARCHAIC FUTURE (Anonyma Netword, c. 2048 BE -Biophilic Era- & Beacon Press, c. 1998, pg 8) Submitted by Adrianne Shtop, Philadelphia, PA, USA ************* "The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries= =20 to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an=20 amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman." --Oscar Wilde Submitted by Mary Bridget O'Conner, Dublin, Ireland. ************* "Besides, as Adrian Mitchell points out, every poet wants all other poets to= =20 write like he or she does--except worse." --Jonathan Williams, from his book of essays, The Magpie's Bagpipe (page= =20 72). Submitted by CAConrad, Philadelphia, USA. ************* "His ruthless climb to the middle." --Tim Dlugos Submitted by: David Trinidad, New York City ************* "What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When outside i= s=20 merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which=20 paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It= =20 is that synthesizing spirit, that 'shaping' force, which prolifically sprout= s=20 and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire.= =20 If I sit still and don't do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack= =20 drum, without meaning." --Sylvia Plath, from THE JOURNALS OF SYLVIA PLATH. Submitted by Jim-T Beck, Phoenix, Arizona, USA. ************* "Babylon hates it when anyone actually enjoys life, rather than merely=20 spends money in a vain attempt to buy the illusion of enjoyment.=20 Dissipation, gluttony, bulimic overconsumption- these are not only legal but= =20 mandatory...But you, you perverts, clearly deserve to be burned at the=20 stake- & here come the peasants with their torches, eager to do the State's=20 bidding without even being asked. Now you are the monsters, & your little=20 gothic castle of Immediatism is engulfed in flames. Suddenly cops are=20 swarming out of the woodwork. Are your papers in order? Do you have a right=20 to exist?" Selected from Hakim Bey's IMMEDIATISM p.23 (1994) Submitted by Frank Sherlock, Philadelphia, PA, USA. ************* "Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let=20 it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting t= o=20 gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I hav= e=20 not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or=20 to protect myself or my country. For...in fact, as a woman, I have no=20 country...." --Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas Submitted by Miliza Devaro, San Francisco, USA ************** "Camille Paglia, that most noisome and antifeminist of self-proclaimed feminists..." =20 --Natalie Angier, from WOMAN, AN INTIMATE GEOGRAPHY (pg 106, cr 1999, =20 Anchor Books) Submitted by Adrianne Shtop while in Phila. PA, USA Mentioned in NYC, NY, 8/31/00 app. 2:02 pm to CAConrad who immediately thereafter (app. 2:03 pm) demanded it for You. ************* "We should not be surprised that the clitoris loves power, or that its nature is complex....The clitoris is our magic cape. It tells us that joy is a serious business and that we must not take our light, our sexual brilliance, lightly." --Natalie Angier, from WOMAN, AN INTIMATE GEOGRAPHY (Anchor Books, c.=20 1999, pg 78-9) Submitted by Adrianne Shtop, Philadelphia, PA, USA ************* "When I made the discovery that life itself is my art, and music is my craft= ,=20 a tremendous weight lifted off me. I fell in love with my music again." --k.d. lang, in an interview with The New York Blade, 7/28/00 Submitted by CAConrad, Philadelphia, PA, USA. ************* "Once art is really accepted it will cease to be. It is only a substitute,=20= a=20 symbol-language, for something which can be seized directly. But for that t= o=20 become possible man must become thoroughly religious, not a believer, but a=20 prime mover, a god in fact and deed." --Henry Miller Submitted by Dugan O'Neil, New York City ************* "Between waking and being awake there is a moment full of doubt and dream, when you struggle to remember what the place and when the time and whether you really are. A peevish moment of wonderment as to where the real world lies." -- Keri Hulme from THE BONE PEOPLE (=A91986, page 36) Submitted by rtjr, smithville, nj, usa ************* "Writing, that ultimate effort to recycle, has always made my world more rea= l=20 for me, not less so. Secret love is fragile, but true love should be able t= o=20 withstand exposure. If my love affair with solitude that had miraculously=20 returned me to the arms of the world couldn't survive the telling, it was=20 time to find out." --Alix Kates, from Drinking the Rain Submitted by J. L. Mehta, San Jose, CA, USA ************* "What lies behind you and what lies before you are tiny matters compared to=20 what lies within you." --Ralph Waldo Emerson. Submitted by Enrique Gonzales, New York City, USA. =20 ************* "I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means....The stories other people would tell about my life, my mother's life, my sisters', uncles', cousins', and lost girlfiriends'--those are the stories that could destroy me, erase me, mock and deny me. I tell my stories louder all the time...all of them have to be told in order not to tell the one the world wants, the story of us broken, the story of us never laughing out loud, never learning to enjoy sex, never being able to love or trust love again, the story in which all that survives is the flesh. That is not my story. I tell all the others so as to not have to tell that one." --Dorothy Allison, from TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW FOR SURE (Plume Books= ,=20 c. 1995, pp 70-2) Submitted by Adrianne Shtop, Philadelphia, PA, USA ************* "Now that my father is dead I have a better relationship with him." --Adrianne Shtop, said in New York City, Angelica's Kitchen, 2:14 pm,=20 8/31/00. Submitted by CAConrad with Ms. Shtop's permission. ************* "The phrase 'bread and circuses' has become a commonplace to describe how the Roman Empire managed to keep the populace contented during the long centuries of its decline. By providing enough food to keep the bodies satisfied, and enough spectacles to keep the minds entertained, the ruling classes were able to avoid social unrest....a society begins to rely heavily on leisure--and especially passive leisure--only when it has become incapable of offering meaningful productive occupation to its members. Thus 'bread and circuses' is a ploy of last resort that postpones the dissolution of a society only temporarily." ---Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, from FINDING FLOW, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF =20 ENGAGEMENT WITH EVERYDAY LIFE (Basic Books, c.1997, pp. 69-70) Submitted by Adrianne Shtop, Philadelphia, PA, USA ************* It was a warm spring day. My partner, Susan Schmitt & I were at an up country day care center & one class of preschoolers had just exited the bookmobile. They were waving & saying thank you for the stories when one smiley little tyke turned & said to my now retired partner, "Goodbye Mrs Schmutz." submitted by: Susan E Stein, Ambler, PA USA ************* "There's the common misconception that melancholy is better fodder for good=20 art.... I think that honesty and integrity exist in every sort of emotion,=20 in jealousy, in melancholy, and in happiness." --k.d. lang, in an interview with The New York Blade, 7/28/00 Submitted by CAConrad, Philadelphia, USA ************* "A poet cannot be expected to distract himself with contemporaries in his=20 sixties as he did in his personal thirties." --Jonathan Williams, from his book of essays The Magpie's Bagpipe (page=20 81). Submitted by CAConrad, Philadelphia, USA ************* "When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I never tried= =20 before." =20 --Mae West Submitted by Jackie Addisson, Trenton, N. J., USA ************* =20 AND NOW, A FINAL WORD FROM THE KING! "I like it well done. I ain't ordering a pet." --Elvis Presley Every issue will end with a word from The King, and that's a goshdarn promis= e=20 from me to YOU! Until next issue, don't be nice unless you mean it, CAConrad --part2_a0.9561c75.26e8a221_boundary-- --part1_a0.9561c75.26e8a261_boundary-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 08:26:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Wolff Subject: PSA/Michael Palmer Comments: To: subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Please come to hear Michael Palmer and Joshua Clover read at the New School in New York: Thursday, September 14th, 7 pm Admission $8/$5 for PSA members On Saturday, September 16th, Michael Palmer presents "Spin City: Movement and Rest in the Work of the Objectivists," at the New School 2-5 pm, Saturday the 16th Registration fee: $25 for non-PSA members $15 for members and students (also deals negotiable by calling Rebecca Wolff at PSA, 212-254-9628) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 08:55:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Wolff Subject: stuff on Flood Comments: To: subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" New on Flood: Fence Fiction Annex http://communities.iuniverse.com/bin/circle.asp?circleid=512 the continuing serialization of months by D.E. Steward short fiction by Sharon Mesmer coming soon: further installments of The Impossibly, by Laird Hunt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 17:58:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Frank Parker Subject: Re: Afghanistan Women is a HOAX Comments: To: poetryetc@mailbase.ac.uk, GetUpStar@aol.com, shamoon.zamir@kcl.ac.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The petition you forwarded is a famous internet HOAX. About.com has some information about this "urban legend", just click the link I've provided: http://urbanlegends.about.com/science/urbanlegends/library/blafghan.htm?term s=Taliban+Women+Petition *************** Frank Parker franks@now.at http://now.at/frankshome ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 10:24:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: 'Camille' 'Martin' Subject: spontaneous combustion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ---------------------------------- * L * I * T * * * C * I * T * Y * ---------------------------------- presents S P O N T A N E O U S C O M B U S T I O N An End-of Summer Poetry and Music Extravaganza featuring Dave Brinks Christian Champagne Paul Chasse Brother Clit Andrei Codrescu Richard Collins Joel Dailey Dennis Formento Lee Grue Rodger Kamenetz Robin Kemp Bill Lavender Camille Martin John Sinclair Andy Young Rudy's Caribbean Funk Band . . . and more! Hosted by Jimmy Ross Wednesday, September 13, 8:00 pm at The Rooster, 616 N. Rampart (in the French Quarter, above Mama Rosa's) New Orleans, LA Suggested donation: $7 Proceeds to benefit Lit City, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:49:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: ELO Launches Electronic Literature Directory / Kendall MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message came to the administrative account. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 15:08:27 -0700 From: Robert Kendall The Electronic Literature Directory (http://directory.eliterature.org) is a unique and valuable new resource for readers and writers of digital texts. Created and maintained by the Electronic Literature Organization, this searchable database provides the most comprehensive reference tool available anywhere for electronic literature. Currently the Directory catalogs over 360 authors, 560 works, and 80 publishers. The descriptive entries cover poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction that makes significant use of electronic techniques or enhancements. The Directory provides easy access to one of the most exciting and fastest-growing bodies of cutting-edge literature. Among the new forms of writing represented here are hypertexts and other interactive pieces, kinetic or animated poems, multimedia works, generated texts, and works that allow reader collaboration. Directory users can also enjoy the enhancements that the new technology brings to traditional literature, such as streaming audio readings of poetry by masters ranging from e.e. cummings and Dylan Thomas to contemporary Pulitzer Prize winners. The Directory contains live links to Web works, publishing sites, and author home pages, making it a prime portal for readers. Users can search the Directory for individual authors or works, or they can browse numerous categories such as poetry, fiction, hypertext, or animated text. More-sophisticated search and selection capabilities will be added in the future, letting users find works by specifying virtually any attribute, from the language of the text to the distribution medium (Web, disk, etc.). Another future enhancement will be the addition of reviews and reader recommendations to listings. Authors and publishers listed in the Directory can edit their own listings to ensure accuracy and completeness. If you are an author or publisher, we encourage you to contact us at directory@eliterature.org for your account information so you can edit your existing listings and add new ones for yourself. If your work isn't in the Directory but should be, let us know so we can rectify the mistake. The collaboration of authors, publishers, and ELO staff in maintaining content will ensure that the Directory is always comprehensive, accurate, and up to date. The Directory is currently in a publicly accessible beta form. Some bugs are still present, some planned features have not yet been implemented, and not all data has been checked for accuracy. During the beta period we are seeking user feedback. Please inform us of any problems you encounter. Electronic Literature Directory http://directory.eliterature.org Electronic Literature Organization http://www.eliterature.org Robert Kendall Directory Administrator directory@eliterature.org ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:54:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Short of getting into an ever-widening spiral of ad hominems regarding purported "delusions," I can only return to my point, conveniently passed over by you, that the states under discussion are instruments of domination. That's neither the politics of a Gore-touting erstwhile reformer, nor of a cheerleader for the Texas serial killer and dynastic scion. Nor, really, of an optimistic social-democratic Naderite. To your question: Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? I'll keep my answer within the narrow bounds of personal experience: someone gassed and beaten in vitro by Nixon's hired goons, who grew up to receive his first identifying scar at the hands of one of (Republican) Bob Martinez' Florida state troopers during a nonviolent civil action, might be somewhat justified in placing a certain amount of blame in that direction. But no fear, it's an equal opportunity attack: Lawton Chiles' state troopers kicked my ass too. And Clinton and Gore have been as instrumental as Reagan in busting up the social movements (and the civil society) that gave those I care for a measure of hope. In my neck of the woods, we talk about Clinton's presidency as years 13-20 of the Reagan/Bush administration. But this has become really tiresome, especially as it's taken shape in my attempt to produce a rebuttal to what was simply your placing of words in my mouth. (Read my initial post: I never mentioned Republicanism as the locus of the problems I was identifying, nor did I make any mention of voting for Gore). Reluctant as I am to join those who can be counted on to groan at every mention of politics on the list, I'm going to absent myself from further discussion of this until your posts come up to argument from their current level of blank assertion (with emphatic caps, no less - nice touch). Taylor -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 8:11 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this LINE! If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and grounded views of Frost. Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > From: Taylor Brady > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" > liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: > > Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping > things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on > an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same > repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei > Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of > examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, > anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. > > All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. > citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism over > a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a > police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a > thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime of > holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having > their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of > "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO > anything to warrant the stick. > > Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from > which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a > justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction between > that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - a > government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything about > the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral > authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to > fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no > better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the > contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to register > its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that > one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of > others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf > of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those > outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of > domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international > list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a > position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely > the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. > Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every > time I say "I"? > > (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a while). > > Taylor > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has been > read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression of > a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," > "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my > concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still > outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry > us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple > of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar > with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now > gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came > back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, > 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" > content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities > (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views > critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. > Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the > Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I > understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of > Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be > condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. > > ------------------ > Yunte Huang > Assistant Professor > Dept of English > Harvard University > 12 Quincy St > Cambridge, MA 02138 > Tel: 617-495-1139 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:57:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Rothenberg Subject: Re: Burning Man Hell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ron, Something I wrote on Burning Man, from a few years back, being there, that might apply to your burning interest can be found at Jack Magazine: http://www.jackmagazine.com/bmh.html I'm not sure if or how it addresses language Best, Michael R. > On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Ron Silliman wrote: > > > 1) Is anybody on this list attending Burning Man? I'd love to hear an > > account that addressed the question of the role of language and language > > arts out there in the desert. > > > > 2) If you have a good virus scanning program (I use Norton), HTML should > > pose no threat. Ditto if you use a service like Hotmail. > > > > 3) Anselm, stop slandering shoe laces! > > > > Ron > > _________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:07:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I worry about the invocation of sanity in your attempt to solidify the distinction between pleasure and disgust. Certainly - and without going into any embarrassing personal detail - there are plenty of us in the world whose experience of what get called "perversions" is exactly this coincidence of intense pleasure and intense disgust. And no, I don't think that's simply internalized self-loathing at the enactment of socially proscribed practices, aesthetic, sexual or otherwise. The rounding up of that experience under the heading of "insanity" might have (has had) some pretty dangerous social consequences, no? [As an aside, I'd recommend a look at Samuel R. Delany's novel The Mad Man for a rigorous narrative examination of an aesthetics of pleasurable disgust. Or passages in Dodie Bellamy's The Letters of Mina Harker. Or or or...] Taylor -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 6:17 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics I think I agree with much of what Jacques Debrot wrote below-- but why redefine pleasure as "intense feeling?" All intense feeling is not pleasure. I can see intense feeling, or emotive intensity, being considered more important, in a poem, than whether that intesnity is pleasurable or painful; I can also understand how one might derive pleasure FROM an intense negative feeling--but that wouldn't make the latter pleasure, only something from which pleasure could be derived. In my aesthetics figuring out how this could be is important, by the way, the main expression of the question being: what do we get out of tragedy? One thought: tragedy acts as a counter-irritant; another is that an artwork, in containing something painful, or subduing it, produces a kind of pleasurable victory over pain. Anyway, my bottom line is that the ultimate function of art is to give people pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure. Disgust IS the opposite of pleasure. An artwork that elicits only disgust cannot be pleasurable (or desired by anyone sane); art that works with that which disgusts must somehow achieve something pleasurable in spite of that, not FROM it. --Bob G. Jacques Debrot wrote: > > There are valid grounds for identifying LangPo w/ the academy--even if its > presence in most literature departments is practically non-existent, as > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& his > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic distance > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of *demystifying* > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's > soon-to-be, like myself) function, in a sense, as bureaucrats, surveiling & > adjudicating the poem's *real* meaning which, naturally, is never what it > appears to be, as appearances themselves--by reason of the pleasure they > give--are assumed to be misleading (by "pleasure" understand that I am giving > a shorthand for what is really *intense* feeling--the opposite of pleasure > being then, not "pain," but, as Dave Hickey puts it, "the banality of neutral > comfort." The false dichotomy between pleasure & disgust is, by the way, > Sianne Ngai's basic mistake in her recent brilliant essay in _Open Letter_). > In any case, it goes w/out saying , I think, that a lot of awfully boring > Language-influenced poetry (including some of my own) is advanced or > published for *therapeutic* reasons--that is, because it is supposedly good > for us. > > Nothing, however, is more potentially disruptive of the status quo than > pleasure--it's amazing as well as scary, really, what you & I are capable of > getting off on. Pleasure--or beauty, as Dave Hickey has argued too (in > essays that crucially inform this post)--is also *essentially democratic* in > that there is a **vernacular** of beauty or pleasure that enfranchises > audiences and acknowledges their power (& by audience, I don't mean the > ghettoized audience of the poetry world or of academia). Indeed, it is not > criticism that is politically efficacious so much as the assent or "praise" > an audience gives to the persuasive power of a poem--the vernacular of > pleasure or beauty is thus always a quality that is politicized in one way or > another, rather than neutralizing politics (which is what I find so > fascinating about Maria Damon's inclusion, in her book, of the poetry of > women living in housing projects, or, for that matter, about prison poetry). > This is something quite different, I think, from "dumbing down." Still, > poetry can never be politically efficacious unless it moves a non-specialist > or non-professional audience--in the way Pop art did, say. Art, in fact, is > only transgressive, as Hickey puts it, if Jesse Helms says it is: > "Regardless of what the titillated cognoscenti might flatter themselves by > believing, if you dealt in transgression, insisted upon it, it was always the > Senator, only the Senator . . . whose outrage mattered." Helms, of course > may not know squat about art, but his business, after all, *is* rhetoric . > > Of course, there is a lot of LangPo which would be powerfully affective--even > to an uninitiated audience-- but the emphasis has always been someplace else, > too focused, like the academy, on critique, & on a therapeutic model of > aesthetic experience & too suspicious of *content* in its valorization of > transgressive *form*. (But, in fact, a lot of putatively anti-LangPo > poetries are equally therapeutic in intent--the suspicion of pleasure has > almost become reflexive today. Indeed, the return to lyricism typical of a > lot of recent NY School-inspired poetry only strikes me most of the time as > completely & banally comfortable & self-satisfied.) We need poems, in other > words, as ravishingly beautiful & political as Mapplethorpe's _X Portfolio_, > Cindy Sherman's _Doll Photos_, or Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_. > > --Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 13:49:49 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit richard - 1. I don't think Taylor was supporting more government at all. 2. Though the Republican Party wishes you to believe otherwise, they are at least as supportive of more government as the Democrats. Their deregulatory efforts are directed solely at reducing overhead for corporations. If anyone remembers welfare reform it should be interesting to note that it came with increased regulations. Why? It's a social program, not a corporate program. Republicans may not outspend Democrats on social issues but they certainly do outspend Democrats on the military. And military spending is almost 1/2 of our total annual spending. But the differences between the two parties are minimal in both categories. Both generally increase military spending and decrease social spending. Both generally deregulate controls surrounding corporations and increase regulations surrounding social programs. Both generally seem to wish to make a bigger military (more government) while looting the american tax base and funneling those gains to their soft-money donor-friends in the big corporations. republicans tend to loot faster (which they call 'less government') but on less taxes. which means they loot a greater percentage of your tax dollar. so they don't need as much taxes as the Democrats who are going to loot more slowly on a larger tax base by making it look like they are the friends of the people. but again let me stress the differences between the two are marginal at best. 3. The core of your argument here can be reduced to two premises and its conclusion. "... it is the type of intellectual who dominates this Line that runs China today!" " ... your vision will lead to even MORE government in the US...." translation: person who says intellectual things runs china china is a "more government" country (implicit) therefore intellectuals bring about "more government" this is a highly specious argument, to say the least. perhaps some intellectuals in china also do not support the chinese government (though it may be dangerous to do so). perhaps intellectuals in china are diverse. perhaps the intellectual climate in china is not exemplary of the intellectual climate in america. intellectuals do seem to be involved in political revolutions on both sides everywhere throughout history. brainy people figure out how to control things. no surprise there. but perhaps brainy people can also figure out how *not* to control things (which may equal "more government"). one need only read shunryu suzuki or bakunin to see this. "Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power." Bakunin, an intellectual, wrote these words. Surely he too was not speaking for more government. but you suggest he is backhandedly suggesting more government? hmm. let's see. if someone says something intellectual, he is supporting more government. what is it to say something intellectual? primarily it is someone saying something that some other people do not understand immediately. but all people are capable of saying something that excludes others. so all people can speak intellectually and participate in some form of intellectualism or others. (i've heard many complex analyses of NFL games, for example, by people not commonly called "intellectual" because they might not have college degrees or they have blue collar jobs, etc.) this leads us to your subtle conclusion that, since intellectuals are for more government, and since all people are really intellectuals, it follows that all people are for "more government." I don't think I agree with this argument either. because the first premise is patently false. China deserves condemnation. America deserves condemnation. Yes. But in a way-out sense, power structures are often set up by *acknowledgement* of the gestures (Genet or Kafka, anyone? Miller's Crossing? etc.) of power. How can we begin to ignore the power structures of government? How can we ignore their gestures, all the while their powers are PAINFULLY clear? This I have no answer for. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 11:11 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this LINE! If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and grounded views of Frost. Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > From: Taylor Brady > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" > liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: > > Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping > things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on > an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same > repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei > Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of > examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, > anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. > > All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. > citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism over > a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a > police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a > thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime of > holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having > their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of > "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO > anything to warrant the stick. > > Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from > which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a > justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction between > that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - a > government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything about > the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral > authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to > fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no > better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the > contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to register > its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that > one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of > others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf > of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those > outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of > domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international > list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a > position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely > the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. > Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every > time I say "I"? > > (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a while). > > Taylor > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has been > read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression of > a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," > "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my > concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still > outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry > us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple > of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar > with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now > gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came > back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, > 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" > content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities > (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views > critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. > Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the > Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I > understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of > Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be > condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. > > ------------------ > Yunte Huang > Assistant Professor > Dept of English > Harvard University > 12 Quincy St > Cambridge, MA 02138 > Tel: 617-495-1139 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:55:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Address query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone have addresses for the following? (Postal would be preferred, but e-mail would also be helpful). Diane Ward Harryette Mullen Mark McMorris Heather Fuller Benjamin Friedlander Please b-c me, and thanks in advance. All best, Taylor Brady ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 11:41:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: POG opening fall event: Sheila Pitt and Sharon Wahl, Saturday Sept 23, Antigone, 7pm Comments: To: "poetry@listserv. arizona. edu" , Poesis , Tucson Weekly , Tucson Citizen , Tom Mandel , Rodrigo Martinez Toscano , pogin , Philip Good , Ofelia Zepeda , "MCCAFFER@QUCDN. QUEENSU. CA" , mary k , Mark Mansheim , Marisa Januzzi , Maggie Jaffe , Lyn Hejinian , Ken Gross , Julie Silverman , Juliana Spahr , Jessica Lowenthal , jerry rothenberg , J Kuszai , "Hung Q. Tu" , Greg Jackson , Greg Garfin , Gil Ott , Gibly , Erica Hunt , Eli Goldblatt , Ed Foster , Dan Buckley , Cynthia Hogue , Cole Swensen , Claire West , chuck , Brent Cottle , Bob Perelman , Bill Luoma , Bill Endres , Bernadette Mayer , Barbara Cully , Annina Lavee , Annie Carr , Allison Moore , Alison Deming , "AABRAFMAN@aol. com" , Allen Brafman , bob cauthorne , carlos , David Greenlee , Dennis Evans , "english@listserv. arizona. edu" , Karen Falkenstrom , karen tallman , Mary Koopman , "mfa (E-mail)" , Michael Davidson , modern , "neese@psi. edu" , Ofelia , Penny Gates , "pog@listserv. arizona. edu" , "pogevent (E-mail)" , Raft , Richard Laue , Rodrigo Toscano , Shelly Dorsey MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit for immediate release (teachers please announce to your classes; even better, ask us for xerox copies to distribute to your classes and we'll get them to your mailbox) * POG presents visual artist Sheila Pitt and writer Sharon Wahl Saturday, September 23, 7pm, Antigone Books, 411 N 4th Ave, 792-3715 Admission: $5; Students $3 Sheila Pitt is a printmaker, painter, soft-sculpture and mixed-media artist who lives and works in Tucson. She’s a professor in the Art Department of University of Arizona and has had numerous shows in Tucson and across the country. In the 1990s, Pitt created “Women on the Altar,” a series of experiments in nontraditional printmaking using copper, zinc, fabric, and glass along with prints and their original woodcuts in a series of related works that focus on concerns universal to women. The show was exhibited at the UA Museum of art in June-July 1994. An example of her more recent cloth works is “Phallocentric Quilt,” a black and white quilt printed and stitched with images of her grandparents’ faces in every square, with grandpa securely in the middle. Sharon Wahl did graduate work in math at MIT, then completed an MFA in creative writing at Washington University, in St, Louis. Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Iowa Review (Tim McGinnis Award), Chicago Tribune (Nelson Algren Award finalist), Pleiades (Editors’ Prize in poetry), Literal Latte (Fiction Contest winner), Harvard Review, and other journals. She won a fiction fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts in 1999, and is currently teaching at Pima Community College in Tucson. She is a member of the POG collective. · POG events are sponsored in part by grants from the Tucson/Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. for further information contact POG: 296-6416 tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 12:13:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jocelyn Saidenberg Subject: KRUPSKAYA & LEROY Reading and Book Party in SF, 9/13 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" KRUPSKAYA and LEROY PRESS Reading and Book Party Wednesday, September 13, 7:30 pm Modern Times Boostore, 888 Valencia Street, San Francisco KRUPSKAYA: Mike Amnasan & Laura Moriarty LEROY: Taylor Brady & Summi Kaipa KRUPSKAYA and LEROY PRESS are the featured 'Indie' presses at Modern Times for the month of September, with a special 25% off sale on books and a fabulous window display. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 14:50:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Isn't the ancient (I believe from Horace) definition of poetry's function "to delight and instruct"? --dbc On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Fredrik Hertzberg LIT wrote: > On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Jacques Debrot wrote: > > > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& his > > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic distance > > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of *demystifying* > > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's > > This is a weird statement, I would have thought just the oppiste, that > Bernstein welcomes both rhetoric and aesthetics, as well as pleasure. > Read "A Blow Is like an Instrument". But I guess Bernstein can be read in > variou,s opposing, contradictiry, self-contradictory ways. But weird > nevertheless. > > Fred > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 15:40:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Balestrieri, Peter" Subject: To All Albiach and Gevirtz Queries' Responders MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi, I'd like to thank all the Listees that sent me info, Forward and Back, on these authors. Very kind. Regards, Pete Balestrieri ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 22:38:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: language in lingua franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/7/00 9:08:36 AM, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << So the authoritarians,patriarchs, or the traditionalists are usually in opposition to new styles or ideas and are often dour and timid persons. They fear change of any kind. People "fear" poetry: even the less "strangified" writing is seen as dangerous. Is this new? No. Its very old and is part of a continuous struggle between the new and the old. Pound's dictum to make it new still holds. Not to is to give up. But lets not become fixated on LangPo. There are ways of writing that may be influenced by these writers that may go past it: as long as there is not a reversion to simplistic traditionalism (often by critics or writers who write in a manner that is "realistic" or "straight from the heart", and which "tells something" (when it could be told better in formal, or explicative prose), >> Hi Richard, mind if I add my measly one cent? I like most of what you said in your post (which is quite a bit longer than what I have reproduced here), but I do think you overstate just a tad. I guess some "traditionalists" fear poetry, but that is pretty much confined to countries in which a poem can stir the political tides. In the USA we're generally dealing with tastes. And they change all the time. The reality based poem may seem shop worn, but let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" poems which were astonishingly innovative for the time. No radical formal machinations there--just a new attitude toward content. And no one ever accused Frank of being dour and timid. No, that dour and timid thing sounds too much like a stereotype. In fact, it could be argued that langpo is the more timid form since it represses direct emotional expression. Could it be that the current ensconced innovators "fear" emotion? Are they in fact producing the latest versions of a very long tradition of puritan art? Of course there are arguments on both sides, and no doubt they all are worth hearing. Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the former is clearly the more innovative. When it appeared on the scene, there was a palpable sense that something new was going on, despite the obvious and profound influence of Ashbery. Vispo has been around for centuries, and remains a hybrid form that fails to appeal to many of those whose primary love is for language--just not enough of it in vispo, generally. By the way, I enjoy, and support, much of both langpo and vispo. Innovation is important, but it is not the be all and end all. There are some vispoems I consider more successful than some langpoems, and which is more innovative becomes secondary to which is better art. We all know that today's innovation is tomorrow's tradition. A true traditionalist is the best thing we have, for as Eliot (that bastard) knew, only the truly experimental get to join the tradition which is nothing else but a record of innovation, as any Norton Anthology clearly demonstrates. One problem for me is that there has been so much innovation since the sixties that nothing looks very new, anyway. A return to direct albeit creatively crafted emotion may be the most innovative thing to approach right now. Perhaps not. But we can all count on one thing. As langpo enters the tradition, joins the academy (which any poetry must do in order to survive--like it or not, that's da fac, Jack), there will be strong reaction and opposition from the young. A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and Universities. A poet who has the opportunity to affect students, to share his obsession with language with the young (some of whom are actually eager to learn)--a sell out? When we consider that so many young people have developed a love for poetry in such places (both "straight from the heart" stuff and experimental), the attacks often seem little more than straw man tactics and sour grapes. Your point that Professors are like guardians rings true for me. And we need that. We all must earn our way. As we all know, many never live to see the celebration their work ultimately achieves. Some Professors/Critics, it is true, are quite narrow minded. But anyone who suggests that the avant garde has historically been open minded needs to get off the booze. Same sins in both camps, and both covet power in sometimes very ugly ways. Long ago I threw my hat in the progressive ring, but I damn well know that some of those "traditional" poems are a lot better than some of the experiments I have seen. I try to maintain a democratic palate. In my view, to shut out anything is to deny one's self an opportunity to be influenced, to find new combinations, to progress. No doubt I've overreached your comments. But I appreciate the opportunity to sound off on a number of issues. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:23:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Taylor Subject: Re: From Bei Ling to Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Dear Yunte. I'm not taylor, but I am a Taylor. But I'm in agreement with you in principle. I'm kind of "on the outside looking in" ("reverse' of "outside looking out...") I'm on a very ( or relatively) low income compared to most academics (here referring to those employed at universities) but nor do I "fit in" quite with theso-called "working class". I urge younger "would be poets" to take an interest in what academics are saying without putting them on a pedestal.And even to enrol in courses at our local university (Auckland,N.Z.) The anti-intellectual anti-academic stance is prevalant still. I urge young friends to use the universities and their resources and to look at writers who are "challenging" as well as others such as Bukowski. I see the ideal reader as being able to "take in" Bukowski and Stein, AS WELL AS B's near namesake Zukowski. Bukowski's good but his stance against (if it is against) established or "difficult" poets smacks of envy. Conversely, I dont find r eading Stein or Zukovsky "difficult",altho maybe I use some "interpretation" for Z. Reading these poets is like entering into different "contracts" as to how you are going to read. The struggle for progress in art,lit,or politics is constant and is as problematic inside or outside the universities, inside or outside the communist (or any other political) party. There may be a tendency to "get out of touch" with "ordinary people" but these latter can be equally be lacking in healthy contact with academics. Nor can a writer or artist operate effectively if he/she is constantly "at war". We all need times when we "drop out". Similarly society needs its intellectuals (as long as they dont become too stuffy or inflexible, which is a danger whoever you are.)I suspect that Lehman etal are simplifying these issues which old but ongoing and still of vital importance.Regards, Richard Taylor. (not the Taylor of your message...) >From: Yunte Huang >Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 10:06:10 -0400 >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: From Bei Ling to Lingua Franca > >Dear Taylor, > >Very delighted to hear from you. Your argument is very well put. How's >life in SF? Here the new semester will start in a few weeks, and I look >forward to another round of testing the wits of my students with Pound and >Stein, in addition to some radical poetics of the transpacific. Speaking >of academia, I find the Lingua Franca piece utterly incapable of grasping >with the politics of poetry and poetics in school curriculum. What Lyn >Hejinian said about "Isn't the avant-garde always pedagogical?" drives home >the important point that the avant-garde is pedagogical in ways that it >undermines the pre-established power structure in institutionalized >pedagogy. When Epstein quotes (and complicitly endorses) Lehman's >rhetorical question that "But when a school of poetry is entirely academic. >. . how is it avant-garde?" he (and Lehman) misses entirely on the >possibility that an ideological critique of the banal academic politics may >be launched both from within and without the academy. Anyone who has >experimented with letting his or her students "unlearn" (rather than >relearn and reinforce) their previously acquired habits of reading poetry >will understand what I am saying and may sincerely hesitate before he or >she reduces everything to "you are either academic or not!" There's a joke >among mainland Chinese that may be relevant here: If you don't like the >Communist Party, then that's exactly the reason you should join the party >and undo it from the inside. Of course someone beside you may scream that >"You'll be tainted before you know it!" Of course someone inside you may >try to club you like your zen master, shouting "Wake up! It can't be done!" > But, yes, there are commies who try to be commies differently, or Chinese >who try to be Chinese differently, or Americans to be Americans >differently--"The difference is spreading," so says Stein. Categories can >be done and undone. To assume that the academy is such and such and can't >be otherwise may be a good point, but it doesn't point anywhere else and >hence is a dead point. And this is probably where the line starts, a line >between (non)liberal scepticism or even cynicism and activism. --Y.H. >------------------- >Yunte Huang >Assistant Professor >Dept of English >Harvard University >12 Quincy St >Cambridge, MA 02138 >Tel: 617-495-1139 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 22:38:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Burning Man In-Reply-To: <39AEFEEE.E57E74A0@concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > >Come to think of it, maybe George and David should have passed on Orono >and hightailed it to Black Rock City, where lampshade-wearing hoohah is >put to the test. > >Rachel Hey, Rachel How do you know what kind of hoohah was going on in Orono? You should have seen Bromige and Peter Davidson and the stuffed cats! -- George Bowering Fax 604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 22:40:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > > >If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it >work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism >as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: >To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. >State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and >grounded views of Frost. Don't laugh! I once knew a poet who expressed views just about like that! -- George Bowering Fax 604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 10:51:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Nielsen, Aldon" Subject: Re: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000901105250.00bbcd00@pop.ihug.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I don't know if the LINGUA FRANCA article is available on-line -- the print version doesn't seem to carry any ref. to a web version -- BUT Andrew Epstein is on this list & might be willing to make it available to you directly???? It would not be possible to post it to the list as it's copyrighted material. " Subjects hinder talk." -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 (310) 338-3078 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 18:59:17 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Genesis 0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan. I like this one. I often get a "fright" (almost literally when I read some of the strange language and commands that my(imperious?imperial?fascist?) computer keeps firing at me when I drift onto thwrong screen or push the wrong button.And the bloody thing keeps beating me at Chess! Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Sondheim" To: Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 11:04 AM Subject: Genesis 0 > - > > > Genesis 0 > > > Bad magic: No world not called from trigger restricted illegal destination > world file none. Restriction level can not be lowered. warning: invalid > path value file load interrupted: line: warning: possibly missing trailing > warning: whitespace following final Invalid command. Aborting. load: un- > known error reading file missing filename No binding may be called only > directly from a macro, not in command substitution. not a builtin command: > no such command or macro too many recursions. Try using instead expression > stack underflow dirty expression stack warning: non-numeric string value > used in numeric context expression stack overflow stack underflow warning: > possibly missing before operator: arithmetic overflow illegal object of > assignment division by zero internal error: reduce: bad restricted can not > be closed: illegal object of assignment unknown key name illegal field > name getopts can not be used in a macro called as a function. invalid op- > tion specifier: not supported function name must be an identifier. substi- > tution in expression is legal, but redundant. Help on subject not found. > not enough memory for lines of history. missing arguments: syntax error in > recall range. extra characters after recall range: history scan disabled. > No world lines? Don't be ridiculous. > > no such world. default world. > > Please report this to the author, and describe what you did. > > > __ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 19:04:20 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Tumor Text-Growth Comment:Richard Taylor. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan. That's right:"Language its a virus.." Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alan Sondheim" To: Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 6:53 PM Subject: Tumor Text-Growth > - > > > Tumor Text-Growth > > > ls -la .snapshot/hourly.* | grep ln >> zz; cat zz > > -rw------- 1 sondheim users 78191 Sep 1 18:56 ln > -rw------- 1 sondheim users 77414 Sep 1 13:34 ln > -rw------- 1 sondheim users 77136 Sep 1 01:06 ln > -rw------- 1 sondheim users 77136 Sep 1 01:06 ln > -rw------- 1 sondheim users 78191 Sep 1 18:56 ln > -rw------- 1 sondheim users 79589 Sep 2 01:04 ln > > Violent growth of text/theory file within ~/ home directory > of sondheim: seething mass of theoretical debris. > > Mud-slime of latinate terminologies, ideolectical processes > and theoretical debris. > > Cancer-tumor of explanatory theoretical debris. > > Viscous liquidity of pruning growth critique of abstractive > protocols, languages, and processes, blooming of theoretical > debris. > > > _ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:31:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Harry Nudel Subject: m&r..after gyula MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NO FLY ZONE (3;33/9/9/00) music is money minus time .. ah mores a stock doubles every tempora ... csco amzn intl sycamore networks ... love is dissonance plus patience zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzorn ... no problemos, mon petit pauvre,.... for ever.. Drn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 08:14:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Wolff Subject: Laird Hunt's The Impossibly on Flood Comments: To: subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Visit Flood: Fence Fiction Annex To read Part A, sections 1 and 2 of The Impossibly, by Laird Hunt http://communities.iuniverse.com/bin/circle.asp?circleid=512 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 13:36:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Nielsen, Aldon" Subject: Re: assimilation and purity & language in lingua franca In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Aldon Nielsen, asking about Andrew Epstein "do we know this guy" >sounds like we on the List are one big xenophobic clan but maybe >you're being ironic about our place in the vast scheme of things. To quote an American president, let me say this about that. I can't for the life of me understand how the question "do we know this guy" sounds like xenophobia -- wouldn't that be more along the lines of "we don't want to know this guy"? but yes, I was trying to be ironic, as Andrew's name was quite visible on the list of those who compose the "we" to whom I addressed myself -- I'm always trying -- The one new bit of information I've gleaned regarding this article is that Andrew was asked to do this piece. I'd be curious to know how such asking comes about. -- more curious to know how the request read -- " Subjects hinder talk." -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 (310) 338-3078 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:05:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Epstein Subject: Re: language in lingua franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi -- A number of people have asked about my article that is being discussed in this thread and where it can be found. The article is called "Verse vs. Verse," and it appears in the current (September) issue of the magazine Lingua Franca. LF can be found at a lot of newstands, magazine stores, and Barnes and Noble type bookstores (at least in NYC, where I am -- it may be a bit more scarce elsewhere), as well as at college, and I suppose some public, libraries. Unfortunately, the editors decided to not offer this particular article on their website, which is www.linguafranca.com-- at least not yet. If there are people interested, I'd be happy to send a xerox of the piece to the first 15 or so people who backchannel me with their address (please send messages to me, not the list). After that, it may get a bit taxing for me, so please do try to find it in another way if you can. And thanks for the interest in the piece. take care, Andrew ade3@columbia.edu P. S. Just a quick response to Yunte Huang: when I quote a comment by someone whose point of view you don't like, it doesn't mean that I think that way or that I "complicitly endorse" (interesting phrase!) that point of view. And why am I guilty of endorsing the Lehman comment about the avant-garde and the academy but not the Hejinian quote about the avant-garde and the academy you approvingly refer to just an instant before? This seems like curious and selective reasoning (and reading) to me.... Peter Fogarty wrote: >>Hi all, is there any chance that the article in Lingua Franca could be posted to the list for clarity as I don't have access to it. If it's on the web, perhaps the URL could be posted for the benefit of us all. Cheers, Peter ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 16:02:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: San Francisco Address & L, MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Poetics List, Is there a PERSLY Drive in San Francisco,? Or put it another way, does anybody know where the writer Sharon Doubiango lives in San Francsico? I received a letter from her, with an illegible return address.... Thankx Chris Ps. Also thanks Rachel Loden for the email address.... I tried to backchannel you at concentric net and it didn't get there.... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 19:46:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carol Hamshaw Subject: TCR Launch with John Newlove MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WHAT: Fall 2000 Issue Launch WHEN: 7:30, October 26, 2000 WHERE: Anza Club, #3 West 8th Avenue INFO: 984-1712 John Newlove comes to Vancouver for fall launch of The Capilano Review North Vancouver literary and visual arts journal, The Capilano Review is launching its Fall 2000 issue at the Anza Club on October 26, 2000, 8PM. We'll be celebrating this issue with several readings, including John Newlove who will be here from Ottawa. Newlove last read in Vancouver in 1986. JOHN NEWLOVE was born and raised in Saskatchewan. It was in Vancouver, where he lived, with interruptions from 1960-67, that he first began a serious attempt to teach himself to write verse, impelled by the company and conversation of the likes of Roy Kiyooka, Curt Lang and Fred Douglas, and by the sheer spirit of the city itself. John has published nearly 20 books. Lies was given a Governor General's Award; his selected poems, Apology for Absence, is published by The Porcupine's Quill. In 1999 rob mclennan published a small chapbook of Newlove's, The Tasmanian Devil and other poems. Please see www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/newlove for more information. Also reading will be Thea Bowering, Anne Stone, Clint Burnham, and bill bissett. Admission is $5 (free for Capilano Press Society members) and includes a copy of the issue. THEA BOWERING's personal essay The Monster, or The Deferred Subject was published in TCR 2:31, Spring 2000. She currently works as a freelance writer in Vancouver and is writing a series of short stories set in Scandinavia and Canada. CLINT BURNHAM lives in Vancouver, where he teaches at ECIAD (postmodernism, cultural theory, Marxism) and runs a liberal arts program for people on the Downtown Eastside. His books include The Jamesonian Unconscious (criticism, Duke, 1995), Steve McCaffery (criticism, ECW, 1996), Be Labour Reading (poetry, ECW, 1997), Airborne Photo (fiction, Anvil, 1999), and, forthcoming, A4isms (aphorisms, House) and Buddyland (poetry, Coach House). Work has appeared recently or is about to appear in Sulfur, Queen Street Quarterly, W, West Coast Line, and Matrix. ANNE STONE is author of the novels jacks: a gothic gospel and Hush (Insomniac Press, 1999), as well as the chapbook, Sweet Dick All. She currently teaches at Capilano College. BILL BISSETT is a painter, poet, and performance artist who lives in Vancouver and Toronto and is the author of over 70 books of poetry. His work has been produced on cassette and CD and new sound poetry on CD is forthcoming from Red Deer Press. Recent titles of his poetry books include b leev abul char ak trs, scars on th seehors, th influenza uv logik, inkorrect thots, and northern brids in color. He recently resurrected his small magazine blewointment to be included in the upcoming Small Magazines anthology by The Capilano Review (edited by Jason Le Heup), a two volume set to be released in Winter and Spring of 2001. -- Carol L. Hamshaw Managing Editor The Capilano Review 604-984-1712 http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/dept/TCR For submission guidelines, please see http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/dept/TCR/submit.html -- Carol L. Hamshaw ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 07:39:52 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Padraig O'Morain Subject: Ladytown MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, I have added three recently published poems (in Books Ireland and Snakeskin) to my site at http://ladytown.stormloader.com Cheers, Padraig ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Click here to read 'Ladytown', a collection of poetry by Padraig O'Morain, previously published in Irish and British journals and on the Web. http://ladytown.stormloader.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 21:46:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: allegrezza Subject: fall _moria_ in late summer and cfp MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The autumn issue of _moria_ is online at www.moriapoetry.com. poems by: jonathan monroe randolph healy nava fader mark budman geoffrey gatza dancing bear poetics articles: Joe Ahearn's "The Freedom Principle: First Notes Toward a Poetics of Liberation" Ben Steiner's "Poetry as Questioning" CFP: Any theory/poetics articles are welcome for the winter and spring issues. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:56:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: query / Levitsky In-Reply-To: <275127.3177405190@321maceng.fal.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jakobson is, believe it or not, fairly straightforward on this. His alignment of metaphor with an axis of substitution and metonym with an axis of combination, though probably arguable (he says as much himself on several occasions), is a good place to start. Unfortunately, I'm blanking on the title of the article, but I know it's in that Harvard collection "Language in Literature." The whole essay might be a bit much for an undergraduate class, but the paragraph or two I have in mind might do well to frame a discussion. Best, Taylor -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Poetics List Administration Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 9:33 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: query / Levitsky This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 10:40:59 -0400 Hi all, I am looking for concise and straightforward description of metaphor and = metonym for an undergraduate class. Any suggestions? thanks, Rachel Levitsky ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 10:36:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Brook Subject: Paul Hammond, The Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on the Cinema MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable In my capacity as editor at City Lights, I brought out Paul Hammond's original study, CONSTELLATIONS OF MIRO, BRETON, in July. (The volume also contains translations of Breton's poems and reproductions of Miro's paintings in the Constellations series.) Paul Hammond's second book for City Lights, THE SHADOW AND ITS SHADOW: SURREALIST WRITINGS ON THE CINEMA, is shipping now, ahead of its announced November publication date. You should be able to find it soon in the usual/unusual places. It can also be ordered directly from City Lights. Requests for review or desk copies should be sent to the City Lights publicist, Stacey Lewis, at stacey@citylights.com. Thanks, --James Brook ------------------------------------------------------------------- Film/Cultural Studies/Surrealism THE SHADOW AND ITS SHADOW: Surrealist Writings on the Cinema Third edition, revised and expanded Edited, translated, and introduced by Paul Hammond ISBN 0-87286-376-X / $17.95 / pp 225 City Lights Booksellers & Publishers 261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco, CA 94133 415-362-8193 415-362-4921 (fax) staff@citylights.com / www.citylights.com The Shadow and Its Shadow is a collection of classic writings by the Surrealists on their mad love of moviegoing. These theoretical, = polemical, and poetical re-visions of the seventh art document = Surrealism's scandalous and nonreductive take on film. The essayists include such names as Breton, Aragon, Desnos, Dal=ED, Bu=F1uel, and Man Ray as well as many of the less famous though equally fascinating figures of the movement. In his introduction, Paul Hammond limns the history of Surrealist cinemania, highlighting how these revolutionary poets, artists, and philosophers sifted the silt of commercial--often Hollywood--cinema for the odd fleck of gold, the windfall movie that, somehow slipping past the censor, questioned the dominant order. Such prospecting pivoted around the notion of lyrical behavior--as depicted on the screen, and as lived in the movie house. The representation of such behavior led the Surrealists to valorize the manifest content of such denigrated genres as silent and sound comedy, romantic melodrama, film noir, horror movies. As to lived experience, moviegoing Surrealists looked to the spectacle's latent meaning, reading films as the unwitting providers of redemptive sequences that could be mentally clipped out of their narrative context and inserted into daily life--there, to provoke new adventures. "Hammond's book is a reminder of the wealth and range of surrealist writings on the cinema. . . . [T]he work represented here is still challenging and genuinely eccentric, locating itself in an 'ethic' of love, reverie and revolt." --Sight & Sound Paul Hammond is the author of, among other works, Constellations of Mir=F3, Breton (City Lights Books), L'=C2ge d'or, and Marvellous M=E9li=E8s. He is the coeditor, with Ian Breakwell, of Seeing in the Dark: A Compendium of Cinemagoing. = CONTENTS Available light / Paul Hammond = Some surrealist advice / The Surrealist Group War letter / Jacques Vach=E9 = On d=E9cor / Louis Aragon = Cinema U.S.A. / Philippe Soupault = Battlegrounds and commonplaces / Ren=E9 Crevel = Against commercial cinema / Benjamin P=E9ret = Buster Keaton=92s College / Luis Bu=F1uel = Abstract of a critical history of the cinema / Salvador Dal=ED = The marvelous is popular / Ado Kyrou = As in a wood / Andr=E9 Breton = Picture palaces / Robert Desnos = Plan for a cinema at the bottom of a lake / Bernard Roger = The lights go up / Jacques Brunius = Surrealism and cinema / Jean Goudal = Introduction to black-and-white magic / Albert Valentin = Crossing the bridge / Jacques Brunius = Sorcery and cinema / Antonin Artaud = The screen=92s prestige / Jacques Brunius = Remarks on cinematic oneirism / Robert Benayoun = The cinema, instrument of poetry / Luis Bu=F1uel = Malombra, aura of absolute love / The Romanian Surrealist Group Data toward the irrational enlargement of a film: The Shanghai Gesture / The Surrealist Group = The film and I / Ado Kyrou = Cinemage / Man Ray = Another kind of cinema / Marcel Mari=EBn = Intention and surprise / Nora Mitrani = The ideal summa / Petr Kr=E1l = Turkey broth and unlabeled love potions / G=E9rard Legrand = The fantastic =96 the marvelous / Ado Kyrou Concerning King Kong / Jean Ferry = Larry Semon=92s message / Petr Kr=E1l = Hands off love / The Surrealist Group = Chaplin, the copper=92s nark / Jean-Louis B=E9douin = Manifesto of the Surrealists concerning L=92=C2ge d=92or / The Surrealist Group = Zaroff; or, The prosperities of vice / Robert Benayoun = Eroticism / Robert Desnos = Eroticism =3D love / Ado Kyrou = Au repas des guerri=E8res / Nelly Kaplan = Female x film =3D fetish / G=E9rard Legrand = Mae Murray / Jacques Rigaut = "Enchanted wanderer": excerpt from a journey album for Hedy Lamarr / Joseph Cornell = Iron in the wound / Alain Joubert = Pornographers & Co. / Robert Lebel = Selected films made by Surrealists = A parting shot ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 20:31:36 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "T. R. Healy and L. MacMahon" Subject: Scully / Healy cd MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Mouthpuller_ a cd of poetry read by Maurice Scully and Randolph Healy, produced by Coelacanth and Wild Honey Press is now available. Recorded at Sun Recording Studios in Temple Bar Dublin in February of this year. Scully reads _Cohering_ and extracts from _Zulu Dynamite_ and _Steps_. Healy reads _Vision_, _(The) Republic of Ireland_ and _Scales_. A selection of poetry by Scully, Healy and others is available at the Sound Eye website http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm and in the online edition of the Notre Dame Review, number 7 http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr7/contents.html £10 + £1.50 p&p (or $15+$5 p&p) Visa and Mastercard accepted. Phone in your number at 353-1-2826590 or mail it to 16a Ballyman Road, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Apologies for cross posting. best wishes Randolph Healy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:30:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity Comments: To: patrick@proximate.org In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their journalistic packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: >mdw: > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. responding >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to internal >stimuli. > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I even >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem to >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i neither >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through the >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling out. >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see in >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total >purity or total assimilation." > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to internal >stimuli. or both. > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > >Patrick > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or 'computers >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for their >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly >simplistic. > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does show >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or silliman >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is worth >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the mcclatchy >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum (this >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find the >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully and >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that yet. >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > >Hello Andrew: > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this problem >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the choices >are either total purity or total assimilation. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:42:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: 'Camille' 'Martin' Subject: spontaneous combustion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ---------------------------------- * L * I * T * * * C * I * T * Y * ---------------------------------- presents S P O N T A N E O U S C O M B U S T I O N An End-of Summer Poetry and Music Extravaganza featuring Dave Brinks Christian Champagne Paul Chasse Brother Clit Andrei Codrescu Richard Collins Joel Dailey Dennis Formento Lee Grue Rodger Kamenetz Robin Kemp Bill Lavender Camille Martin John Sinclair Andy Young Rudy's Caribbean Funk Band ... and more! Hosted by Jimmy Ross Wednesday, September 13, 8:00 pm at The Rooster, 616 N. Rampart (in the French Quarter, above Mama Rosa's) New Orleans, LA Suggested donation: $7 Proceeds to benefit Lit City, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 09:40:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: { brad brace } Subject: UPDATE: The 12hr ISBN-JPEG Project Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" note: the Netcom-FTP site is being shut-down; please chose an alternate link note: new e-address: < bbrace@eskimo.com > _______ _ __ ___ _ |__ __| | /_ |__ \| | | | | |__ ___ | | ) | |__ _ __ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__| | | | | | | __/ | |/ /_| | | | | |_| |_| |_|\___| |_|____|_| |_|_| _____ _____ ____ _ _ _ _____ ______ _____ |_ _|/ ____| _ \| \ | | | | __ \| ____/ ____| | | | (___ | |_) | \| |______ | | |__) | |__ | | __ | | \___ \| _ <| . ` |______| | | ___/| __|| | |_ | _| |_ ____) | |_) | |\ | | |__| | | | |___| |__| | |_____|_____/|____/|_| \_| \____/|_| |______\_____| | __ \ (_) | | | |__) | __ ___ _ ___ ___| |_ | ___/ '__/ _ \| |/ _ \/ __| __| | | | | | (_) | | __/ (__| |_ |_| |_| \___/| |\___|\___|\__| _/ | |__/ > > > > Synopsis: The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project began December 30, 1994. A `round-the-clock posting of sequenced hypermodern imagery by Brad Brace. The hypermodern minimizes the familiar, the known, the recognizable; it suspends identity, relations and history. The 12-hour ISBN JPEG Project ----------------------------- began December 30, 1994 Pointless Hypermodern Imagery... posted/mailed every 12 hours... a stellar, trajective alignment past the 00`s! A continuum of minimalist masks in the face of catastrophe; conjuring up transformative metaphors for the everyday... A poetic reversibility of events... A post-rhetorical, continuous, apparently random sequence of imagery... genuine gritty, greyscale... corruptable, compact, collectable and compelling convergence. The voluptuousness of the grey imminence: the art of making the other disappear. Continual visual impact; an optical drumming, sculpted in duration, on the endless present of the Net. An extension of the printed ISBN-Book (0-9690745) series... critically unassimilable... imagery is gradually acquired, selected and re-sequenced over time... ineluctable, vertiginous connections. The 12hr dialtone... [ see ftp.idiom.com/users/bbrace/netcom/books ] KEYWORDS: >> Disconnected, disjunctive, distended, de-centered, de-composed, ambiguous, augmented, ambilavent, homogeneous, reckless... >> Multi-faceted, oblique, obsessive, obscure, obdurate... >> Promulgated, personal, permeable, prolonged, polymorphous, provocative, poetic, plural, perverse, potent, prophetic, pathological... >> Evolving, eccentric, eclectic, egregious, exciting, entertaining, entropic, erotic, entrancing, enduring... Every 12 hours, another!... view them, re-post `em, save `em, trade `em, print `em, even publish them... Here`s how: ~ Set www-links to -> http://www.teleport.com/~bbrace/12hr.html. Look for the 12-hr-icon. Heavy traffic may require you to specify files more than once! Anarchie, Fetch, CuteFTP, TurboGopher... Or -> http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/12hr.html ~ Download from -> ftp.pacifier.com /pub/users/bbrace Download from -> ftp.idiom.com/users/bbrace Download from -> ftp.teleport.com /users/bbrace Download from -> ftp.rdrop.com /pub/users/bbrace Download from -> ftp.eskimo.com /u/b/bbrace * Remember to set tenex or binary. Get 12hr.jpeg ~ E-mail -> If you only have access to email, then you can use FTPmail to do essentially the same thing. Send a message with a body of 'help' to the server address nearest you: ftpmail@ccc.uba.ar ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de ftpmail@ftp.Dartmouth.edu ftpmail@ieunet.ie ftpmail@src.doc.ic.ac.uk ftpmail@archie.inesc.pt ftpmail@ftp.sun.ac.za ftpmail@ftp.sunet.se ftpmail@ftp.luth.se ftpmail@NCTUCCCA.edu.tw ftpmail@oak.oakland.edu ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com ftpmail@census.gov bitftp@plearn.bitnet bitftp@dearn.bitnet bitftp@vm.gmd.de bitftp@plearn.edu.pl bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu bitftp@pucc.bitnet ~ Mirror-sites requested! Archives too! The latest new jpeg will always be named, 12hr.jpeg Average size of images is only 45K. * Perl program to mirror ftp-sites/sub-directories: src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/packages/mirror * ~ Postings to usenet groups: alt.12hr alt.binaries.pictures.12hr alt.binaries.pictures.misc alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.misc * * Ask your system's news-administrator to carry these groups! (There are also usenet image browsers: TIFNY, PluckIt, Picture Agent, PictureView, Extractor97, NewsRover, Binary News Assistant, Newsfeeds) ~ This interminable, relentless sequence of imagery began in earnest on December 30, 1994. The basic structure of the project has been over twenty-four years in the making. While the specific sequence of photographs has been presently orchestrated for more than 12 years` worth of 12-hour postings, I will undoubtedly be tempted to tweak the ongoing publication with additional new interjected imagery. Each 12-hour posting is like the turning of a page; providing ample time for reflection, interruption, and assimilation. ~ The sites listed above also contain information on other transcultural projects and sources. ~ A very low-volume, moderated mailing list for announcements and occasional commentary related to this project has been established at topica.com /subscribe 12hr-isbn-jpeg -- This project has not received government art-subsidies. Some opportunities still exist for financially assisting the publication of editions of large (36x48") prints; perhaps (Iris giclees) inkjet quadtones bound as an oversize book. Other supporters receive rare copies of the first three web-offset printed ISBN-Books. -- ISBN is International Standard Book Number. JPEG and GIF are types of image files. Get the text-file, 'pictures-faq' to learn how to view or translate these images. [ftp ftp.idiom.com/users/bbrace/netcom/] -- (c) No copyright 1994,1995,1996,1997,1998,1999,2000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 02:42:47 -0500 Reply-To: raltemus@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reed Altemus Subject: Re: Gestalten MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for posting this Mark. IMHO Gestalten is one of the liveliest magazines for experimental & visual poetries around and the editor Paul Silvia couldn't be a nice more open minded person. It comes printed on newsprint type paper in both black & blue inks. Highly recommended. RA Mark Prejsnar wrote: > i don't believe there has been an announcement about this...So here > goes: > > now out is Gestalten 4 > > with a lot of interesting work, by such as Marcia Arrieta, Bill > DiMichelle, Spenser Selby, Jim Leftwich, WB Keckler, Sheila Murphy, > Gian Lombardo, about 14 others well worth a look... > > AND > > a special section featuring the work of some members of the Atlanta > Poets Group, to wit Maryanne Del Gigante, Rebecca Hymen, John > Lowther, Dana Lisa Lustig, Tedd Mulholland, Randy Prunty and James > Sanders (oh and me). > > available from: > > Broken Boulder Press > po Box 172 > Lawrence , KS 66044 > > published annually > subscriptions are $4 for 2 issues > $7 for 4 issues > > mark prejsnar > @lanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 13:08:25 -0700 Reply-To: rovasax@rova.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rova Saxophone Quartet Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was at an SF Planning Commission meeting yesterday afternoon when a sheriff's deputy grabbed a young man, nearly jerked his arm out of its socket, and threw him to the ground in the most brutal manner possible. It seemed he would go right on to hog-tying the man if several of us hadn't jumped up to protest this treatment. His crime? Going about five seconds over his allotted timeslot in speaking out against the planning commission's continuing approval -- without review or study -- of live-work lofts and new, illegal, non-tax-paying office spaces that are driving out minorities, longtime residents, artists, and musicians in droves from the city of San Francisco. How is this connected to the now long-distant (geographically and polemically) protest against the treatment of Bei Ling? Maybe it's not... but a friend and writer once told me that "It's important to be a witness," and inherent, I think, in the concept of "witness" is "one who testifies to what he saw." What the government -- any government, whether it's represented by state troopers in Florida, secret police in China, or sheriff's deputies in supposedly liberal San Francisco -- never seems to realize is that with every blow on the head of a nonviolent protestor, every denial of basic civil liberties, it's radicalizing a new segment of the population, i.e. all those who were there to witness it in some way, assuming they have a sense to get outraged with. While I too would much rather keep the focus on poetry rather than politics, sometimes the latter seems intent on intruding, clumsy, brutal, and thoughtless as always, and something needs to be said, even in a forum meant for poetics. David Cook -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Taylor Brady Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 9:55 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry Short of getting into an ever-widening spiral of ad hominems regarding purported "delusions," I can only return to my point, conveniently passed over by you, that the states under discussion are instruments of domination. That's neither the politics of a Gore-touting erstwhile reformer, nor of a cheerleader for the Texas serial killer and dynastic scion. Nor, really, of an optimistic social-democratic Naderite. To your question: Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? I'll keep my answer within the narrow bounds of personal experience: someone gassed and beaten in vitro by Nixon's hired goons, who grew up to receive his first identifying scar at the hands of one of (Republican) Bob Martinez' Florida state troopers during a nonviolent civil action, might be somewhat justified in placing a certain amount of blame in that direction. But no fear, it's an equal opportunity attack: Lawton Chiles' state troopers kicked my ass too. And Clinton and Gore have been as instrumental as Reagan in busting up the social movements (and the civil society) that gave those I care for a measure of hope. In my neck of the woods, we talk about Clinton's presidency as years 13-20 of the Reagan/Bush administration. But this has become really tiresome, especially as it's taken shape in my attempt to produce a rebuttal to what was simply your placing of words in my mouth. (Read my initial post: I never mentioned Republicanism as the locus of the problems I was identifying, nor did I make any mention of voting for Gore). Reluctant as I am to join those who can be counted on to groan at every mention of politics on the list, I'm going to absent myself from further discussion of this until your posts come up to argument from their current level of blank assertion (with emphatic caps, no less - nice touch). Taylor -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 8:11 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this LINE! If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and grounded views of Frost. Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > From: Taylor Brady > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" > liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: > > Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping > things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on > an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same > repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei > Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of > examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, > anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. > > All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. > citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism over > a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a > police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a > thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime of > holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having > their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of > "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO > anything to warrant the stick. > > Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from > which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a > justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction between > that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - a > government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything about > the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral > authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to > fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no > better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the > contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to register > its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that > one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of > others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf > of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those > outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of > domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international > list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a > position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely > the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. > Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every > time I say "I"? > > (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a while). > > Taylor > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has been > read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression of > a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," > "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my > concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still > outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry > us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple > of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar > with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now > gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came > back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, > 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" > content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities > (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views > critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. > Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the > Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I > understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of > Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be > condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. > > ------------------ > Yunte Huang > Assistant Professor > Dept of English > Harvard University > 12 Quincy St > Cambridge, MA 02138 > Tel: 617-495-1139 > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 17:39:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: BeeHive Volume 3 : Issue 3 | Now Online!!!! (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ________________________________________________ BeeHive Hypertext/Hypermedia Literary Journal Volume 3 : Issue 3 |...| September 2000 ________________________________________________ ISSN: 1528-8102 http://beehive.temporalimage.com ________________________________________________ MODERN KELLER : Jacqueline Goss Hypermedia work bringing together Helen Keller and Martha Graham *+--> http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps33/app_a.html >>--------<< PROJECTS FOR MOBILE PHONE : Alan Sondheim plus, ECONOMIES OF THE IMAGINARY *+--> http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps33/app_b.html >>--------<< 5 TEXTS : Elisha Porat fiction and poetry including THE DOUBLE and ON THE BEACH *+--> http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps33/app_c.html >>--------<< THE EXECUTION OF THE SUN : Jason DeBoer short fiction -- shakespeare through bataille *+--> http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps33/app_d.html >>--------<< BOMBAY BOOGIE WOOGIE : Ira Cohen short fiction from the photographer, author, publisher and counter-culture vetran *+--> http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps33/app_e.html >>--------<< SQUARING OF THE WORD : Siegfried Holzbauer visual poetry from austria *+--> http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps33/app_g.html ________________________________________________ BeeHive ArcHive: http://beehive.temporalimage.com/archive/index.html All the content, all the time... 100 authors, 70 pieces ________________________________________________ BeeHive Creative Director: Talan Memmott / beehive@percepticon.com BeeHive Poetry Editor: Ted Warnell / beehivepoetry@percepticon.com BeeHive Hypertext/Hypermedia Literary Journal is produced and published by PERCEPTICON CORPORATION SAN FRANCISCO CA USA http://www.percepticon.com ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 21:12:42 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: query / Levitsky MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/8/00 12:36:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu writes: > Hi all, > I am looking for concise and straightforward description of metaphor and = > metonym for an undergraduate class. Any suggestions? > thanks, > Rachel Levitsky > Hello RL, The classic account of the metaphor/metonymy distinction is Jakobson's, as I'm sure you know. See the essays collected in *Language in Literature* [a paperback edit. published bu Harvard Univ. Press], where it is discussed frequently [esp. 109-114]. I have used this book with undergraduates. There's a lot in it that is difficult for them, but the metaphor/metonymy thing iis not especially hard, and J's examples in the pages mentioned seem to work well. If this seems too hard, Terence Hawkes summarizes Jakobson's take in *Structuralism and Semiotcis* [pp.76-79], a useful little book that undergraduates will be able to handle. Best, George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 16:41:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Sinfonia Press announcement / Carfagna MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message came to the administrative account. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: Ric D Carfagna Date: 9/9/00 9:54 AM -0400 Sinfonia Press would like to announce the release of two new chapbooks by Ric Carfagna (featured at the Boston conference): Porchcat Nadir - 48 pages $6.00 Nitetome - 40 page $5.00 and a buck for our friendly postal workers. also available: Confluential Trajectories - 44 pages $6.00 "very intriguing 'Alternative' stuff" note: each title limited to 200 copies; goin fast . all inquiries & orders : Sinfonia Press P.O. Box 385 Petersham, MA 01366 Email: sinfoniapress@juno.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 13:18:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wanda Phipps Subject: Chosen Featured Site Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hey, Mind Honey has just been made featured performance poetry site on Suite101.com a really cool Internet Guide site, so check it out: http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/performance_poetry I also finally have audio up on the Mind Honey Poetry page. Check out my reading of a poem from a series called Variations on the Blues for Jo Jo accompanied by Joel Schlemowitz on the amazingly fun instrument he invented called the Typeoclavecin: http://www.users.interport.net/~wanda/poetry.html There's also more on the Articles page: http://www.users.interport.net/~wanda/articles.html and the Press page: http://www.users.interport.net/~wanda/press.html if you want to check those out -- and more soon to come. Hope you enjoy it! Wanda ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 18:59:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: CDROM of Collected Work available - MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII SUB/CON/TEXT CDROM 2.03 Available: COLLECTED WORK, 1994-2000 Alan Sondheim I've been working non-stop on putting as much of my work (dealing with literature, psychology, cyberspace, language, sexuality, body, etc.) on one cdrom. The result is sub/con/text (which also includes collabora- tions with Foofwa d'Imobilite, Barry Smyle, and Azure Carter), which is available now. sub/con/text is an enormous mass of material - some of which is available on my website, but most of which will be new to you. The advantage of the cdrom, in any case, is that you can explore it at your leisure, copy out texts and graphics, etc. It's relatively easy to use - you can access the various directories through a browser or any file browser such as Explorer. The cdrom was made on a PC, but because it is only files and directories, I imagine it will open on most Macs as well. Includes: 30 articles, outlines of 8 talks, 345 images (approx.), 6 music tracks (mp3), the full Internet Text (approximately 3800 pages) and additional materials (revised The Case of the Real; Ma, a Novel), 7-8 webpage suites (including Water, Frac, Narcissistic Disturbance, etc.); approx- imately 15 video segments in .avi format and one also in .rm and .asf formats; and 61 tiny programs on basic, perl, or dialog. The sound should be playable on most mp3-compatible players; the video will open in various players as well. The texts are accessible through most browsers at cdrom\network\index.html . The websuites will open in almost any browser as well. The texts and articles are all in text-based ascii format, which means they're readable literally with anything; they're the core of the cdrom. There is a readme_1st.txt which acts as a guide. There is 'adult' material on the cdrom; please keep away from children. I'm asking $10 + $4 shipping and handling; this helps cover the costs of the burner, label, case, disk, and most important, the labor. Please send $14.00 in check, cash, or money order, with a return address, to Alan Sondheim 432 Dean Street Brooklyn, NY, USA USA Phone 718-857-3671 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000 19:37:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: cdrom (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Apologies - Forgot to add the zip-code - Alan Sondheim 432 Dean Street Brooklyn, NY, 11217 USA ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 15:12:05 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: geraets Subject: Alan Loney and ABdotWW (NZ) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The September issue of ABdotWW (formerly A Brief Description of the Whole World) comprises responses to the poetry and prose writing of Alan Loney. No doubt a number of you already know of Alan's writing: he's been a key practitioner in New Zealand new poetry for some thirty years now and just recently has been producing some terrific new works. Anyone interested in this issue, or in a subscription to ABdotWW ($US25 p.a. post-free, quarterly issues), can email me or make contact via: The Writers Group, 11-20 Poynton Tce., Auckland 1001, NZ. + The Writers Group is to publish a selection of Alan's critical writing, probably in the new year, the first of what is intended to be a series of publications of new writing. Should you have an interest in such publications, please be in touch. John Geraets Editor / ABdotWW ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 16:44:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Donald Gallup / Silliman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: "Ron Silliman" Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 08:27:21 -0400 r.i.p. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/10/national/10GALL.html ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 08:53:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: NYT Times review of Fanny Howe's Selected Poems Comments: cc: Fanny Howe , Rae Armantrout MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Selected PoemsA short but quite positive review of one of our very finest poets. The book is available from UC Press, which puts her on equal footing with, say, Olson & Creeley. This sort of recognition is long overdue. Ron ------------ September 10, 2000 By MELANIE REHAK ''We know where love is by its stillness,'' Fanny Howe writes in one of the spare, muscled poems gathered in ''Selected Poems,'' work culled from 20 years of her poetry. Indeed, it's stillness more than anything else that tempers this volume; its quiet, forceful poems carry an existential weight that belies their small size. Among other things, Howe has made a long-term project of trying to determine how we fit into God's world, and her aim is both true and marvelously free of sentimental piety. ''Mad God, mad thought / Take me for a walk,'' she writes, ''Stalk me. Made God, / Wake me with your words. / Believe in what I said.'' Her work is fueled by a persistent need to find out not the meaning of life itself, but how to ask what it is. ''A feeling triggers a feeling, then the heft / Of the hand to work,'' Howe states in a typically Dickinsonian moment. It's as if she can't help herself Ñ these fierce poems demand to be put forth. Taken together, they create a world of their own, a series of structures that dot the landscape Howe travels. ''My vagabondage / is unlonelied by poems'' she confesses at one point, as if to justify her questioning. She's on a private quest through the metaphysical universe, and the results are startling and honest. ''If goals create content stealth creates form,'' she writes. Her ''Selected Poems'' proves she's absolutely correct. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 10:31:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Dillon Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Here we go again. And Gore isn't a dynastic scion? And Tennessee doesn't have a death penalty? And the Clintons didn't send a retard to his execution who thought he was going to be able to come back to his plate of cherry pie after a momentary adjournment? Serial killer? A creepy remark. Creepy. And cheap. I wasn't talking political parties, I was talking PHILOSOPHY. I want more poets to make Republicanism work for the ends they seek: freedom for the individual. I didn't say that all poets could adopt Republicanism, either. For instance, I want poets of the future to have the independence A.A. Gore has by owning a million dollars worth of Occidental Petroleum stock. Dubya's 2% monthly investment in their Social Security accounts will help them get there. > From: Taylor Brady > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:54:58 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Short of getting into an ever-widening spiral of ad hominems regarding > purported "delusions," I can only return to my point, conveniently passed > over by you, that the states under discussion are instruments of domination. > That's neither the politics of a Gore-touting erstwhile reformer, nor of a > cheerleader for the Texas serial killer and dynastic scion. Nor, really, of > an optimistic social-democratic Naderite. > > To your question: > > Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you > call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? > > I'll keep my answer within the narrow bounds of personal experience: someone > gassed and beaten in vitro by Nixon's hired goons, who grew up to receive > his first identifying scar at the hands of one of (Republican) Bob Martinez' > Florida state troopers during a nonviolent civil action, might be somewhat > justified in placing a certain amount of blame in that direction. But no > fear, it's an equal opportunity attack: Lawton Chiles' state troopers kicked > my ass too. And Clinton and Gore have been as instrumental as Reagan in > busting up the social movements (and the civil society) that gave those I > care for a measure of hope. In my neck of the woods, we talk about Clinton's > presidency as years 13-20 of the Reagan/Bush administration. > > But this has become really tiresome, especially as it's taken shape in my > attempt to produce a rebuttal to what was simply your placing of words in my > mouth. (Read my initial post: I never mentioned Republicanism as the locus > of the problems I was identifying, nor did I make any mention of voting for > Gore). Reluctant as I am to join those who can be counted on to groan at > every mention of politics on the list, I'm going to absent myself from > further discussion of this until your posts come up to argument from their > current level of blank assertion (with emphatic caps, no less - nice touch). > > Taylor > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon > Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 8:11 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do > you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call > tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? > > The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I > call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT > OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or > A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient > fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of > writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist > poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean > Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? > > In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your > vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you > deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this > Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin > revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this > LINE! > > If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it > work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism > as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: > To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. > State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and > grounded views of Frost. > > Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore > tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply > replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one > radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with > the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. > > Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > > >> From: Taylor Brady >> Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry >> >> Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" >> liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: >> >> Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping >> things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on >> an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same >> repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei >> Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of >> examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, >> anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. >> >> All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. >> citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism > over >> a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a >> police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a >> thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime > of >> holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having >> their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of >> "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO >> anything to warrant the stick. >> >> Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from >> which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a >> justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction > between >> that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - > a >> government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything > about >> the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral >> authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to >> fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no >> better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the >> contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to > register >> its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that >> one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of >> others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf >> of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those >> outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of >> domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international >> list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a >> position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely >> the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. >> Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every >> time I say "I"? >> >> (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a > while). >> >> Taylor >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: UB Poetics discussion group >> [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang >> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry >> >> As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has > been >> read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression > of >> a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," >> "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my >> concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still >> outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry >> us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple >> of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar >> with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now >> gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came >> back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, >> 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" >> content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities >> (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views >> critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. >> Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the >> Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I >> understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of >> Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be >> condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. >> >> ------------------ >> Yunte Huang >> Assistant Professor >> Dept of English >> Harvard University >> 12 Quincy St >> Cambridge, MA 02138 >> Tel: 617-495-1139 >> > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 10:26:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dodie Bellamy Subject: Description follow-through Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Hi All, The semester and my Description class has begun. The class has met twice and looks like it's going to be a good group--16 people who seem open and eager to talk. Again, this is a "fiction" craft class for MFAs. The bulk of the writing assignments will be creative exercises rather than essays. I'd like to thank everybody on the list for their amazingly helpful suggestions. I couldn't use everything, with this embarrassment of riches, but even when I didn't use reading suggestions, your suggestions helped to focus, refine and broaden my thinking on the topic. Please forgive me for not thanking each of you individually. I can only offer the usual excuse: drowning in things to get done. Following is the reading list for the course. Best, Dodie Universal vs. Cultural Elaine Scarry, from Dreaming by the Book Dan Farrell, from The Inkblot Record Erica Goode, "How Culture Molds Habits of Thought," New York Times, August 8, 2000 Lisa Robertson Class Visit Lisa Robertson, from Soft Architecture Instructions Jeannette Winterson, from Powerbook Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from The Confessions Categories/Catalogues Mark Seltzer, from Chapter 5, "The Profile of the Serial Killer," Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound Culture Bob Flanagan, from The Book of Medicine Pamela Lu, "Series H, Category Ap" Henry Gray, "Face," from Anatomy of the Human Body "Women Seeking Men," from Village Voice personals Obituaries, San Francisco Chronicle Franz Kafka, "A Crossbreed" and from Fragments Point of View Mary Douglas, Chapter 2, "Secular Defilement," from Purity and Danger Kathy Acker, from My Mother: Demonology E.F. Benson, Chapter 1 from Queen Lucia Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (In class we will watch an excerpt from the film Susperia by Dario Argento.) Hierarchies Susan Stewart, Chapter 1, "On Description and the Book," from On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection Alain Robbe-Grillet, "Dressmaker's Dummy," "The Secret Room," from Towards a New Novel Manuel Puig, Chapter 9 from Kiss of the Spider Woman Un/Familiar Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" (plus introductory materials) William Shakespeare, from Titus Andronicus William Carlos Williams, Chapter 1 from The White Mule Virginia Woolf, from To the Lighthouse David Wojnarowicz, from "In the Shadow of the American Dream" De/Natured C.S. Giscombe, "Natural Abilities & Natural Writing" Jean Toomer, "Kabnis," from Cane Jack Spicer, "Thing Language" Sight Isn't the Only Sense Constance Claussen, Chapter 1, "The Odour of the Rose: Floral Symbolism and the Olfactory Decline of the West," from Worlds of Sense Kevin Killian, "Wait Until Dark" "State's Overlooked Treasure: Excellent Sauvignon Blanc Overshadowed by Chardonnay," San Francisco Examiner MFK Fisher, "Let the Sky Rain Potatoes" Stephen King, pp. 114-116 of Danse Macabre Shirley Jackson, from The Haunting of Hill House Nathaniel Mackey, from Bedouin Hornbook Dodie Bellamy, from The Letters of Mina Harker Representation and Distance Mark Seltzer, Chapter 6, "Pulp Fiction: The Popular Psychology of the Serial Killer," from Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound Culture Emile Zola, from The Beast in Man Dennis Cooper, the infinity sections beginning and ending Frisk J.G. Ballard, intro plus Chapter 1 from Crash Inside/Outside Jacqueline Rose, Chapter 2, "The Body of Writing," from The Haunting of Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath, "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 14:15:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Goethe-Institut Reception Comments: To: "ANNOUNCE CULTURAL EVENTS @ GOETHE-INSTITUT" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear Friends of the Goethe-Institut, Last week you received an e-mail from us concerning our current calendar of events. As you undoubtedly noticed, it wasn’t sent as a ‘blind copy’, and the list of addressees weren’t hidden. We understand the severity of this problem and apologize for the error. We’ve also taken measures to assure it won’t happen again! Thanks for your interest in the Goethe-Institut, and enjoy the upcoming events! Roland Meinert Goethe-Institut San Francisco 530 Bush Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Phone: 415 263-8760 Fax: 415 391-8715 http://www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:41:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/10/00 5:16:59 PM, tbrady@MSGIDIRECT.COM writes: << I worry about the invocation of sanity in your attempt to solidify the distinction between pleasure and disgust. Certainly - and without going into any embarrassing personal detail - there are plenty of us in the world whose experience of what get called "perversions" is exactly this coincidence of intense pleasure and intense disgust. And no, I don't think that's simply internalized self-loathing at the enactment of socially proscribed practices, aesthetic, sexual or otherwise. The rounding up of that experience under the heading of "insanity" might have (has had) some pretty dangerous social consequences, no? >> I have no idea at whom this was directed, but I share your concern. Yes, the puritans are among us, and in force. As Freud knew, those who are most disgusted usually harbor a strong desire for what offends them, and some major guilt to go along with it. A little "insanity" might be just what the doctor ordered. Might put a little feeling back into the asylum. "Morality is a weakness of the brain." Rimbaud, of course, was referring to those socially proscribed practices, aesthetic, sexual or otherwise. But hell, what aesthetic isn't socially proscribed these days? We have our work cut out for us. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 19:55:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: derek beaulieu Subject: housepress - Roy Miki and Steve McCaffery MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit housepress is pleased to announce the release of 2 new chapbooks: "kiyooka" by roy miki - a poetic response to Kiyooka's "transcanada letters" and to his memory - 16 pages, hand-bound japanese style with hand-printed linocut front cover portrait of Roy Kiyooka - limited edition of 60 numbered copies - $10.00ea. "Poetry in the Pissoir" by Steve McCaffery - consists of 6 treatises - 12 pages, hand-bound and printed on 25% cotton linen paper with card covers - limited edition of 70 numbered copies - $10.00 ea. for more information, or to order copies, please contact: derek beaulieu housepress@home.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:24:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII funny how those "idiotic binaries" seem to be not only in lingua franca but everywhere TEAM USA vs the World Republican vs. Democrat Language centered writing (poetics list) vs. Mainstream/Creative Writing Program work Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola Microsoft vs. the Law good vs. evil "their journalistic packaging" vs. ("our" implicit) purity/authenticity Firestone Tires vs. public safety "oppostional/transgressive/alternative" vs. SOS (samoshit) "subtlety" vs. "'drama'" "when you come to a fork in the road, take it" --Yogi Berra On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Maria Damon wrote: > i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms > of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual > rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) > against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their journalistic > packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from > the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. > > At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: > >mdw: > > > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. responding > >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to internal > >stimuli. > > > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I even > >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory > >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem to > >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i neither > >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through the > >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling out. > >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total > >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see in > >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total > >purity or total assimilation." > > > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to internal > >stimuli. or both. > > > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being > >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > > > >Patrick > > > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is > >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or 'computers > >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is > >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for their > >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly > >simplistic. > > > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does show > >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or silliman > >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is worth > >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the mcclatchy > >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum (this > >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find the > >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the > >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. > >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully and > >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that yet. > >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make > >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: UB Poetics discussion group > >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw > >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM > >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > > > > >Hello Andrew: > > > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick > >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what > >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit > >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this problem > >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was > >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the choices > >are either total purity or total assimilation. > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 21:49:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just to back Taylor up--the *names* we have for our emotions don't even begin to match the variety of its "flavors". Pleasure X, say--unlike language--is something *more* than the absence of pleasures Y and Z. Pleasure is a positivity. Beauty & disgust are united by the quality of *wonder*--the 100,000 (or so) different reasons we have for saying WOW! --Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 18:50:44 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Fwd: Afghanistan Women MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The Ptcs. Grp. I've sent this on to someone locally.I support this petition.Just read Frank Parker's email so I'm confused. The hero of "The Battle of Mt Bei Ling" is confused! Richard Taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ramez Qureshi" To: Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 12:15 PM Subject: Fwd: Afghanistan Women > In a message dated 9/2/2000 7:36:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Qsofie writes: > > << >>>Please read this: News and an e-petition about > > >>>the Taliban. I think it's important, and anyway, you get to use the power > > >>>of the net for some good: read and sign it!! The government of > > >>>Afghanistan is waging a war upon women. The situation is getting so bad > > >>>that one person in an editorial of the Times compared the treatment of > > >>>women there to the treatment of Jews in pre-Holocaust Poland. > > >>> > > >>>Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and > > >>>have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, > > >>>even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their > > >>>eyes. > > >>> > > >>>One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of fundamentalists for > > >>>accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned > > >>>to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a > > >>>relative. > > >>> > > >>> > > >>>Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male > > >>>relative; Professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, > > >>>lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and stuffed > > >>>into their homes. Homes where a woman is present must have their windows > > >>>painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent > > >>>shoes so that they are never heard. Women live in fear of their lives for > > >>>the slightest misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those without male > > >>>relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging on the > > >>>street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s. > > >>> > > >>>Depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency > > >>>levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the > > >>>suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the > > >>>suicide rate among women, who cannot find proper medication and treatment > > >>>for severe depression and would rather take their lives than live in such > > >>>conditions, has increased significantly. There are almost no medical > > >>>facilities available for women. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a > > >>>reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of > > >>>beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, > > >>>but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in > > >>>corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear. One doctor > > >>>is considering, when what little medication that is left finally runs > > >>>out, leaving these women in front of the president's residence as a form > > >>>of protest. It is at the point where the term "human rights violations" > > >>>has become an understatement. > > >>> > > >>>Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, > > >>>especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone > > >>>or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or > > >>>offending them in the slightest way. > > >>> > > >>> > > >>>Women enjoyed relative freedom, to work, dress generally as they wanted, > > >>>and drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The rapidity of > > >>>this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; Women > > >>>who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms > > >>>are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the name of > > >>>right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or 'culture,' > > >>>but it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where > > >>>fundamentalism is the rule. Everyone has a right to a tolerable human > > >>>existence, even if they are women in a Muslim country. If we can threaten > > >>>military force in Kosovo in the name of human rights for the sake of > > >>>ethnic Albanians, citizens of the world can certainly express peaceful > > >>>outrage at the oppression, murder and injustice committed against women > > >>>by the Taliban. > > >>> > > >>>STATEMENT > > >>>In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in > > >>>Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves action by the United > > >>>Nations and that the current situation overseas will not be tolerated. > > >>>Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere, and it is UNACCEPTABLE for > > >>>women in 1999 to be treated as subhuman and so much as property. Equality > > >>>and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives in > > >>>Afghanistan or elsewhere. > > >>> > > 1. Angana Chatterji, CA, USA > 2. Richard Shapiro, CA, USA > 3. Sofia Qureshi, CA, USA > 4. Ramez Qureshi, NY USA > 5. Richard Taylor, AK, N.Z > >>>PLEASE COPY this email on to a new message, sign the bottom and forward > > >>>it to everyone on your distribution lists. IF you receive this list with > > >>>more than 300 names on it, 1) please e-mail a copy of it to: > > >>>sarabande@brandeis.edu > > >>> > > >>>2) and PLEASE remove the first 300 names from the copy you e-mail to your > > >>>friends. Even if you decide not to sign, please be considerate and do not > > >>>kill the petition. Thank you! > > >>> >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 02:19:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: Re: Lingua franca In-Reply-To: <200009110407.AAA09312@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Sep 11, 2000 00:07:18 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Don't forget that the full title of the journal where Andrew Epstein published his article ("Verse vs. Verse") is: *Lingua franca: THE REVIEW OF ACADEMIC LIFE*. I mean: what else needs be said *about the article*? It cost $6.25, plus taxes. His essay's title, "Verse vs. Verse," contains a rich irony the author does not pursue, and that ironically sums-up what is at stake for any reader of this journal, concerning whether or not Language poets are avant-garde or not. I mean, what-else needs saying about all this? Ok, perhaps a comment, seventy years after Joyce, on the advertising scattered throughout the pages of the article: The essay's title alone takes a full page, and opposite it, a full-page ad from Barnes & Noble for eight volumes of short stories with titles including *A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You*, *Close Range* and *Dream Stuff*. In the article itself, there is an ad for "HarperSanFrancisco: A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers"'s *A Long Way From Tipperary: What A Former Irish Monk Discovered in his Search for the Truth*, and opposite that mirrored as half-page an ad from Blackwell subliminally titled "Broaden Your Literary Horizons...", then, in the next set of pages, ads from Duke and Praeger, and two ads for postdocs in many subjects except poetry's (but, what *is* its subject?), plus an ad for The Treatment Center of The New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and, lastly, announcement of a new translation of the Italian Ren. poet Tasso's *Gerusalemme liberata* (rock on, translation-dude!). But the transcendent peak of all this close-range dream-stuff, however, is another full-page ad on exiting the article, titled: "Palgrave: Global Publishing at St. Martin's Press." "Palgrave," the ad will inform you, is St. Martin's new imprint -- "combines the Scholarly and Reference Division with Macmillan Press (UK)." Of course, the vaulted snowy peak of the name "Palgrave" is that it was the monicker for the most popular anthology of English-language verse for Victorian hearths, right into Pound's time, and, no doubt, right into ours, the name will last on, a seamless relay for any blind man to see. Two things worthy of note here in the pages of Andrew's article: it's "HarperSanFrancisco," i.e. no spaces between the words!! -- but why? what are the implications?; and, apparently the NY Psych. Inst. has a sliding fee-scale!! (is it only for academics?? and does it "slide" in the first place because the pharmaceuticals industry is now taking larger and larger bites out of their pie??). Andrew, fun article. I like the (but, unattributed) photowit of having Bernstein and Andrews ascending from the Underground (subway). How come Bruce looks disoriented? Did you consider writing an essay about this subject for a poetry magazine/newsletter instead? The entire address, virtually all the content, presentational vim, journalistic stylease, would have had to have been radically altered -- don't you think?...but I think it's an interesting thought-experiment all best, louis ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 11:32:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Atticus40@AOL.COM Subject: query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi List, Merry Fortune asked me to post the following query: Hi, I am interested in talking with mainly multicultural poetry or writing collectives for an article on collectives! Some of the aspects of collective life I would like to look at are: The emotional lives/business practices and ethics of your collective. The idea that collectives are a way of peacefully and quietly deflecting the somewhat corporate techno-mentality and intrusion of aspiring paces and cultivating an an "old world" sense of intimacy.=20 And revealing the essence of something that goes well and works and to reveal the uniqueness and similarities of each collective. Please Contact: Merry_Fortune@excite.com =A0=20 _______________________________________________________ Say Bye to Slow Internet! http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from rly-zc02.mx.aol.com (rly-zc02.mail.aol.com [172.31.33.2]) by= =20 air-zc03.mail.aol.com (v75_b3.11) with ESMTP; Fri, 08 Sep 2000 20:41:28 -040= 0 Received: from kuku.excite.com (kuku-rwcmta.excite.com [198.3.99.63]) by=20 rly-zc02.mx.aol.com (v75_b3.9) with ESMTP; Fri, 08 Sep 2000 20:41:19 -0400 Received: from wiser.excite.com ([199.172.152.234]) by kuku.excite.com (InterMail vM.4.01.02.39 201-229-119-122) with ESMTP id <20000909001501.XLZ26527.kuku.excite.com@wiser.excite.com> for ; Fri, 8 Sep 2000 17:15:01 -0700 Message-ID: <244303.968458501803.JavaMail.imail@wiser.excite.com> Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 17:15:00 -0700 (PDT) From: "Merry_Fortune@excite.com" To: atticus40@aol.com Subject: Hey Collectives Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3Diso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Mailer: Excite Inbox X-Sender-Ip: 168.191.122.111 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 02:10:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: New book, now available Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" LIVING ROOT: A MEMOIR Published by the State University of New York Press, September 2000. Orders: 1-607-277-2211, $18.50 plus postage, or at bookstores online and otherwise. Advance notice on Living Root: "In the subtle resources of this articulate poet's testament, one voice again speaks for all" --Robert Creeley "...one of the most touching memoirs of growing up Jewish in America....he proves that American English may be the major 'Jewish' language of the late twentieth century." --Sander Gilman, The University of Chicago "at any moment a paragraph will open far afield--to the Babel of language, to kaballah, to Walter Benjamin--or an interwoven poem will give the autobiography lyric depth and concentration..."--John Felstiner, author of Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. "...a work of crossings, hauntings, reanimations: a mighty golem walking the lost Jewish streets of Brooklyn and Miami Beach." --Norman Finkelstein, author of The Ritual of the New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature. "...splendidly preoccupied with God-racked issues"--Denis Donoghue, author of The Practice of Reading." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 10:43:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: owner-realpoetik@SCN.ORG Subject: RealPoetik G. P. Skratz G. P. Skratz (GPSkratz@aol.com) performs poetry & music with Arundo, acoustic theater music with Smooth Toad, & rock n roll with The Serfs. OPIUM 1. Nature Poem first poppy blossom of the season: scarlet with black bottom, wearing a little green turbin which is off by noon as the scarlet fans out: crepe paper fun over nether dark, suggesting the gift to come. 2. (after Basho) harvest moon: curled worm in poppy pod. 3. Moon Viewing Poem when we wearied of fucking in the hot sticky opium baths in the deep of the saucer, we gazed out the porthole at the moon, saw the flashes reflected, lighting even what the sun would not: flashes of earth, in the pan. 4. O o the o pium pop pies are a swayin in the gently roll in earth quake & the viruses are brew in in the kiss. 5. In Dream in dream the scab-dark poppie petals shut tight as palms pressed in a virginal prayer as what can not be answered: for example: why the lord strikes down the righteous with the gusto he spent on sodom, & the petals open, fall away, surrender & tears pour from the pod: healings for all, st francis to hitler, all of us in its blossom, in dream in dream in dream. - G. P. Skratz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 20:02:44 +0000 Reply-To: anielsen@lmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: anielsen@LMU.EDU Subject: Fanny Howe in the news MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII The _New York Times Book Review_, in their all too brief In Brief section, belatedly notes the appearance of Fanny Howe's selected, a book you should own unless you happen to possess all of her earlier books -- I suppose an actual review is too much to expect, but there is this, which might bring the book to the attention of some few, new readers -- "Has All-- a Codicil?" -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Department of English Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 anielsen@lmu.edu (310) 338-3078 _________________________________________________ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 09:22:07 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Taylor Brady wrote: > > I worry about the invocation of sanity in your attempt to solidify the > distinction between pleasure and disgust. Certainly - and without > going into any embarrassing personal detail - there are plenty of us > in the world whose experience of what get called "perversions" is > exactly this coincidence of intense pleasure and intense disgust. You get pleasure from the stimulus that outweighs the disgust it causes you to feel; that doesn't make the disgust you experience pleasure. Note the "only" in what I say, "An artwork that elicits only disgust cannot be pleasurable (or desired by anyone sane)." > And no, I don't think that's simply > internalized self-loathing at the enactment of socially proscribed > practices, aesthetic, sexual or otherwise. The rounding up of that > experience under the heading of "insanity" might have (has had) some > pretty dangerous social consequences, no? Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to want that which cause you to feel only pain, in whatever form. If not impossible. As for social consequences, there's a plus and minus to everything: identifying insane practices can be used against non-conformists but can also (theoretically) locate genuine problems and help people overcome them. > [As an aside, I'd recommend a look at Samuel R. Delany's novel The > Mad Man for a rigorous narrative examination of an aesthetics of > pleasurable disgust. Or passages in Dodie Bellamy's The Letters of > Mina Harker. Or or or...] The all sound interesting--but seem not to be about a desire for the painful; instead they seem to be about the pleasure of the partially painful. There's also, of course, the pleasure of defeating pain, and the putting up with pain in the belief that it will lead to pleasure (as in training for a sporting event). --Bob G. > Taylor > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman > Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 6:17 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics > > I think I agree with much of what Jacques Debrot wrote below-- > but why redefine pleasure as "intense feeling?" All intense feeling is > not pleasure. I can see intense feeling, or emotive intensity, being > considered more important, in a poem, than whether that intesnity is > pleasurable or painful; I can also understand how one might derive > pleasure FROM an intense negative feeling--but that wouldn't make the > latter pleasure, only something from which pleasure could be derived. > > In my aesthetics figuring out how this could be is important, by the > way, the main expression of the question being: what do we get out of > tragedy? One thought: tragedy acts as a counter-irritant; another is > that an artwork, in containing something painful, or subduing it, > produces a kind of pleasurable victory over pain. > > Anyway, my bottom line is that the ultimate function of art is to give > people pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure. Disgust IS the opposite of > pleasure. > > --Bob G. > > Jacques Debrot wrote: > > > > There are valid grounds for identifying LangPo w/ the academy--even if its > > presence in most literature departments is practically non-existent, as > > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& > his > > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic > distance > > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of > *demystifying* > > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's > > soon-to-be, like myself) function, in a sense, as bureaucrats, surveiling > & > > adjudicating the poem's *real* meaning which, naturally, is never what it > > appears to be, as appearances themselves--by reason of the pleasure they > > give--are assumed to be misleading (by "pleasure" understand that I am > giving > > a shorthand for what is really *intense* feeling--the opposite of pleasure > > being then, not "pain," but, as Dave Hickey puts it, "the banality of > neutral > > comfort." The false dichotomy between pleasure & disgust is, by the way, > > Sianne Ngai's basic mistake in her recent brilliant essay in _Open > Letter_). > > In any case, it goes w/out saying , I think, that a lot of awfully boring > > Language-influenced poetry (including some of my own) is advanced or > > published for *therapeutic* reasons--that is, because it is supposedly > good > > for us. > > > > Nothing, however, is more potentially disruptive of the status quo than > > pleasure--it's amazing as well as scary, really, what you & I are capable > of > > getting off on. Pleasure--or beauty, as Dave Hickey has argued too (in > > essays that crucially inform this post)--is also *essentially democratic* > in > > that there is a **vernacular** of beauty or pleasure that enfranchises > > audiences and acknowledges their power (& by audience, I don't mean the > > ghettoized audience of the poetry world or of academia). Indeed, it is > not > > criticism that is politically efficacious so much as the assent or > "praise" > > an audience gives to the persuasive power of a poem--the vernacular of > > pleasure or beauty is thus always a quality that is politicized in one way > or > > another, rather than neutralizing politics (which is what I find so > > fascinating about Maria Damon's inclusion, in her book, of the poetry of > > women living in housing projects, or, for that matter, about prison > poetry). > > This is something quite different, I think, from "dumbing down." Still, > > poetry can never be politically efficacious unless it moves a > non-specialist > > or non-professional audience--in the way Pop art did, say. Art, in fact, > is > > only transgressive, as Hickey puts it, if Jesse Helms says it is: > > "Regardless of what the titillated cognoscenti might flatter themselves by > > believing, if you dealt in transgression, insisted upon it, it was always > the > > Senator, only the Senator . . . whose outrage mattered." Helms, of > course > > may not know squat about art, but his business, after all, *is* rhetoric . > > > > Of course, there is a lot of LangPo which would be powerfully > affective--even > > to an uninitiated audience-- but the emphasis has always been someplace > else, > > too focused, like the academy, on critique, & on a therapeutic model of > > aesthetic experience & too suspicious of *content* in its valorization of > > transgressive *form*. (But, in fact, a lot of putatively anti-LangPo > > poetries are equally therapeutic in intent--the suspicion of pleasure has > > almost become reflexive today. Indeed, the return to lyricism typical of > a > > lot of recent NY School-inspired poetry only strikes me most of the time > as > > completely & banally comfortable & self-satisfied.) We need poems, in > other > > words, as ravishingly beautiful & political as Mapplethorpe's _X > Portfolio_, > > Cindy Sherman's _Doll Photos_, or Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_. > > > > --Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 11:22:14 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Baptiste Chirot wrote: > > Isn't the ancient (I believe from Horace) definition of > poetry's function "to delight and instruct"? > Yes, Horace--getting it 50% wrong the way even the best puritans always do. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 09:53:54 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: New @ Bridge Street, Krupskaya, Davies, Thomas, Nichol, Germ, Chain, Raddle Moon, Tricycle. . . MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks poetics, for your support. Ordering and discount information. (Note to new subscribers: Bridge Street is an independent bookstore in Washington, DC which periodically posts lists of revelant new publications to the poetics list.) 1. _Beyond the Safety of Dreams_, Michael Amnasan, Krupskaya, $9. "All was well for a while." 2. _A Wild Salience: The Writing of Rae Armantrout_, ed Tom Beckett, Burning Press, $15. Armantrout poems & interviews, Hejinian, Moriarty, Nielsen, DuPlessis, Hillman, F Howe, Vickery, Wheeler, L Davis, Grim, K Robinson, Creeley, West, Bromige, Alexander, Lazer, Perelman, Silliman, & others. 3. _The Occasional Tables_, Scott Bentley, Subpress, $10. "midge cupola stoner // they made everything fun / reading is easy, standing / more difficult." 4. _Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left_, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Zizek, Verso, $20. 5. _Chain #7_, ed Osman, Spahr, & Zweig, $12. Contributors include Antin, Armantrout, Bellamy, Bryant, Fries, Jarnot, Kaipa, Liu, Mayer, Notley, Retallack, Schultz, Silliman, Torres, Waldrop, Wojnarowicz, &&&. 6. _Threadsuns_, Paul Celan trans Pierre Joris, Sun & Moon, $13.95. "here // live yourself / straightthrough, without clock." 7. _Comp._, Kevin Davies, Edge, $12.50. "To become unhinged is to admit, finally, the existence of hinges." 8. _Confusion Comix_ Jacques Debrot, Second Story, $5. "The weirdest thing is that today poets don't make any money at all" 9. _Paramour_, Stacy Doris, Krupskaya, $9. "Get all fuzzy" 10. _A Knot Is Not a Tangle_, Ben Friedlander, Krupskaya, $9. "To write outside of habits / that sequester // sense, what sense / transmits" 11. _The Germ #4_, ed Card & Maxwell, $6. Hume, R Smith, Swensen, Elmslie, Gardner, E Robinson, Hocquard, Ashbery, Weiser, Treadwell, Latta, Day, Sobin, Coolidge, Anderson, Armantrout, P Gizzi, &&&. 12. _Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry_, ed John High and others, Talisman, $24.95. Truly impressive in its scope. Includes over eighty contributors. 13. _New Mannerist Tricycle_, Lisa Jarnot, Bill Luoma, & Rod Smith, Beautiful Swimmer, $8. Three serial poems: Jarnot's "They," Luoma's "Ode," & Smith's "The Spider Poems." "that they loved all outer space" 14. _Aliens & Anorexia_, Chris Kraus, Semiotext(e) / Smart Art, $10. 15. _The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century Volume 1_, ed Douglas Messerli, Green Integer, $15.95. Alberti, Bachmann, Dario, Eich, Ekelof, Foix, Gonzalez, Guillen, Sakutaro, Fumiko, Karinthy, Lundkvist, Mac Low, Mandelshtam, Cabral de Melo Neto, Michaux, O.V. de Milosz, Nagy, Rosselli, Scotellaro, & Mutsuo. 16. _Nude Memoir_, Laura Moriarty, Krupskaya, $9. "_Nothing is definable unless it has no history._" 17. _Zygal_, b p Nichol, Coach House, $13. "a noun is how youre found out" 18. _Unknowne Land_, Elena Rivera, Kelsey St, $10. "My prayers had vanished with the lust" 19. _Raddle Moon 18_, ed Susan Clark, $12. the "bewilderment, transhumance, ghost," issue-- Notley, F Howe, Stewart, Wolsak, Blaser, Barbara Guest & Laurie Reid, Maeterlinck trans Southam, & Killian on Colin Smith. 20. _XEclogue_, Lisa Robertson, New Star, $11. "I want to tell you about the hegemony of my supple extensions." 21. _Mon Canard_, Stephen Rodefer, The Figures, $12.50. "whose sum of sorrow nectarless at the seat of vibration neat / expedites the proem equinoxed mute and luminous and asleep" 22. _A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Publishing_, ed Jerome Rothenberg and Steven Clay, Granary, $28.95. McCaffery and Nichol, Everson, Davidson, Waldman, Derrida, JAbes, Stein, S Howe, Blanchot, Perloff, Duchamp, Artaud, Tedlock, Barthes, Meltzer, Drucker, Knowles, Finlay, Schneemann, Cayley, Bernstein, &&&. 23. _R-hu_, Leslie Scalapino, Atelos, $12.95. "Trajectory is hell." 24. _Gertrude Stein, Modernism, and the Problem of "Genius", Barbara Will, Edinburgh, $32. 25. _Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and Twentieth Century American Poetry_, Lorenzo Thomas, Alabama, $19.95. An extremely cogent, engaging study. Authors addressed include Fenton Johnson, William Stanley Brathwaite, Margaret Walker, Melvin B. Tolson, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Harryette Mullen. 26. _Continuity Girl_, Chris Tysh, United Artists, $10. "in blue ashes on graph paper" Some Bestsellers: _On the Nameways_, Clark Coolidge, Figures, $11. _Republics of Reality: 1975-1995_, Charles Bernstein, Sun & Moon, $14.95. _Happily_, Lyn Hejinian, Post-Apollo, $7. _Sight_, Lyn Hejinian & Leslie Scalapino, Edge, $12. _Aerial 9: Bruce Andrews_, ed Rod Smith, Edge, $15. _Reading Race in American Poetry: "An Area of Act"_, ed Aldon Lynn Nielsen, U Illonois, $18.95 _Selected Poems_, Fanny Howe, U Cal, $15.95. _Why Different?_, Luce Irigaray, Semiotext(e), $8. _Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing_, Nathaniel Mackey, U Alabama, $24.95. _Bliss to Fill_, Prageeta Sharma, Subpress, $10. _Translating the Unspeakable_, Kathleen Fraser, Alabama. $19.95. _Tottering State: Selected Early Poems 1963-1983, O Books, $15. _Arcana : Musicians on Music_, ed John Zorn, Granary, $24.95. _poetics@_, ed Joel Kuszai, Roof, $18.95. _Dailies_, Tim Davis, Figures, $12.50. Poetics folks receive free shipping on orders of more than $20. Free shipping + 10% discount on orders of more than $30. There are two ways to order. 1. E-mail your order to aerialedge@aol.com with your address & we will bill you with the books. or 2. via credit card-- you may call us at 202 965 5200 or e-mail aerialedge@aol.com w/ yr add, order, card #, & expiration date & we will send a receipt with the books. We must charge shipping for orders out of the US. Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20007. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 11:57:59 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: language in lingua franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >From Bill Austin: > Hi Richard, mind if I add my measly one cent? I like most of what > you said in your post (which is quite a bit longer than what I have > reproduced here), but I do think you overstate just a tad. I guess > some "traditionalists" fear poetry, but that is pretty much confined > to countries in which a poem can stir the political tides. I disagree, Bill. The danger to mediocrities of poetry of a kind they're not used to (whether innovative or simply outside their constricted experience the way visual poetry is outside the experience of many language poets, and--to be fair--language poetry is outside the experience of many visual poets) is that it threatens their intellectual self-esteem, because they can't understand it. So they pretend it doesn't exist until they're forced to acknowledge it, whereupon they deny its innovativeness and/or decry its willful incoherence. > In the USA we're generally dealing with tastes. > And they change all the time. The reality based poem may seem shop > worn, but let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" > poems which were astonishingly innovative for the time. Wasn't William Carlos Williams doing that kind of thing long before O'Hara? > No radical formal machinations there--just a new attitude toward > content. And no one ever accused Frank of being dour and timid. Maybe he wasn't socially, but to shrink from higher meanings (which O'Hara didn't always do) is certainly a form of timidity--as is shrinking from anything (including the banal, the informally- expressed)--as you go on to imply. > No, that dour and timid thing sounds too much like a > stereotype. In fact, it could be argued that langpo is the more timid > form since it represses direct emotional expression. Could it be > that the current ensconced innovators "fear" emotion? Are they in > fact producing the latest versions of a very long tradition of > puritan art? Of course there are arguments on both sides, and no > doubt they all are worth hearing. > > Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the > former is clearly the more innovative. Do you really believe poets trying for verbal innovation in their poetry are likely to be more innovative than poets trying for visual innovation AND verbal innovation (as all the best visual poets do)? > When it appeared on the scene, there was a > palpable sense that something new was going on, despite the obvious > and profound influence of Ashbery. I don't know about "profound" there, but I do know that Olson, Stein, Cummings, Pound, Eliot--Roethke, even--the Dadaists and others influenced language poetry a lot more than Ashbery. > Vispo has been around for centuries, Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was decorative only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud Hollander's imitations of them. > --and remains a hybrid form that fails to appeal to many of those > whose primary love is for language--just not enough of it in vispo, > generally. Not enough of visual interest in langpo, either. Dunno what you're arguing here. We all know that some people are too narrow to appreciate one or more arts. > By the way, I enjoy, and support, much of both langpo and > vispo. Innovation is important, but it is not the be all and end all. > There are some vispoems I consider more successful than some > langpoems, and which is more innovative becomes secondary to which is > better art. We all know that today's innovation is tomorrow's > tradition. A true traditionalist is the best thing we have, > for as Eliot (that bastard) knew, only the truly experimental > get to join the tradition which is nothing else but a record of > innovation, as any Norton Anthology clearly demonstrates. But Robert Frost is (properly) there. > One problem for me is that there has been so much innovation since the > sixties that nothing looks very new, anyway. A return to direct > albeit creatively crafted emotion may be the most innovative thing > to approach right now. Perhaps not. But we can all count on one > thing. As langpo enters the tradition, joins the academy (which any > poetry must do in order to survive--like it or not, that's da fac, > Jack), there will be strong reaction and opposition from the young. > > A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and > Universities. There are exceptions, of course, but in general it takes a different kind of person to plug away in a certified career lane as one who becomes a professor must from the kind who CAN'T (for better or worse) stick to such a lane. And the former will tend to prefer knownstream to otherstream art, because that's what lines his lane. The big problem, though, is that professors wield far more short-term cultural power than independent artists, and they much more often than not use it against the best independent artists (however they try to hide that with token gestures towards the marginal--as when Marjorie Perloff granted visual poetry a seminar at Stanford that mentioned two or three genuine visual poets a while back). > A poet who has the opportunity to affect students, > to share his obsession with language with the young (some of whom > are actually eager to learn)--a sell out? When we consider that > so many young people have developed a love for poetry in such > places (both "straight from the heart" stuff and experimental), > the attacks often seem little more than straw man tactics and sour > grapes. Your point that Professors are like guardians rings > true for me. And we need that. We all must earn our way. As we > all know, many never live to see the celebration their work > ultimately achieves. Some Professors/Critics, it is true, are > quite narrow minded. But anyone who suggests that the avant garde > has historically been open minded needs to get off the booze. > Same sins in both camps, and both covet power in sometimes > very ugly ways. Long ago I threw my hat in the progressive ring, > but I damn well know that some of those "traditional" poems are a > lot better than some of the experiments I have seen. I try to > maintain a democratic palate. In my view, to shut out anything > is to deny one's self an opportunity to be influenced, to find new > combinations, to progress. > > No doubt I've overreached your comments. But I appreciate the > opportunity to sound off on a number of issues. Best, Bill Ditto to you, Bill. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 09:01:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dodie Bellamy Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" At 9:30 AM -0600 9/8/00, Maria Damon wrote: >i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms >of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual >rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) >against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their journalistic >packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from >the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. You're right, Maria, the Adorno/Orwell standoff was really bizarre, but fun, kind of like a mental roller coaster ride. I love Lingua Franca, myself, see as a kind of National Enquirer for academics. Years ago, when I'd never heard of the mag, Kevin and I were crashing at Albert Mobilio's studio in NYC, and Albert was still writing for LF at the time, so copies were lying around. KK and I read the issue about the sexual harassment charges against Jane Gallup, and we signed up for a subscription when we got home. I still sometimes think about how taking one's shoe off while sitting in a chair could be seen as a sign of sexual aggression. Or I was talking recently to someone from the English Department at Stonybrook, and I'm like, "Your department's been through a lot lately!" Having read all about it in--where else--Lingua Franca! But if I were doing serious academic writing--or expecting that--I'd be burning issues myself. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 11:01:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: Tumor Text-Growth Comment:Richard Taylor. In-Reply-To: <007401c01963$047afe80$e3cc36d2@Richard> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" >Alan. That's right:"Language its a virus.." Richard. From, according to W. Burroughs, outer space. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 785-864-4630 | fax: 785-864-5255 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.math.ukans.edu/~roitman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 14:59:56 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Massey Subject: Re: From Bei Ling to Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/10/2000 7:23:32 PM Central Daylight Time, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << I see the ideal reader as being able to "take in" Bukowski and Stein, AS WELL AS B's near namesake Zukowski. Bukowski's good but his stance against (if it is against) established or "difficult" poets smacks of envy. Conversely, I dont find reading Stein or Zukovsky "difficult",altho maybe I use some "interpretation" for Z. >> Or is it Zucchini. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 09:18:15 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: juliana spahr Subject: call for work: chain 8 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit CALL FOR WORK Chain 8: Comics How can you be alone if you have a "thought" with you? -Ignatz Mouse It's wot's behind me that I am. . . . -Krazy Kat We see-as in this-one frame at a time. -Leslie Scalapino Comic strips, graphic novels, frameworks, comedies of errors, thought balloons, sequential narratives, political cartoons, funnies, social satires, caricature, seriality, text & image, captions. We welcome submissions from readers. We urge you to look at previous issues before you submit. Please send camera ready visual art, essays, poems, stories, performance texts, collaborations, etc. by December 1, 2000. Please send two copies of your submission to Jena Osman English Department Temple University 10th floor Anderson Hall 1114 Berks St. Philadelphia, PA 19122. Please, NO email submissions. Please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you would like your work returned. For more information on submission, see: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~spahr/chain Deadline: December 1, 2000 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 17:20:16 -0230 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "K.Angelo Hehir" Subject: Re: query / Levitsky-jakobson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Taylor is right. This article gets a bit thick as it goes on but is a great place to wade in to. Jakobson, Roman. "Concluding Statement: Linguistics and Poetics", Style in language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. [Cambridge] Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology [1960]. 350- 377) I've been walking around with this essay for some time now and it is unfortunate that, 40 years later, his conclusion still holds true. "If there are some critics that believe who still doubt the competence of linguistics to embrace the field of poetics, I privately believe that the poetic competence of some bigoted linguists has been mistaken for the an inadequacy of the linguistic science itself. All of us here, however, definitely realize that a linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant in linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronisms." (Jakobson 377) bests,, kevin On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Taylor Brady wrote: > Jakobson is, believe it or not, fairly straightforward on this. His > alignment of metaphor with an axis of substitution and metonym with an axis > of combination, though probably arguable (he says as much himself on several > occasions), is a good place to start. Unfortunately, I'm blanking on the > title of the article, but I know it's in that Harvard collection "Language > in Literature." The whole essay might be a bit much for an undergraduate > class, but the paragraph or two I have in mind might do well to frame a > discussion. > > Best, > Taylor > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Poetics List > Administration > Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 9:33 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: query / Levitsky > > This message had to be reformatted to remove HTML tags. > > Christopher W. Alexander > poetics list moderator > > -- > > From: > Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 10:40:59 -0400 > > Hi all, > I am looking for concise and straightforward description of metaphor and = > metonym for an undergraduate class. Any suggestions? > thanks, > Rachel Levitsky > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 07:35:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "r.l. whyte" Subject: CD-ROM of collected work available -- Alan Sondheim MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII [forwarded from Allen Bramhall. This is a great thing -- Ryan] From: "Allen H. Bramhall" To: "Wryting" , Subject: re CD-ROM of collected work available this is an unpaid political announcement. if you're on a list to which Alan Sondheim contributes, you've seen the quantity of work that he produces. the quality and variety are impressive. his work is strange, intense, beguiling, beautiful and surprising. myself, I'm taken with the humour that arises in Alan's work. his humour, to me, is the sanity that holds his work together, but that's just my take. the point is that it is worthy work, if judged by no other basis than his commitment. we've all seen his work for free. 14 bucks for a shitload of material aint a bad deal. that's near what books cost. in the grander sense, buying Alan's cd-rom is a support of Poetry itself, just as buying any mag or book is. lest we forget, poetry is fucking marginal. this is a world of 200 copy press runs. sheesh. some of you out there maybe teach poetry, or elsewise turn a profit, but for all of us, if poetry has any meaning at all, it is worth a few ducats. even, really, if you don't like Alan's work. this is not a mattter of marketing. it's a community thing. at the very least, one can think in terms of a potlatch economy. buying Alan's cd-rom won't even affect the down payment on that SUV you're looking at. end of sermon. Allen Bramhall ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 09:19:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Lind, Joshua H." Subject: Metaphor and Metonymy MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Regarding Rachel Levitsky's question and Taylor Brady's response, there is a Roman Jakobson essay titled "Two Aspects of Language" that (I believe) is the one to which Taylor was referring. I hope it's helpful. Cheers, Josh Joshua H. Lind Enrollment Data Technician School of Continuing Studies University of St. Thomas ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 17:16:15 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity Comments: To: Maria Damon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria - Opposition is but one species of building tension. any division creates tension it seems. All divisions make things digestible. It's why we have teeth, right? some people prefer division systems with n>2 where n equals the number of parts. i see the value of n as wholly outside of moral judgment, whether n is 2 or 100. So I don't criticize people for being binary, as tempted as I may be to do so. and what is writing without tension? perhaps this is *not* a rhetorical question, for if there's one thing I know, it is that I don't know much. so lingua franca is simple, OK. there's nothing wrong with that, I think. what I sense in your note here is that there was perhaps something in the adorno/orwell article that you disliked that went beyond the structure of the article. I am more ready to buy that then to buy that it is merely the structure that makes the argument or the magazine invalid or with little value. my simple difficulty with epstein's article is that i am not interested in the issue of 'selling out' for there may be nothing pure in this world, especially in America where capital reigns supreme. epstein's discussion starts with a binary and modulates beyond a binary after the introduction to a collection of about 8 or 9 different loci. epstein's article doesn't retain a binary though it starts with one. i think his discussion becomes somewhat complex and open actually, and to epstein's credit. but i could care less ultimately whether he shows two teams or 2 million individuals. here's the essence of my criticism: the issues of 'selling out' and 'contradiction', however, which i see as essential to the article, seem to lack a flavor of compassion for human desire and identity. (let me make it clear that I am NOT saying either that the article or the author lack a flavor of compassion for human desire and identity.) on the flip side of my critique, the discussion of what some people within academia do to keep it from being so corporatized or so institutional/power-that-is DOES interest me, and epstein surely does touch upon that. my dislike was merely with the set-up and the partial focus on the notion that people like silliman and bernstein have betrayed their youth and that there was some dwelling on selling out and apparent contradictions. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: Maria Damon [mailto:damon001@tc.umn.edu] Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 11:30 AM To: patrick@proximate.org; POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their journalistic packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: >mdw: > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. responding >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to internal >stimuli. > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I even >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem to >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i neither >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through the >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling out. >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see in >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total >purity or total assimilation." > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to internal >stimuli. or both. > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > >Patrick > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or 'computers >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for their >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly >simplistic. > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does show >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or silliman >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is worth >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the mcclatchy >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum (this >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find the >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully and >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that yet. >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > >Hello Andrew: > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this problem >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the choices >are either total purity or total assimilation. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 14:24:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Again, you seem to be mistaking my criticism of Bush for a defense of Gore, who will get nothing of the sort from me. Since my requests that you actually read my posts before mulching them with your conspiracy manure-spreader has gone unheeded now twice, I'll consider my end of this dubious "debate" concluded. I leave it to others to decide which is "creepier": my characterization of Bush as a serial killer, or his own race toward a national record for most death warrants signed, and greatest racial disproportion in the carrying out of those warrants. Taylor Brady -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 7:32 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry Here we go again. And Gore isn't a dynastic scion? And Tennessee doesn't have a death penalty? And the Clintons didn't send a retard to his execution who thought he was going to be able to come back to his plate of cherry pie after a momentary adjournment? Serial killer? A creepy remark. Creepy. And cheap. I wasn't talking political parties, I was talking PHILOSOPHY. I want more poets to make Republicanism work for the ends they seek: freedom for the individual. I didn't say that all poets could adopt Republicanism, either. For instance, I want poets of the future to have the independence A.A. Gore has by owning a million dollars worth of Occidental Petroleum stock. Dubya's 2% monthly investment in their Social Security accounts will help them get there. > From: Taylor Brady > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 09:54:58 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Short of getting into an ever-widening spiral of ad hominems regarding > purported "delusions," I can only return to my point, conveniently passed > over by you, that the states under discussion are instruments of domination. > That's neither the politics of a Gore-touting erstwhile reformer, nor of a > cheerleader for the Texas serial killer and dynastic scion. Nor, really, of > an optimistic social-democratic Naderite. > > To your question: > > Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you > call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? > > I'll keep my answer within the narrow bounds of personal experience: someone > gassed and beaten in vitro by Nixon's hired goons, who grew up to receive > his first identifying scar at the hands of one of (Republican) Bob Martinez' > Florida state troopers during a nonviolent civil action, might be somewhat > justified in placing a certain amount of blame in that direction. But no > fear, it's an equal opportunity attack: Lawton Chiles' state troopers kicked > my ass too. And Clinton and Gore have been as instrumental as Reagan in > busting up the social movements (and the civil society) that gave those I > care for a measure of hope. In my neck of the woods, we talk about Clinton's > presidency as years 13-20 of the Reagan/Bush administration. > > But this has become really tiresome, especially as it's taken shape in my > attempt to produce a rebuttal to what was simply your placing of words in my > mouth. (Read my initial post: I never mentioned Republicanism as the locus > of the problems I was identifying, nor did I make any mention of voting for > Gore). Reluctant as I am to join those who can be counted on to groan at > every mention of politics on the list, I'm going to absent myself from > further discussion of this until your posts come up to argument from their > current level of blank assertion (with emphatic caps, no less - nice touch). > > Taylor > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon > Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 8:11 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do > you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call > tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? > > The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I > call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT > OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or > A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient > fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of > writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist > poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean > Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? > > In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your > vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you > deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this > Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin > revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this > LINE! > > If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it > work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism > as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: > To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. > State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and > grounded views of Frost. > > Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore > tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply > replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one > radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with > the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. > > Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > > >> From: Taylor Brady >> Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry >> >> Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" >> liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: >> >> Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping >> things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on >> an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same >> repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei >> Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of >> examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, >> anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. >> >> All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. >> citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism > over >> a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a >> police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a >> thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime > of >> holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having >> their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of >> "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO >> anything to warrant the stick. >> >> Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from >> which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a >> justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction > between >> that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - > a >> government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything > about >> the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral >> authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to >> fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no >> better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the >> contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to > register >> its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that >> one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of >> others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf >> of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those >> outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of >> domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international >> list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a >> position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely >> the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. >> Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every >> time I say "I"? >> >> (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a > while). >> >> Taylor >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: UB Poetics discussion group >> [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang >> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry >> >> As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has > been >> read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression > of >> a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," >> "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my >> concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still >> outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry >> us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple >> of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar >> with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now >> gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came >> back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, >> 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" >> content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities >> (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views >> critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. >> Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the >> Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I >> understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of >> Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be >> condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. >> >> ------------------ >> Yunte Huang >> Assistant Professor >> Dept of English >> Harvard University >> 12 Quincy St >> Cambridge, MA 02138 >> Tel: 617-495-1139 >> > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 15:46:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Avery Burns Subject: Fwd: Canessa Park Reading 9/24/00 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Canessa Park Reading Series > Sunday September 24th @5 pm > > Mary Burger & Elena Rivera > > Mary Burger covets a life of quiet inutility. She > publishes > Second Story Books, featuring short, sort of > narrative works, > and Narrativity (www.sfsu.edu/~newlit/narrativity/), > an > online town hall for experimental narrativists. Her > book > Thin Straw That I Suck Life Through (Melodeon) is > now here. > Other poems have appeared recently in her apartment. > > Elena Rivera's Unknowne Land (Kelsey Street) is the > first > winner of the Frances Jaffer Book Award. She has > published two limited edition chapbooks and two > artists > books, and was poet-in-residence at the Djerassi > Foundation > in 1996. > > Hope to see you there. > Avery E. D. Burns > Literary Director - Canessa Park > 708 Montgomery @ Columbus > San Francisco, Ca > Admission $5 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 17:34:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the names we have for feelings usually don't capture the feeling. what is missed can often (and only!)be reached through visual poetry, web poetry, sound poetry. The new ELO chat at http://www.eliterature.org/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=list&forum=DCForumID5&conf=DCConfID1 might be a place to talk about this. tom bell Jacques Debrot wrote: > > Just to back Taylor up--the *names* we have for our emotions don't even begin > to match the variety of its "flavors". > > Pleasure X, say--unlike language--is something *more* than the absence of > pleasures Y and Z. Pleasure is a positivity. > > Beauty & disgust are united by the quality of *wonder*--the 100,000 (or so) > different reasons we have for saying WOW! > > --Jacques -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 19:12:38 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David - i understand that you and many others associate binaries with war and sports teams, but that doesn't make the very structure of a binary repulsive or ignorant in any way. i am sure you find neither war nor sports nor corporations valueless because they do things in twos instead of ones or twenties or whatever other number. you most likely have more articulate reasons to dislike the things on your list than a general condemnation of 2. i dislike all of those things you mention but not because of their twoness. even the two party-system -- there's nothing wrong with it's two ness though there is plenty wrong with how they express one view point and how they exclude others. but there's nothing immoral or unvirtuous about the number 2. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of David Baptiste Chirot Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 9:25 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity funny how those "idiotic binaries" seem to be not only in lingua franca but everywhere TEAM USA vs the World Republican vs. Democrat Language centered writing (poetics list) vs. Mainstream/Creative Writing Program work Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola Microsoft vs. the Law good vs. evil "their journalistic packaging" vs. ("our" implicit) purity/authenticity Firestone Tires vs. public safety "oppostional/transgressive/alternative" vs. SOS (samoshit) "subtlety" vs. "'drama'" "when you come to a fork in the road, take it" --Yogi Berra On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Maria Damon wrote: > i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms > of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual > rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) > against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their journalistic > packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from > the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. > > At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: > >mdw: > > > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. responding > >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to internal > >stimuli. > > > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I even > >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory > >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem to > >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i neither > >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through the > >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling out. > >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total > >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see in > >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total > >purity or total assimilation." > > > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to internal > >stimuli. or both. > > > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being > >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > > > >Patrick > > > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is > >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or 'computers > >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is > >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for their > >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly > >simplistic. > > > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does show > >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or silliman > >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is worth > >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the mcclatchy > >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum (this > >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find the > >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the > >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. > >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully and > >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that yet. > >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make > >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: UB Poetics discussion group > >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw > >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM > >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > > > > >Hello Andrew: > > > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick > >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what > >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit > >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this problem > >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was > >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the choices > >are either total purity or total assimilation. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 17:04:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: <39BCDC7E.956@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob, Not sure about the way your argument slides from "disgust" to "pain" in the final paragraph. But yeah, I suppose we could say the same things about pain, in a way. What continues to give me pause is the heroic narrative of positive human feelings (i.e., pleasure) winning through the adversity of pain/disgust. Certainly, it's a fairly deep cultural embedding, even to our sense of "perversion" as a turning aside, a detour - the long way round. As in, what are all those silly perverts/aesthetes/etc. doing wasting so much time just getting back around to the wholesome pleasure we normal folks can access without all the theatrics? There's another way of staging that drama, though, and it goes something like this, in my version: One of our primary models for pleasure - orgasm - occurs to us as a passivation, an undergoing. (All the cultural baggage of le petit mort, etc., can enter here and stand around on stage looking bored as the verbiage piles up). That we more or less actively pursue it speaks to a desire to take up the conditions of our own bodies' passivity, in our own hands (literally or figuratively). Now this passivation, at the level of both emotional and physiological response, would seem to be something common to persons expiring in bliss, puking in disgust, and wincing in pain. In all three cases, I'd argue it's the question of "taking-up" - thus a context within which the condition is placed, and a praxis that works on it - rather than some formulation of converting emotional or sensual negatives into their opposites, that is decisive in the question "pleasure or no?" One might frame it in terms of consent, though that would have to be broad enough to cover a range from consent at the level of the act ("yes, you can touch me there": the analogy for our present purposes would be the literary anthology one skips around in, certain characters and practices in which one makes a point of avoiding) to consent at the level of the scene ("yes, you can immobilize me and control my body's actions for a while": here the analogy is the poetry reading, where, past one's initial informed decision, one's pretty much in it until the end. Both often hold a stock of potential circuit breakers or safe words in reserve, usually some variant of, "OK, that's enough." One wishes poetry audiences used them more often.) So it's not a matter, to my mind (or body), of pleasure "outweighing" or "defeating" disgust or pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under certain concrete conditions. And this is consistent in the other direction as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs to me as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways typical of "pleasure." A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to want that which cause you to feel only pain, in whatever form. Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you manage to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those insane people who want that which causes only pain), from the class defined before (those sane people who are practicing nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly that appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've just announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced that you've demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting that which." From either angle, you're allowing me as a sane person full access to my pleasure, but only so long as I maintain a categorical distinction between that pleasure and pain, setting the stage for the truly perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely that which I do not want. Still crazy, Taylor P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to imply that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - any more than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. I'd like to see room for what I've argued alongside the more "intentional," less "undergone" pleasures of the perfectly executed double play or the meticulous alphabetizing of my library. -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 6:22 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics Taylor Brady wrote: > > I worry about the invocation of sanity in your attempt to solidify the > distinction between pleasure and disgust. Certainly - and without > going into any embarrassing personal detail - there are plenty of us > in the world whose experience of what get called "perversions" is > exactly this coincidence of intense pleasure and intense disgust. You get pleasure from the stimulus that outweighs the disgust it causes you to feel; that doesn't make the disgust you experience pleasure. Note the "only" in what I say, "An artwork that elicits only disgust cannot be pleasurable (or desired by anyone sane)." > And no, I don't think that's simply > internalized self-loathing at the enactment of socially proscribed > practices, aesthetic, sexual or otherwise. The rounding up of that > experience under the heading of "insanity" might have (has had) some > pretty dangerous social consequences, no? Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to want that which cause you to feel only pain, in whatever form. If not impossible. As for social consequences, there's a plus and minus to everything: identifying insane practices can be used against non-conformists but can also (theoretically) locate genuine problems and help people overcome them. > [As an aside, I'd recommend a look at Samuel R. Delany's novel The > Mad Man for a rigorous narrative examination of an aesthetics of > pleasurable disgust. Or passages in Dodie Bellamy's The Letters of > Mina Harker. Or or or...] The all sound interesting--but seem not to be about a desire for the painful; instead they seem to be about the pleasure of the partially painful. There's also, of course, the pleasure of defeating pain, and the putting up with pain in the belief that it will lead to pleasure (as in training for a sporting event). --Bob G. > Taylor > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman > Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 6:17 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics > > I think I agree with much of what Jacques Debrot wrote below-- > but why redefine pleasure as "intense feeling?" All intense feeling is > not pleasure. I can see intense feeling, or emotive intensity, being > considered more important, in a poem, than whether that intesnity is > pleasurable or painful; I can also understand how one might derive > pleasure FROM an intense negative feeling--but that wouldn't make the > latter pleasure, only something from which pleasure could be derived. > > In my aesthetics figuring out how this could be is important, by the > way, the main expression of the question being: what do we get out of > tragedy? One thought: tragedy acts as a counter-irritant; another is > that an artwork, in containing something painful, or subduing it, > produces a kind of pleasurable victory over pain. > > Anyway, my bottom line is that the ultimate function of art is to give > people pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure. Disgust IS the opposite of > pleasure. > > --Bob G. > > Jacques Debrot wrote: > > > > There are valid grounds for identifying LangPo w/ the academy--even if its > > presence in most literature departments is practically non-existent, as > > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& > his > > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic > distance > > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of > *demystifying* > > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's > > soon-to-be, like myself) function, in a sense, as bureaucrats, surveiling > & > > adjudicating the poem's *real* meaning which, naturally, is never what it > > appears to be, as appearances themselves--by reason of the pleasure they > > give--are assumed to be misleading (by "pleasure" understand that I am > giving > > a shorthand for what is really *intense* feeling--the opposite of pleasure > > being then, not "pain," but, as Dave Hickey puts it, "the banality of > neutral > > comfort." The false dichotomy between pleasure & disgust is, by the way, > > Sianne Ngai's basic mistake in her recent brilliant essay in _Open > Letter_). > > In any case, it goes w/out saying , I think, that a lot of awfully boring > > Language-influenced poetry (including some of my own) is advanced or > > published for *therapeutic* reasons--that is, because it is supposedly > good > > for us. > > > > Nothing, however, is more potentially disruptive of the status quo than > > pleasure--it's amazing as well as scary, really, what you & I are capable > of > > getting off on. Pleasure--or beauty, as Dave Hickey has argued too (in > > essays that crucially inform this post)--is also *essentially democratic* > in > > that there is a **vernacular** of beauty or pleasure that enfranchises > > audiences and acknowledges their power (& by audience, I don't mean the > > ghettoized audience of the poetry world or of academia). Indeed, it is > not > > criticism that is politically efficacious so much as the assent or > "praise" > > an audience gives to the persuasive power of a poem--the vernacular of > > pleasure or beauty is thus always a quality that is politicized in one way > or > > another, rather than neutralizing politics (which is what I find so > > fascinating about Maria Damon's inclusion, in her book, of the poetry of > > women living in housing projects, or, for that matter, about prison > poetry). > > This is something quite different, I think, from "dumbing down." Still, > > poetry can never be politically efficacious unless it moves a > non-specialist > > or non-professional audience--in the way Pop art did, say. Art, in fact, > is > > only transgressive, as Hickey puts it, if Jesse Helms says it is: > > "Regardless of what the titillated cognoscenti might flatter themselves by > > believing, if you dealt in transgression, insisted upon it, it was always > the > > Senator, only the Senator . . . whose outrage mattered." Helms, of > course > > may not know squat about art, but his business, after all, *is* rhetoric . > > > > Of course, there is a lot of LangPo which would be powerfully > affective--even > > to an uninitiated audience-- but the emphasis has always been someplace > else, > > too focused, like the academy, on critique, & on a therapeutic model of > > aesthetic experience & too suspicious of *content* in its valorization of > > transgressive *form*. (But, in fact, a lot of putatively anti-LangPo > > poetries are equally therapeutic in intent--the suspicion of pleasure has > > almost become reflexive today. Indeed, the return to lyricism typical of > a > > lot of recent NY School-inspired poetry only strikes me most of the time > as > > completely & banally comfortable & self-satisfied.) We need poems, in > other > > words, as ravishingly beautiful & political as Mapplethorpe's _X > Portfolio_, > > Cindy Sherman's _Doll Photos_, or Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_. > > > > --Jacques ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 16:22:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Damion Searls Subject: Re: query / Levitsky (metaphor/metonymy) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Rachel, In the unlikely event that you're looking for the terms' traditional meaning (as opposed to their theory meaning, which I personally have only ever understood in brief flashes until I thought about it some more), Richard Lanham's A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS is useful. p.s. sorry i missed your shindig in CA -- i was at an absinthe party (yum! and artsy too!). backchannel and let me know how you're doing? --damion >In a message dated 9/8/00 12:36:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, >poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu writes: > >> Hi all, >> I am looking for concise and straightforward description of metaphor and = >> metonym for an undergraduate class. Any suggestions? >> thanks, >> Rachel Levitsky >> >Hello RL, > >The classic account of the metaphor/metonymy distinction is Jakobson's, as >I'm sure you know. See the essays collected in *Language in Literature* [a >paperback edit. published bu Harvard Univ. Press], where it is discussed >frequently [esp. 109-114]. I have used this book with undergraduates. >There's a lot in it that is difficult for them, but the metaphor/metonymy >thing iis not especially hard, and J's examples in the pages mentioned seem >to work well. > >If this seems too hard, Terence Hawkes summarizes Jakobson's take in >*Structuralism and Semiotcis* [pp.76-79], a useful little book that >undergraduates will be able to handle. > >Best, > >George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 20:03:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/11/00 2:04:54 PM, BobGrumman@NUT-N-BUT.NET writes: << > In the USA we're generally dealing with tastes. > And they change all the time. The reality based poem may seem shop > worn, but let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" > poems which were astonishingly innovative for the time. Wasn't William Carlos Williams doing that kind of thing long before O'Hara? -------- Austin: Nope, close but no cigar. Williams always wrote as if he had something major to say, competing with Eliot and all that. No, O'Hara's particular celebration of urban minutiae is an original. And all that Hollywood stuff. And his tone! --------- > No radical formal machinations there--just a new attitude toward > content. And no one ever accused Frank of being dour and timid. Maybe he wasn't socially, but to shrink from higher meanings (which O'Hara didn't always do) is certainly a form of timidity--as is shrinking from anything (including the banal, the informally- expressed)--as you go on to imply. ---------- Austin: Not sure we can easily identify exactly who is shrinking from higher meanings. Language has the capacity to resonate in all sorts of ways. But when the materiality of the word becomes the focus, the "poetry" tends to be about that and sometimes little else. Which is fine by me. Referential language (conventional, symbolic, etc.) more often creates rather than limits dimensions, at least such an argument may be proffered. It's the difference between opening a door on a Hollywood backlot (nothing behind it) and opening a door to a real building (lots of rooms). Of course there are exceptions, and the mind inevitably struggles to make meaning and more meaning out of all art. And some of Frank's "I do this, I do that" poems resonate like gangbusters without going for the Modernist or high Modernist major statement. On the other hand, if shrinking from "higher meanings" is the test, then poetry ended with the Modernists, since postmodernism is all about such shrinking, the fragmentation of the ONE. ------------------ > No, that dour and timid thing sounds too much like a > stereotype. In fact, it could be argued that langpo is the more timid > form since it represses direct emotional expression. Could it be > that the current ensconced innovators "fear" emotion? Are they in > fact producing the latest versions of a very long tradition of > puritan art? Of course there are arguments on both sides, and no > doubt they all are worth hearing. > > Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the > former is clearly the more innovative. Do you really believe poets trying for verbal innovation in their poetry are likely to be more innovative than poets trying for visual innovation AND verbal innovation (as all the best visual poets do)? ---------------- Austin: Keep reading. ------------------ > When it appeared on the scene, there was a > palpable sense that something new was going on, despite the obvious > and profound influence of Ashbery. I don't know about "profound" there, but I do know that Olson, Stein, Cummings, Pound, Eliot--Roethke, even--the Dadaists and others influenced language poetry a lot more than Ashbery. ----------------------- Austin: Yes, there are many influences--that's always true. But it was Ashbery and the postructuralist philosophers who got the langpo ball moving. They were more than influences--they were more like a hammer to the carburetor to start the engine. When Ashbery's poetry, and Derrida's philosophy hit land, the floodgates opened. ------------------------ > Vispo has been around for centuries, Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was decorative only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud Hollander's imitations of them. ---------------------- Austin: You should get in touch with Kuzminsky. He's got a file of vp from ancient and Medieval neighborhoods that will knock your socks off. Merely decorative? Not at all. Some beautiful and brilliant stuff. Herbert was a concrete poet, no? I'm referring to something much closer to what we have today. Of course the technology has advanced. But the procreation of computers doesn't affect the quality of vp any more than the invention of the typewriter made for better verses. But these technologies do permit new innovations which is not the same thing as quality. ------------------------ > --and remains a hybrid form that fails to appeal to many of those > whose primary love is for language--just not enough of it in vispo, > generally. Not enough of visual interest in langpo, either. Dunno what you're arguing here. We all know that some people are too narrow to appreciate one or more arts. ------------------ Austin: Of course. But I was offering an explanation, obliquely, for the relative successes of langpo and vispo. ------------------------ > By the way, I enjoy, and support, much of both langpo and > vispo. Innovation is important, but it is not the be all and end all. > There are some vispoems I consider more successful than some > langpoems, and which is more innovative becomes secondary to which is > better art. We all know that today's innovation is tomorrow's > tradition. A true traditionalist is the best thing we have, > for as Eliot (that bastard) knew, only the truly experimental > get to join the tradition which is nothing else but a record of > innovation, as any Norton Anthology clearly demonstrates. But Robert Frost is (properly) there. ---------------------------- Austin: Yes, and he was one hell of an innovator when it came to the dark/light of imagery, the potential for an image to fold back on itself, meaning and unmeaning at the same time. ----------------------------- > One problem for me is that there has been so much innovation since the > sixties that nothing looks very new, anyway. A return to direct > albeit creatively crafted emotion may be the most innovative thing > to approach right now. Perhaps not. But we can all count on one > thing. As langpo enters the tradition, joins the academy (which any > poetry must do in order to survive--like it or not, that's da fac, > Jack), there will be strong reaction and opposition from the young. > > A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and > Universities. There are exceptions, of course, but in general it takes a different kind of person to plug away in a certified career lane as one who becomes a professor must from the kind who CAN'T (for better or worse) stick to such a lane. And the former will tend to prefer knownstream to otherstream art, because that's what lines his lane. The big problem, though, is that professors wield far more short-term cultural power than independent artists, and they much more often than not use it against the best independent artists (however they try to hide that with token gestures towards the marginal--as when Marjorie Perloff granted visual poetry a seminar at Stanford that mentioned two or three genuine visual poets a while back). ---------------------------- Austin: Bob, everyone has to work, or most everyone in the real world. What about all those poets who work in the private sector in some capacity, feeding the corporate machine? What about their personalities? They're not sell outs, but Professors are? These are stereotypes, plain and simple. This still sounds like your garden variety conspiracy theory to me (they wield power against poor us). There is no backroom agreement to oppress. As I said, we're dealing with tastes--and most people who enjoy poetry, in or out of the academy, prefer work that is less conceptual, more readable. That's life. It's a big country out there. Everyone with a career is plugging, one hopes. And yes, certain few professors have power over cultural directions. What's wrong with that? It's their job. It's what they were trained for ten years to do. We can't all hit the big time. In my view, they've done a damn good, if not perfect, job. They are, after all, largely responsible for the staying power of Stein, cummings, and all those other guys we like. And it's never been true that Profs must to stick to the knownstream. It's just a better bet. When a critic goes otherstream for her/his subject, s/he's taking a risk. S/he might end up with a hat with two propellors instead of a 747. And let's face it, there's plenty left to say about those poets who are knownstream. They are really, really, good. But mostly Profs, like most other people, stick to what they enjoy. In this sense, most people on the planet are timid. Are we to believe there's some connection between the kind of personality that can't hold a job and the ability to produce quality poetry?! And what's this love of power, anyway? Who cares how much power independent artists have? It's supposed to be about art. The power is in the art. If power is so important to us, we should run for Congress. Independent artists do have more power relative to the arts academy than the guy who invents in his garage has vs. the official scientific community. So it looks like the arts academy is doing pretty well. Let's just do our job (making and sharing art), and let them do theirs. Last time I looked over the Western history of literature, I wasn't too disappointed. One terrific writer after another. ------------------------------- > A poet who has the opportunity to affect students, > to share his obsession with language with the young (some of whom > are actually eager to learn)--a sell out? When we consider that > so many young people have developed a love for poetry in such > places (both "straight from the heart" stuff and experimental), > the attacks often seem little more than straw man tactics and sour > grapes. Your point that Professors are like guardians rings > true for me. And we need that. We all must earn our way. As we > all know, many never live to see the celebration their work > ultimately achieves. Some Professors/Critics, it is true, are > quite narrow minded. But anyone who suggests that the avant garde > has historically been open minded needs to get off the booze. > Same sins in both camps, and both covet power in sometimes > very ugly ways. Long ago I threw my hat in the progressive ring, > but I damn well know that some of those "traditional" poems are a > lot better than some of the experiments I have seen. I try to > maintain a democratic palate. In my view, to shut out anything > is to deny one's self an opportunity to be influenced, to find new > combinations, to progress. > > No doubt I've overreached your comments. But I appreciate the > opportunity to sound off on a number of issues. Best, Bill Ditto to you, Bill. --Bob G. >> And that's a wrap. Best wishes to all, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 20:40:32 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Prageeta Sharma Subject: No Subject MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Volunteers needed for the annual d.u.m.b.o. art under the bridge festival!!! October 13, 14, 15, 2000 The d.u.m.b.o. arts center is looking for volunteers to help for this year's festival. Help is needed in all of the above areas: Live Action Painting: artists interpret live nudes during a 2-hour period with music, food, and onlookers; auction of works to follow; body painting to occur as well!-Saturday October 14th 8 p.m. Theater; Film/Video; Spoken Word; Fashion Show; Dance: all events to occur in multiple locations all weekend long! We also need help with music, parties, installations, logistics, administration and more.. Contact: Hedi, Joy or Steve at d.u.m.b.o. arts center (dac) 718 624-3772 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 19:05:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: query / Levitsky-jakobson In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, that's the one I had in mind. It's in the Harvard Language in Literature as simply "Linguistics and Poetics." Thanks, Kevin. >Taylor is right. This article gets a bit thick as it goes on but is a >great place to wade in to. > >Jakobson, Roman. "Concluding Statement: Linguistics and Poetics", Style in >language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. > [Cambridge] Technology Press of Massachusetts >Institute of Technology [1960]. 350- 377) > > >I've been walking around with this essay for some time now and it is >unfortunate that, 40 years later, his conclusion still holds true. > >"If there are some critics that believe who still doubt the competence of >linguistics to embrace the field of poetics, I privately believe that the >poetic competence of some bigoted linguists has been mistaken for the an >inadequacy of the linguistic science itself. All of us here, however, >definitely realize that a linguist deaf to the poetic function of language >and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant >in linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronisms." (Jakobson 377) > > >bests,, >kevin > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 22:00:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Wolff Subject: Wilson and Ames at Housing Works Comments: To: xintra@msn.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Friday, September 15th, 7 pm Housing Works Used Book Cafe 26 Crosby Street, New York Admission is Free Cintra Wilson and Jonathan Ames reading from their new books, respectively: A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease; and What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer. CIntra Wilson is a beloved columnist at Salon and controversial columnist for the San Francisco Examiner; this is her first book. Jonathan Ames is the author of I Pass Like Night and The Extra Man. Both are available in paperback. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 23:35:21 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: language in lingua franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Forgive my forwarding with Patrick's permission. I'm delighted to be in sync with anyone as bright as he is: "A poet who has the opportunity to affect students, to share his obsession with language with the young (some of whom are actually eager to learn)--a sell out? When we consider that so many young people have developed a love for poetry in such places (both "straight from the heart" stuff and experimental), the attacks often seem little more than straw man tactics and sour grapes. Your point that Professors are like guardians rings true for me. And we need that. We all must earn our way. As we all know, many never live to see the celebration their work ultimately achieves. Some Professors/Critics, it is true, are quite narrow minded. But anyone who suggests that the avant garde has historically been open minded needs to get off the booze. Same sins in both camps, and both covet power in sometimes very ugly ways. Long ago I threw my hat in the progressive ring, but I damn well know that some of those "traditional" poems are a lot better than some of the experiments I have seen." I see what you mean by my taking the words out of your mouth; here, you have taken mine. Could not say this any better. Patrick ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 02:12:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Igor Satanovsky Subject: Re: language in lingua franca and VisPo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bob, knowing you as one of the most knowledgeable practitioners/critics engaged in VisPo today, I was surprised to read yr following statement: << Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was decorative only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud Hollander's imitations of them. >> Practically every anthology on this subject proves otherwise. A visual aspect of poetry, far from being a decorative element, was a manifested and essential component at the cradle of human culture, and together with oral tradition, religion and written sign constituted ONE inseparable cultural field. A split between art and literature happened later, in the process of urbanization. Everywhere we look back in history, we find irrefutable evidence that tradition of VisPo has always existed. Here are just a couple of sources (and there is so much more out there): Visual LitCrit. Precisely: Three Four Five, ed. by Richard Kostelanetz. West Coast Poetry Review, 1979. - Most of this volume is dedicated to LitCrit on VisPo before 20th century. "A Point of View: Visual Poetry in the 90's", ed. by D. Bulanov, Simplisii, Russia, 1998 - has 2 wonderful articles on a continuous tradition of VisPo by Jeremy Adler and "Idea of VisPo: Reconstruction of Archive" by Dmitry Bulatov (unfortunately, both in Russian, but available in English somewhere else, i am sure). In short, in the last hundred years, we have witnessed a serious revival of VisPo, accompanied by movement toward reintegration of art and writing. Let's not diminish or underestimate VisPo's rich history. Now that we have a firmly established tradition of avant-garde writing (!), it should be easier to accept. As for limitations of "avant-garde" as a term specific to the 20 century, don't get me started ;-) ... Best, Igor Satanovsky isat@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 01:26:08 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: LangPo Innovation & Reply to Bill Austin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill. I was making a general point about innovation. I made this point to John Geraets who edits ABDOTWW which came under "attack" from a young friend of mine Scott Hamilton. I was trying to point out that the main complaint of Alan Loney had seemed to me (he wrote many editorials which were interesting but constantly complained of him and the "avant garde" (altho I dont think he used that term) being relegated to the margins etc) to be that "oppositional" writing, as he called it, was being rejected, and that the more conservative or "realist" writers, many of whom are pretty dull in fact, were still dominating the scene. But Geraets didnt see the point that, if Loney is a major N.Z. poet (and significant enough or original enough)(and I like his work very much)to be "disturbing the universe" say in contradistinction to our more moderate lit. mags, then that was a) one good thing about his acheivement and b) it is true of all innovation that it challenges the "establishment" at some level.He didnt see the importabce of the (ultimately) the political connection.As to Frank O'Hara, his homosexuality would have been a significant political factor, even tho not obvious at the time, and to some people, his poems would be just too strange to deal with. A lot of writers (who are lauded today and made poet laureates etc) would be quite hostile, even now, to O'Hara's poems. He WAS an innovator. He influenced Ashbery - well you probably know that story.However, your point about innovators, or certain Lang Poets fearing emotion is worth thinking about.Perhaps many of us do. I'm interested in those writers and the Black Mountain derivatees (eg would that include Eshlemann?) but something that concerns me about them is that in their very passion for language etc they become humourless.Or tend to, or could. And I have noticed that many (all?) of the "great" writers have a comic sense.Swift,Rabellais, Stevens,Joyce,Ashbery (somewhat),James Tate (just "locked on" to him),O'Hara,Bukowski,Ted Berrigan - even,dare i say it, Gerty Stein! Or there is a kind of surprised sureality about their vision. I just read the (Laura's)intro to Laura Riding's poems(I hadnt read much of her if anything), and despite the almost tortured struggle she has to reconcile language and truth, her poems are extraordinary. And they're extraordinary in a kind of comic vision that,say, Selima Hill of England seems to have. But I dont mean that thus we dodge the "dark" things.They are implicit in Riding and Stein - "inside" the words. No. But by innovation, I maybe mean actually a return to certain fundamental forces in poetry.That said, I think that in say, Ron Silliman's Tjanting the extraordinary concetration on detail is almost revelatory. And the same things that move me in that work, are what move me in a poem by Blake.(A poet in N.Z.,who has been influenced by Zukovsky and some of the Lang Poets that I think is of extraordinary ability, and has a kind of lyric intellection, is Michelle Leggott in her book "Dia" for example.)There are, or seem to me to be little "epiphanies" in his( R.S's) works - within (or between) the very sentences.So I dont think that a return to certain Rupert Brookian, or Masefieldian thing, or the Romantics as such.But I interested in the way certain writers have picked up the "deep image" and combined it with the quotidian.(This is a bit roughly put I know.) Sometimes Anselm Hollo pulls off some excellent things in "Microcosms", or remember Ted Berrigan's Sonnets with all their borrowings and then the sudden realisation one gets that one is suddenly there.Maybe Creeley too. I'm starting to wander, but, (I wouldnt knock Eliot so much,I know he was a bit of a miserable old bugger...but...)and then their's Jack Spicer. And me! I'll send some things I've done,am doing and I'll discuss some of other points later.Looks as tho I'm getting too many words!At least I've got off poor old Bei Ling's case.By the way, I'm not on the attack against universities.I think they are vital,and the professors who can inspire so much.Warm regards to you Bill and the others of course,Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 2:38 PM Subject: Re: language in lingua franca > In a message dated 9/7/00 9:08:36 AM, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: > > << So the authoritarians,patriarchs, or the > > traditionalists are usually in opposition to new styles or ideas and are > > often dour and timid persons. They fear change of any kind. People "fear" > > poetry: even the less "strangified" writing is seen as dangerous. Is this > > new? No. Its very old and is part of a continuous struggle between the new > > and the old. Pound's dictum to make it new still holds. Not to is to give > > up. But lets not become fixated on LangPo. There are ways of writing that > > may be influenced by these writers that may go past it: as long as there is > > not a reversion to simplistic traditionalism (often by critics or writers > > who write in a manner that is "realistic" or "straight from the heart", and > > which "tells something" (when it could be told better in formal, or > > explicative prose), >> > > Hi Richard, mind if I add my measly one cent? I like most of what you said > in your post (which is quite a bit longer than what I have reproduced here), > but I do think you overstate just a tad. I guess some "traditionalists" fear > poetry, but that is pretty much confined to countries in which a poem can > stir the political tides. In the USA we're generally dealing with tastes. > And they change all the time. The reality based poem may seem shop worn, but > let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" poems which were > astonishingly innovative for the time. No radical formal machinations > there--just a new attitude toward content. And no one ever accused Frank of > being dour and timid. No, that dour and timid thing sounds too much like a > stereotype. In fact, it could be argued that langpo is the more timid form > since it represses direct emotional expression. Could it be that the current > ensconced innovators "fear" emotion? Are they in fact producing the latest > versions of a very long tradition of puritan art? Of course there are > arguments on both sides, and no doubt they all are worth hearing. > > Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the former is > clearly the more innovative. When it appeared on the scene, there was a > palpable sense that something new was going on, despite the obvious and > profound influence of Ashbery. Vispo has been around for centuries, and > remains a hybrid form that fails to appeal to many of those whose primary > love is for language--just not enough of it in vispo, generally. By the way, > I enjoy, and support, much of both langpo and vispo. Innovation is > important, but it is not the be all and end all. There are some vispoems I > consider more successful than some langpoems, and which is more innovative > becomes secondary to which is better art. We all know that today's > innovation is tomorrow's tradition. A true traditionalist is the best thing > we have, for as Eliot (that bastard) knew, only the truly experimental get to > join the tradition which is nothing else but a record of innovation, as any > Norton Anthology clearly demonstrates. > > One problem for me is that there has been so much innovation since the > sixties that nothing looks very new, anyway. A return to direct albeit > creatively crafted emotion may be the most innovative thing to approach right > now. Perhaps not. But we can all count on one thing. As langpo enters the > tradition, joins the academy (which any poetry must do in order to > survive--like it or not, that's da fac, Jack), there will be strong reaction > and opposition from the young. > > A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and > Universities. A poet who has the opportunity to affect students, to share > his obsession with language with the young (some of whom are actually eager > to learn)--a sell out? When we consider that so many young people have > developed a love for poetry in such places (both "straight from the heart" > stuff and experimental), the attacks often seem little more than straw man > tactics and sour grapes. Your point that Professors are like guardians rings > true for me. And we need that. We all must earn our way. As we all know, > many never live to see the celebration their work ultimately achieves. Some > Professors/Critics, it is true, are quite narrow minded. But anyone who > suggests that the avant garde has historically been open minded needs to get > off the booze. Same sins in both camps, and both covet power in sometimes > very ugly ways. Long ago I threw my hat in the progressive ring, but I damn > well know that some of those "traditional" poems are a lot better than some > of the experiments I have seen. I try to maintain a democratic palate. In > my view, to shut out anything is to deny one's self an opportunity to be > influenced, to find new combinations, to progress. > > No doubt I've overreached your comments. But I appreciate the opportunity to > sound off on a number of issues. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 01:28:59 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David. It could be, but what about simply "to delight". Richard Taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Baptiste Chirot" To: Sent: Friday, September 08, 2000 7:50 AM Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics > Isn't the ancient (I believe from Horace) definition of poetry's > function "to delight and instruct"? > > --dbc > > > > > On Fri, 1 Sep 2000, Fredrik Hertzberg LIT wrote: > > > On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Jacques Debrot wrote: > > > > > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's > > > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& his > > > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's assumption > > > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic distance > > > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of *demystifying* > > > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward the > > > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her > > > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for this > > > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's > > > > This is a weird statement, I would have thought just the oppiste, that > > Bernstein welcomes both rhetoric and aesthetics, as well as pleasure. > > Read "A Blow Is like an Instrument". But I guess Bernstein can be read in > > variou,s opposing, contradictiry, self-contradictory ways. But weird > > nevertheless. > > > > Fred > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 09:58:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: In defense of L.F. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I went to the Lingua Franca website and read the article "Is Bad Writing Necessary," by Foucault biographer James Miller. While based on a binary opposition that might appear to be simplistic, the article makes reference to an actually existing and quite interesting debate. I followed internet links the the London Review of Books, where Eagleton reviews Gayatri Spivak and is answered in a letter to the editor by Butler (Judith). The portraits of Orwell and Adorno that Miller presents are far from simplistic; this article is not a simple middle-brow bashing of theoretical jargon. It is relatively well-informed and lively journalism. It might have seemed superficial had I been reading it in Critical Inquiry... Jonathan Mayhew jmayhew@ukans.edu _____________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 09:11:51 -0600 Reply-To: Laura.Wright@Colorado.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wright Laura E Subject: Collom, Yates, Bernstein read in Boulder, 9/21 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit COLLOM, YATES, BERNSTEIN OPEN LEFT HAND SEASON WITH BENEFIT The Left Hand Reading Series returns for a fifth season with a reading to benefit Dead Metaphor Press. Poet Jack Collom, a popular favorite, will be joined by poet Katie Yates and writer Tree Bernstein. Thursday, September 21st at 8:00 p.m. in the V Room at the Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut Street in Boulder, CO. Admission is free, but donations are requested, and proceeds will go to benefit Dead Metaphor Press, a local literary publisher. There will be a short Open Reading immediatedly before the featured readings. Sign up for the Open Reading will take place promptly at 8:00 p.m. For more information about the Left Hand Reading Series, call (303) 938-9346 or (303) 544-5854. More about the readers: Jack Collom is a distinguished poet who has graced Boulder with his presence for many years. The author of 16 books of poetry, including the recent _Dog Sonnets_ (Jensen/ Daniels) and _Entering the City_ (Backwaters Press), Collom has recorded two spoken word CDs with local musician Ken Bernstein, and was twice awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His selected poems, _Red Car Goes By_, will be published by Tuumba in November, 2001. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Writing & Poetics at Naropa University. Katie Yates is the author of _Olivia_ and _So Difficulty_, both published by Rodent Press, _Reference_ (We Press) and _Is It Happening?_ (Boog Lit). A resident the past four years at the Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center, she will be moving back to Boulder in the Fall. Tree Bernstein is the publisher and graphic designer for Tree House Press and Nest Egg Books. Her chapbooks include _On The Way Here_, short stories, published by Baksun Books and _Journal of the Lingering Fall_, a memoir, published by Dead Metaphor Press. Most recently her work has appeared in _Thus Spake The Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998_ and in the latest issue of Naropa's literary magazine _Bombay Gin_. The Left Hand Reading Series is an independent series presenting readings of original literary works by emerging and established writers. Founded in 1996 and originally sponsored by Boulder's Left Hand Bookstore, the series is now curated by poets Mark DuCharme and Laura Wright. Readings in the series are presented monthly. The Left Hand Reading Series is funded in part by grants from the Boulder Arts Commission and the Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder County (AHAB). Upcoming events in the series include: Thursday, October 19: Joe Amato, Kass Fleisher, Laura Wright ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "The writer belongs to a language which no one speaks..." -M. Blanchot Laura E. Wright University of Colorado, Norlin Library Acquisitions Dept. (303) 492-8457 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 13:52:02 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: subliminal bush Comments: To: Subsubpoetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit FW: insider for Sept. 12 A campaign ad for Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush in which the word "RATS," a fragment of the word "bureaucrats," pops up in one frame is raising questions about subliminal advertising. The image lasts a 30th of a second, but is in large white letters, larger than any other word in the commercial criticizing Democratic nominee Al Gore's prescription drug plan as one that would be decided by bureaucrats (Richard Berke, NEW YORK TIMES, 9/12). The ad was produced by Alex Castellanos, who created the 1990 ad for Republican U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms showing a pair of white hands crumbling a rejection letter because the job went to a black man. It aired during Helms' campaign against former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt. Castellanos, who produced the 30-second Bush commercial for the Republican National Committee, insisted use of the word "RATS" was "purely accidental," saying, "We don't play ball that way. I'm not that clever." Asked when he noticed it, Castellanos said, "That's all I want to say." The FCC does not explicitly prohibit subliminal advertising, a spokesman said, but "we have policy statements and public notices that indicate they are inherently intended to be deceptive and might be contrary to the public interest." pH ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 22:03:32 +0000 Reply-To: anielsen@lmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: anielsen@LMU.EDU Subject: language in the enquirer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Dodie: You must be at the wrong checkout counter -- The NATIONAL ENQUIRER of academia is the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, which is properly tabloid, has recently bifurcated, and is delivered in protective plastic sheathing. There you can read HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST ON LANGUAGE DIET, BROOKLYN PROF SLAYS BAD THINKING AND SELF, WHY RUDY HATED COLLEGE and many other delights -- AND the back is filled with something that looks suspiciously like PERSONALS ads -- LINGUA FRANCA has attempted to match this with cover come-ons like AN MLA MEMBER IN THE WHITE HOUSE?, but the CHRONICLE comes out weekly, as any good tabloid should -- "Has All-- a Codicil?" -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Department of English Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 anielsen@lmu.edu (310) 338-3078 _________________________________________________ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 22:03:27 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ian davidson Subject: Fanny Howe Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Just joined the list so apologies if this has already been mentioned. A Folio for Fanny Howe, published last year by Spectacular Diseases, contains Q along with a good range of essays on her by Armantrout, Green, Huk, Middleton and Mills. It's available throught Small Press Distribution in Berkley apparently. Goes with the Selected Poems like bread with butter. Ian _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 16:02:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <39BCF8A6.6B7F@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII thanks Bob! the puritans though have a solution for the fifty per cent they get wrong-- they substitute might and as all know: "might makes RIGHT!" (from earliest puritan assaults on american indian and quaker communities to "manifest destiny" to "human rights" + "star wars" ="free trade on our terms") as the New Hampshire license plate puts it: LIVE FREE OR DIE --dave baptiste On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Bob Grumman wrote: > David Baptiste Chirot wrote: > > > > Isn't the ancient (I believe from Horace) definition of > > poetry's function "to delight and instruct"? > > > Yes, Horace--getting it 50% wrong the way even the best puritans always > do. > > --Bob G. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 16:58:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Dickison Subject: Vancouver poets SUSAN CLARK & LISA ROBERTSON Thurs Sept 14, 7:30 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable *** Please forward this to anyone who might be interested. THANKS!! Our calendar is in the mail, but late-any day now, it will drop. *** POETRY CENTER 2000 The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives presents Special evening with Vancouver poets SUSAN CLARK & LISA ROBERTSON Thursday, September 14, 7:30 pm, $5 donation @ the Unitarian Center 1187 Franklin (at Geary) Treat yourself & don't miss this evening from two of Canada's finest-- Poet SUSAN CLARK, best known south of the border here in the U.S. for her role as editor of the long-lived poetry journal Raddle Moon (http://www.sfu.ca/~clarkd/raddlemoon/), has been a major bridge-builder between writers working in innovative traditions in Canada, Great Britain, and the U.S. She also works as editor on the collaborative publishing projects Giantess and Sprang Texts. Ms. Clark is author of Believing in the World: a reference work (Tsunami) and several as-yet-unpublished mss., including the truly long poem Bad Infinity, that she says is "about everything." * LISA ROBERTSON's books XEclogue and Debbie: An Epic (both from New Star) have been astounding readers and become new classics of our post-millennial moment. Debbie was nominated for Canada's highest literary prize, the Governor-General's Award. Recently in San Francisco briefly, she debuted her new work, The Weather (forthcoming from New Star). Both Ms. Clark and Ms. Robertson have been affiliated with Vancouver's adventurous Kootenay School of Writing for over a decade. "Robertson is a poet of breathtaking originality" --Kevin Killian. "I feel I've made 'things' too long and have come to abhor their making. This blowsy nothing--'my book--is the result. The endless, endless, endless, neglected, obsessed over and into book. Agglomerative, bulgy; insultingly, needlessly big. . . . Made to be for 'everything' but not a container. . . . Overwhelm is where I live; it interests me to examine its positive values! To take it on as a determined practice." --Susan Clark (on Bad Infinity) AND, coming soon=8A=8Asame time, same location, two weeks hence=8A. An evening of Words & Music TOM RAWORTH & BRUCE ACKLEY Thursday, September 28, 7:30 pm, $5 donation @ the Unitarian Center 1187 Franklin (at Geary) THE UNITARIAN CENTER is located at 1187 Franklin St. at the corner of Geary on-street parking opens up at 7:00 pm from downtown SF take the Geary bus to Franklin =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D Readings that take place at The Poetry Center are free of charge. Except as indicated, a $5 donation is requested for readings off-campus-SFSU students and Poetry Center members get in free. The Poetry Center's programs are supported by funding from Grants for the Arts-Hotel Tax Fund of the City of San Francisco, the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc., and The Fund for Poetry, as well as by the Dean of the College of Humanities at San Francisco State University, and by donations from our members. Join us! =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Steve Dickison, Director The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives ~ San Francisco State Univers= ity 1600 Holloway Avenue ~ San Francisco CA 94132 ~ vox 415-338-3401 ~ fax 415-338-0966 http://www.sfsu.edu/~newlit ~ ~ ~ L=E2 taltazim h=E2latan, wal=E2kin durn b=EE-llay=E2ly kam=E2 tad=FBwru Don't cling to one state turn with the Nights, as they turn ~Maq=E2mat al-Hamadh=E2ni (tenth century; tr Stefania Pandolfo) ~ ~ ~ Bring all the art and science of the world, and baffle and humble it with one spear of grass. ~Walt Whitman's notebook ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 23:22:09 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: shelf space Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hey all--strapped for cash and needing to clear up some shelf space at the same time, I wanted to offer the below six books for $20 (plus $3 S&H to US) to the first backchanneler: Noon, Cole Swensen Try, Cole Swensen CONDUIT, Barrett Watten Description, Arkadii Dragomoschenko (trans. Hejinian) The Little Door Slides Back, Jeff Clark Captive Audience, Bob Perelman Please b/c if you're interested, to elloyd74@hotmail.com Also available, for $7 plus $3 S&H: "O Solo Homo: the new queer performance," ed. Holly Hughes and David Roman. Published in 1998 with a list price of $17.50, the anthology includes performance texts by Hughes, Luis Alfaro, Tanya Barfield, Kate Bornstein, Craig Hickman, Michael Kearns, Alec Mapa, Susan Miller, Tim Miller, Peggy Shaw, Carmelita Tropicana, Denise Uyehara, and Ron Vawter (481 pages). Thanks all. And I fiercely agree w/Taylor re: pleasure, em _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 09:15:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hi dodie, yeah, lingua franca is lots of fun, and it's certainly more substantive than many of us feared when we first learned it was coming into existence. it just has its drawbacks is all, and because the treatment is often so thorough and thoughtful it's harder to see the marketing strategies of journalism that still obtain. love you madly --md At 9:01 AM -0700 9/11/00, Dodie Bellamy wrote: >At 9:30 AM -0600 9/8/00, Maria Damon wrote: >>i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms >>of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual >>rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) >>against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their journalistic >>packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from >>the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. > >You're right, Maria, the Adorno/Orwell standoff was really bizarre, >but fun, kind of like a mental roller coaster ride. I love Lingua >Franca, myself, see as a kind of National Enquirer for academics. >Years ago, when I'd never heard of the mag, Kevin and I were crashing >at Albert Mobilio's studio in NYC, and Albert was still writing for >LF at the time, so copies were lying around. KK and I read the issue >about the sexual harassment charges against Jane Gallup, and we >signed up for a subscription when we got home. I still sometimes >think about how taking one's shoe off while sitting in a chair could >be seen as a sign of sexual aggression. > >Or I was talking recently to someone from the English Department at >Stonybrook, and I'm like, "Your department's been through a lot >lately!" Having read all about it in--where else--Lingua Franca! > >But if I were doing serious academic writing--or expecting that--I'd >be burning issues myself. > >Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 11:28:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: PUBLIC APOLOGY (for Wendy Kramer, etc.) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Folks, I would like to apologize for some quotes attributed to me in an interview that appears in the latest HIGHWIRE ANTHOLOGY edited by Greg Fuchs and Kyle Conner.... Especially in regards to Wendy Kramer. First, I did NOT say, "She's Wet Like A child," Second, all the comments about Wendy were meant to be absolutely positive, childlike(ness) as a virtue--- and this in fact was probably even the rationale of the editors on publishing an excerpt (ill-transcribed at that) of a drunken transcript with me..... and i very much appreciate Mr. Fuchs and Mr. Conner's decision to do so.... but still feel a need to offer an apology, to honor the Apollonian professional identity alienation so important these days when it comes to reputation..... and hope I did not create (unintentionally) yet another enemy.... chris stroffolino------------- ------ P.S. Beware of magazines/journals that reject your work on the grounds that it doesn't fit the topic juliana spahr wrote: > CALL FOR WORK > Chain 8: Comics > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 18:39:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Prageeta Sharma Subject: Huang Chih-Yang's Lover's Library opening Sept. 21 @Ethan Cohen Fine Arts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable HUANG CHIH-YANG: LOVER=92S LIBRARY SEPTEMBER 21, 2000-OCTOBER 25, 2000 Ethan Cohen Fine Arts welcomes you to Lover=92s Library, a one-man show=20 opening September 21 from 6-8 PM of Huang Chih-Yang=92s most recent works. =20= Love r=92s Library is a series of ink brush portraits depicting couples in New Yo= rk=20 City. Each portrait is created with Chinese ink on a 11=92 x 4=92 silk canva= s.=20 The series is a rigorous cataloguing of the human body both as an "amorous=20 object" and a "deliberative figure," which are terms that relate directly to= =20 Roland Barthes=92 A Lover=92s Discourse, a text that has helped to organize=20= and=20 influence this series of portraits and Huang=92s use of this space. Huang Chih-Yang=92s portraits present the body through the process of=20 documentation: starting from a photograph of the couple taken in his studio,= =20 Huang sets out to redefine the body. He essentializes and garnishes the=20 beauty of the human form thus allowing the portrait to become both intimate=20 and bold. Additionally, his use of the brush enables Huang to create a fine= =20 hypnotic form or in Barthes terms, a "deliberative figure." Huang Chih-Yang= =20 establishes a remarkable visual discourse where his luminous canvases=20 illustrate the ambiguities of this form. These figures both perplex and=20 point the viewer closer to the body as a "human shell," and allow Huang to=20 idealize the "the total union" of the coupling. Huang Chih-Yang=92s previou= s=20 shows "Zoon" and "Ideal Lovers" touch on similar themes as "Lover=92s Librar= y"=20 addressing the tensions between representation and realism, and the handsome= =20 line of the brush. Huang Chih-Yang=92s work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europ= e,=20 Asia and the United States. He has had solo exhibitions at numerous venues=20 including: Hanart =20 T Z Gallery, Ludwig Forum for the Arts, and The Art Studio in Taiwan. He ha= s=20 also participated in group shows at The Drawing Center, Asia Society=92s=20 Inside/Out show, and The Venice Biennial. Please join us in welcoming Huang=20 Chih-Yang. ETHAN COHEN FINE ARTS* 37 Walker Street* New York, New York 212-625-1250 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 01:23:34 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity Comments: To: patrick@proximate.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed "i understand that you and many others associate binaries with war and sports teams, but that doesn't make the very structure of a binary repulsive or ignorant in any way." Quite right. Saussure has much to say about this, without which we would all stand mute. Ron Silliman _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 21:35:06 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I snipped a lot you said about taste, Taylor, which sounds interesting to me but outside what I believe I was talking about, which is simply that pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. To say, as you do, that it's not a matter of "defeating" disgust or pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under certain concrete conditions," seems to me insane. Black is white under certain conditions. Being dead is being alive under certain conditions. I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. > And this is consistent in the other direction > as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs > to me as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways > typical of "pleasure." So you experience a mixture of pain and pleasure. You do not experience pain as pleasure. > A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: > > Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other > people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to > want that which causeS you to feel only pain, in whatever form. > > Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you > manage to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those > insane people who want that which causes only pain), from the > class defined before (those sane people who are practicing > nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, > without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly > that appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've > just announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced > that you've demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure > from" and "wanting that which." From either angle, you're allowing > me as a sane person full access to my pleasure, but only so long as > I maintain a categorical distinction between that pleasure and pain, > setting the stage for the truly > perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without > psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely > that which I do not want. > > Still crazy, > Taylor Maybe not, but I don't follow you. By pleasure I mean that which makes a given person feel good in some way. It has nothing to do with "the practices and preferences of other people." If a nonconformist derives pleasure from a poem that makes everyone else vomit he is sane; if he reads that poem in hopes ONLY that it will cause him to be sick (assuming being sick is painful for him), then he is insane. The difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting that which" gives nothing but pain in the short term, and leads to no conceivable plesure in the long term, is that the first is about feeling good, the second about feeling bad. How can it be sane to want to feel bad-- unless what caused you to feel bad will later make you feel more good than you felt bad? > P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our > primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to > imply that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - > any more than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. > I'd like to see room for what I've argued alongside the more > "intentional," less "undergone" pleasures of the perfectly executed > double play or the meticulous alphabetizing of my library. My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second what makes a person feel good. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 22:35:35 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: language in lingua franca and VisPo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, Igor. Thanks for the list of anthologies, not all of which I've looked at. No time to argue a very involved question (was there serious visual poetry before the 20th century), but must say that I have a narrower idea of visual poetry than most people, and that's what I'm talking about. I don't consider words and pictures sharing the page to be visual poetry necessarily. I think that in the past there were all kinds of wonderful meldings of the verbal and the visual--but they had little to do with making significant esthetic use of the way words can look. A parallel would be sound poetry, which I think new to the 20th century even though opera has been with us since before Greece. Some day maybe I'll have time to defend my proposition a lot better-- and I certainly would agree with anyone who thinks I haven't studied sufficient earlier work. always the best to you, Bob ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 22:20:16 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Austinwja@AOL.COM wrote: > > The reality based poem may seem shop > > worn, but let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" > > poems which were astonishingly innovative for the time. > > Wasn't William Carlos Williams doing that kind of thing long before > O'Hara? > > Austin: Nope, close but no cigar. Williams always wrote as if he > had something major to say, competing with Eliot and all that. No, > O'Hara's particular celebration of urban minutiae is an original. > And all that Hollywood stuff. And his tone! Well, you're interested in smaller originalities than I am. Williams's plums in the fridge poem, which I can't stand, did the main thing O'Hara's "I did this, I did that" poems did. But, yes, O'Hara's personality was different than Williams's. But all poetic oeuvres are "original" in the sense that they express different people's personalities, since all personalities are different. > > No radical formal machinations there--just a new attitude toward > > content. And no one ever accused Frank of being dour and timid. Snip of stuff about O'Hara that's interesting but I was just reacting to the idea of untimidity of personality indicating untimidity of poetry, which it doesn't. > > Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the > > former is clearly the more innovative. > > Do you really believe poets trying for verbal innovation in their > poetry are likely to be more innovative than poets trying for visual > innovation AND verbal innovation (as all the best visual poets do)? > > ---------------- > > Austin: Keep reading. I did but don't feel you came close to answering the question. > ------------------ Re: langpo: > When Ashbery's poetry, and Derrida's > philosophy hit land, the floodgates opened. I dunno about that, but don't know enough or have to learn enough to argue it. > > ------------------------ > > > Vispo has been around for centuries, > > Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than > a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was > decorative only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud > Hollander's imitations of them. > > ---------------------- > > Austin: You should get in touch with Kuzminsky. He's got a file of > vp from ancient and Medieval neighborhoods that will knock your socks > off. Merely decorative? Not at all. Some beautiful and brilliant > stuff. About all I've seen of ancient and medieval visio-textual art was the stuff in Dick Higgins's big gathering, and nothing I saw made any impression on me. > Herbert was a concrete poet, no? I guess. But concrete poetry is a form of visual poetry. > I'm referring to something much closer to what we have > today. Of course the technology has advanced. But the procreation of > computers doesn't affect the quality of vp any more than the invention > of the typewriter made for better verses. But these technologies do > permit new innovations which is not the same thing as quality. Well, I don't know what Kuzminsky has or how good it is. All I know is that I'm aware of visual poetry that is verbally as innovative as language poetry, in my view--and also visually innovative. I simply don't see how language poetry can be as innovative as visual poetry. snip > But Robert Frost is (properly) there. > > ---------------------------- > > Austin: Yes, and he was one hell of an innovator when it came to the > dark/light of imagery, the potential for an image to fold back on > itself, meaning and unmeaning at the same time. Like O'Hara, he had a unique personality. I fail to find any genuine innovation in his poetry. To me, he's just an improved Thomas Hardy (though that's a lot, since Hardy was a major poet, it seems to me). > > A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and > > Universities. > > There are exceptions, of course, but in general it takes a different > kind of person to plug away in a certified career lane as one who > becomes a professor must from the kind who CAN'T (for better or worse) > stick to such a lane. And the former will tend to prefer knownstream > to otherstream art, because that's what lines his lane. The big > problem, though, is that professors wield far more short-term cultural > power than independent artists, and they much more often than not > use it against the best independent artists (however they try to hide > that with token gestures towards the marginal--as when Marjorie > Perloff granted visual poetry a seminar at Stanford that mentioned > two or three genuine visual poets a while back). > > ---------------------------- > > Austin: Bob, everyone has to work, or most everyone in the real > world. What about all those poets who work in the private sector in > some capacity, feeding the corporate machine? What about their > personalities? They're not sell outs, but Professors are? These > are stereotypes, plain and simple. I didn't say anything about sell-outs. I was merely sketchily explaining why there are attacks on academics. Professors work inside the establishment, artists can work there, too, but usually don't. So there's friction between the two. > And yes, certain few professors have power over > cultural directions. What's wrong with that? Nothing except that, except for a very few rare exceptions, they use their power to reward mediocrity while the van Goghs have to wait until they've been dead fifty years to make anything whatever from their art. Snip of opinion about the value of academics as conservators of dead artists' work, which they are, and for which they are to be commended. But why must they also throw so much support to contemporary imitators of dead artists' work? Incidentally, it's not "cummings," but "Cummings." > Are we to believe there's some connection between the kind of > personality that can't hold a job and the ability to produce quality > poetry?! No. There is, however, a connection between the kind of adventurousness that finds following years of rules to become a Ph.D.and then professor difficult and the ability to produce innovative art. > And what's this love of power, anyway? > Who cares how much power independent artists have? > It's supposed to be about art. The power is in the art. > If power is so important to us, we should run > for Congress. Independent artists do have more power relative > to the arts academy than the guy who invents in his garage has vs. > the official scientific community. So it looks like the arts > academy is doing pretty well. Let's just do our job (making and > sharing art), and let them do theirs. Last time I looked over the > Western history of literature, I wasn't too disappointed. One > terrific writer after another. One terrific dead writer after another, followed by living imitators. As for power, I mentioned it merely to suggest why otherstream artists resent academics. The latter have the power to help the former, and don't. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 23:00:29 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: LangPo Innovation & Reply to Bill Austin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/12/00 2:49:00 PM, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << Bill. I was making a general point about innovation. I made this point to John Geraets who edits ABDOTWW which came under "attack" from a young friend of mine Scott Hamilton. I was trying to point out that the main complaint of Alan Loney had seemed to me (he wrote many editorials which were interesting but constantly complained of him and the "avant garde" (altho I dont think he used that term) being relegated to the margins etc) to be that "oppositional" writing, as he called it, was being rejected, and that the more conservative or "realist" writers, many of whom are pretty dull in fact, were still dominating the scene. But Geraets didnt see the point that, if Loney is a major N.Z. poet (and significant enough or original enough)(and I like his work very much)to be "disturbing the universe" say in contradistinction to our more moderate lit. mags, then that was a) one good thing about his acheivement and b) it is true of all innovation that it challenges the "establishment" at some level.He didnt see the importabce of the (ultimately) the political connection.As to Frank O'Hara, his homosexuality would have been a significant political factor, even tho not obvious at the time, and to some people, his poems would be just too strange to deal with. A lot of writers (who are lauded today and made poet laureates etc) would be quite hostile, even now, to O'Hara's poems. He WAS an innovator. He influenced Ashbery - well you probably know that story.However, your point about innovators, or certain Lang Poets fearing emotion is worth thinking about.Perhaps many of us do. I'm interested in those writers and the Black Mountain derivatees (eg would that include Eshlemann?) but something that concerns me about them is that in their very passion for language etc they become humourless.Or tend to, or could. And I have noticed that many (all?) of the "great" writers have a comic sense.Swift,Rabellais, Stevens,Joyce,Ashbery (somewhat),James Tate (just "locked on" to him),O'Hara,Bukowski,Ted Berrigan - even,dare i say it, Gerty Stein! Or there is a kind of surprised sureality about their vision. I just read the (Laura's)intro to Laura Riding's poems(I hadnt read much of her if anything), and despite the almost tortured struggle she has to reconcile language and truth, her poems are extraordinary. And they're extraordinary in a kind of comic vision that,say, Selima Hill of England seems to have. But I dont mean that thus we dodge the "dark" things.They are implicit in Riding and Stein - "inside" the words. No. But by innovation, I maybe mean actually a return to certain fundamental forces in poetry.That said, I think that in say, Ron Silliman's Tjanting the extraordinary concetration on detail is almost revelatory. And the same things that move me in that work, are what move me in a poem by Blake.(A poet in N.Z.,who has been influenced by Zukovsky and some of the Lang Poets that I think is of extraordinary ability, and has a kind of lyric intellection, is Michelle Leggott in her book "Dia" for example.)There are, or seem to me to be little "epiphanies" in his( R.S's) works - within (or between) the very sentences.So I dont think that a return to certain Rupert Brookian, or Masefieldian thing, or the Romantics as such.But I interested in the way certain writers have picked up the "deep image" and combined it with the quotidian.(This is a bit roughly put I know.) Sometimes Anselm Hollo pulls off some excellent things in "Microcosms", or remember Ted Berrigan's Sonnets with all their borrowings and then the sudden realisation one gets that one is suddenly there.Maybe Creeley too. I'm starting to wander, but, (I wouldnt knock Eliot so much,I know he was a bit of a miserable old bugger...but...)and then their's Jack Spicer. And me! I'll send some things I've done,am doing and I'll discuss some of other points later.Looks as tho I'm getting too many words!At least I've got off poor old Bei Ling's case.By the way, I'm not on the attack against universities.I think they are vital,and the professors who can inspire so much.Warm regards to you Bill and the others of >> Well, I read the above and . . .damn . . . can't find anything to really disagree with, except that Ashbery is a whole lot funnier that you suggest. Somewhat funny? Nah, the guy is a riot! And even the darkest poets of our century didn't forget to be funny, as you imply. Perhaps I'll just add a note of clarification. I'm not hard on Eliot's poetry. Despite some currently fashionable views, "The Waste Land" may still be seen as the primier poetic document--and mightily avant garde--of the 20th century. The man was a genius. On the other hand, if he were alive today, I wouldn't invite that old bigot to dinner. And I would never accuse you of trashing Profs. You're obviously too bright, and your brush never that broad. As I said, I was using your comments as a springboard to deal with several issues raised on the list, some of which had little to do with your original post. It was easier than posting over and over. But mostly I agree with you on the warm regards to all. The give and take is as beneficial as dirty sex for the circulatory system. Well, almost. Hard to beat those nasty pleasures. Richard, you're okay in my poetry book. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 00:06:56 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/12/00 4:44:09 PM, Austinwja@AOL.COM writes: >Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than >a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was decorative >only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud Hollander's >imitations of them. James, It seems I respond to your comments instinctively more than to any other person's. I have two issues with your comments on Herbert: The first is to the phrase "decorative only." The "decorative" may be an intensely intellectual experience; it has something to do with the creation of a meditative space. In fact, my essay on decorative poetics around a review of Ed Friedman's "Mao & Matisse" in the most recent issue of Big Bridge (http://www.bigbridge.org/) deals exactly with that idea. The second is your referring to Herbert's poetry as "decorative only" (this time in your sense of decorative). I assume you are referring to "Easter Wings." The poem, as I experience the poem, is a visual and rhythmical incarnation of despair or the fall (as a progressively narrowing sense of possibilities) being transformed into a progressively expanding sense of possibilities through the Holy Ghost. That's what the wing shape is, death and rebirth of (and in) Christ. It seems to me Hopkins's "God's Grandeur" has "easter Wings" behind it, so does a less familiar poem, my "I hear wings in the foliage" (with its peculiar shape), in "Io's Song." My third point relates to the supposed "inferiority" of visual poetry. I don't think Robert Grenier is any less imaginative than any language poets. Murat Nemet-Nejat ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 00:11:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: language in lingua franca and VisPo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/12/00 4:48:03 PM, Isat@AOL.COM writes: >Practically every anthology on this subject proves otherwise. A visual >aspect >of poetry, far from being a decorative element, was a manifested and >essential component at the cradle of human culture, and together with oral >tradition, religion and written sign constituted ONE inseparable cultural >field. A split between art and literature happened later, in the process >of >urbanization. Everywhere we look back in history, we find irrefutable >evidence that tradition of VisPo has always existed. Igor, Hurrah! Murat Nemet-Nejat ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 08:37:11 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fredrik Hertzberg LIT Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII And there's Teddy's immortal words: "The bourgeois want art voluptuous and life ascetic; the reverse would be better." (On the same page, p. 13 in Aesthetic Theory: "Ask a musician if the music is a pleasure, the reply is likely to be - as in the American joke of the grimacing cellist under Toscanini - 'I just hate music.'") Freddy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 21:24:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: language in lingua franca and VisPo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the bulatov one is available in my translation at http://www.sicmagazine.com/content99/05_bulatov/index.html tom bell Igor Satanovsky wrote: > > "A Point of View: Visual Poetry in the 90's", ed. by D. Bulanov, Simplisii, > Russia, 1998 > - has 2 wonderful articles on a continuous tradition of VisPo by Jeremy Adler > and "Idea of VisPo: Reconstruction of Archive" by Dmitry Bulatov > (unfortunately, both in Russian, but available in English somewhere else, i > am sure). > Igor Satanovsky > isat@aol.com -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:28:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: geraldine mckenzie Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity Comments: To: patrick@proximate.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Does it make sense to say that, while a two-party system is not inherently wrong, it's pretty much certain to turn out that way? Two choices is, effectively, no choice. As Pope once said, It's the same rope at different ends they twist. In Australia the main choice is between Labour and Liberal (there are a number of smaller parties but with no chance of gaining power in parliament). For the Labour voter, this means an increasingly conservative Labour Party can screw you in a variety of ways, knowing you might vote Green but you'll never vote Liberal. On a state level, we've got a Labour Government doing its best to sabotage the public school system and drive parents to private schools. Those who can't afford them will have to put up with declining standards of education that will ensure few rise above the socio-economic status which has already condemned them to inferior schooling. And this from a party that used to be identified with the working class. The alternative is no better. Perhaps it would be fair to add that the chief virtue of the two-party system is its stability, though, as this becomes a constant vindication of the status quo, one might want to question this also. Didn't mean to go on like that. Geraldine >From: Patrick Herron >> > >even the two party-system -- there's nothing wrong with it's two ness >though >there is plenty wrong with how they express one view point and how they >exclude others. but there's nothing immoral or unvirtuous about the number >2. > >Patrick > > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of David Baptiste >Chirot >Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 9:25 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity > > > funny how those "idiotic binaries" seem to be not only in lingua > franca but everywhere > TEAM USA vs the World > Republican vs. Democrat > Language centered writing (poetics list) vs. Mainstream/Creative > Writing Program work > Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola > Microsoft vs. the Law > good vs. evil > "their journalistic packaging" vs. ("our" implicit) > purity/authenticity > Firestone Tires vs. public safety > "oppostional/transgressive/alternative" vs. SOS (samoshit) > "subtlety" vs. "'drama'" > > "when you come to a fork in the road, take it" > --Yogi Berra > >On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Maria Damon wrote: > > > i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in >terms > > of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on >"intellectual > > rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) > > against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their >journalistic > > packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated >from > > the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. > > > > At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: > > >mdw: > > > > > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. >responding > > >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to >internal > > >stimuli. > > > > > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I >even > > >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory > > >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem >to > > >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i >neither > > >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through >the > > >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling >out. > > >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total > > >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see >in > > >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total > > >purity or total assimilation." > > > > > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to >internal > > >stimuli. or both. > > > > > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being > > >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > > > > > >Patrick > > > > > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is > > >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or >'computers > > >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is > > >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for >their > > >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly > > >simplistic. > > > > > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does >show > > >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or >silliman > > >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is >worth > > >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the >mcclatchy > > >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum >(this > > >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find >the > > >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the > > >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. > > >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully >and > > >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that >yet. > > >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make > > >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > >From: UB Poetics discussion group > > >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw > > >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM > > >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > > > > > > > >Hello Andrew: > > > > > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick > > >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what > > >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little >bit > > >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > > > > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this >problem > > >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I >was > > >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the >choices > > >are either total purity or total assimilation. > > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 07:52:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry Comments: To: Rova Saxophone Quartet In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII One thing which does seem to link both Bei-Ling and the person assaulted in the message here is: economics. That is, Bei-Ling's journal was charged with not following basically economic rules--and the person here is charged with basically protesting an economic power move. In both cases what is being challenged is the economic hegemony, whether that of the State or that of the capitalist free enterprisers. The economic challenge in both cases is liked to art--in its forms of distribution, and its forms of production (loft spaces). These in turn are linked by the powers-that-be to the supression of other minority points of view and rights, all with economic implications. Thanks to Mr. Cook for calling attention to the interrelation of these two cases. --dbc On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Rova Saxophone Quartet wrote: > I was at an SF Planning Commission meeting yesterday afternoon when a > sheriff's deputy grabbed a young man, nearly jerked his arm out of its > socket, and threw him to the ground in the most brutal manner possible. It > seemed he would go right on to hog-tying the man if several of us hadn't > jumped up to protest this treatment. His crime? Going about five seconds > over his allotted timeslot in speaking out against the planning commission's > continuing approval -- without review or study -- of live-work lofts and > new, illegal, non-tax-paying office spaces that are driving out minorities, > longtime residents, artists, and musicians in droves from the city of San > Francisco. > > How is this connected to the now long-distant (geographically and > polemically) protest against the treatment of Bei Ling? Maybe it's not... > but a friend and writer once told me that "It's important to be a witness," > and inherent, I think, in the concept of "witness" is "one who testifies to > what he saw." What the government -- any government, whether it's > represented by state troopers in Florida, secret police in China, or > sheriff's deputies in supposedly liberal San Francisco -- never seems to > realize is that with every blow on the head of a nonviolent protestor, every > denial of basic civil liberties, it's radicalizing a new segment of the > population, i.e. all those who were there to witness it in some way, > assuming they have a sense to get outraged with. > > While I too would much rather keep the focus on poetry rather than politics, > sometimes the latter seems intent on intruding, clumsy, brutal, and > thoughtless as always, and something needs to be said, even in a forum meant > for poetics. > > David Cook > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Taylor Brady > Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 9:55 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > > Short of getting into an ever-widening spiral of ad hominems regarding > purported "delusions," I can only return to my point, conveniently passed > over by you, that the states under discussion are instruments of domination. > That's neither the politics of a Gore-touting erstwhile reformer, nor of a > cheerleader for the Texas serial killer and dynastic scion. Nor, really, of > an optimistic social-democratic Naderite. > > To your question: > > Why do you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you > call tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? > > I'll keep my answer within the narrow bounds of personal experience: someone > gassed and beaten in vitro by Nixon's hired goons, who grew up to receive > his first identifying scar at the hands of one of (Republican) Bob Martinez' > Florida state troopers during a nonviolent civil action, might be somewhat > justified in placing a certain amount of blame in that direction. But no > fear, it's an equal opportunity attack: Lawton Chiles' state troopers kicked > my ass too. And Clinton and Gore have been as instrumental as Reagan in > busting up the social movements (and the civil society) that gave those I > care for a measure of hope. In my neck of the woods, we talk about Clinton's > presidency as years 13-20 of the Reagan/Bush administration. > > But this has become really tiresome, especially as it's taken shape in my > attempt to produce a rebuttal to what was simply your placing of words in my > mouth. (Read my initial post: I never mentioned Republicanism as the locus > of the problems I was identifying, nor did I make any mention of voting for > Gore). Reluctant as I am to join those who can be counted on to groan at > every mention of politics on the list, I'm going to absent myself from > further discussion of this until your posts come up to argument from their > current level of blank assertion (with emphatic caps, no less - nice touch). > > Taylor > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Richard Dillon > Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 8:11 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > Pray tell me. Why, then, if you vote, you will likely vote Gore? Why do > you attack Republican philosophy and blame that party for acts you call > tyrannical by the Federal Government and its police? > > The reason you will vote Gore/Clinton is that you believe in a set of what I > call Liberal political visions that will lead inevitably to their EXACT > OPPOSITE. For instance, ALL of the WOMEN who stood up to the Big HEE or > A.A. Gore are now being AUDITED by the IRS! But of course this inconvenient > fact is never going to be acknowledged by the preponderant majority of > writers on this line and the line's administration. As a RadLib feminist > poet in Boulder said, "I want women to have power in government, not Jean > Kirkpatrick." Who on this line even remembers Jean Kirkpatrick? > > In other words, regardless of your NICE words, ostensibly reasonable, your > vision will lead to even MORE government in the US of the sort you say you > deplore. WHY? Because it is the type of intellectual who dominates this > Line that runs China today! The peasants who now REVOLT against Zemin > revolt against an intellectual class of people who think like MANY on this > LINE! > > If you took the time to really understand Republicanism, you could make it > work to attain the justices you seek. More poets should adopt Republicanism > as their vehicle for the kind of freedom they supposedly embody. I say: > To hell with Ernesto Cardinale and the poetry of Mao Zedung. Forget it. > State run poetry is an oxymoron! Get back into the more sophisticated and > grounded views of Frost. > > Nearly all of the talk I see on this line attempts to reform the evermore > tyrannical Federal administration of the country by even MORE of it, simply > replacing the hand of one deluded Liberal generation with another, one > radical clique that seized control of the Democrat party in one time with > the children from the next. A ridiculous equation. > > Alexander, Grand Inquisitor, are you going to continue your PC Censorship? > > > > From: Taylor Brady > > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > > Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:20:00 -0700 > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > Subject: Re: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > > > Well put, Yunte. And to your warning against making a fetish of "our" > > liberal skepticism, I'd only want to add the following: > > > > Most of the rationales here advanced for "not over-reacting," "keeping > > things in perspective," "not casting the first stone" have been founded on > > an understanding of the U.S. state as involved in many of the same > > repressive actions as those used by the Chinese state in the case of Bei > > Ling. To which one might say - yes, very true. And there are lists of > > examples far longer and uglier than those so far adduced here. COINTELPRO, > > anyone? The Philly MOVE bombing? Etc. etc. etc. > > > > All of which says precisely nothing about the qualification of a U.S. > > citizen or resident to express political outrage and engage in activism > over > > a denial of fundamental political rights. We live, in many respects, in a > > police state - a lot of us learned that fairly young, say the first time a > > thug in blue and black hit us on the head with a big stick for the crime > of > > holding a cardboard sign. Or, in the case of others I've known, for having > > their race act by default as such a sign, thus (from the perspective of > > "pro-active enforcement methods") obviating the need that they actually DO > > anything to warrant the stick. > > > > Again, though, this says nothing. If we are to maintain the position from > > which we can point to these abuses of "our own" government with a > > justifiable outrage, we must have recourse to a sense of disjunction > between > > that state and ourselves. In other words, we are not our bad government - > a > > government which might in fact be unqualified to say much of anything > about > > the protection of political liberties, at least in the sense of moral > > authority. But if "we" allow the implicit phrase "the U.S. government" to > > fill in the content of our first person plural pronoun (i.e., "we're no > > better than nation X"), if we allow that repressive state to take on the > > contours of our own identity, then we cede the ground from which to > register > > its outrages AS outrages. The alternative, as I've seen it, has been that > > one acts "abroad" (effectively or not is another question) on behalf of > > others like Bei Ling for the same reason one thus acts "at home" on behalf > > of oneself: out of an understanding that the states committing those > > outrages are not representatives of "their" people, but instruments of > > domination. In other words, we U.S. people (I know it's an international > > list, apologies for all the un-scare-quoted first persons) are "in a > > position to say something" about the Chinese state's actions for precisely > > the same reason we are in that position with respect to the U.S. state. > > Absent that - well, do I really want to mean "FBI/CIA/Pentagon..." every > > time I say "I"? > > > > (And it surely is nice to hear from you in this space - it's been a > while). > > > > Taylor > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: UB Poetics discussion group > > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Yunte Huang > > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:15 PM > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > Subject: Bei Ling and Chinese Poetry > > > > As much as I dislike the ways in which contemporary Chinese poetry has > been > > read in the U.S. (the poetry has been understood mainly as an expression > of > > a few narrowly defined ideological shibboleths, such as "democracy," > > "individual freedom," "free sex," or what have you), I have to express my > > concerns about Bei Ling's fate and I have to say that his arrest still > > outrages me. Sometimes I wonder how far our liberal scepticism can carry > > us when we are confronted with some basic facts. I met Bei Ling a couple > > of times in the Boston area (where both of us live) and am quite familiar > > with his Chinese literary magazine TENDENCIES, which seems to have now > > gotten him into trouble. According to some mutual friends who just came > > back from Beijing and who managed to carry a few copies of the current, > > 13th issue of the magazine out of China, there's little "subversive" > > content in it. It is mainly the history of Bei Ling's literary activities > > (as editors of some overseas literary journals that at times express views > > critical of Chinese political culture) that has gotten him blacklisted. > > Therefore, I disagree with some of the views expressed earlier on the > > Poetics list that caution against over-reaction on "our" part. I > > understand the sound mentality behind such rationales, but in the case of > > Bei Ling's arrest, I do believe that the Chinese government should be > > condemned for its shameless action. ----Y.H. > > > > ------------------ > > Yunte Huang > > Assistant Professor > > Dept of English > > Harvard University > > 12 Quincy St > > Cambridge, MA 02138 > > Tel: 617-495-1139 > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 08:05:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity Comments: To: Patrick Herron In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Patrick: I didn't make my point very well-- what i meant was that in such a world where binaries are so prevalent, calling Lingua Franca's tactics "idiotic binaries' seems much akin to the Claude Rains character in CASABLANCA proclaiming loudly "Gambling going on ! I'm shocked! Shocked!" it seems like an act of "bad faith" i don't have any problems with binaries--after all this entire discussion could not take place without the binary set up used by computer circuitry! personally as a philosphical way of thinking, i prefer "both/and" to "either/or"-- but what i meant in this case was not a critique of the binary oppostions, but a note that to attack the Lingua Franca piece as (or not) making use of "idiotic binaries" in itself reveals the prevalence of the binary thinking in our culture-- that is, by implication, it suggests that the author (and an implied knowing "we")--are distinguishing their binaries from the "iditioc" ones of Lingua Franca--that is, that there is an implied binary in the statement, in which Lingua Franca is the "bad subject position"-- the critique in this case of "idiotic binaries" is trappd in its own reflection of binary thinking, which it claims to find "idiotic" i only meant that i found this ironic-- --dbc On Mon, 11 Sep 2000, Patrick Herron wrote: > David - > > i understand that you and many others associate binaries with war and sports > teams, but that doesn't make the very structure of a binary repulsive or > ignorant in any way. i am sure you find neither war nor sports nor > corporations valueless because they do things in twos instead of ones or > twenties or whatever other number. you most likely have more articulate > reasons to dislike the things on your list than a general condemnation of 2. > i dislike all of those things you mention but not because of their twoness. > > even the two party-system -- there's nothing wrong with it's two ness though > there is plenty wrong with how they express one view point and how they > exclude others. but there's nothing immoral or unvirtuous about the number > 2. > > Patrick > > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of David Baptiste > Chirot > Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 9:25 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity > > > funny how those "idiotic binaries" seem to be not only in lingua > franca but everywhere > TEAM USA vs the World > Republican vs. Democrat > Language centered writing (poetics list) vs. Mainstream/Creative > Writing Program work > Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola > Microsoft vs. the Law > good vs. evil > "their journalistic packaging" vs. ("our" implicit) > purity/authenticity > Firestone Tires vs. public safety > "oppostional/transgressive/alternative" vs. SOS (samoshit) > "subtlety" vs. "'drama'" > > "when you come to a fork in the road, take it" > --Yogi Berra > > On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Maria Damon wrote: > > > i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in terms > > of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on "intellectual > > rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) > > against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their > journalistic > > packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated from > > the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. > > > > At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: > > >mdw: > > > > > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. > responding > > >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to > internal > > >stimuli. > > > > > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I even > > >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory > > >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem > to > > >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i > neither > > >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through the > > >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling > out. > > >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total > > >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see > in > > >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total > > >purity or total assimilation." > > > > > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to > internal > > >stimuli. or both. > > > > > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being > > >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > > > > > >Patrick > > > > > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is > > >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or > 'computers > > >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is > > >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for > their > > >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly > > >simplistic. > > > > > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does > show > > >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or > silliman > > >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is worth > > >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the mcclatchy > > >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum > (this > > >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find the > > >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the > > >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. > > >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully > and > > >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that > yet. > > >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make > > >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > >From: UB Poetics discussion group > > >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw > > >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM > > >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > > > > > > > >Hello Andrew: > > > > > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick > > >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what > > >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little bit > > >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > > > > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this > problem > > >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I was > > >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the > choices > > >are either total purity or total assimilation. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:33:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Taylor Subject: Visual Poetry & Binary MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm not certain what is meant by the term being used "binary". I know what the binary number system is. Obviously it has to do with either or. Do people using this term mean that by "binary" thinking one categorises everything into opposites? Or some theory that any movement or ideational "progress" in one direction inevitably produces a counterforce? Is it thinking stolen from pseudo science or what? And what exaxtly is meant by visual poetry? I know about concrete poetry and the significance of layout etc but I'm not certain of how the term applies.Could someone enlighten me? I've seen some of Peter Finch's pomes, and that "exploded poem" by Steve McCaffery... Serious persons need only (apply) reply. And to whoever: Zukovsky wasnt a Zucchini.Dont see many Zucchini's in N.Z. but I believe they're insinuating there way into the new fangled coffee bars. But he wasnt far away from being a Bukowski. Perhaps Bukowski was Zukovsky's secret other who wrote the "I drank this I drank that,then I smacked somethin against the wall, and vomited lovin'ly over me lovely lady and then the bitch left me" poems in his spare time! Then he went back to his minor works such as `A' But back to my questions. Richard. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:06:15 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity Comments: To: geraldine mckenzie In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Geraldine - >Does it make sense to say that, while a two-party system is not inherently wrong, it's pretty much certain to turn out that way? Two choices is, effectively, no choice. ...because the two are similar and/or offer limited options and/or they are not really two at points and/or they manipulate, etc., but NOT because of their twoness. P >From: Patrick Herron >> > >even the two party-system -- there's nothing wrong with it's two ness >though >there is plenty wrong with how they express one view point and how they >exclude others. but there's nothing immoral or unvirtuous about the number >2. > >Patrick > > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of David Baptiste >Chirot >Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2000 9:25 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: assimilation vs. purity > > > funny how those "idiotic binaries" seem to be not only in lingua > franca but everywhere > TEAM USA vs the World > Republican vs. Democrat > Language centered writing (poetics list) vs. Mainstream/Creative > Writing Program work > Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola > Microsoft vs. the Law > good vs. evil > "their journalistic packaging" vs. ("our" implicit) > purity/authenticity > Firestone Tires vs. public safety > "oppostional/transgressive/alternative" vs. SOS (samoshit) > "subtlety" vs. "'drama'" > > "when you come to a fork in the road, take it" > --Yogi Berra > >On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Maria Damon wrote: > > > i've noticed that lingua franca's pieces often present themselves in >terms > > of idiotic binaries --about a year ago, there was a piece on >"intellectual > > rigor v. good writing" or some such nonsense that pitted adorno (rigor) > > against orwell (good writing). this may just be part of their >journalistic > > packaging --the subtlety, if it exists at all, has to be extrapolated >from > > the hyped up and oversold "drama" of opposition. > > > > At 8:56 PM -0400 8/31/00, Patrick Herron wrote: > > >mdw: > > > > > >if you were taking issue with a simple binary, you were either 1. >responding > > >to my post, 2. responding to epstein's article, or 3. responding to >internal > > >stimuli. > > > > > >you couldn't have been responding to my post, because what binary I >even > > >reference is the one that epstein appears to create in the introductory > > >paragraphs. i have repeatedly mentioned that the article does not seem >to > > >continue in such a black and white way beyond the introduction. i >neither > > >suggest that epstein's discussion of purity/sellout is binary through >the > > >entire article nor do i put forth my own binary about purity or selling >out. > > >I certainly never make any argument for "total purity or total > > >assimilation;" in fact what i say about the issue myself and what i see >in > > >most of the article outside of the introduction is anything but "total > > >purity or total assimilation." > > > > > >you may therefore be either responding to epstein's article or to >internal > > >stimuli. or both. > > > > > >my apologies for losing my patience because I fear I am not being > > >comprehended. i just don't know how else to express this. > > > > > >Patrick > > > > > >ps i think condemnation of binaries as inherently 'simple' perhaps is > > >equivalent to saying things like, 'human cognition is simple' or >'computers > > >are simple' or 'numbers are simple.' further, to spurn simplicity is > > >perhaps an even more specious move. i do think spurning binaries for >their > > >binariness smacks of irrational intellectual fashion and is overly > > >simplistic. > > > > > >pss andrew's article deals with the soldout-purity *spectrum* and does >show > > >the shades of grey along the range and how people like bernstein or >silliman > > >aren't purely sellouts or keeping it real. i think the article is >worth > > >reading, as there is plenty of valuable information. like the >mcclatchy > > >quotes. but for some reason I do not find the sellout/purity spectrum >(this > > >is an analog thing, this spectrum) very fruitful. I maintain, i find >the > > >range between "total purity or total assimilation" as fruitless as the > > >extremes, but not because of any particular structure to the arguments. > > >there is nothing pure. period. i thought this is something painfully >and > > >easily learned in childhood. i guess some people haven't learned that >yet. > > >but that's just me. i guess many other people still need to make > > >discoveries about what 'selling out' really means. > > > > > >-----Original Message----- > > >From: UB Poetics discussion group > > >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of mdw > > >Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 1:06 PM > > >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > >Subject: FWD: RE: assimilation vs. purity > > > > > > > > >Hello Andrew: > > > > > > I think I was replying as much to Patrick > > >Herron's looking at the problem of a simple binary as I was to what > > >your article in Lingua Franca was doing, so perhaps I caused a little >bit > > >of confusion there, for which I apologize. > > > > > > I'm sorry then if my post on one particular aspect of this >problem > > >seemed like a wholesale condemnation of your article, when in fact I >was > > >just taking issue with the idea that such a binary exists, that the >choices > > >are either total purity or total assimilation. > > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 09:18:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Gallaher Organization: University of Central Arkansas Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT There's an interview with Michael Palmer in the Spring 2000 issue of _jubilat_ that focuses on some of this, with questions like: "Is there a danger, now that the l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poets and you have been more widely incorporated into what is considered to be American poetry, of becoming misincorporated?" This is the direct link to a snippet of the interview (the whole thing is well worth reading, natch): http://www.umass.edu/english/jubilat/palmerselections.html --JGallaher ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:08:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: September @ Poetry City - Krupskaya, Finlay Comments: To: SubSubpoetics Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable POETRY CITY=20 Thurs September 21 =80 7 pm A Celebration of KRUPSKAYA Books Laura Moriarty, Liz Fodaski, & co Friday September 22 =80 7 pm An Illustrated Lecture by Alec Finlay A Guerdon for our Exile Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Sparta, A Poetic Garden 5 Union Sq W NYC 212 691 6590 info@twc.org Events are free ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 09:56:24 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: Pavement Saw Press Subject: The Republic of Letters MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Is any one out there familiar with the publication The Republic of Letters from boston who could give me info? b/c is fine Be well David Baratier, Editor Pavement Saw Press PO Box 6291 Columbus OH 43206 USA http://pavementsaw.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 10:43:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: all poetry is visual poetry, all poetry is language poetry, don't create separate fiefdoms like "genuinely visual poetry"; a lot of so called visual poetry is just not that interesting *visually*, in the cute tricks with typography genre; it often gives me the old deja vu all over again feeling; sure, Apollinaire and the Brazilians were innovative at one time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jonathan Mayhew jmayhew@ukans.edu _____________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 11:15:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Clark D. Lunberry" Subject: Coolidge Book Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Anywhere out there have any suggestions as to how I might obtain (and purchase) a copy of Clark Coolidge's relatively obscure book _Smithsonian Depositions & Subject to a Film_? Perhaps someone has an extra copy or knows where one might be found. Thanks, CD Lunberry ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 12:48:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: "Adad" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - Adad This is for her, gold and juniper orchards, everyone was named Adad and used the "Adad," and then there was Izanami and Izanagi, did I mention I brought all these people whose names I knew to live there, from Adad? I'm the terrific warrior, did I say thanks to her and her, and I walk all over Adad and "Adad," they also came along, all of them. All the streams and rocks, and even the grains of sand, to their fullest and nothing surprises me. And I built a palace of curved jewels and gold and swords and cedar because I knew their names and maybe they don't, and this includes breath, swoon, and languor. Ir\emum takes her, seizing her, called the Dragon-Lion and the Lion-Dragon, and with one naming I can take her. It's all over; I can taste her and hear and see; i can't breathe much. It's too much to see her and hear in an instant of an eye, the interior of her body. "Adad" was her lover, I took her mouth, I didn't know where I was. __ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 13:31:07 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: shelf space Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Thanks to all who contacted me about my 6-for-$20 offer; the poetry books have been sold. The queer performance text's still available, if anyone wants it--b/c me. best, em _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:36:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Taylor Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They both were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if those are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants with oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is only slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the wings of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course WCW moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was probably temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. Another point is that none of them were pa rticularly radical in their politics. This was (or it leads me into thinking about)the (gist of the) thing Scott Hamilton was challenging Geraets about in a letter to ABDOTWW, and one of the "questions" that arose parallels the supposed "sell out" of Silliman etc in that Leigh Davis (an avowed and open supporter of Capitalism) was or is being published by ABDOTWW yet they are supposeedly "oppositional", or "avant-garde". But it is a debate only because there is obviously no direct correlation between eg who or at what salary level you work for and one's poetry.(Scott had pointed out that Davis, the "avant-garde" writer, was a (very rich) member of a big finance company that had helped to destroy N.Z.'s economy over the last 15 years or so.) An example in music is Charles Ives (but I think Ives took to making himself into a multi-millionaire after his music got hardly any interest or was actively scorned), and of course there's Stevens.(Or they are "counter-examples.) This is all part of a rather complicated discussion.But I thought it might parallel the McClatchy accusations against (some?) LangPo exponents. But Scott wasnt attacking the innovative writing in ABD as such. Although I thought that the "accusations" of Scott's were a bit simplistic it (his initial letter)they generated some interesting issues. I felt that they were not suffuciently attended to. For example, I wrote to Geraets to the effect that it was paradoxical that Zukovsky, who was Jewish, was a great friend of Pound (as was Williams) who (Pound)was pretty close to being a Nazi. And somewhat Z. is one of LangPo's heroes and how to reconcile that or these things with the Marxist "branch" ?And so forth.I also "asked" or tried to "open up" other questions.E.g. what is the connection between a poet and their philosophy/politics? Can poetry be apolitical? There were a lot of issues that were left unanswered which I felt reflected rather badly on the Writers Group (whom Scott accused of being elitist). I didnt see it in such severe terms as Scott but I was disappointed that other members of (those who contribute to ABDOTWW) didnt join in the discussion.i've drifted here a bit, but I'm working on the other points you mentioned. By the way at least you and Bob write in a way that is relatively clear. Maybe I should just load or inflict my poems on the list instead like Alan Sondheim does.He's writing some amusing and interesting stuff.What do you think?Regards,Richard. >From: Austinwja@AOL.COM >Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 20:03:50 EDT >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca > >In a message dated 9/11/00 2:04:54 PM, BobGrumman@NUT-N-BUT.NET writes: > ><< > In the USA we're generally dealing with tastes. >> And they change all the time. The reality based poem may seem shop >> worn, but let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" >> poems which were astonishingly innovative for the time. > >Wasn't William Carlos Williams doing that kind of thing long before >O'Hara? > >-------- > >Austin: Nope, close but no cigar. Williams always wrote as if he had >something major to say, competing with Eliot and all that. No, O'Hara's >particular celebration of urban minutiae is an original. And all that >Hollywood stuff. And his tone! > >--------- > >> No radical formal machinations there--just a new attitude toward >> content. And no one ever accused Frank of being dour and timid. > >Maybe he wasn't socially, but to shrink from higher meanings (which >O'Hara didn't always do) is certainly a form of timidity--as is >shrinking from anything (including the banal, the informally- >expressed)--as you go on to imply. > >---------- > >Austin: Not sure we can easily identify exactly who is shrinking from higher >meanings. Language has the capacity to resonate in all sorts of ways. But >when the materiality of the word becomes the focus, the "poetry" tends to be >about that and sometimes little else. Which is fine by me. Referential >language (conventional, symbolic, etc.) more often creates rather than limits >dimensions, at least such an argument may be proffered. It's the difference >between opening a door on a Hollywood backlot (nothing behind it) and opening >a door to a real building (lots of rooms). Of course there are exceptions, >and the mind inevitably struggles to make meaning and more meaning out of all >art. And some of Frank's "I do this, I do that" poems resonate like >gangbusters without going for the Modernist or high Modernist major >statement. On the other hand, if shrinking from "higher meanings" is the >test, then poetry ended with the Modernists, since postmodernism is all about >such shrinking, the fragmentation of the ONE. > >------------------ > >> No, that dour and timid thing sounds too much like a >> stereotype. In fact, it could be argued that langpo is the more timid > >form since it represses direct emotional expression. Could it be >> that the current ensconced innovators "fear" emotion? Are they in >> fact producing the latest versions of a very long tradition of >> puritan art? Of course there are arguments on both sides, and no >> doubt they all are worth hearing. >> >> Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the >> former is clearly the more innovative. > >Do you really believe poets trying for verbal innovation in their poetry >are likely to be more innovative than poets trying for visual innovation >AND verbal innovation (as all the best visual poets do)? > >---------------- > >Austin: Keep reading. > >------------------ > >> When it appeared on the scene, there was a >> palpable sense that something new was going on, despite the obvious >> and profound influence of Ashbery. > >I don't know about "profound" there, but I do know that Olson, Stein, >Cummings, Pound, Eliot--Roethke, even--the Dadaists and others >influenced language poetry a lot more than Ashbery. > >----------------------- > >Austin: Yes, there are many influences--that's always true. But it was >Ashbery and the postructuralist philosophers who got the langpo ball moving. >They were more than influences--they were more like a hammer to the >carburetor to start the engine. When Ashbery's poetry, and Derrida's >philosophy hit land, the floodgates opened. > >------------------------ > >> Vispo has been around for centuries, > >Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than >a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was decorative >only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud Hollander's >imitations of them. > >---------------------- > >Austin: You should get in touch with Kuzminsky. He's got a file of vp from >ancient and Medieval neighborhoods that will knock your socks off. Merely >decorative? Not at all. Some beautiful and brilliant stuff. Herbert was a >concrete poet, no? I'm referring to something much closer to what we have >today. Of course the technology has advanced. But the procreation of >computers doesn't affect the quality of vp any more than the invention of the >typewriter made for better verses. But these technologies do permit new >innovations which is not the same thing as quality. > >------------------------ > >> --and remains a hybrid form that fails to appeal to many of those >> whose primary love is for language--just not enough of it in vispo, >> generally. > >Not enough of visual interest in langpo, either. Dunno what you're >arguing here. We all know that some people are too narrow to appreciate >one or more arts. > >------------------ > >Austin: Of course. But I was offering an explanation, obliquely, for the >relative successes of langpo and vispo. > >------------------------ > >> By the way, I enjoy, and support, much of both langpo and >> vispo. Innovation is important, but it is not the be all and end all. >> There are some vispoems I consider more successful than some >> langpoems, and which is more innovative becomes secondary to which is >> better art. We all know that today's innovation is tomorrow's >> tradition. A true traditionalist is the best thing we have, >> for as Eliot (that bastard) knew, only the truly experimental >> get to join the tradition which is nothing else but a record of >> innovation, as any Norton Anthology clearly demonstrates. > >But Robert Frost is (properly) there. > >---------------------------- > >Austin: Yes, and he was one hell of an innovator when it came to the >dark/light of imagery, the potential for an image to fold back on itself, >meaning and unmeaning at the same time. > >----------------------------- > >> One problem for me is that there has been so much innovation since the >> sixties that nothing looks very new, anyway. A return to direct >> albeit creatively crafted emotion may be the most innovative thing >> to approach right now. Perhaps not. But we can all count on one >> thing. As langpo enters the tradition, joins the academy (which any >> poetry must do in order to survive--like it or not, that's da fac, >> Jack), there will be strong reaction and opposition from the young. >> >> A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and >> Universities. > >There are exceptions, of course, but in general it takes a different >kind of person to plug away in a certified career lane as one who >becomes a professor must from the kind who CAN'T (for better or worse) >stick to such a lane. And the former will tend to prefer knownstream >to otherstream art, because that's what lines his lane. The big >problem, though, is that professors wield far more short-term cultural >power than independent artists, and they much more often than not >use it against the best independent artists (however they try to hide >that with token gestures towards the marginal--as when Marjorie Perloff >granted visual poetry a seminar at Stanford that mentioned two or three >genuine visual poets a while back). > >---------------------------- > >Austin: Bob, everyone has to work, or most everyone in the real world. What >about all those poets who work in the private sector in some capacity, >feeding the corporate machine? What about their personalities? They're not >sell outs, but Professors are? These are stereotypes, plain and simple. >This still sounds like your garden variety conspiracy theory to me (they >wield power against poor us). There is no backroom agreement to oppress. As >I said, we're dealing with tastes--and most people who enjoy poetry, in or >out of the academy, prefer work that is less conceptual, more readable. >That's life. It's a big country out there. Everyone with a career is >plugging, one hopes. And yes, certain few professors have power over >cultural directions. What's wrong with that? It's their job. It's what >they were trained for ten years to do. We can't all hit the big time. In my >view, they've done a damn good, if not perfect, job. They are, after all, >largely responsible for the staying power of Stein, cummings, and all those >other guys we like. And it's never been true that Profs must to stick to the >knownstream. It's just a better bet. When a critic goes otherstream for >her/his subject, s/he's taking a risk. S/he might end up with a hat with two >propellors instead of a 747. And let's face it, there's plenty left to say >about those poets who are knownstream. They are really, really, good. But >mostly Profs, like most other people, stick to what they enjoy. In this >sense, most people on the planet are timid. Are we to believe there's some >connection between the kind of personality that can't hold a job and the >ability to produce quality poetry?! And what's this love of power, anyway? >Who cares how much power independent artists have? It's supposed to be about >art. The power is in the art. If power is so important to us, we should run >for Congress. Independent artists do have more power relative to the arts >academy than the guy who invents in his garage has vs. the official >scientific community. So it looks like the arts academy is doing pretty >well. Let's just do our job (making and sharing art), and let them do >theirs. Last time I looked over the Western history of literature, I wasn't >too disappointed. One terrific writer after another. > >------------------------------- > >> A poet who has the opportunity to affect students, >> to share his obsession with language with the young (some of whom >> are actually eager to learn)--a sell out? When we consider that >> so many young people have developed a love for poetry in such >> places (both "straight from the heart" stuff and experimental), >> the attacks often seem little more than straw man tactics and sour >> grapes. Your point that Professors are like guardians rings >> true for me. And we need that. We all must earn our way. As we >> all know, many never live to see the celebration their work >> ultimately achieves. Some Professors/Critics, it is true, are >> quite narrow minded. But anyone who suggests that the avant garde >> has historically been open minded needs to get off the booze. >> Same sins in both camps, and both covet power in sometimes >> very ugly ways. Long ago I threw my hat in the progressive ring, >> but I damn well know that some of those "traditional" poems are a >> lot better than some of the experiments I have seen. I try to >> maintain a democratic palate. In my view, to shut out anything >> is to deny one's self an opportunity to be influenced, to find new >> combinations, to progress. >> >> No doubt I've overreached your comments. But I appreciate the >> opportunity to sound off on a number of issues. Best, Bill > >Ditto to you, Bill. > > --Bob G. > > >> > > >And that's a wrap. Best wishes to all, Bill > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 15:15:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gregory Severance Subject: Re: CDROM of Collected Work available - In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan, I'd like to buy a copy of the CDROM and pick it up from you. I'll call you in the coming week to arrange a time for me to stop by. Gregory Severance http://www.walrus.com/~morocco 212-522-4121 p.s. I Iive in the neighborhood and visited you one day last year. GS At 06:59 PM 9/9/2000, you wrote: >SUB/CON/TEXT CDROM 2.03 Available: > >COLLECTED WORK, 1994-2000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:38:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jesse glass Subject: Brother Anthony of Taize MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear List: Just back from a week in Korea where I spent some time with the = incredible Brother Anthony of Taize. This self-effacing man has = produced a series of translations of contemporary Korean poets that is = truly amazing. Not much is known about new poetry in Korea because of = the dearth of good translations. Please visit his site at: http://www.sogang.ac.kr/~anthony/poetry.htm His translations of Ku Sang and Kwang-kyu Kim are available from Forest = Books/ 61 Lincoln Road, Wayland, MA. 01778. The Cornell East Asia = Series carries his translations of Chon Sang Pyong--one of the most = popular of contemporary Korean poets--as well as the major poet Ko Un's = selected poems, The Sound of Many Waves. Ko Un's Beyond Self is = available from Parallax Press. =20 I was most impressed with the range of Ko Un's poetry--from Zen (in = Korean, Son) meditations, to unforgettable portraits of people from Ko = Un's childhood, to intensely political works. Anthony's translations = are fine poems in themselves. Anthony has also translated Yi Mun-yol's The Poet,a must read for anyone = interested in 19th c. Korean verse. This novel tells the true story of = Kim Sakkat, a fallen aristocrat turned wandering poet. This book is = available from The Harvill Press, 84 Thornhill Road, London, N1 1RD. I wish I could relay the impact that Anthony had on me: his introducing = the stories of these poets; the harsh conditions in which they found = their voice and practiced their craft. I urge anyone interested in = Asian poetry to read these books. Jesse Glass About Jesse Glass. How to order his books. = http://www.letterwriter.net/html/jesse-glass.html ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:56:51 +0000 Reply-To: anielsen@lmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: anielsen@LMU.EDU Subject: "One ever feels this twoness . . . " -- W.E.B. DuBois MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII But as I read the comments of Dodie and others, the objection was never to "twoness" per se -- rather to the reduction of a complex array of phenomena to a binary opposition -- This may work well enough when the binary opposition is between a voiced and voiceless fricative, but certainly seems more suspect when arranged between "good writing" and "intellectual rigor" -- or between poets who have spent the last twenty years denouncing the academy and poets who have spent the last twenty years denouncing academic workshop verse. "Has All-- a Codicil?" -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Department of English Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 anielsen@lmu.edu (310) 338-3078 _________________________________________________ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:07:19 -0700 Reply-To: betsy@poetshouse.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: betsy@POETSHOUSE.ORG Subject: e-books panel 9/20 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit E-books and New Digital Tecnhology: Friend or Foe of Independent Literary Publishing? A panel discussion co-sponsored by Poets House and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. With John Oakes, Four Walls Eight Windows Ram Devineni, Rattapallax Magazine and Press Calvin Reid, Publishers Weekly Adrian J. Taylor, Fictionpolois Communications Wednesday, September 20 at 7pm at Poets House, 72 Spring Street, 2nd Floor, NYC Admission free. Learn about the opportunities and drawbacks that new technologies (e-books, print on demand, the internet) present for literary magazines and presses, and the impact of e-publishing trends in commercial publishing for smaller publishers. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 16:57:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: In defense of L.F. In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:58 AM -0500 9/12/00, MAYHEW wrote: >I went to the Lingua Franca website and read the article "Is Bad Writing >Necessary," by Foucault biographer James Miller. While based on a binary >opposition that might appear to be simplistic, the article makes reference >to an actually existing and quite interesting debate. I followed internet >links the the London Review of Books, where Eagleton reviews Gayatri >Spivak and is answered in a letter to the editor by Butler (Judith). The >portraits of Orwell and Adorno that Miller presents are far from >simplistic; this article is not a simple middle-brow bashing of >theoretical jargon. It is relatively well-informed and lively journalism. >It might have seemed superficial had I been reading it in Critical >Inquiry... > >Jonathan Mayhew >jmayhew@ukans.edu > >_____________ well this is the thing about lingua franca. there's generally some real substance there, which makes the framing somewhat frustratingly idiotic. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 13:43:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Small Press Traffic Subject: Coming soon to Small Press Traffic.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Coming soon to Small Press Traffic.... September 29, 2000 Rae Armantrout Carol Mirakove October 7, 2000 4-7pm Literary Soiree and Auction Main Hall, CCAC October 13, 2000 David Baratier Chris Kraus October 27, 2000 K. Silem Mohammad Aaron Shurin November 10, 2000 Lyn Hejinian Pattie McCarthy (coproduced with Poets & Writers in honor of their 30th anniversary season) November 17, 2000 Robert Fitterman Sianne Ngai stay tuned for more all readings begin at 7:30 and admission is $5. Please note our new reading space: Timken Lecture Hall CCAC 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco (near the intersection of 16th and Wisconsin, on the 22 bus line, good evening parking) SPT will be offline for the next few days as we complete our move. See you soon! _______________________ Elizabeth Treadwell Jackson, Director Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center at CCAC 1111 Eighth Street San Francisco, CA 94107 415/437-3454 http://www.sptraffic.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 17:36:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Massey Subject: Re: Visual Poetry & Binary MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/13/2000 3:39:59 PM Central Daylight Time, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << And to whoever: Zukovsky wasnt a Zucchini. >> True, he wasn't a Zucchini... or a Zukovsky. It's: Zukofsky. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 19:12:58 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Murat, to get Bill Austin off the hook, it was I, not he, who claimed that the visuality of Herberts' poems were only decorative. You give a good argument that "Easter Wings" uses visuality in a more than merely decorative way, though. (To check, I've been thumbing through Dick Higgins's Pattern Poetry, and now suspect I'll have to admit to being . . . wrong. I over-reacted to what I took as one more claim that contemporary visual poets aren't doing anything significantly new; that's something I'll never agree to. As for decoration, it can certainly do marvelous things, but it is by definition secondary. My point, which may not be valid, is that only in the twentieth century did visio-textual artists make poetry (of consequence) whose visual elements are equal or superior to (and interdependent, not merely co-existing, with) its verbal elements. As for Bob Gregory's poetry, it makes my point that a poet working in the verbal AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other things being equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone: Gregory has been as innovative a language poet verbally as anyone around-- and he is carrying his langpo verbal innovativeness now into visual poems (as are a few other language poets). --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:43:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Safdie Joseph Subject: New Chapbook MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Steve Ellis of Oasis Press has brought out an attractive chapbook (or, in his word, "fascicle") of my poems called *September Song* -- some of you who "know" me only from intermittent posts on this list or another might be interested in checking them out. If so, please back-channel me for the mailing information. It's almost old news already, but I found Andrew Epstein's piece in *Lingua Franca* on langpo "infiltration" into the academy scrupulously even-handed, a model of fine journalism, and recommend it highly. I touched on these matters myself in a panel presentation last week on "21st century poetry," and could also send those notes out to anyone who can open Word or RTF attachments. Thanks, Joe Safdie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 19:28:52 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Visual Poetry & Binary MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------6A4D30AC514" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6A4D30AC514 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have an essay or two on what I consider to be visual poetry at the site whose URL should be below. --Bob G. --------------6A4D30AC514 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="sig.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="sig.txt" Bob Grumman BobGrumman@Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site --------------6A4D30AC514-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 19:45:42 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: all poetry is visual poetry, all poetry is language poetry, don't create separate fiefdoms like "genuinely visual poetry"; a lot of so called visual poetry is just not that interesting *visually*, in the cute tricks with typography genre; it often gives me the old deja vu all over again feeling; sure, Apollinaire and the Brazilians were innovative at one time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "all poetry is visual poetry, all poetry is language poetry, don't create separate fiefdoms like 'genuinely visual poetry'" Jonathan Mayhew Sure, and all words are visual poetry and all art is visual poetry and all human endeavors are visual poetry and all everything is visual poetry--and now we have no danger of, gasp, separate fiefdoms. But if we want to be able to communicate, we need to distinguish forms of poetry from one another, and distinguish a given form of of poetry (like "genuine visual poetry") from forms of poetry that people wrongly consider to be that form of poetry. Maxim: intelligence is directly proportionate to the largeness of one's generalities, and indirectly proportionate to the number and minuteness of the specifics one is able to distinguish between. "a lot of so called visual poetry" I thought all poetry is visual poetry. "--is just not that interesting *visually*, in the cute tricks with typography genre; it often gives me the old deja vu all over again feeling; sure, Apollinaire and the Brazilians were innovative at one time" J M A Lot of anything you can name is boring, so what? --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 19:19:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: Visual Poetry In-Reply-To: <20000913125912.DMEA832940.mta1-rme.xtra.co.nz@smtp.xtra.co.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There is no working definition for visual poetry--Karl Young (Looking over this i note that a brief note turned into a long performance directed into the vastness of cyberspace --fortuitously for the reader risking eye and brain and patience damage in its perusal--it may always be deleted and sent back into the wastes from which it came--) i greatly respect Bob Grumman's ideas re visual poetry, and all poetries. i believe that visual poetry is the oldest form of notation. visual poetry is quite different from lexical/verbal poetry in that the latter is based on measure--it is a time art visual poetry spatializes the notations in such a way that the reader moves among the texts/images--the montage or intersign poetry as Philadelpho Menezes called it the usual "strict time" or "keeping time" of verbal poetry is non-existent this opens the visual poet to all manner of performances, oral and through body movements, gestures, howlings, shriekings, sound poetry performances visual poetry is interactive in a huge number of possible ways--many of them ways that verbal poetry is not as well, the visual poem, like the sound poem, is not a completely "fixed text" that is, it remains "open" literally to/for/ with/by the reader/viewer/sounder/performer a definition i have given for a web site collection of "minimal definitions of visual poetry" is this: visual poetry is a hieroglyph of site/sight/cite the site of the page, the sight of the image, the cite of sounds of letters, syllables, words visual poetry is a palimptsest of memory, dream, imagination and concrete fact (http://www.fut.es/~boek861/poesia_visual.htm) if you examine the definitions provided by the wonderful array of other visual poets at this site, you will find that the definition of visual poetry is indeed open ended and mine is simply mine--for that particular site and time as it is continually in flux as one studies and makes more it may alsways be developing--one hopes so! many of the commentators and detractors of visual poetry are people who have not made an effort to seriously study the works --although happily now there are some new anthologies available for the most part visual poetry as always is found in journals, and from small presses such as Bob's Runaway Spoon press (and happily with the new media--on web sites and distirbuted on CD Rom) (as well as in performances at exhibitions and conferences held continually throughout the world) given what is often presented in the academy as "visual poetry" one can literally "see" why the entire area of visual and sound poetries is treated for the most part as a kind of curiosity, rather than a vital and generative area of work, practised internationally by workers of excellent quality a good deal of work that passes itself off as "visual poetry" done by workers coming from a language centered orientation is not visual poetry--it is primarily concerned with the playing around of arrangements of typefaces and having words move in more than one direction (this aspect was noted by one commentator to the list, who contended that this is basically what "visual poetry" is) a major exception is the work of Robert Grenier since Bob Grumman brought up the puritans-- language centered writing and its approaches with visual poetry strike one as being of the "puritan" school that is, language centered writing in many of its stated objectives, is a form of writing that is antithetical to visual poetry, as well as many other poetries this is not a binary statement or a value judgement-- simply an observation based on statements made i have heard a talk by Johanna Drucker for example in which she stated that the "material word" would be basically a form of visual poetry that has nothing to do with the senses whatsoever this is a very puritanical conception of the text --basically an anti-idol worshipping and graven image making kind of stance one of the innovations of much language writing came from its essaying to work through various aspects of Russian formalism (the earlier developments of formalism and New Criticism in Britain and the USA also made use of the works of the Russian and Czech formalists, though in a somewhat different manner due to the lesser availability of texts then in English) aspects of Russian formalism--the work of Schlovsky in his earlier phases for example--were involved with aspects of the visual poetries of Russian Futurism--most notably the idea of the "Word as Such" proclaimed by Kruchonhyk and Khlebnikov in a joint manifesto (Kruchonyhk and Khlebnikov then proceeded in quite different directions--see an excellent brief history and analysis for example in RUSSIAN FORMALISM A Metapoetics Peter Steiner (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984 pp.143-146, 149-151) also see Markov's HISTORY OF RUSSIAN FUTURISM and the two superb books by Gerald Janecek THE LOOK OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE and ZAUM The Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism excerpts from the last named as well as examples of the work of Kruchonhyk and Robert Grenier may be found at: Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry http://www.thing.net/~grist/homekarl.htm the visual aspects become dropped when a puritanical conception of the word, or "material word" or "materiality of language" are emphasized by the formalism of language centered writing since the cultural influence of puritanism remains ever strong in the usa, what is acceptable in the academy and more and more so by areas of the so called mainstream--are bound to be works coming from the language centered sphere, and not those of visual poetry, which for Philadelpho Menezes is that of the "intersign" and the "intermedia" (as opposed to "multimedia) the latter in a sense are too "contaminated" (not puritan in the pure sense) even within visual poetry this idea is acknowledged for example in the distinction made since the Sixties between "clean" and "dirty" work I think that Bob Grumman made a distinction which is generally held to be more or less true--that modern visual poetry is initiated by Mallarme's "Un Coup de des" Mallarme's poem is basically a book--a visual/sound work of book art book art is one of the significant developments of modern visual poetry since then, through many movements and modes of making and presentation to the present though it also present in much older forms--scrolls, papyri, Egyptian and Mayan and other texts incised or painted on rocks, THE BOOK OF KELLS, THE BOOK OF HOURS, the works of Blake, many many others from around the world modern sound poetry was so named in the 1950s by Henri Chopin, one of the pioneers of working with electromagnetic tape. the origins of this are usually held to be with the phonetic poetries of Futurism (Italian and Russian) and Dada both sound and visual poetry --in my view--are really the first poetries Russian Futurist Zaum for example was influenced by the glossollalia of those in a state of religious ecstasy or "being beside/outside" oneself--"speaking in tongues"--whose origins are lost in the sands of time it should be noted that historically in the west an interest, renewed, in the visual poetry aspects of written language often coincides with the introduction of new technologies for the reproduction of texts as well as with the historical attempts to decipher the various hieroglyphic languages--especially, in the west prior to the conquest of the new world--that of the Egyptians the introduction of the printing press came about in an era of great interest in the hieroglyphs and as well helped to bring about the creation of "pattern poetry" modern visual and sound poetries have developed along with the introduction of photography, the telegraph and telephone, the radio and film, aerial photography, the x-ray, the sonar, the radar, the mimeograph machine, the typewriter, the xerox machine, the computer technologies modern visual and sound poetries have also had a deep interelationship with the modern movements in painting, performance and a remewed interest in handwritten notations a strong current in american poetry has been the relationship with the visual--beginning with the interest in and influence of the Egyptian hieroglyphics during the American renaissance (see John irwin's AMERICAN HIEROGLYPHICS) and extending via the Fenollosa/Pound work THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER AS A MEDIUM FOR POETRY into the work of pound--while William Carlos Williams looked to contemporary painting (as did Gertrude Stein) for an example--and Olson, coming out of the Pound-Williams tradition, turned to the Mayan hieroglyphs William Burroughs has also been a strong advocate for the study and use of hieroglyphic writing in the making of visual/sound texts and performances Kerouac used the visual technique of "sketching" in relation to page size as a dictation of the time frame of poetry to produce sound poetry texts from haiku to his book length OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT much american folk art as well as "outsider art" deals with forms of visual poetry--for example the old signs one still finds for example for a hardware store--a saw hanging in front of the store and so on ad infinitum graffiti or tagging and its relationships with hip hop music and performance are another living example of the "open field" aspects of visual poetry and sound poetry (intersign and intermedia) unfortunately in the united states, due to the pronounced influence of still of puritanism and in the 20th century that of formalism, the actually central fact of visual poetry as a vital ongoing project of american writing/notation has been greatly ignored in fact visual poetry often is treated as the works of Poe often were by the traditions of american formalism: "a find for french eyes" --as noted in a post to this list which dismissed visual poetry as something interesting done at one point by the French and the Brazilians Kerouac wrote of "book movie"--"the visual American form" long before the arrival of the puritans on what is now the shores of the usa, the Ojibway people were making a visual poetry notation of their language which still exists today "Ojibway" is the name given by other tribes and nations and it means "the people who write" the Ojibway name for themselves is Inishnabe--"first people" It is a very sad and typical fact of american culture and history to ignore its own deepest as Gilles Deleuze would call it "rhizomes"--and attempt instead to eradicate them and put in their place something else, much cleaner, much more "material" much more "safe" and much more easily "territorialized" and "colonized" on the other hand, while i hope as does Bob Grumman for more recognition for visual poetry, i also hope that it does not become "colonized" or that there are never arguments about it as with language centered writing--has it been assimilated, is it pure, what is its relationship with the academy ad infinitum ad nauseaum i doubt there will be--given the overall cultural "structure of feeling" as the British cultural critics say some aspects will be appropriated and formalized and canonized--and then put away safely, as they already have been, by various "authorities"--and that way a certain easing of the conscience may be felt--we have dispensed with THAT! now to the more serious work at hand that is, the puritan, formalist project in its various guises and generations i shd. note that these are my own ides and views-- and as well--i am not trying to set up binaries the puritan and non-puritan are part of one another yin-yang that one may try to eradicate the other--is an historical fact it is also a fact that many aspects of art and thought which are "foreign" or "international" are historically regarded as dangerous and in need of being rubbed out in the usa--for example the internationalism of the anarchists (massive public executions in Chicago in the 1880s, murders extending through the period of the I.W.W. to the Sacco and Vanzetti executions--suppresion of internationalism of communism and Socialism, beginning during WW1 and put into full force with the Palmer Raids, the development of the FBI--extended now to the mass media exportation of american culture throughout the world, to effectively make a super economic/cultural/military power-- in this regard one notes some of the comments on this list as being part of the cultural heritage of "manifest destiny" that is--many aspects of the international intersign of visual and sound poetries need to be eradicated for the americanization and colonization of the areas in order for them to be made part of the "american scene" culturally and to "fit in" with already constructed presentations of the possibilities of language well, i shall conclude this intermedia soap box performance of singing, signing, notating, gesticulating, spray painting, montaging of elements ("It is not the elements which are new, but the order of their of their arrangement"--Pascal") with two quotations torn from the Book of Hope (i.e. that visual/sound poetries are not fatally colonized . . . ) (hope being perhaps the most obdurate of human emotions) "Creation survives in fragments under the ruins of a world for which we can no longer find expression." W. Weidle, L'IMMORTALITE DES MUSES qtd. in Hans Richter, DADA ART AND ANTI-ART (New York: McGraw-Hill p. 214). "Not only do the words change meanings but meanings vary locally at the same time. A final glossary, therefore, cannot be made of words whose intentions are fugitive." William S. Burroughs, JUNKIE (NY: Ace Editions, 2nd Edition, p. 17) The intentions of visual poetry are not fugitive--it is just that they have been made so in their reception within the culture of the usa. As an international and at the same time intensely local language of the intersign, it is not surprising that this situation should exist--for it exists at the peripheries of the areas of american control and spheres of influence. yet also is embedded within american culture, despite attempts at its eradication what the heck, one more quotation, with emphasis on the both/and of "here/there": "A Dadaist is someone who loves life in all its uncountable form, and one who knows, and says that, "Life is not here alone, but there, there, there (da, da, da)." Johannes Baader in Die freie Strasse, berlin, December 1918 qtd. in Richter, p. 215 To conclude (this to a snoozing audience of winos and babies, and to blissfully unaware lovers and to the relief of the beat policemen-- as well as the birds and insects whose meals are being put off by the noise of this gesticulating spray painting hieroglyphic figure-- ceding at last the soap box to the self proclaimed Leader of the Quest for Righteousness--) visual poetry is a bridge among modern visual poetry and sound poetry methods, presentations, notations, and technologies and ancient ones visual poetry is also there already as a bridge among american poetries and international poetries-- a bridge too often ignored or put under the process of demolition and make over of dismissal and dissing-- as an "away zone" useless until . . . the zoning commitees get hold of it-- --dbc ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 02:01:18 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Coolidge Book Comments: cc: lunberry@CSD.UWM.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed American Book Exchange (www.abexchange.com), the most complete site of rare book dealer catalogs, shows one copy available as follows: COOLIDGE, Clark. Smithsonian Depositions & Subject to a Film. NY: Vehicle Editions (1980). First edition. 83 pp. Fine in printed wrappers; a trade paperback original. One of 500 copies printed. Bookseller Inventory # 4653 Price: US$ 20.00 convert currency Presented by Jeff Maser - Bookseller, Richmond, CA, U.S.A. Go the the website and follow the ordering instructions. I'm always inclined to call first myself, just to make sure it's really in stock. Excellent book, by the way, Ron Silliman _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 00:30:04 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: language lingua frankfooter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Damn, Bob, the way you send to the list prohibits the simple reply unless I cut and paste. Backchannels go straight to you. Hmmm . . . Anyway, on to your comments-- Austinwja@AOL.COM wrote: > > The reality based poem may seem shop > > worn, but let's not forget Frank O'Hara's "I do this, I do that" > > poems which were astonishingly innovative for the time. > > Wasn't William Carlos Williams doing that kind of thing long before > O'Hara? > > Austin: Nope, close but no cigar. Williams always wrote as if he > had something major to say, competing with Eliot and all that. No, > O'Hara's particular celebration of urban minutiae is an original. > And all that Hollywood stuff. And his tone! Well, you're interested in smaller originalities than I am. Williams's plums in the fridge poem, which I can't stand, did the main thing O'Hara's "I did this, I did that" poems did. But, yes, O'Hara's personality was different than Williams's. But all poetic oeuvres are "original" in the sense that they express different people's personalities, since all personalities are different. Austin: Not sure what small vs. large really means in art, or how much it matters. Something small can be far more potent than something bloated. But I don't agree that O'Hara's innovation is small, in any event. His particular take on the urbane sensibility seems astonishingly fresh to me and had enormous influence on much of what came between New York School and langpo. That last, the influence, is a fact. And differing personalities should not be dismissed as a small thing--not that you're necessarily doing that. Aren't those differences the fuel for different innovative strategies? > > No radical formal machinations there--just a new attitude toward > > content. And no one ever accused Frank of being dour and timid. Snip of stuff about O'Hara that's interesting but I was just reacting to the idea of untimidity of personality indicating untimidity of poetry, which it doesn't. Austin: We agree. > > Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the > > former is clearly the more innovative. > > Do you really believe poets trying for verbal innovation in their > poetry are likely to be more innovative than poets trying for visual > innovation AND verbal innovation (as all the best visual poets do)? > > ---------------- > > Austin: Keep reading. I did but don't feel you came close to answering the question. Austin: That's because I left out what I thought was obvious. My mistake. Surely in the world of visual arts vp might do better than langpo. But I thought the issue, and the thrust of your complaints, is that vp is marginalized in the arena of literature. If that's the issue, then my comments stand. Not enough language in vp for some in the literary disciplines. I assume you're not fighting for wall space at the galleries. If what you're after is greater acceptance from literary critics, then you have to deal with their tastes and biases. The rest is irrelevant. Those who prefer visuals might indeed find poetry lacking, but we're not talking about acceptance from them, are we? In the world of painting, the combination of word and image is pretty old news--which doesn't make any less valuable today. > ------------------ Re: langpo: > When Ashbery's poetry, and Derrida's > philosophy hit land, the floodgates opened. I dunno about that, but don't know enough or have to learn enough to argue it. Austin: ok > > ------------------------ > > > Vispo has been around for centuries, > > Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than > a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was > decorative only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud > Hollander's imitations of them. > > ---------------------- > > Austin: You should get in touch with Kuzminsky. He's got a file of > vp from ancient and Medieval neighborhoods that will knock your socks > off. Merely decorative? Not at all. Some beautiful and brilliant > stuff. About all I've seen of ancient and medieval visio-textual art was the stuff in Dick Higgins's big gathering, and nothing I saw made any impression on me. > Herbert was a concrete poet, no? I guess. But concrete poetry is a form of visual poetry. Austin: This is an opinion I happen to agree with, only because the parameters of vp are so broad. On the other hand, all poetry on the page is visual. When we start gathering differences under one rubric, where do we stop? Your own definitions can be understood to apply to nearly everything, including the rather conventional poem whose lines are occasionally indented, in the sense that the visual placement of lines complements what is being said. > I'm referring to something much closer to what we have > today. Of course the technology has advanced. But the procreation of > computers doesn't affect the quality of vp any more than the invention > of the typewriter made for better verses. But these technologies do > permit new innovations which is not the same thing as quality. Well, I don't know what Kuzminsky has or how good it is. All I know is that I'm aware of visual poetry that is verbally as innovative as language poetry, in my view--and also visually innovative. I simply don't see how language poetry can be as innovative as visual poetry. Austin: My point was that as a general form, langpo was something fresh in the eighties. Vispo, as Igor has rightly claimed, is a thing revived. But this doesn't stop me from appreciating individual vispos more than certain individual langpos. And I made that point in a previous post. snip > But Robert Frost is (properly) there. > > ---------------------------- > > Austin: Yes, and he was one hell of an innovator when it came to the > dark/light of imagery, the potential for an image to fold back on > itself, meaning and unmeaning at the same time. Like O'Hara, he had a unique personality. I fail to find any genuine innovation in his poetry. To me, he's just an improved Thomas Hardy (though that's a lot, since Hardy was a major poet, it seems to me). Austin: Now here I have to say, keep reading. Frost, that is. Okay, you can't find it. I agree about Hardy's stature (it really isn't up for debate anyway), but to suggest (if you are) that Frost's handling of the language is just remixed Hardy, well there are a boatload of well considered critical texts since WW II that say otherwise. Of course they could all be wrong. > > A final note. I still don't get these attacks on Professors and > > Universities. > > There are exceptions, of course, but in general it takes a different > kind of person to plug away in a certified career lane as one who > becomes a professor must from the kind who CAN'T (for better or worse) > stick to such a lane. And the former will tend to prefer knownstream > to otherstream art, because that's what lines his lane. The big > problem, though, is that professors wield far more short-term cultural > power than independent artists, and they much more often than not > use it against the best independent artists (however they try to hide > that with token gestures towards the marginal--as when Marjorie > Perloff granted visual poetry a seminar at Stanford that mentioned > two or three genuine visual poets a while back). > > ---------------------------- > > Austin: Bob, everyone has to work, or most everyone in the real > world. What about all those poets who work in the private sector in > some capacity, feeding the corporate machine? What about their > personalities? They're not sell outs, but Professors are? These > are stereotypes, plain and simple. I didn't say anything about sell-outs. I was merely sketchily explaining why there are attacks on academics. Professors work inside the establishment, artists can work there, too, but usually don't. So there's friction between the two. Austin: I didn't say you said it. Actually these days it seems artists usually do work in the establishment. What else do we have to replace the old patronage? I guess Michelangelo worked for the ultimate establishment. Didn't seem to hurt his art any. And those who can't find positions scramble to teach part time. But you and a few others have complained on the list about Profs, so my comments were meant to cover all that ground. You have also referred in print to some critics as "idiots" for not devoting their critical skills to very marginalized writers, for not turning over every rock imaginable. They may not all see things the way you do, but my guess is that they're all fairly intelligent people who have good reasons for the choices they make. I don't know, could it be that many of them just don't consider certain art very good? The fiends!! > And yes, certain few professors have power over > cultural directions. What's wrong with that? Nothing except that, except for a very few rare exceptions, they use their power to reward mediocrity while the van Goghs have to wait until they've been dead fifty years to make anything whatever from their art. Austin: stereotype. And Van Gogh's problems had little, if anything, to do with the academy, and much more to do with the commercial tastes of art dealers and his own illness. Snip of opinion about the value of academics as conservators of dead artists' work, which they are, and for which they are to be commended. But why must they also throw so much support to contemporary imitators of dead artists' work? Austin: But they don't always. Most of the artists in that bag make a small reputation for themselves by getting published and winning prizes. And those journals and prizes are generally administered by conservative editors (poets), state agencies, etc., that have very little to do with most Profs or the academy in general. When was the last time a major critical work was devoted to a contemporary, conventionally narrative or lyric poet? There are a few works, but they're not major. Most of the big shot Profs/critics are writing about experimental work as far as I can tell. Incidentally, it's not "cummings," but "Cummings." Austin: Incidentally, cummings alternately used lower and upper case in his own signature (I have a facsimile in front of me right now of lower case in his own hand), and various anthologies and editions of his work offer both versions. But this sort of thing reduces a civil albeit spirited discussion to something very close to an ad hominem zinger. Should I now correct the spelling and grammatical errors in your posts? Of course not! I wouldn't do that to anyone. That would be rude and childish. > Are we to believe there's some connection between the kind of > personality that can't hold a job and the ability to produce quality > poetry?! No. There is, however, a connection between the kind of adventurousness that finds following years of rules to become a Ph.D.and then professor difficult and the ability to produce innovative art. Austin: You say this as if it is fact. But is it? I guess you have your personal reasons for investing in this idea. Sounds a lot like that business about type A personalities we use to hear so much about on the TV, that was later shown to be a guess cum desire to simplify a very complicated situation. I know more than a few Profs whose very experimental work is as marginal as it gets, but then again testimonials are not good evidence. Of course if one was degreed by, and appointed to, some Midwestern institution, his/her tastes are to some extent governed by geography. To prefer langpo, for example, to work that more accurately expresses their lives and culture--well, it ain't gonna happen, not much anyway--and maybe it shouldn't. God!! I love NYC! > And what's this love of power, anyway? > Who cares how much power independent artists have? > It's supposed to be about art. The power is in the art. > If power is so important to us, we should run > for Congress. Independent artists do have more power relative > to the arts academy than the guy who invents in his garage has vs. > the official scientific community. So it looks like the arts > academy is doing pretty well. Let's just do our job (making and > sharing art), and let them do theirs. Last time I looked over the > Western history of literature, I wasn't too disappointed. One > terrific writer after another. One terrific dead writer after another, followed by living imitators. As for power, I mentioned it merely to suggest why otherstream artists resent academics. The latter have the power to help the former, and don't. --Bob G. Austin: But the latter HAVE helped the former, over and over again. Once again, we must consider the staying power of Stein, cummings, etc., which owes much to the efforts of academics. Now I'm not sure what YOUR argument is. Should academics not write about the dead? The poetry, I might add, is very much alive. And the last I heard, most of the contemporary experimental writers represented in the major anthologies are very much with the living. But why should anyone single out academics in this regard? Those on the margins also have power to help each other out. Some do, and some horde even the little they have to give. To single out Profs seems to me a little too convenient. In any event, you have my best wishes, always. I'm ready to move on to something else. If you want the last word, it's yours. Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 16:38:37 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GasHeart@AOL.COM Subject: Philly: Theater, Music, Film - more notes from the fringe MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 1. bell and clock - added shows, thursday(9/14) at 10, friday(9/15) at 8 2. fab four meet at the pearly gates - see update below 3. rat conference - theater conference, fri (9/15), and sat. (9/16) at 11pm 4. dilapidating -every night at 8, till 9/16 5. king crimson - 11/16, and11/17 (this is not a fringe fest event) 6. The Gate to Moon Base Alpha - FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22nd 8PM (not a fringe=20 event) __________________________________________________________ 1. bell and clock - added shows, thursday(9/14) at 10, friday(9/15) at 8 i saw this and it was great...a great space, great lighting, and the acting=20 is great, too. by the way, greg giavanni was involved in putting this together even though=20 that is not mentioned in the fringe guide....he is the guy behind the Big=20 Mess extravaganzas that occur once or twice a year at the troc.....and yes,=20 greg is a barrymore juror this year michael dura, looks way cool in bell and clock, rises to this occassion at St. Augustine=92s Church, 241 N. Lawrence St. (between 4th and 5th st.) ____________________________________________________________ 2. fab four meet at the pearly gates - see update below i saw this and it was cool, otherwordly and worth seeing.....the only thing=20= i=20 would add to my previous blurb is =20 Warning: Depicts Beatles in dangerous situations. at Smoke, 233 Bread St., wed.(9/13) at 8, thu.(9/14) at 8, fri.99/15) at 8=20 and 10, sat.99/16) at 8 and 10 it sells out so try to get your tickets early _____________________________________________________________ 3. rat conference - theater conference a late night discussion/conversation about theater....this is a nationwide=20 group of independent theaters and artists....it will be at Theater Double,=20 1619 Walnut St. and is part of the Fringe Fest (there is also a listserve or= =20 newsgroup related to this group) for more info contact thtrdbl@aol.com _____________________________________________________________ 4. dilapidating -every night at 8, till 9/16 i heard this is good....they come fron the netherlands and do performances i= n=20 large spaces...using =93art, architecture, music and film=94......griftheath= er=20 did a cool piece at fringe before. Location was tba, but is the Shirley Bldg= ,=20 444 n. 2nd st. _____________________________________________________ 5. king crimson - 11/16, and11/17 (not a fringe event) KING CRIMSON at the Theatre of Living Arts Thursday, November 16 and Friday, November 17 at 9:00 p.m. =20 Tickets are $35 robert fripp, adrian belew, tony levin, bill bruford....(trey gunn and 1 mor= e=20 guy?) .... defines =93progressive rock=94, they play their oldies and impro= vise=20 keeping you on the edge of your seat and/or sanity, they rock out ______________________________________________________________ 6. The Gate to Moon Base Alpha - FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22nd 8PM =93Good news to everyone who came to the Gate to Moon Base Alpha last=20 winter/spring and was wondering if the series would continue. The Alpha Gate= =20 performances will continue this Fall, and the first show is FRIDAY, SEPTEMBE= R=20 22nd 8PM!!! Slipping into Sublimnity, Sporangia, Dev79, and Will Schofield=20 will be making and playing music ambient and psychedelic.=94 =93The Gate to Moon Base Alpha is a place for Philadelphia and international= =20 artists to play ambient/experimental/space music live. Liberated from the =20 expectations of club and bar performances, artists from experimental DJs to=20= =20 neo-classical ensembles to tape loopers to psychedelic post-rock and space =20 musicians perform hour long sets with the freedom their mind expanding music= =20 really demands. The mission of the series is also to help break down the =20 walls separating many of us in our sub-genres and cliques, inevitably =20 categories mediating us from the immediate wonder of the music itself.=94 all of this and more will take place Friday, September 22nd at the ROTUNDA=20 (4012 Walnut Street). Admission is free to all ages. This event is a potluck= =20 so bring food and drinks to share. (this is not a fringe fest event) ______________________________________________________ so the fringe fest is still going on, until sat., 9/16....there are so many=20 wonderful performances, to pick up a guide, go to the fringe box office , 11= 3=20 n. 2nd st., to see what you like before this unique festival ends.......the=20 cabaret is still happening every night at 11 at the lithograph bldg., 211=20 race st. (rear) and is free. it should be especially good fri. and sat. nigh= ts well, that's all for now....send me your upcoming events.....also let me kno= w=20 if you are getting duplicates of this, if you want me to just send one your=20 way josh cohen GasHeart@aol.com ... ... . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 00:36:07 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/13/00 1:35:07 PM, MuratNN@AOL.COM writes: << In a message dated 9/12/00 4:44:09 PM, Austinwja@AOL.COM writes: >Serious, non-decorative visual poetry has been around for less than >a century. Yes, to me Herbert's shaped poems' visuality was decorative >only. That's why the academy is willing to applaud Hollander's >imitations of them. James, It seems I respond to your comments instinctively more than to any other person's. I have two issues with your comments on Herbert: The first is to the phrase "decorative only." The "decorative" may be an intensely intellectual experience; it has something to do with the creation of a meditative space. In fact, my essay on decorative poetics around a review of Ed Friedman's "Mao & Matisse" in the most recent issue of Big Bridge (http://www.bigbridge.org/) deals exactly with that idea. The second is your referring to Herbert's poetry as "decorative only" (this time in your sense of decorative). I assume you are referring to "Easter Wings." The poem, as I experience the poem, is a visual and rhythmical incarnation of despair or the fall (as a progressively narrowing sense of possibilities) being transformed into a progressively expanding sense of possibilities through the Holy Ghost. That's what the wing shape is, death and rebirth of (and in) Christ. It seems to me Hopkins's "God's Grandeur" has "easter Wings" behind it, so does a less familiar poem, my "I hear wings in the foliage" (with its peculiar shape), in "Io's Song." My third point relates to the supposed "inferiority" of visual poetry. I don't think Robert Grenier is any less imaginative than any language poets. Murat Nemet-Nejat >> Murat, your analysis is right on the money, though you don't need me to tell you this. However, your backchannel attributes certain statments to me that are not in fact mine. Austinwja@aol.com did not write the above. Bob Grumman wrote the above, and I replied to it. By the way, in my reply I never said that vp was less imaginative than lp. I said that the innovation of vp goes back centuries, while langpo was pretty new in our time. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 21:41:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Vidaver Subject: A Talk at KSW: Jason Wiens--"On Documenting the Contemporary" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "On Documenting the Contemporary" A talk by Jason Wiens at the Kootenay School of Writing Sunday, September 17, 2000 2pm Free Jason Wiens, a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary, will present an informal talk on his research into Vancouver poetry of the 1980. Discussion to follow. Kootenay School of Writing 201 - 505 Hamilton Street Vancouver BC 604-688-6001 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 00:47:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/13/00 1:43:48 PM, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << I think you've got in for the old Posssum. W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. >> Hi Richard! Loved your post. I promise you I have nothing against TseTse's poetry. Even considering Pound's brilliant edit, The Waste Land is Eliot's poem. And Four Quartets is no slouch either. The history is that Eliot pretty much ignored Williams, and that drove the latter man up a wall. Oh, and I also love Williams' poetry. As I said, very democratic palette. Always a delight to hear from you. Hope things are going wonderfully for you. You deserve it. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 23:06:40 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Actually, Williams was on "the road to the contagious hospital" in poem I. of _Spring and All_. The piece of green glass (or actually, "the broken// pieces of a green/ bottle") is from a poem published later called "Between Walls." On Eliot & WCW, the notion of their opposition probably comes from Williams himself. Quickly thumbing through my books I have not been able to track down the reference, but somewhere he says (disapprovingly) that "The Waste Land" was the poem that put U.S. poetry back into the classroom. He also dismisses TSE as "a subtle conformist," in the famous preface to _Kora in Hell_. --Mark DuCharme Richard Taylor wrote (among other things): > >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They both >were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if those >are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants with >oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is only >slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the wings >of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course WCW >moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was probably >temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. >W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of >the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very >innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes >thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know >the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:50:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: POETRY SERIES RETURNS!! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This message came to the administrative account. - Tim Shaner --On Thursday, September 14, 2000, 1:26 AM -0400 "George Fouhy" wrote: " FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE " Northern Westchester Center for the Arts " 272 N. Bedford Rd. " Mt. Kisco, NY 10549 " " Creative Arts Cafe Poetry Series " Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, D.Nurksy " and OPEN MIKE " " Mt. Kisco, NY: The Northern Westchester Center for the Arts: September " 18th at 7:30 PM, The Creative Arts Cafe Poetry Series at Northern " Westchester Center for the Arts is honored to present Pet Laureate of " Brooklyn, D. Nurkse, awarded Fellow by the National Endowment for the " Arts, 1995 and 1984. Author of five books of poetry, including his most " recent book Leaving Ziai (Four Way Books), D. Nurkse=92s poems have " appeared extensively in magazines, anthologies, and on radio and video " cassettes. He is co- translator of two books and is co-editor of Four " Contemporary Poets (La Vida Press, NY,1994); poetry of Eleanor Wilner, " Magdalena Gomes, Sharon Olds, and Juanita Tobin. . In 1996, he was " appointed Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. An OPEN MIKE for poets follows the " reading. " " Mr. Nurkse is a poet, writer, teacher and translator. He graduated, " Magnum Cum Laude, from Harvard University in 1970. His Professional " associations include PEN, Poets and Writers, Amnesty International and " he is currently the alternate United Nations representative for Defense " For Children International, an organization based in Geneva, " Switzerland. " " His most recent book is Leaving Xaia (Four Way Books). New work is in " The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Kenyon Review. D. Nurkse=92s " other work includes Voices Over Water (Greywolf Press, St. Paul, " 1993), Staggered Lights (Owl Press, Seattle, 1990), Shadow Wars " (Hanging Loose Press, NY, 1988), and Isolation in Action (State Street " Press, NY, 1988). His poetry has been published in magazines, journals " and quarterlies including: The American Poetry Review, The Hudson " Review, The Antioch Review, Columbia, New York Quarterly, The " Massachusetts Review, The Quarterly, Poetry, Epoch, Yankee, The New York " Times...the list goes on and on ! " " Mr. Nurkse was featured on =93Poetry Breaks=94 (WGBH-TV, Boston, = nationally " distributed through PBS), filmed in November 1994. He also performed his " poetry on Cincinnati Public Radio in 1992 and 1993 and on =93New Letters " on the Air=94 (NPR, 1994). " " Doors open at 7:15 PM. The reading begins at 7:30. Suggested donation " is $7.00: $5.00 for seniors and students. A reception and book signing " follow the reading.. " " The NWCA is located at 272 North Bedford Road, Rte 117.For further " information, please contact NWCA, Cindy Beer, Program Coordinator, 914 " 241 6922. " ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 02:46:53 +0000 Reply-To: anielsen@lmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: anielsen@LMU.EDU Subject: I been framed! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII What Maria says about the frustrations of the framing in _Lingua Franca_ is right on target. There are several subjects which seem to cause the LF editors to act like they've got a bug up the nose -- cultural studies being perhaps the most frequent instance -- and there is a certain mode of LF article we often see (and please note that I am no longer talking about Andrew's piece) -- in which reductive views of "the two sides" of a debate are presented by an author who seems to sit in some more objctive position above the silliness of the fray -- and at the same time, the mag always has some compelling reading and always has at least one piece of real news -- when they are running things like "Cannibalism: Threat or Menace? Professors Take Sides" "Has All-- a Codicil?" -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Department of English Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 anielsen@lmu.edu (310) 338-3078 _________________________________________________ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 19:46:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Molly Schwartzburg Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <39BEE460.6246@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > Herbert was a concrete poet, no? > > I guess. But concrete poetry is a form of visual poetry. Most people who study visual poetry limit the term "concrete poetry" to work coming out of the movement of that name that began in the 50s, and for the most part concrete poets don't make "pattern poetry" or "shaped poetry" like Herbert's (in which the poem looks like the object it takes as its subject matter). So, Herbert is usually placed in the more general category of "visual poet." But I'm an academic, so...dare I speak at all? --Molly Schwartzburg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 00:23:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET Subject: Belladonna report MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Friday September 1--Tisa Bryant and Cecelia Vicuna read to a A/C buzzing, people-packed Bluestockings Bookstore to kick off Belladonna’s Fall season. Alicia Locker, an open reader, began the event by reciting who read a painful/funny rhyme about her story of being an Aguna, a Jewish woman whose hubby won’t divorce her as punishment for rejecting his violent ways—a performance replete with non-verbal expression achieved by pointing to parts of her body that didn’t rhyme as well with the otherwise PG rating. San Francisco poet, former Dark Room Collective member Tisa Bryant took the mike to read from her "Letters to Regret" series and "Tsimmes" (seems the night had Jewish traditions written all over it). Both pieces use prose as the base for patchwork united by time period and the consciousness of the poet resulting in a filmic, real time, spanning camera effect. Yvonne Rainer films thread into the quilt of "Tsimmes" (jewish compote) alongside Tituba and slavetrade, breast cancer scare and the artifacts and language of family history. The long piece is Bryant’s new chapbook, published by Leroy. Cecilia Vicuña’s soft speaking voice belies a mesmerizing shamanic presence. Exploring the communicative possibilities of the non-verbal, Vicuña’s performance incorporated movement and wordless song—sounded without voice. She began by moving through the crowd, rearranging objects and brushing against audience members. This physical survey of the area transformed it into a numinous space which Vicuña herself controlled. From this arena she launched into a performance that was equal parts magic, humor and homage (to prehistory, to fertility). In addition to several poems that have earned her banned status in Latin America, her evening’s repertoire included an impromptu dialogue with a noisy air conditioner and a duet with an angry toddler. Interruptions which other readers might deem a nuisance Vicuña treats as an opportunity. Her idiosyncratic take on "the show must go on" was a welcome reminder that the show is on at all times whenever you decide to pay attention to it. Belladonna Books and Booglit published a pamplet of much of the work Vicuña read during the reading, called Bloodskirt. --Rachel Levitsky and Liz Young, curators ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 02:16:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kirschenbaum Subject: New Gander and Howe Bookcellar Pamphlets Comments: To: subsubpoetics@listbot.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi all,=20 Aaron Kiely and I have started a new pamphlet series, Bookcellar, in conjunction with the Bookcellar poetry series that he curates at, you guessed it, the Bookcellar in Cambridge, MA. Here are our first efforts, with more to follow in the coming months: Now available=20 pamphlets (digest size, black ink on brown paper) Bookcellar 1 Forrest Gander, The Hugeness of That Which is Missing, 12 pages, $3 Bookcellar 2 Fanny Howe, ( ), 16 pages, $3 All publications are printed in editions of 60, 10 of which are signed by the authors and numbered.=20 Subscriptions 5 unsigned chapbooks, $15 ppd. 10 unsigned chapbooks, $27 ppd. (Buy 9, get 1 free) 5 signed & numbered chapbooks, $25 ppd.=20 10 signed & numbered chapbooks, $45 ppd. (Buy 9, get 1 free) Please note, only 5 signed edition subscriptions are available. Ordering info Add 55=A2 postage/item ordered (excluding subscriptions) Please send check or money order payable to:=20 Aaron Kiely Shifting Units Press 108 Winthrop Road, #2 Brookline, MA 02445 Email: aaron7k@hotmail.com for more information=20 Thanks,=20 Aaron Kiely, editor, Shifting Units Press=20 David Kirschenbaum, publisher, Boog Literature _______________________________________________________ Say Bye to Slow Internet! http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 08:25:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Subject: y'all come down now MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For the many on the Poetics List who are already heading south, either for the Catfish Festival in Demopolis on Saturday or the Southern Miss - Alabama football game Saturday night in Birmingham, you might wish to hit the gas and arrive early enough to attend Johanna Drucker's lecture this Friday afternoon. Drucker will be speaking on "From Materiality to Metadata: Towards a Metalogics of the Book" -- University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa), 3 pm, 216 Phifer. If you have car trouble and must stay on for another couple of weeks, stick around for Kalamu Ya Salaam's reading (7:30pm. Morgan Auditorium, Thursday, September 21) and for Lorenzo Thomas' reading (7:30, place to be announced, Thursday, September 28). Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 07:33:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kirschenbaum Subject: thanks for pittsburgh and bama and info Comments: To: subsubpoetics@listbot.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hi all, thanks to all the listmates who gave their suggestions on where to go in Birmingham and Pittsburgh. More to follow. as ever, David _______________________________________________________ Say Bye to Slow Internet! http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 08:37:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: more re lingua franca... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" worth i think comparing/contrasting the academic poetry situation (whatever you make of it) as depicted/suggested in lingua franca with a recent u.s. news article on creative writing in academe, "labor of love," by brendan i. koerner: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/grad/gbwriting.htm (thanx to brian kenney here at cu for alerting me to this piece... seems to this reader that the article manages to capture, perhaps unwittingly, both the pedagogical naivete and the self-loathing of many who teach in/direct mfa programs...) andrew e (hi andrew) has stated hereabouts that he was less interested in things mfa than in exploring the l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e phenom per se... i'll take him at his word (and why not?)... for me though (and esp. in the face of that u.s. news piece) i can't help but dwell on the conflicted (to put it mildly) institutional circumstances that continue to support and promote the mfa (in such & such terms) even as controversies rage (?) over a given set of poetic practices/communities... these are not unrelated events... but in any case it would be something of a mistake to make the argument, at least theoretically, that teaching a different type of literature amounts, ipso facto, to a different type of teaching (empirically this could be so---but has anyone attempted a survey of late?... my educated (!) guess is that "a different type of teaching" does not correlate in overwhelmingly positive terms with a different type of literature---but to go there, we'd really have to start talking educational theory)... anyway, just to notch the conversation toward less formal, more institutionally specific considerations... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:53:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Trace Deadlines (fwd) Comments: To: "Sub^2*P" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Hi We'd like to remind you of some upcoming deadlines for the trAce New Media Writing Competition, online survey and frAme ejournal issue 5. 30th September 2000 Deadline for entries for the Second trAce/Alt-X Competition for New Media Writing is the end of the month. The judge is Shelley Jackson, the prize is =A31000 and the winner will be announced in December 2000. This competition is looking for the very best of new media writing, so please copy this announcement to all your friends and lists. More information and entry form at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/comp.html 1st October 2000 On 1st October trAce will be going back in time...with a few surprises for our website visitors. The trAce Survey into Writers and the Internet: This is your last chance to tell us how you use the Internet as a writer. This international trAce survey will close on October 1st. Complete the survey online at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/question.htm 31st October 2000 Call for Contributions to frAme 5: Digital Labour: For Love or Money Christy Sheffield Sanford is guest editor for issue 5 of frAme, trAce's online journal of theory and social commentary (launching in late November). We are limited in the number of contributions we can accept so contact Christy at Christys@fdt.net as soon as possible if you would like to contribute. We prefer original web-specific work but will take text-based work and work that has been presented in other venues. We look forward to hearing from you! Helen Whitehead Editorial Manager trAce Online Writing Community The Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane Nottingham NG11 8NS ENGLAND Tel: ++44 (0)115 9486360 Fax: ++44 (0)115 9486364 Web: http://trace.ntu.ac.uk=20 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 10:10:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: <39BED9CA.7983@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A final note, for me, before I admit that we seem to be writing at cross-purposes here. I'm not sure in what way most of what I wrote was "outside what you were talking about," but so be it. If the argument is to be framed in these terms, it can't progress beyond impasse. So perhaps we should agree to disagree here? Especially when you have recourse to something like the following, which does the ideological work of granting your perspective the mantle of common-sense "naturalness": My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second what makes a person feel good ...I'd say that's precisely a model - you could draw it with a Venn diagram, even. Furthermore, it seems to be a particularly metaphysical sort of model, since it ultimately depends on a seemingly alchemical process of transubstantiation. In order to account for the experiences of those who undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the purposes of pleasure, it has to posit a pain that can be "converted" into pleasure, and vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, it's difficult for me to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic happening in the null set that forms the intersection of the two you've defined. Now if we were to frame it in terms of a dialectic rather than a simple opposition, we might get somewhere. But already there, we're pretty far from the position that could maintain categorical impermeability between pain on the one hand and pleasure on the other. Hegel's dialectic of lordship and bondage might do as a thumbnail sketch of some of the subtleties involved in such situations of opposition. Sorry for any immoderate tone in the preceding, but when my experiences and those of people I care about get characterized as "insane," it brings out a bit of the swamp 'gator in this Florida boy. Taylor -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 6:35 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics I snipped a lot you said about taste, Taylor, which sounds interesting to me but outside what I believe I was talking about, which is simply that pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. To say, as you do, that it's not a matter of "defeating" disgust or pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under certain concrete conditions," seems to me insane. Black is white under certain conditions. Being dead is being alive under certain conditions. I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. > And this is consistent in the other direction > as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs > to me as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways > typical of "pleasure." So you experience a mixture of pain and pleasure. You do not experience pain as pleasure. > A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: > > Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other > people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to > want that which causeS you to feel only pain, in whatever form. > > Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you > manage to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those > insane people who want that which causes only pain), from the > class defined before (those sane people who are practicing > nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, > without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly > that appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've > just announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced > that you've demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure > from" and "wanting that which." From either angle, you're allowing > me as a sane person full access to my pleasure, but only so long as > I maintain a categorical distinction between that pleasure and pain, > setting the stage for the truly > perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without > psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely > that which I do not want. > > Still crazy, > Taylor Maybe not, but I don't follow you. By pleasure I mean that which makes a given person feel good in some way. It has nothing to do with "the practices and preferences of other people." If a nonconformist derives pleasure from a poem that makes everyone else vomit he is sane; if he reads that poem in hopes ONLY that it will cause him to be sick (assuming being sick is painful for him), then he is insane. The difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting that which" gives nothing but pain in the short term, and leads to no conceivable plesure in the long term, is that the first is about feeling good, the second about feeling bad. How can it be sane to want to feel bad-- unless what caused you to feel bad will later make you feel more good than you felt bad? > P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our > primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to > imply that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - > any more than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. > I'd like to see room for what I've argued alongside the more > "intentional," less "undergone" pleasures of the perfectly executed > double play or the meticulous alphabetizing of my library. My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second what makes a person feel good. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:17:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Kane Subject: Hoa Nguyen's on WriteNet Again! Comments: To: writenet@twc.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII See how a poetry workshop unfolds on-line. Teachers & Writers Collaborative is proud to feature the fifth on-line workshop led by poet Hoa Nguyen of Austin, Texas. Eight student writers from around the country are participating this time around. Adapt Hoa's writing exercises for your own students, and learn how to critique student poetry by reading Hoa's responses on the forum page. To view the page, go to http://www.writenet.org/ and hit the "Virtual Poetry Workshop" link. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:05:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: Belladonna report In-Reply-To: <000501c01e03$85ee5c60$8d706420@herbert> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Rachel, Thanks much for the report. A minor correction for the list: Tisa's book is published by a+bend, not Leroy. It really is a fine book, and I wouldn't want anyone barking up the wrong tree after it. Taylor -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 9:23 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Belladonna report Friday September 1--Tisa Bryant and Cecelia Vicuna read to a A/C buzzing, people-packed Bluestockings Bookstore to kick off Belladonna's Fall season. Alicia Locker, an open reader, began the event by reciting who read a painful/funny rhyme about her story of being an Aguna, a Jewish woman whose hubby won't divorce her as punishment for rejecting his violent ways-a performance replete with non-verbal expression achieved by pointing to parts of her body that didn't rhyme as well with the otherwise PG rating. San Francisco poet, former Dark Room Collective member Tisa Bryant took the mike to read from her "Letters to Regret" series and "Tsimmes" (seems the night had Jewish traditions written all over it). Both pieces use prose as the base for patchwork united by time period and the consciousness of the poet resulting in a filmic, real time, spanning camera effect. Yvonne Rainer films thread into the quilt of "Tsimmes" (jewish compote) alongside Tituba and slavetrade, breast cancer scare and the artifacts and language of family history. The long piece is Bryant's new chapbook, published by Leroy. Cecilia Vicuña's soft speaking voice belies a mesmerizing shamanic presence. Exploring the communicative possibilities of the non-verbal, Vicuña's performance incorporated movement and wordless song-sounded without voice. She began by moving through the crowd, rearranging objects and brushing against audience members. This physical survey of the area transformed it into a numinous space which Vicuña herself controlled. From this arena she launched into a performance that was equal parts magic, humor and homage (to prehistory, to fertility). In addition to several poems that have earned her banned status in Latin America, her evening's repertoire included an impromptu dialogue with a noisy air conditioner and a duet with an angry toddler. Interruptions which other readers might deem a nuisance Vicuña treats as an opportunity. Her idiosyncratic take on "the show must go on" was a welcome reminder that the show is on at all times whenever you decide to pay attention to it. Belladonna Books and Booglit published a pamplet of much of the work Vicuña read during the reading, called Bloodskirt. --Rachel Levitsky and Liz Young, curators ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 01:26:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Fouhy Subject: POETRY SERIES RETURNS!! Comments: To: Nancy Desmond , Nanette , "NCGiles@aol.com" , "Nester, Daniel" , Nico Suave , "Ogorman05@aol.com" , "Othercinsf@aol.com" , "Paolino, Tammy" , "parnofil@rw.com" , "PartnersBE@aol.com" , Patrick Gabridge , Paul Maass , Paul Schonberg , "Paul-Victor L. Winters" , paul_lindstrom , PAULETTE , "pdunn@pipeline.com" , "Peele, Tom" , "pembroke9@earthlink.net" , "Perry, Cat" , "Perullo, Jinx" , Peter Giles , PETER PIOPPO/Mauri , "PeterSpiro@aol.com" , "Pinezich, Lyn" , Poetics List Administration , "PolitoR@newschool.edu" , Poncet1212 , "prdanjan@email.msn.com" , "Purcell, Jan" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Northern Westchester Center for the Arts 272 N. Bedford Rd. Mt. Kisco, NY 10549 Creative Arts Cafe Poetry Series Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, D.Nurksy and OPEN MIKE Mt. Kisco, NY: The Northern Westchester Center for the Arts: September 18th at 7:30 PM, The Creative Arts Cafe Poetry Series at Northern Westchester Center for the Arts is honored to present Pet Laureate of Brooklyn, D. Nurkse, awarded Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, 1995 and 1984. Author of five books of poetry, including his most recent book Leaving Ziai (Four Way Books), D. Nurkse’s poems have appeared extensively in magazines, anthologies, and on radio and video cassettes. He is co- translator of two books and is co-editor of Four Contemporary Poets (La Vida Press, NY,1994); poetry of Eleanor Wilner, Magdalena Gomes, Sharon Olds, and Juanita Tobin. . In 1996, he was appointed Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. An OPEN MIKE for poets follows the reading. Mr. Nurkse is a poet, writer, teacher and translator. He graduated, Magnum Cum Laude, from Harvard University in 1970. His Professional associations include PEN, Poets and Writers, Amnesty International and he is currently the alternate United Nations representative for Defense For Children International, an organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. His most recent book is Leaving Xaia (Four Way Books). New work is in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Kenyon Review. D. Nurkse’s other work includes Voices Over Water (Greywolf Press, St. Paul, 1993), Staggered Lights (Owl Press, Seattle, 1990), Shadow Wars (Hanging Loose Press, NY, 1988), and Isolation in Action (State Street Press, NY, 1988). His poetry has been published in magazines, journals and quarterlies including: The American Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, The Antioch Review, Columbia, New York Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, The Quarterly, Poetry, Epoch, Yankee, The New York Times...the list goes on and on ! Mr. Nurkse was featured on “Poetry Breaks” (WGBH-TV, Boston, nationally distributed through PBS), filmed in November 1994. He also performed his poetry on Cincinnati Public Radio in 1992 and 1993 and on “New Letters on the Air” (NPR, 1994). Doors open at 7:15 PM. The reading begins at 7:30. Suggested donation is $7.00: $5.00 for seniors and students. A reception and book signing follow the reading.. The NWCA is located at 272 North Bedford Road, Rte 117.For further information, please contact NWCA, Cindy Beer, Program Coordinator, 914 241 6922. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 23:22:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: help: two quotes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Anyone recognize the following lines? "May no armure hit lette, ne none hye walles" "We have scotch'd the snake, not killed it She'll turn and be her selfe .." If so, please backchannel (scope@ucsd.edu) Thanks, Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 09:24:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In response to question--- There's alos that Sheldon Sacks (I think that's the right name) edited book, "On Metaphor," university of Chicago Press, which has some very interesting essays---a range from more theory-laden specialized to discourse to more "plain" speaking.... Also, Since you were interested in the difference between "metaphor" and "metonymy," my hunch is that you are interested in that politicized debate that privileges metonymy in contemporary (is it still?) theory--- For instamce, reading a entry by Barbara Godard on Luce Irigiray, you could find statements like this: Irigaray " challenges [Lacan's] focus on the subject's cathexis, on the Other as object, on definitions of terms rather than on relations between them; that is, the privileging of metaphor and metonymy." (369) This is interesting to me---especially the assumption that metaphor is analogous to definition of terms and that metonymy is analogous to the relations between them. I do not find a necessary connection between "metaphor" and an over emphasis on definition of terms at the expense of the relations between them. Sure, some metaphor theory may attempt to reduce metaphor to a tool employed to subsume its "tenor" in its concrete "vehicle", but there are other ways of figuring metaphor that are at least as subversive of mere "defiinitions of terms".... It is not Irigaray I am critiquing here, as much as what I became aware of, in grad school as a critical orthodoxy some of my teachers adhered to unquestioningly-- the assumption that in order to focus on relations and constitute the other as subject that one should employ metonymy rather than metaphor.... Anyway, this is just a thought (not going to write a whole essay now), but maybe may be useful for your students..... Chris S. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 13:30:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Job Opening at SUNY-Buffalo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Poetics Assistant or Associate Professor of English Starting Fall, 2001 Tenure-track Assistant Professor or tenured Associate Professor, in modernist and/or post-modernist poetry and poetics, with emphasis on women's writing, to start Fall, 2001. Teaching load (2/2), salary, benefits, and privileges competitive with other Research I-AAU universities. Please submit letter of application, cv, and writing sample to Poetics Search Committee Co-Chairs, Professor Susan Howe and Professor Charles Bernstein, Department of English, The University at Buffalo, 438 Clemens Hall, Buffalo, New York, 14260, by November 1, 2000. All applications will be acknowledged. Please visit the Poetics Program website (http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics) and the English Department website (http://writing.upenn.edu/cas/english). The State University of New York at Buffalo is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity employer. Women and minorities are warmly encouraged to apply. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:03:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: The Second Annual Best-Worst Juvenalia Contest Party MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was asked to forward this message to the list. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 15:02:49 -0400 From: Matthew J Chambers Subject: The Second Annual Best-Worst Juvenalia Contest Party (Lost) Friday Events announces The Second Annual Best-Worst Juvenalia Contest Party Friday September 22, 8 pm 547 Linwood Ave. Apt. 3 Buffalo how it works: submit anonymously any number of poems: fee $1 per poem. Put each poem/journal entry/short prose piece+dollar in a separate envelope - you may bring the entries with you to the contest-party or mail them c/o verdure to 413 Bird Ave., Buffalo NY 14213 (if you can not attend the party, be sure to include your name and address on a separate sheet). Winner chosen by concensus on-premises. Winner take all & publication in _verdure_. You may submit your own juvenalia, or someone else's, but the winner is considered to be, ultimately, the author. Submissions of good-bad early works by well-known poets of the late 20th century are especially encouraged. Please be sure that your name or the author's name does not appear on the entry, as the voting should be "blind." Obviously, those of us who wish to disclose authorship will have the chance to do so after the contest. Only the contest winner must come (or be dragged) forward, though last year everyone did so. BYOB; coffee, appetizers and desserts will be served. for more info, please contact Linda Russo or call Matt Chambers at 882-9138 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:44:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tisa Bryant Subject: Announcing "Parrot Drum" by Hoa Nguyen Mime-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable New from the Leroy chapbook series Parrot Drum by Hoa Nguyen 33 pages $5 Hand-bound using Japanese Binding with images by Philip Trussell "Her poems move in a homeostasis as organisms do, self regulating by feeling, free to ascend and plummet, turn and stand. They put me in mind of Olson=92s penetration from "Quantity in Verse and Shakespeare's Late Plays". They are free to move, come and go, hover as they please, like aerodynes. The individual words are luminous with cellness=92, seeming each to know the others, and having a way of being the whole while holding to their own gras= p of place. Syntactically alarming and alerting to fresh perception, these poems set thought to new leaps, brightly. The element of Chinese characters and Mayan hieroglyphs dance concretely at these speeds." Philip Trussell, 12-28-99 Leroy Chapbooks are edited & published by Renee Gladman http://www.durationpress.com/leroy 4 book series subscriptions are available for $18 Single titles are $5 Address all correspondence to: Renee Gladman Leroy Press 3180 18th Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94110 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 12:47:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tisa Bryant Subject: New Titles from Leroy! Mime-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Renee Gladman and Leroy are proud to announce the publication of the first title in Series II of Leroy chapbook: 33549 Taylor Brady Taylor Brady is the winner of this year's New Langton Arts Award for Literature, San Francisco "He recombines raw material from his own written work to create hybrid compositions with infinite possibilities." New Langton Arts Also take note of Leroy Press titles from its first chapbook series. They are wonderful and all currently available! PARROT DRUM Hoa Nguyen with illustrations by Philip Trussel May 2000 THE EPICS Summi Kaipa January 2000 GIFT AND VERDICT Roberto Tejada October 1999 CARTOGRAPHIES OF ERROR Rachel Levitsky July 1999 Leroy Press' efforts to publish innovative prose and poetry by mostly emerging or geographically obscured writers have resulted in thoughtfully designed and beautifully hand-stitched books. To view these works online (covers only), please visit the Duration Press web site at http://www.durationpress.com Subscriptions are available for $18 for 4 books, or can be purchased for $ 5 dollars each. Please make checks payable to Renee Gladman To contact Renee Gladman/Leroy, use the following e-mail address: rgladman@php.ucsf.edu or write to: Renee Gladman Leroy Press 3180 18th Street, Suite 201 San Francisco, CA 94110 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:56:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Mayhew Subject: What I was trying to say... Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit What I was trying to say peevishly in my post with the too-long subject heading was that I am much more interested in the visuality of poetry than in visual poetry as its own separate thing. All poetry is visual if its on the page and/or appeals to the visual imagination. Once you get to say that something isn't genuine visual poetry then you are protecting turf rather than investigating the whole problem in its full historical context. Especially when claim are made about degrees of innovation in poetry. Visual poetry (in the narrower sense) would have to be striking visually and engage me linguistically as well. Sorry to be so jaded... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 09:58:36 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Susan M. Webster Schultz" Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Perhaps another good place to look for discussions of metaphor is in Derek Walcott's _Omeros_, especially the middle sections where he questions his own use of metaphor (Ancient Greece = the Caribbean). For him empire and metaphor seem linked, and he is both drawn to and averse (sic) to both. Kamau Brathwaite is a much more metonymic writer, and bears comparison to Walcott along those lines. There are discussions of metaphor all over de Man, if I recall correctly (it's been a while). Gemma Fiumura Corradi has written an excellent book on metaphor (I may have mentioned this on another list); it's published by Routledge. This book is also an excellent "defence of poesy." Metaphor is understandably in trouble in a world where differences are often considered more important than samenesses, but still has an important place "at the table." Hawai`i's an interesting place from which to regard metaphor, so often misused in the interest of the colonial, too often ignored in more recent struggles against it. Susan ----- Original Message ----- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 10:02:51 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Susan M. Webster Schultz" Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark--that quotation is from Williams's autobiography and begins with a statement that Eliot's Waste Land hit the poetry world like an atom bomb (an interesting statement, as there was no such thing in 1922!). Williams always struck me as very anxious about the "competition"--he really sets Hart Crane up for abuse in _Paterson_ (metaphorically, or is it metonymically). Susan S. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark DuCharme" To: Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 7:06 PM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca > Actually, Williams was on "the road to the contagious hospital" in poem I. > of _Spring and All_. The piece of green glass (or actually, "the broken// > pieces of a green/ bottle") is from a poem published later called "Between > Walls." > > On Eliot & WCW, the notion of their opposition probably comes from Williams > himself. Quickly thumbing through my books I have not been able to track > down the reference, but somewhere he says (disapprovingly) that "The Waste > Land" was the poem that put U.S. poetry back into the classroom. He also > dismisses TSE as "a subtle conformist," in the famous preface to _Kora in > Hell_. > > --Mark DuCharme > > > > > > > > > Richard Taylor wrote (among other things): > > > > >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They both > >were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if those > >are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants with > >oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is only > >slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the wings > >of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course WCW > >moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was probably > >temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. > >W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of > >the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very > >innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes > >thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know > >the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:44:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tisa Bryant Subject: New Lesbian Fiction Editor for Blithe House Quarterly Comments: To: Kate Carpenter , Laura Johnson , ultra down productions , Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa , Rana Halpern , Rachel Bernstein , Rachel Levitsky , Jorge Cortinas , J Keene , Joan Shuman Mara Galvez Breton , Doris Owyang , Deanna Downes , Naadu Blankson , Nailah , Nzadi , Al Luhan , Jaime Cortez , Lauren Gudath , Laurence Padua , Pamela Lu , Mary Burger , Mammaroma , Carol Taylor , Carolina Santiago , Laurette Hamilton , Laurel Holliday , scribin@earthlink.net, Charlotte Gutierrez , Wura-Natasha Ogunji , Wendy Wheaton , Beth Murray , Bethany White , Anne-Mary Mullen , Anurima Bannerji , cath , Peta-Gay Pottinger , Peniey McClary , Jen Hofer , Robin Templeton , Daniel 'Dewey' Schott , Danielle Georges Comments: cc: Veronica Majano Mime-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, everyone! Just wanted to let you know that I am now the Lesbian Fiction Editor (I personally call it "queer women's fiction" as this suits my politics) for Blithe House Quarterly, which is a Gay/Lesbian online journal. You can check out past issues, submissions guidelines and FAQs at http://www.blithe.com, or jump right to http://www.blithe.com/bhq4.3/guidelines4.3.html I'm currently reading submissions for the Winter 2000 issue. I'm especially looking for innovative prose, but any and all good stuff welcome. Sorry, but no poetry, please. I urge you to either submit previously unpublished work (if you are a queer woman writer or have written/write about queer women), or to pass this information on to your friends! Check out the website first, then e-mail me if more questions arise. Hope to hear from you! Tisa Bryant ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 16:18:12 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed >As for Bob Gregory's poetry, it makes my point that a poet working >in the verbal AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other >things being equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone: Gregory >has been as innovative a language poet verbally as anyone around-- >and he is carrying his langpo verbal innovativeness now into visual >poems (as are a few other language poets). Aren't you talking about Bob GRENIER??? Or, if not, perhaps you could enlighten me and others as to who this Bob Gregory is, where his works are available, etc. Mark DuCharme _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 18:19:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Broder, Michael" Subject: Ear Inn Listings--September 16-30, 2000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > The Ear Inn Readings > Saturdays at 3:00 > 326 Spring Street, west of Greenwich > New York City > > September 16 > Amy Holman, David Dodd Lee, George Kalamaras, Jen Robinson > > September 23 > Timothy Donnelly, Joanna Fuhrman, Adeena Karasick > > September 30 > Sue Oringel, Kevin Pilkington, Dawn O'Dell > > The Ear Inn Readings Michael Broder, Patrick Donnelly, Lisa Freedman, Kathleen E. Krause, Curators Martha Rhodes, Director For additional information contact Michael Broder (212) 802-1752 The Ear is one block north of Canal Street, a couple blocks west of Hudson. The closest trains are the 1-9 to Canal Street @ Varick, the A to Canal Street @ Sixth Ave, or the C-E to Spring Street@ Sixth Ave. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 15:57:08 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Taylor Brady wrote: > A final note, for me, before I admit that we seem to be writing at > cross-purposes here. I'm not sure in what way most of what I wrote was > "outside what you were talking about," but so be it. If the argument > is to be framed in these terms, it can't progress beyond impasse. So > perhaps we should agree to disagree here? Yes. > Especially when you have recourse to > something like the following, which does the ideological work of > granting your perspective the mantle of common-sense "naturalness": > > "My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple > definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second > what makes a person feel good" > > ...I'd say that's precisely a model - you could draw it with a Venn > diagram, even. Okay, think very very simple model. If it's a model, what isn't? For me a model is much more complicated. > Furthermore, it seems to be a particularly metaphysical sort of model, > since it ultimately depends on a seemingly alchemical process of > transubstantiation. In order to account for the experiences of those > who undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the > purposes of pleasure, it has to posit a pain that can be "converted" > into pleasure, and > vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, Sorry, but it's not as I hold, it's as it is. Unless black is not the opposite of white, etc. > it's difficult for me > to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic > happening in the null set that forms the intersection of the > two you've defined. Now if we were to frame it in terms of a > dialectic rather than a simple opposition, we might get somewhere. > But already there, we're pretty far from the position that could > maintain categorical impermeability between > pain on the one hand and pleasure on the other. Hegel's dialectic of > lordship and bondage might do as a thumbnail sketch of some of the > subtleties involved in such situations of opposition. All I can say is that I can't think like you. To me it's simple: everyone desires pleasure, and not pain. But some people's idea of an object of pleasure is other people's idea of an object of pain. No transubstatiation, just different strokes for different folks. But you seem to be trying to say that for some people--your friends, I guess--there could be an object which for them is an object of pain from which they derive pleasure. That to me is like saying there can be an black object which is white. If it's an object of pain, one cannot derive pleasure from it. If it's an object of pleasure, it is not an object of pain. And sure, there are subtleties involved: many objects are mixed, in which case some people might desire them for their ability to give pleasure in spite of their ability also to cause pain. And that's as much as I can say about this. (Except that its all, for me, a matter of semantics) > Sorry for any immoderate tone in the preceding, but when my > experiences and > those of people I care about get characterized as "insane," it brings > out a bit of the swamp 'gator in this Florida boy. Aah, I'm pretty mucu unoffendable. And you can call me or my friends insane, I don't care--but in this case I really doubt I call any people you care about insane because I doubt that any of them truly desire to experience anything that gives them pain but neither gives them pleasure at the same time directly or indirectly or will, or they believe it will, lead them to some future pleasure. --Bob G. > Taylor > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman > Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 6:35 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics > > I snipped a lot you said about taste, Taylor, which sounds interesting > to me but outside what I believe I was talking about, which is simply > that pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. > > To say, as you do, that it's not a matter of "defeating" disgust or > pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under certain concrete > conditions," seems to me insane. Black is white under certain > conditions. Being dead is being alive under certain conditions. > I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, > but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. > > > And this is consistent in the other direction > > as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs > to > me as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways > > typical of "pleasure." > > So you experience a mixture of pain and pleasure. You do not experience > pain as pleasure. > > > A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: > > > > Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other > > people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to > > want that which causeS you to feel only pain, in whatever form. > > > > Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you > > manage to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those > > insane people who want that which causes only pain), from the > > class defined before (those sane people who are practicing > > nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, > > without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly > > that appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've > > just announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced > > that you've demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure > > from" and "wanting that which." From either angle, you're allowing > > me as a sane person full access to my pleasure, but only so long as > > I maintain a categorical distinction between that pleasure and pain, > > setting the stage for the truly > > perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without > > psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely > > that which I do not want. > > > > Still crazy, > > Taylor > > Maybe not, but I don't follow you. By pleasure I mean that which > makes a given person feel good in some way. It has nothing to do > with "the practices and preferences of other people." If a > nonconformist derives pleasure from a poem that makes everyone else > vomit he is sane; if he reads that poem in hopes ONLY that it will cause > him to be sick (assuming being sick is painful for him), then he is > insane. > > The difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting that which" > gives nothing but pain in the short term, and leads to no conceivable > plesure in the long term, is that the first is about feeling good, the > second about feeling bad. How can it be sane to want to feel bad-- > unless what caused you to feel bad will later make you feel more good > than you felt bad? > > > P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our > > primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to > > imply that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - > > any more than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. > > I'd like to see room for what I've argued alongside the more > > "intentional," less "undergone" pleasures of the perfectly executed > > double play or the meticulous alphabetizing of my library. > > My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple > definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second > what makes a person feel good. > --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 17:40:08 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Most people who study visual poetry limit the term "concrete poetry" > to work coming out of the movement of that name that began in the > 50s, and for the most part concrete poets don't make "pattern poetry" > or "shaped poetry" like Herbert's (in which the poem looks like the > object it takes as its subject matter). So, Herbert is usually > placed in the more general category of "visual poet." You're right that most people who (seriously) study the topic do as you say, Molly, but it's a confused situation because many of them have conflicting ideas as to what concrete poetry is, and what visual poetry is. There are active visual poets who do work that's not much different from the concrete poets who hate having their work called concrete poetry for political reasons, and because they want to think they've gone beyond the concrete poets. Some of them claim that visual poetry and concrete poetry are two different poetries entirely. There's also the (to me) idiocy of limiting the term "concrete poetry" to a certain group of artists who worked together and did similar work and not to others who clearly did concrete poems but whose poems were different from those of the first group. That is, "concrete poetry" is on the surface an excellent general term (for poetry whose materiality as part of paper, etc., is estheticall important), but it has come to mean a single form of something common sense would say exists in many other forms. This came about because people using terms too often apply it to a group instead of to what that group is doing, which is the bane of taxonomy. The concrete poets abetted this by saying that concrete poetry was only what they and their friends did instead of trying to be taxonomically sane--and the critics let them get away with it. One of the two major "concrete poetry" anthologies of c.1970, Solt's Concrete Poetry: a World View, contains just about every form of inanimate visual poetry I'm familiar with, including shaped poems. The whole area's very confused, which is why I've worked out my so-far unaccepted taxonomy of visual poetry. I dumped the term "concrete poetry" entirely simply because it's so vexed a term. > But I'm an academic, so...dare I speak at all? I'll check with my friends. You may have redeeming qualities. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 19:10:14 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: language lingua frankfooter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------4A37125F7FE6" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------4A37125F7FE6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Damn, Bob, the way you send to the list prohibits the simple reply > unless I cut and paste. You started it, Bill. (I think.) But don't worry, I'm running out of gas. So I'll be snipping and skipping in this. Apologies, but I'm working on--of all things--a sci fi novel that I'm trying to do 2000 words a day on, so I can't get into the various questions that have come up in our discussion. (1st snip) > Well, you're interested in smaller originalities than I am. > Williams's plums in the fridge poem, which I can't stand, did the > main thing O'Hara's "I did this, I did that" poems did. But, > yes, O'Hara's personality was different than Williams's. But > all poetic oeuvres are "original" in the sense that they express > different people's personalities, since all personalities are > different. > > Austin: Not sure what small vs. large really means in art, or how > much it matters. It's small/large in originalities I was speaking of, and I think it should be clear: changes in subject matter and/or vocabulary are small originalities, use of syntactical distortions never before used for esthetic purposes is large; or finding a new rhyme scheme for sonnets is a small originality, the first use of free verse a large originality--etc. Cummings was more original than Frost (which doesn't mean he was a better poet necessarily). > Something small can be far more potent than something bloated. A small originality can be used better than a large one, yes. > But I don't agree that O'Hara's innovation is small, in any event. > His particular take on the urbane sensibility seems astonishingly > fresh to me and had enormous influence on much of what came between > New York School and langpo. That last, the influence, is a fact. > And differing personalities should not be dismissed as a small > thing--not that you're necessarily doing that. No, I AM so dismissing it--because it's a given. Every poet has a unique personality. > Aren't those differences the fuel for different innovative strategies? Sure. So we go to the innovations, if any, that result, and evaluate them, not the personalities that caused them. > > > Of the two dominant "avant garde" styles, langpo and vispo, the > > > former is clearly the more innovative. > > > > Do you really believe poets trying for verbal innovation in their > > poetry are likely to be more innovative than poets trying for visual > > innovation AND verbal innovation (as all the best visual poets do)? You failed to answer the above. > Austin: That's because I left out what I thought was obvious. My > mistake. Surely in the world of visual arts vp might do better > than langpo. But I thought the issue, and the thrust of your > complaints, is that vp is marginalized in the arena of literature. I believe that, yes, but I was only concerned in the above with your remark that language poetry was decidedly more innovative than visual poetry. > If that's the issue, then my comments stand. Not enough language > in vp for some in the literary disciplines. Huge subject. I think it's more that visual poetry mixes expressive modalities, and many academics (sorry, folks) are what I call segreceptual. (I remember in college having to fight as an editor of the literary magazine to get the English profs to allow the visual art department to supply illustrations.) Much visual poetry is short on language, but so is much poetry (haiku, for instance). But there is visual poetry that is full of language-- having more, in fact, than textual poetry could have since visual poets are allowed to superimpose texts on one another. > I assume you're not fighting for wall space at the galleries. I'm trying (not yet having begun to fight) for space ANYWHERE. > If what you're after is greater acceptance from literary critics, > then you have to deal with their tastes and biases. Right. (snip) > In the world of > painting, the combination of word and image is pretty old news-- > which doesn't make any less valuable today. Right, but visual poetry--GENUINE visual poetry (sorry, Jonathan)--is not just a combination of word and image, and it has not been done that often in visual art (though there are quite a few painters and even sculptors doing what I'd call genuine visual poetry and getting away with it). > Austin: all poetry on the page is visual. When we start > gathering differences under one rubric, where do we > stop? Your own definitions can be understood to apply to nearly > everything, including the rather conventional poem whose lines are > occasionally indented, in the sense that the visual placement of > lines complements what is being said. If you've read my piece on the taxonomy of visio-textual art at Comprepoetica and you feel what you just said is valid, I should junk the essay. (URL attached) > Austin: My point was that as a general form, langpo was something > fresh in the eighties. Vispo, as Igor has rightly claimed, is a > thing revived. But this doesn't stop me from appreciating > individual vispos more than certain > individual langpos. And I made that point in a previous post. I'm leaning toward the position that there WAS genuine visual poetry before the 20th century but I am sure we could find language poetry before the 20th century, too. Langpo was definitely not something drastically fresh in the eighties; I named all the people doing language poetry before then, like Joyce and Stein, Cummings and Roethke. As for pre-20th century langpo, the Greeks did the distorted syntax thing, I'm sure--and it was as close to current langpo as what Herbert did is to current vizpo. Re: Frost, I didn't say his poetry was just "remixed Hardy" but that he was an improved Hardy. But I don't want to argue about this. I'm afraid I have my mind made up about Frost. The critics favoring him are not finding any technical innovations in his work--except little rhymthmic finesses and the like that every poet can be found to be doing, and every writer. About academics > I didn't say anything about sell-outs. I was merely sketchily > explaining why there are attacks on academics. Professors work inside > the establishment, artists can work there, too, but usually don't. > So there's friction between the two. > > Austin: I didn't say you said it. Actually these days it seems > artists usually do work in the establishment. What else do we > have to replace the old patronage? I guess Michelangelo worked for > the ultimate establishment. Working FOR the establishment is different from spending years to become PART of the establishment, the way most academics have to. > You have also referred in print to some critics as "idiots" for not > devoting their critical skills to very marginalized writers, for not > turning over every rock imaginable. Wrong again, Bill. They're idiots for not turning over ANY rocks. > They may not all see things the > way you do, but my guess is that they're all fairly intelligent > people who have good reasons for > the choices they make. I don't know, could it be that many of them > just don't consider certain art very good? The fiends!! No, not fiends, idiots. Unless I'm wrong about them: but watch and see if any of them ever bothers to demonstrate that his disregard of visual poetry is valid--with evidence concerning the worthlessness of such art, or even of my defenses of it. > > And yes, certain few professors have power over > > cultural directions. What's wrong with that? > > Nothing except that, except for a very few exceptions, they use > their power to reward mediocrity while the van Goghs have to wait > until they've been dead fifty years to make anything whatever from > their art. > Austin: stereotype. That something is a stereotype doesn't make it false. My overall point is that academics could and should do a lot more for innovative contemporary artists than they do, and that's where I'll leave this part of our discussion. > Incidentally, it's not "cummings," but "Cummings." Okay, I popped off because I'm tired of him being referred to as cummings, which I believe he didn't consider himself to be. Your lower case signature, which I don't think I've seen, if it wasn't a stray joke of his, would certainly be evidence that he WAS, at times, cummings. I have to admit that I saw your use of the lower-case name as further evidence of my feeling that you don't really know visual poetry very well. > > Are we to believe there's some connection between the kind of > > personality that can't hold a job and the ability to produce quality > > poetry?! > > No. There is, however, a connection between the kind of > adventurousness that finds following years of rules to become a > Ph.D.and then professor difficult and the ability to produce > innovative art. > > Austin: You say this as if it is fact. But is it? I guess you > have your personal reasons for investing in this idea. Sounds a > lot like that business about type A personalities we used to hear > so much about on the TV, that was later shown to be a guess cum > desire to simplify a very complicated situation. > I know more than a few Profs whose very experimental work is > as marginal as it gets, but then again testimonials are not good > evidence. True. I didn't say the connection I mentioned was the only one. Very complex situation. I would guess most psychologists would agree that there is such a thing as a creative personality, and that such personalities have trouble adjusting to, say, the army. But I withdraw my speculation as a fact, though I strongly believe it. My personal reason for so doing is that my theory of psychology, one of my life's works, says so. But my experience of life has confirmed it, too. (As for me, I strongly suspect I'm way too disciplined to be a poet, but not disciplined enough to be an academic.) > Of course if one was degreed by, and appointed to, some > Midwestern institution, his/her tastes are to some extent > governed by geography. To prefer langpo, for example, to work > that more accurately expresses their lives and culture--well, it > ain't gonna happen, not much anyway--and maybe it shouldn't. God!! > I love NYC! > Austin: But (academics) HAVE helped (innovative artists), over > and over again. Once again, we must consider the staying power > of Stein, cummings, etc., which owes much to the efforts of > academics. Yes, they're good to dead Harvard grads. > Now I'm not sure what YOUR argument is. Neither am I. > Should academics not write about the dead? Not that, nor do I see how you could get that idea. I have said they disregard innovative living artists. From that it does not follow that they should ONLY regard such artists. > The poetry, I might add, is > very much alive. And the last I heard, most of the contemporary > experimental writers represented in the major anthologies are very > much with the living. A few anthologies have included a smattering of work of mostly over-fifty-year-old language poets with connections, yes. > But why should anyone single out academics in this regard? Those on > the margins also have power to help each other out. Some do, and > some horde even the little they have to give. To single out Profs > seems to me a little too convenient. You read me too fast. Where did I single out professors? The commercial publishers, the arts administrators running museums, lecture circuits, grants-bestowing organizations, etc., and others are as bad or worse. We got into professors because you asked why people were dumping on academics and I tried to say why I think they do. Which is not the same thing as giving my own opinion of professors, which is certainly not negative. > In any event, you have my best wishes, always. Same to you. > I'm ready to move on to something else. Good. > If you want the last word, it's yours. I took it, and would have even if I'd known in advance you were going to offer it to me. Too much I disagree with to let go by. --Bob --------------4A37125F7FE6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="sig.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="sig.txt" Bob Grumman BobGrumman@Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site --------------4A37125F7FE6-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 09:36:17 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz Subject: The Visual in Visual Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The difficulty with coming up with a working definition for visual poetry turns on an acceptable account of its "visuality." There's no easy way to distinguish between a more traditional text and a visual one. They're both visual, even as intensely visual, if you like, as each other. I think distinguishing between the different intensities and effects of "visual" poetry is probably best addressed semiotically. The best account I've read of some of these issues is Eric Vos's Concrete Poetry as a Test Case for a Nominalistic Semiotics of Verbal Art. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 05:47:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Cunningham Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pain-ites & Pleasure-ites, Not sure if it's pleasurable or disgusting to see pleasure, pain and disgust so carefully defined and interrogated--before this started I would have said pleasurable. I do think this thread is a good example of the generative nature of a rather stark position strongly argued (i.e. Debrot's original post). However I was more interested in Debrot's attempt to justify an aesthetics of pleasure (if that isn't too redundant) precisely because pleasure is "potentially disruptive of the status quo." Thus he subtly connects pleasure back to the political/sociological which is also ground zero for many language poets. This dialectical response to language poetry is an overturning that yet maintains the kernal, or perhaps one should say it preserves the form and gives it new content--in any case it allows both an acknowledgment of the language poets' contribution and, in theory, a new/old possibility: pleasure as a tool to produce social change. In other words, rather than asking what pleasure is, what disgust is, or what pain is, I hear Jacques trying to lead us toward the broader question of the uses of pleasure in a work of art, how to make it work for disruption, and not necessarily what defines pleasure or even how to reproduce it. As I believe J. wrote in a post some time ago, the question for him is how to write (which implies the question of which tools are most effective in trying to resist and make change at the level of the sociological/political), not why write (which implies questions of the nature of pleasure, pain and disgust at the level of the psychological). Maybe the foregoing does some justice to Jacques position, which I find always stimulating if not always pleasurable. I do recommend searching on him in the archives for a remarkably coherent set of posts. One part of the original post did rather displease me. I would need much convincing to believe that Bernstein's "recoil from the aesthetic," which we find in J's post being "matched" to theory's critical distance, therefore leads to both Bernstein and his newly-bedded New Historical bedfellows turning into bureaucRATS who adjudicate the poem's *real* meaning. I would argue that Bernstein has never met a poem's *real* meaning in his life--his recoil is as much from this notion of this real meaning, which he finds completely specious, as it is from the aesthetic itself. However, the core of my own response and critique lies elsewhere. Briefly, I think there is a failure on J's part to interrogate this tool, this pleasure-in-the-written (not just in this short post but in the others as well), so that his view of pleasure remains always conceptual and abstract. This is not to say meaningless but at least meaningless outside polemical purposes. To concretize the concept, at least from my perspective, does require trying to say what exactly constitutes pleasure in the experience of that written performance. Since Barthes seems to always be nearby in a discussion of pleasure, I will use his essay on Fourier as my own answer and example. The pleasure of B's essay is the result of his ability to proceed in the service of logic, maintaining an object (a description of Fourier's system) while also remaining in the service of his own zone of obsessions and idiosyncracies (transgression, invention, of course language above all). If we have the first without the second, we have no pleasure since we ought to read Fourier directly. If we have the second without the first, we have no pleasure but only the claustrophobia of an immersion in another's self-obsession. While B's essay might not please everyone, I suspect it produces displeasure when the reader finds the object slipping into the obsession, or the obsession disappearing in the object. I believe I could find a similar object/obsession tension in Fourier himself, which might explain why he is still being read, nut that he is. In short, in my view it is the working out of this *method* of art which makes pleasure into something actual. If so, therefore pleasure cannot then become the method of art in the way J. argues it should (i.e. cannot then be placed in the poem in order to make social change)--pleasure is a product of a particular and apriori interchange, not a tool. To approach it from a different direction, I would say that in order for Barthes' essay to be pleasurable, Barthes himself had to read Fourier critically, with distance, dispassion--he could not simply experience pleasure, succumb to it. The root of academic distance (which divorced of obsession is what J. calls the Puritan) lies here, actually stolen from art I would assert. Barthes begins by knowing his own obsessions--these are the initial objects, which when obscured from him or anyone become, in my view, again the first pursuit. I think pleasure must be understood as rooted in this fundamentally domestic (to steal a term from Fourier) space--here it finds and returns to itself. The political might become its object, just as Fourier's system might become Barthes' object, but it needn't--what is necessary is the obsession, some grasp of the immediate economy, and then *any* object that those obsessions can work against and within. Some may object that the domestic, however it is defined, necessarily extends from the political, from that more Marxist economy. But instead of that argument (which I too find compelling) I prefer to try to concretize this "domestic"--what I want is to be understood, that is my object, even while the idiosyncrasies of that conveyance are in many ways more primary to me. It isn't difficult to imagine a person who experiences a deadness around them, or a deadness in themselves, where extremely real decisions they have made have isolated them from pleasure--for instance there are people brought back to life and pleasure by a particular dance performance, by meeting someone, or more often by a slight shift in the way they conceive their own power and potential. For myself, I feel it is only recently that I begin to understand the full weight of being a participant in my own life, that I could be capable of storming out of a room (for instance) or otherwise responding to events as something other than an extension of my upbringing. The terror, frustration and sometimes pleasure of this so-called freedom takes place, as I experience it, in a space I can only understand as domestic. It may become a political economy by induction, or it may also become a politics once its prior obsessions are grasped, but it still presents itself as a drama of appalling immediacy. I'm half-thinking of Truffaut's 400 Blows as I write this, where in the very first scene a picture of a woman is being passed around the classroom and 14-year-old Antoine stops to draw a moustache or something on her--that is, he tries to participate rather than merely gazing, and this one act begins the long and subtle (i.e. obsessed, idiosyncratic) chain of events that lead him to juvenile detention. Throughout, the social system punishes his continual attempts to not simply receive wisdom. I do wonder if this matter of participation and (egad) empowerment, which I see in the attempt to maintain the idea of a root domestic space and the idiosyncrasies therein, is not identical to the political power of pleasure which J. describes. But based on some of his other posts I would maintain that J. has the reversed sense of things. Maybe this would become clear in a discussion of the new in art. Cliched or redundant art seems loathsome to me not primarily because it fails to disrupt a social status quo but, first of all, because it causes me to fear that what I recognize as cliches are no longer recognized by anyone else, i.e. that I have lost all contact with other intelligences. Although I can imagine and have read many fascinating critiques of this general position as essentialist, romantic, psychological, bourgeois, humanist, etc., it means very little next to that actual fear, which I think, on the contrary, is the most stable ground on which to build the new, subversive and anti-bourgeois in art. Besides, as I said, until this fear has an object it's just boring self-obsession. Sorry this went on so long. Probably should have saved it for an essay. Brent Cunningham At 05:04 PM 9/11/00 -0700, you wrote: >Bob, > >Not sure about the way your argument slides from "disgust" to "pain" in the >final paragraph. But yeah, I suppose we could say the same things about >pain, in a way. What continues to give me pause is the heroic narrative of >positive human feelings (i.e., pleasure) winning through the adversity of >pain/disgust. Certainly, it's a fairly deep cultural embedding, even to our >sense of "perversion" as a turning aside, a detour - the long way round. As >in, what are all those silly perverts/aesthetes/etc. doing wasting so much >time just getting back around to the wholesome pleasure we normal folks can >access without all the theatrics? > >There's another way of staging that drama, though, and it goes something >like this, in my version: One of our primary models for pleasure - orgasm - >occurs to us as a passivation, an undergoing. (All the cultural baggage of >le petit mort, etc., can enter here and stand around on stage looking bored >as the verbiage piles up). That we more or less actively pursue it speaks to >a desire to take up the conditions of our own bodies' passivity, in our own >hands (literally or figuratively). Now this passivation, at the level of >both emotional and physiological response, would seem to be something common >to persons expiring in bliss, puking in disgust, and wincing in pain. In all >three cases, I'd argue it's the question of "taking-up" - thus a context >within which the condition is placed, and a praxis that works on it - rather >than some formulation of converting emotional or sensual negatives into >their opposites, that is decisive in the question "pleasure or no?" > >One might frame it in terms of consent, though that would have to be broad >enough to cover a range from consent at the level of the act ("yes, you can >touch me there": the analogy for our present purposes would be the literary >anthology one skips around in, certain characters and practices in which one >makes a point of avoiding) to consent at the level of the scene ("yes, you >can immobilize me and control my body's actions for a while": here the >analogy is the poetry reading, where, past one's initial informed decision, >one's pretty much in it until the end. Both often hold a stock of potential >circuit breakers or safe words in reserve, usually some variant of, "OK, >that's enough." One wishes poetry audiences used them more often.) > >So it's not a matter, to my mind (or body), of pleasure "outweighing" or >"defeating" disgust or pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under >certain concrete conditions. And this is consistent in the other direction >as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs to me >as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways typical of >"pleasure." > >A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: > >Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other people get >only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to want that which cause >you to feel only pain, in whatever form. > >Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you manage >to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those insane people who >want that which causes only pain), from the class defined before (those sane >people who are practicing nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, >without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly that >appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've just >announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced that you've >demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting >that which." From either angle, you're allowing me as a sane person full >access to my pleasure, but only so long as I maintain a categorical >distinction between that pleasure and pain, setting the stage for the truly >perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without >psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely that >which I do not want. > >Still crazy, >Taylor > >P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our >primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to imply >that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - any more >than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. I'd like to see >room for what I've argued alongside the more "intentional," less "undergone" >pleasures of the perfectly executed double play or the meticulous >alphabetizing of my library. > > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman >Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 6:22 AM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics > >Taylor Brady wrote: >> >> I worry about the invocation of sanity in your attempt to solidify the >> distinction between pleasure and disgust. Certainly - and without >> going into any embarrassing personal detail - there are plenty of us >> in the world whose experience of what get called "perversions" is >> exactly this coincidence of intense pleasure and intense disgust. > >You get pleasure from the stimulus that outweighs the disgust it >causes you to feel; that doesn't make the disgust you experience >pleasure. Note the "only" in what I say, "An artwork that elicits only >disgust cannot be pleasurable (or desired by anyone sane)." > > >> And no, I don't think that's simply >> internalized self-loathing at the enactment of socially proscribed >> practices, aesthetic, sexual or otherwise. The rounding up of that >> experience under the heading of "insanity" might have (has had) some >> pretty dangerous social consequences, no? > >Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other >people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to >want that which cause you to feel only pain, in whatever form. If >not impossible. > >As for social consequences, there's a plus and minus to everything: >identifying insane practices can be used against non-conformists but >can also (theoretically) locate genuine problems and help people >overcome them. > >> [As an aside, I'd recommend a look at Samuel R. Delany's novel The >> Mad Man for a rigorous narrative examination of an aesthetics of >> pleasurable disgust. Or passages in Dodie Bellamy's The Letters of >> Mina Harker. Or or or...] > >The all sound interesting--but seem not to be about a desire for the >painful; instead they seem to be about the pleasure of the partially >painful. There's also, of course, the pleasure of defeating pain, and >the putting up with pain in the belief that it will lead to pleasure >(as in training for a sporting event). > > --Bob G. > > > > > >> Taylor >> -----Original Message----- >> From: UB Poetics discussion group >> [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Bob Grumman >> Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2000 6:17 PM >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics >> >> I think I agree with much of what Jacques Debrot wrote below-- >> but why redefine pleasure as "intense feeling?" All intense feeling is >> not pleasure. I can see intense feeling, or emotive intensity, being >> considered more important, in a poem, than whether that intesnity is >> pleasurable or painful; I can also understand how one might derive >> pleasure FROM an intense negative feeling--but that wouldn't make the >> latter pleasure, only something from which pleasure could be derived. >> >> In my aesthetics figuring out how this could be is important, by the >> way, the main expression of the question being: what do we get out of >> tragedy? One thought: tragedy acts as a counter-irritant; another is >> that an artwork, in containing something painful, or subduing it, >> produces a kind of pleasurable victory over pain. >> >> Anyway, my bottom line is that the ultimate function of art is to give >> people pleasure. Aesthetic pleasure. Disgust IS the opposite of >> pleasure. >> >> --Bob G. >> >> Jacques Debrot wrote: >> > >> > There are valid grounds for identifying LangPo w/ the academy--even if >its >> > presence in most literature departments is practically non-existent, as >> > Perlman is right to suggest. Significantly, for example, Bernstein's >> > insistence in _A Poetics_ on refusing the persuasiveness of rhetoric--& >> his >> > concommitant recoil from the aesthetic-- is matched by theory's >assumption >> > (e.g. in the New Historicism) of a certain critical and anaesthetic >> distance >> > from the "literary artifact" for the purpose, ultimately, of >> *demystifying* >> > it. Both share what is, pretty plainly, a puritanical attitude toward >the >> > reader's susceptibility to pleasure in the actual experience of his/her >> > engagement with a poem. In the academy, what a poem *means* is, for >this >> > reason, entirely more important than its affect. Ph.D's (& Ph.D's >> > soon-to-be, like myself) function, in a sense, as bureaucrats, >surveiling >> & >> > adjudicating the poem's *real* meaning which, naturally, is never what >it >> > appears to be, as appearances themselves--by reason of the pleasure they >> > give--are assumed to be misleading (by "pleasure" understand that I am >> giving >> > a shorthand for what is really *intense* feeling--the opposite of >pleasure >> > being then, not "pain," but, as Dave Hickey puts it, "the banality of >> neutral >> > comfort." The false dichotomy between pleasure & disgust is, by the >way, >> > Sianne Ngai's basic mistake in her recent brilliant essay in _Open >> Letter_). >> > In any case, it goes w/out saying , I think, that a lot of awfully >boring >> > Language-influenced poetry (including some of my own) is advanced or >> > published for *therapeutic* reasons--that is, because it is supposedly >> good >> > for us. >> > >> > Nothing, however, is more potentially disruptive of the status quo than >> > pleasure--it's amazing as well as scary, really, what you & I are >capable >> of >> > getting off on. Pleasure--or beauty, as Dave Hickey has argued too (in >> > essays that crucially inform this post)--is also *essentially >democratic* >> in >> > that there is a **vernacular** of beauty or pleasure that enfranchises >> > audiences and acknowledges their power (& by audience, I don't mean the >> > ghettoized audience of the poetry world or of academia). Indeed, it is >> not >> > criticism that is politically efficacious so much as the assent or >> "praise" >> > an audience gives to the persuasive power of a poem--the vernacular of >> > pleasure or beauty is thus always a quality that is politicized in one >way >> or >> > another, rather than neutralizing politics (which is what I find so >> > fascinating about Maria Damon's inclusion, in her book, of the poetry of >> > women living in housing projects, or, for that matter, about prison >> poetry). >> > This is something quite different, I think, from "dumbing down." Still, >> > poetry can never be politically efficacious unless it moves a >> non-specialist >> > or non-professional audience--in the way Pop art did, say. Art, in >fact, >> is >> > only transgressive, as Hickey puts it, if Jesse Helms says it is: >> > "Regardless of what the titillated cognoscenti might flatter themselves >by >> > believing, if you dealt in transgression, insisted upon it, it was >always >> the >> > Senator, only the Senator . . . whose outrage mattered." Helms, of >> course >> > may not know squat about art, but his business, after all, *is* rhetoric >. >> > >> > Of course, there is a lot of LangPo which would be powerfully >> affective--even >> > to an uninitiated audience-- but the emphasis has always been someplace >> else, >> > too focused, like the academy, on critique, & on a therapeutic model of >> > aesthetic experience & too suspicious of *content* in its valorization >of >> > transgressive *form*. (But, in fact, a lot of putatively anti-LangPo >> > poetries are equally therapeutic in intent--the suspicion of pleasure >has >> > almost become reflexive today. Indeed, the return to lyricism typical >of >> a >> > lot of recent NY School-inspired poetry only strikes me most of the time >> as >> > completely & banally comfortable & self-satisfied.) We need poems, in >> other >> > words, as ravishingly beautiful & political as Mapplethorpe's _X >> Portfolio_, >> > Cindy Sherman's _Doll Photos_, or Burroughs' _Naked Lunch_. >> > >> > --Jacques > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:10:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: RESENT-DATE field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: RESENT-FROM field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: RESENT-MESSAGE-ID field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: "Dave Brinks (by way of Bill Lavender, )" Subject: The New Orleans School for the Imagination MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For anyone who hasn't already seen this. Please visit the web site, or ask me, for the fall schedule. http://www.schoolfortheimagination.com Bill Lavender ************************************ A Paper Mephisto: The New Orleans School for the Imagination A NEW POETRY is in the making. And just like the possibility of life based on silicon, it's here to stay. But before everyone can congratulate New Orleans on becoming the new center of the universe for the Imaginary, let me mention a few things. First of all, unlike its spiritual neighbor and counterpart, Catholicism, there was no virgin birth or immaculate conception. The Imaginary has many suitors. Nor are we at pains to demonstrate otherwise, i.e. "Jesus" begets "Hey Zeus." You see, when one is imaginary, one may well suffer from insomnia, but hardly from sleeplessness. Or that is to say, those who cannot remember the future are condemned to repeat it. Besides, looking back through the looking-glass at the twentieth century and all its impossible hells is no longer meaningful. It is merely sentimental (much like Ike & Tina or dead Eva Peron moaning inverted teardrops). Throw yourself a bone for chrissakes! Sing your mind into skew! Let's have fun at everything: Cotillion Balls! Ancestral Compost! Strobe-a-phobia! Menu Pounding Spoons! It's such easy feet and more in the world than shipwrecked bath toes! Not to mention being adult is like having a bad trip, and therefore, a not-so-complicated double-joke! Particularly so, as Poet Bernadette Mayer points out, for "merger" and "acquisition" types. Indeed, revisionist experts have bankrolled our idea of "The Land of the Free" into "America the Inimical!" It's a sinister three stooges orgy of what Lewis, Clark & Co. would have found if they were born tomorrow. Hence, as was prophesied by Poet Ted Berrigan: "Baffling combustions are everywhere downriver." This whorling primordial goo consists of creosote tomatoes, busted concrete, and palmetto bugs (that souvenir of Native Night and Big Muddy), and is belching up from fleshpots even as I write. In fact, this summer, at a secret location in the Undercity, and incubating at record-high temperatures, two secret brains gave birth to a many-headed pigeon. This fantastic creature will serve as mascot for all said "Imaginary" endeavors. It's function is to induce people into a good nap, and hereafter, pardon the soul like a broken church bell on Sunday afternoons. Brace yourself for psychological impact. This is a Poetry of Collisions, a Language Crystal of sorts, where all hours and futures float your head by the ankles and spin your mind into suspended animation orbit. Yes, this highly unhypothetical event is imminent! On September 25th, in the year of the triple zero, "The New Orleans School for the Imagination" begins its inaugural season. Emeritus Confessor of Abomination, Dave Brinks, is its bi-spiritual founder. And while his unsoundness of mind can't be helped, help yourself. Greet the day with wide drowsy yawns! Whisper with all tender rage your one great calm! Tie snake rattles to the ends of your long black braids and mercilessly compose Imaginary Poetry! The corsets of happiness are begging to be opened! Dave Brinks (aka. M'Sewer Diabolique) New Orleans 30.viii.2000 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 11:47:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Al Filreis Subject: Kenneth Goldsmith webcast: 9/21 Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit {{ KENNETH GOLDSMITH has "create[d] a Gargantuan poetic reference book or archive of the argot of our times."* }} live webcast from the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - KENNETH GOLDSMITH at the Kelly Writers House Thursday, September 21, 2000 7:30 PM eastern time: Goldsmith will read from his poetry To participate in the webcast, simply send a message to wh@english.upenn.edu ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MORE ABOUT THIS PROGRAM AND ABOUT GOLDSMITH: http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~wh/goldsmith-kenneth.html other links--> 1] UbuWeb: www.ubu.com 2] "UbuWeb wants to be free": www.english.upenn.edu/88/ubuweb.html 3] online edition of FIDGET: http://www.chbooks.com/online/fidget/ MORE ON GOLDSMITH: Kenneth Goldsmith took a BFA in sculpture, is a visual artist of great range, publishes as an innovative poet whose book Fidget "gives engagement a whole new dimension,"* and has created and continually edits what is by far the most comprehensive web site of visual, concrete nd sound poetery (UbuWeb). (His essay, "Ubuweb Wants to Be Free," is linked here.) Among Goldsmith's books and compact discs include Tizzy Boost, a collaboration with Bruce Andrews (1993); 73 Poems, published by Permanent Press (Brooklyn, NY, 1994) with essays by Robert Mahoney, John Schaefer, and Geoffrey Young; No. 111 2.7.96-19.20.96 (The Figures, 1997); and Fidget (Coach House Books, 2000). Fidget is Goldsmith's transcription of every movement made by his body during thirteen hours on Bloomsday (June 16), 1997. Originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art as a collaboration with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, Fidget attempts to reduce the body to a catalogue of mechnical movements by a strict act of observation. The online edition of Fidget at www.chbooks.com includes the full text, a self-running Java applet version written by programmer Clem Paulsen, and a selection of RealAudio recordings from Theo Bleckmann's vocal/visual performance at the Whitney on Bloomsday, 1998. * Of No. 111 2.7.96-19.20.96, Marjorie Perloff has written: it "is an encyclopedic poem based on words ending in the sound ah, a collection of words drawn from conversation, books, phone calls, radio shows, newspapers, television and especially the internet, arranged alphabetically and by syllable count so as to create a Gargantuan poetic reference book or archive of the argot of our times." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 11:52:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: travis ortiz Subject: Atelos announces the publication of R-hu by Leslie Scalapino Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" R-hu by Leslie Scalapino Atelos is pleased to announce the publication on September 1, 2000 of R-hu by Leslie Scalapino. About the book: R-hu was begun as an experiment in anticipation of a journey to China and Mongolia undertaken by Leslie Scalapino, and much of the writing of the book was accomplished in those places. The r-hu of the title is a Mongolian stringed instrument (the English spelling is phonetic: "She made the shape of letters in the air and said 'R-hu.' It's not possible to be lost."). Using narrative, dream, memory, literary criticism, and argument, the writing crosses successive horizons. The process constitutes a meditation on the emergence of forms; the result is a myriad of encounters with those forms which are the shapes of inner and outer experience; Scalapino sees the inner and outer as simultaneous, interlocked. But they are also entirely separate; we experience their conjunction and interdependence, but we must view these as astonishing and bound to no logical (or social) hierarchies. Ultimately, R-hu is a book about freedom. It is an action in and of freedom. About the author: Leslie Scalapino was born in Santa Barbara, California, and grew up in Berkeley. She attended Reed College and graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley. She teaches at Bard College in the Milton Avery Graduate Program of the Arts and at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has also taught at Mills College, the Naropa Institute, and elsewhere. Leslie Scalapino is the author if eighteen books of poetry, fiction, plays, and essays, the most recent of which are New Time and The Public World/Syntactically Impermanence (both published by Wesleyan University Press). About the project: Atelos was founded in 1995 as a project of Hip's Road. It is devoted to publishing, under the sign of poetry, writing which challenges the conventional definitions of poetry, since such definitions have tended to isolate poetry from intellectual life, arrest its development, and curtail its impact. All the works published as part of the Atelos project are commissioned specifically for it, and each is involved in some way with crossing traditional genre boundaries, including, for example, those that would separate theory from practice, poetry from prose, essay from drama, the visual image from the verbal, the literary from the non-literary, and so forth. The Atelos project when complete will consist of 50 volumes; R-hu is volume 6. The project directors and editors are Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz; cover production and design is by Ree Hall. Ordering information: R-hu may be ordered from Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710-1403; phone 510-524-1668 or toll-free 800-869-7553; online: ww.spdbooks.org or orders@spdbooks.org [ www.spdbooks.org/interact/item.asp?cat=&subcat=&itemno=K803&pos=4&dept= ] Title: R-hu Contact: Lyn Hejinian: 510-548-1817 Author: Leslie Scalapino Travis Ortiz: 415-863-1999 Price: $12.95 fax: 510-704-8350 Pages: 128 Atelos Publication Date: September 1, 2000 PO Box 5814 ISBN: 1-891190-06-7 Berkeley, CA 94705-0814 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 15:49:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Long Subject: 5.1 (Fall 2000) issue of The 2River View MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed All, All, This is to let you know there's a new issue of 2River available, this one with new poems by Joel Chace, Dee Cohen, Brian Hensel, Siel Ju, Lyn Lyfshin, Joseph Lisowski, Radames Ortiz, Ann Politte, Jennifer Poteet, and Kim Welliver, and art by Stephen Eiring. As usual, just go to http://www.daemen.edu/~2River where you'll see the link to the 5.1 (Fall 2000) issue of 2RV. Richard Long ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 14:07:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: POG Fall 2001 Schedule; Spring 2001 programming highlights Comments: To: Tenney Nathanson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Here’s the schedule of POG events for Fall 2000; way down below, there’s a brief listing of already-scheduled events for Spring 2001 (the spring schedule is still being completed). * POG Poetry in Action Fall 2000 Admission: $5; Students $3 Saturday, September 23, 7pm, Antigone Books, 411 N 4th Ave. Visual artist Sheila Pitt and writer Sharon Wahl Sheila Pitt is a printmaker, painter, soft-sculpture and mixed-media artist who lives and works in Tucson. She is a professor in the Art Department of University of Arizona and has had numerous shows in Tucson and across the country. Her installations include “Women on the Altar” and “Phallocentric Quilt.” Sharon Wahl has published stories and poems in The Iowa Review, The Chicago Tribune, Harvard Review, Story Quarterly, Pleiades, and other journals and magazines. She was awarded a fellowship in fiction from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and teaches writing at Pima Community College and at the University of Phoenix. She is currently writing a book of love stories inspired by philosophy texts and will read two of these, based on Zeno and Wittgenstein, on the 23rd. She is a member of the POG collective. [Late-breaking news: unfortunately, Sheila Pitt has had to re-schedule her POG appearance for Spring 2001, date still to be determined. Second presenter at the Sept. 23 event will be announced shortly!] Friday, Oct 13, 7pm, Dinnerware Gallery, 135 East Congress Members of the POG Collective Readers will include Charles Alexander, Elizabeth Landry, Gene Lyman, Allison Moore, Tenney Nathanson, Jesse Seldess, Frances Shoberg, Scott Stanley, and Debra White-Stanley. Saturday, November 18, 7pm, Orts Theatre of Dance, 121 East 7th Street Poet Cole Swensen and choreographer/dancer Eno Washington Cole Swensen is Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. Her poetry has won three national awards: the National Poetry Series in 1987 for New Math, the 1995 New American Poetry Series Award given by Sun & Moon Press for Noon, and most recently the 1998 Iowa Poetry Prize for her collection Try. She serves as a contributing editor for American Letters and Commentary and for Shiny and is the translation editor for How2, the on-line continuation of How/ever. Eno Washington is a world-renowned specialist in Pan African dance. He’s also a Fulbright scholar, an author, and a choreographer, teacher and performer. His biography and work are featured in Dance on the Wind: Memoirs of a Mississippi Shaman (NY: Cinema Guild, 1992). Saturday, Dec 16, 7pm, Dinnerware Gallery, 135 East Congress Writer Diane Glancy and visual artist Ted Pope (Diane Glancy co-sponsored by Chax Press) Diane Glancy is a poet, fiction writer, and playwright. She was for several years the Five Civilized Tribes Playwright Laureate. Among her many other awards are NEA and NEH fellowships, the North American Indian Prose Award from the University of California (for Claiming Breath), and the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. She is Professor of English at Macalaster College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ted Pope’s paintings and computer-assisted works in the forms of prints, video, and interactive multimedia have been exhibited internationally. He is currently a Professor at Arizona International College of the University of Arizona, where he teaches and publishes on contemporary art. Saturday, Jan 27, 7pm, Dinnerware Gallery, 135 East Congress Poet Jackson Mac Low (Co-sponsored by Chax Press) Jackson Mac Low is an internationally-acclaimed poet, composer, and writer of performance pieces, essays, plays, and radio works, as well as a painter and multimedia performance artist. Author of twenty-six books, Mac Low was recently awarded the prestigious Tanning Prize of the Academy of American Poets. Among his recent books are 42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters (1994) and Barnesbook (1995). (Jackson Mac Low will also lead a writing workshop during his visit to Tucson, on Sunday January 28 at St. Philips Episcopal, 4440 N. Campbell at River Road; tentative time is 1:30-3:30; $5 fee at the door. This workshop is co-sponsored by The University of Arizona Extended University Writing Works Center, The University of Arizona Department of English, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the journal Arizona Quarterly. For further information phone POG at 296-6416.) for further information contact POG: 296-6416 tenney@azstarnet.com POG events are made possible in part by grants from Arizona Commission on the Arts Tucson/Pima Arts Council POG also benefits from the continuing support of The University of Arizona Extended University Writing Works Center, The University of Arizona Department of English, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the Arizona Quarterly. Spring 2001 schedule (still in progress): Tuesday, Jan 30: visiting poet Hank Lazar (co-sponsored by Chax Press); site TBA Saturday, Feb 24: visiting poet Joe Amato, Tucson musician Jay Vosk; Dinnerware Tucson Poetry Festival, date TBA: visiting poet Myung Mi Kim, co-sponsored by POG and Chax Press March and April events still being finalized. Tucson composer Dan Buckley will appear in March along with a second presenter. POG hopes to present visiting poet Robin Blaser in April. mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 14:14:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: POETRY SERIES RETURNS!! In-Reply-To: <2575361520.968943003@ubppp248-219.dialin.buffalo.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 2:50 PM -0400 9/14/00, Poetics List Administration wrote: >This message came to the administrative account. - Tim Shaner > > > >--On Thursday, September 14, 2000, 1:26 AM -0400 "George Fouhy" > wrote: > >" FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE >" Northern Westchester Center for the Arts >" 272 N. Bedford Rd. >" Mt. Kisco, NY 10549 >" >" Creative Arts Cafe Poetry Series >" Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, D.Nurksy >" and OPEN MIKE >" >" Mt. Kisco, NY: The Northern Westchester Center for the Arts: September >" 18th at 7:30 PM, The Creative Arts Cafe Poetry Series at Northern >" Westchester Center for the Arts is honored to present Pet Laureate of >" Brooklyn, D. Nurkse... i nominate my cats, brownie and genet, for pet laureates of mpls? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 14:08:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: POG Season Subscription; Sponsors and Patrons Comments: To: Tenney Nathanson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit September 15, 2000 Dear Friends of POG: This is POG’s fifth season of public arts programming. Over the years we have brought to Tucson (or co-sponsored) such important writers as Bob Perelman, David Bromige, Leslie Scalapino, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Jerry Rothenberg, Clayton Eshleman, Lydia Davis, Michael Davidson, Erica Hunt, Juan Felipe Herrera, Norman Fischer, Dodie Bellamy, Kevin Killian, Rae Armantrout, David Shapiro, Bernadette Mayer, Juliana Spahr, Bill Luoma, Gil Ott, Maggie Jaffe, and Lyn Hejinian. And we have presented—typically on the same program with such visiting writers—Arizona writers, musicians, dancers, and visual artists such as Jim Waid, Cynthia Miller, Victor Masayesva, A.C. Huerta, Alex Garza, Ned Schaper, Nancy Solomon, Barbara Penn, Maurice Grossman, Danny Lopez, the Ge Oidag Village (Big Fields) Traditional Dancers, Anne Bunker, Barbara Cully, and Gwen Ray. Both the range of writers and artists we present and our commitment to cross-over arts programming make POG an important presence on the Tucson arts scene. Our 2000-2001 season, a schedule for which you received recently on email, continues this programming tradition. For this 2000-2001 season POG’s programming expenses are roughly $7,000. Approximately $1,500 of this is covered by grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Tucson/Pima Arts Counil. The remaining $5,500 needs to be raised through event admissions, our annual fundraising dinner, sale of POG-related books and broadsides, and (to a significant extent) individual and corporate contributions. We ask that you consider one of the following ways of supporting POG this year: · purchasing a Season Subscription: $30. Free admission to all Fall 2000 and Spring 2001 POG events (a savings of $15 over regular admission to all nine scheduled events). · becoming a POG Sponsor: $50. For a contribution of $50 or more, you can become a POG Sponsor. In exchange you receive a Season Subscription (value $30) and any one of the following: a copy of the POG ONE anthology; a copy of the POG TWO anthology (forthcoming spring 2001); or a POG t-shirt. (Each of these is a $10 value.) · becoming a POG Patron: $100. For a contribution of $100 or more you can become a POG Patron. In exchange you receive a Season Subscription (a $30 value) and TWO of the following: POG ONE, POG TWO, POG t-shirt (a $20 value). POG is an IRS recognized 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. All contributions are fully tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. If you’d like to purchase a Season Subscription or become a POG Sponsor or POG Patron, you can simply respond to this email, explaining briefly which category you’d like to be in. If you are becoming a Sponsor or Patron, please also let us know whether you’d like your name listed along with other POG donors in our publicity (we hope you’ll let us use your name). Then mail your check, made out to POG, to: POG, 7931 East Presidio Road, Tucson, AZ 85750. We’ll add you to our in-house list of Subscribers, Sponsors, and Patrons; just mention your name at the door and you’ll be admitted free of charge to all POG events. If you are becoming a Sponsor or Patron, you can claim your free gift(s) at any POG event. (If you do respond by email, be sure your response is being directed to nathanso@u.arizona.edu or Tenney@azstarnet.com [depending on which section of our email list you are on, your email software might try to send your response to a listserv address]). If you prefer, you can instead print out the form which will come to you momentarily in a separate email message; send it, along with your check, to the address listed above. Thank you for your interest in POG programming. Sincerely, Tenney Nathanson President, POG Board of Directors mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 14:10:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: POG printable Subscription and Donation form Comments: To: Tenney Nathanson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit POG Subscription Form Fall 2000-Spring 2001 To become a POG Season Subscriber, Sponsor, or Patron, please print out and complete this form and mail it, along with your check made out to POG, to: POG, 7931 East Presidio Road, Tucson, AZ 85750. Name: E-Mail address (optional): Street address (optional): Phone (optional): Please select one of the following categories by circling it: · Season Subscription: $30. Free admission to all Fall 2000 and Spring 2001 POG events (a savings of $15 over regular admission to all nine scheduled events). · POG Sponsor: $50. For a contribution of $50 or more, you can become a POG Sponsor. In exchange you receive a Season Subscription (value $30) and any one of the following: a copy of the POG ONE anthology; a copy of the POG TWO anthology (forthcoming spring 2001); or a POG t-shirt. (Each of these is a $10 value.) · POG Patron: $100. For a contribution of $100 or more you can become a POG Patron. In exchange you receive a Season Subscription (a $30 value) and TWO of the following: POG ONE, POG TWO, POG t-shirt (a $20 value). (POG is an IRS recognized 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. All contributions are fully tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.) If you are becoming a Sponsor or Patron, may we list you along with other POG donors in our publicity? YES / NO mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:01:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Nielsen, Aldon" Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy In-Reply-To: <39C0D18C.568C0EEC@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" a couple more useful books: Paul Ricoeur _The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language_ Mark Johnson, ed. _Philisophical Perspectives on Metaphor_ " Subjects hinder talk." -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 (310) 338-3078 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 20:24:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Jarnot Subject: cross-cultural poetics/streetnotes Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The Fall 2000 exhibition of STREETNOTES is now available at http://bfn.org/~xcp STREETNOTES is a biannual electronic journal of essays, poetry, interviews and photography dedicated to the dynamics of street observations made in the traffic of inter-human contact. STREETNOTES has been publishing regularly since 1998 and all documents have been archived on the site. The Xcp: Cross Cultural Website is an independent not-for-profit organization devoted to creating an intercultural exchange in the socially descriptive arts hosted by the Buffalo Freenet. We endeavor to exhibit textual and visual art, ethnographic essays, poetry and work concerning the documentary experience. For more info see http://bfn.org/~xcp/about.html ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 00:58:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: bullae MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - bullae they say you run it towards you they say you turn it to the left turn it to the right, they say you run it from you, they say you turn it up turn it down tilt it this way, he's writing it she covered her mouth with her cloth she covered her mouth with his cloth "la nu-un-ba(-e) tug ba-an-dul 'she did not open her mouth, she covered it with a cloth' Nippul Trial 14" who is covering her mouth with a cloth a cloth within her mouth, covering her, "ma zeh" what is this, suddenly, who is covering her fingers her face her eyes, who is taking away her stylus, who inscribes her tilt it that way, she's writing it all down "ubur'-du-ga-na ka ma-ra-ni-in-ba ga- nam-sul-la mi-ri-in-gu" she puts her breast on you, you take her milk, she she wipes her stains with her cloth, she has stained you with her stain-cloth, she can hardly see you, you can see "ma zeh" barely, she can breathe barely, she can barely see tilt it this way, he's writing it all up wa wa alan close your mouth, no one wants to look inside, who is adding this cloth to your mouth, who is covering your face "open the knee, hurry up, your desire covers him, your desire takes her" she can hardly breathe, she can barely see, she can hardly write, someone has her stylus, someone drawing blood, someone her inscribing tilt it that way, she's writing it all out siskur-alan-lugal ASJ 1, 19 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 00:57:45 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Poultry & Business Comment Richard Taylor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ron. Thanks for this and the link to the N.Y Times which is difficult to get here (or tedious to get at).I found a link on it to some old loner artist they've "discovered" with a strange obsession for young children. But it was very interesting. The business man says some quite cogent things. He was wrong about the nuclear thing though.. The book: "the Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes is an excellent book and covers this.(Rhodes won a Pulitzer). From memory I think Fermi experimented with bringing uranium close to critical mass then they put the carbon rods back into the pile(which I think was in the middle of Chicago!). There was some danger but no dangerous radiation or "blast" occurred. Nor was Fermi playing a game. Anyway its a strange example for the guy to give! The obvious point is that it is how one thinks in relation to where or in what manner one is employed. Its not impossible for a multi millionnaire to be "left" sympathetic. A lot of("high" level business people or ground-floor workers)are so involved in the daily grind that they cant see how they themselves are directly involved. Charles Ives (I just been able to hear his music relat. recently) was another example). he felt (sincerely I think)that insurance was of great importance for people.He was a multi-millionaire. None of us are "free" of "bourgeois" influence. It's maybe a bit more problematic when eg ABDOTWW (Auckland New Zealand) publishes Leigh Davis who has publically declared his great enthusiasm for capitalism. This then draws attention to his writing and its theoretical basis. He may be justified in "loving" capitalism - after all we all benefit from certain aspects of it (mass production,cheap food,medicine) even if some of these might be theoretically even of greater general benefit in some more egalitarian or "socialistic" society. I think people on the list, who have the time, would find ABDOTWW (latest issue from Auckland features the very talented poet Alan Loney), and there has and is still some vital things there, but the Writers Group have still not adressed (sufficiently) certain questions raised in an earlier issue (No 14 1999) raised by Scott Hamilton. Perhaps there were inconsistencies in Scott's "attack" but the issues raised, or arising - such as the question of the interaction of poetics and ultimately politics - have been left (somewhat) in limbo. Geraets doesnt seem to see the urgency of the political questions that are raised by Scott. Or perhaps the problem is timidity or apathy by other contributers. By not engaging in some debate the "Poetic Left" leaves itself open to the kind of charges that are made by McClatchy and others of his ilk. Nor do I think that everyone who is say "avant-garde" in their poetics, would or should (not a good word) support say Marxist or(alternatively say) some variant of Idealist philosophy. But too many magazines seem to not even attempt to tackle these questions. I want to read the Lingua Franca thing for myself (I'm getting it, I hope) but it seems that there may be parallels with the "accusations" made against you (andCharles Bernstein?)and what Scott Hamilton called "The Leigh Davis Paradox". Anyway, that's my pennyworth for now.Regards, Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ron Silliman" To: Sent: Friday, September 01, 2000 11:18 AM Subject: Poultry & Business > Here's an ironic counterpoint to the Lingua Franca article. From the > "Knowledge at Wharton" website at Penn. > > Ron > > ----------------------- > > "Poems Are Long Journeys In Risk" > > > For more than 25 years John Barr has pursued parallel lives as a businessman > and a poet. A long-time senior executive at Morgan Stanley, 10 years ago he > founded Barr Devlin Associates, an investment-banking boutique active in the > natural gas industry. The firm was acquired three years ago by Societe > Generale. Barr also is president emeritus of the Poetry Society of America, > the oldest poetry association in the U.S., and the author of several books > of poetry. The most recent is "Grace," an epic poem based largely on the > monologues of Ibn Opcit, an imaginary Caribbean poet and gardner. Barr is > part of a long tradition of poet-businesspeople, whose best known > representatives include T.S. Eliot, an international banker, and Wallace > Stevens, an insurance executive. In a recent conversation with > Knowledge@Wharton, Barr spoke about business and poetry-and how each of his > worlds energizes the other as long as the two don't collide. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: Could you begin by talking about your business > activities? > > > Barr: I spent 18 years at Morgan Stanley as a partner in charge of the > public utility practice in the investment banking division. Some 10 years > ago, in 1990, I retired and with a couple of partners, we started our own > company, Barr Devlin Associates. We continued to do financial advisory work > providing merger and acquisition advice to U.S.-based utilities that were > dealing with new trends in that industry by merging or restructuring > themselves. > > We were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. I sometimes > compare our small company to one of those pretzel vendors in Manhattan who > is on the right street corner, where everybody wants a hot pretzel. We were > in the thick of action in the mid-1990s, when almost all the utility > companies in the U.S. wanted to merge. We continue to be in that business > and have been investment bankers to half of all the largest deals. There > have been almost 20 mergers so far among our utility clients. > > We could feel the utilities merger market being transformed in 1997. Deals > were changing from stock-for-stock to cash-and-stock transactions, and as a > boutique we could not offer the financing service of a large balance sheet. > In addition, the utilities merger business was becoming international, with > European utilities starting to look at U.S. utilities. Again, as a New > York-based boutique, we could not take advantage of that business. So we > began to talk to a handful of prime international banks, which all showed an > interest in us, and we were very pleased in 1998 to be acquired and become a > part of Societe Generale (SG). We are now in our third year with them, all > my partners have remained in the business, and we have SG's balance sheet > and global platform together with the Barr Devlin franchise. We have been > doing a lot of business. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: What transactions have you done recently? > > > Barr: Duke Power-or Duke Energy as it is now called-is a major utility > company. In 1997 it used us as financial advisors when it merged with > PanEnergy, the second largest gas pipeline company at that time. That merger > produced what continues to be the largest utility company in the U.S. It was > a great adventure and a benchmark transaction. More recently, we were hired > by Enron to sell their utility in Oregon, called Portland General. Closer to > home, my partners and I represented Northeast Utilities in Connecticut when > the company merged with Con Edison several months ago. That merger will > create the largest utility in the Northeast. We have also done smaller > transactions all over the country and in Europe. It's been busy. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: Has poetry kept you equally busy? > > > Barr: Until the 1990s I had published my poetry in small magazines, but I > hadn't published any books. The 1990s became a major publishing time for > me-I published six books between 1989 and 1999. That started with a series > of three limited editions or fine press editions. Those books in 1997 were > combined into a trade press edition called "The Hundred Fathom Curve," which > was published by Story Line Press. In 1999 I published "Grace," which was a > major departure from my prior writing. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: One thing that makes "Grace" striking is your use of > Caribbean-like dialect in your writing. You say in your introductory note to > the book that the voices in "Grace" use the freedoms of dialect to"get away > with murder." Could you explain that? > > > Barr: "Getting away with murder" is the perfect phrase for me to deal with > the potential discomfort I felt in writing a book which is in black > Caribbean language. I'm not black, I'm not Caribbean, and I wasn't invited > to write the book. The debate in poetry in the U.S. today centers around > books where writers take on personae that are different than who they are. > Getting away with murder, for me, was a literary license to invent a dialect > that reads like a Caribbean dialect. It seeks the economy and energy of all > dialects, in my view. The people in "Grace," like Caribbean people, use > words with a high metaphoric content. They don't always bother with suffixes > and prefixes-they go for the jugular in terms of efficiency and economy in > the way they use language. This is true of all dialects you hear around the > world. That is what I was hoping to capture in "Grace." > > > Knowledge@Wharton: You clearly took a big risk writing "Grace" the way you > did. How do you manage risk in your poetry and in your business? > > > Barr: There are a lot of great minds-including many at Wharton-who have > focused on how you manage business risks of various sorts. The decision by > my partners and myself to place our little company within the arms of SG, a > larger enterprise, represented one of the ways we chose to manage risk. We > saw opportunity from our merger, but we also saw stability in it. As a small > company, you are only as good as your next deal. While we did have great > good fortune and success as an independent boutique, when we became part of > a global business platform-and SG is one of the largest financial > institutions in the world-it created a kind of permanence and stability. The > cyclicality of our business doesn't have the same effect on SG that it might > have on a small business. The merger was the way we chose to manage that > risk and also to increase the upside of the business. > > On the poetry side, how do you manage risk? I think it's not possible to > hedge an open commodities position in poetry. Poetry is about risk-but you > don't manage it. That is the big difference between business and poetry. > Business is always trying to create an asymmetric relationship between risk > and reward-you try to get more reward for less risk-and you try and get more > than your fair share of return. That is true of asset management, money > management and it's true of financial advice-we try to help our clients > negotiate the best deal possible in a merger. > > Poems are also about risk because they embrace the unknown and the > uncertain. That is why they have excitement and vitality. Poems are long > journeys in risk. People don't write poems because they have figured it all > out; they write poems in order to figure it out. A good poem contains and > preserves, like an insect in ancient amber, that moment-of figuring > something out-forever. That is why poetry cannot seek to manage risk. You > can do things technically to preserve the moment of a poem's creation and > make it a timeless enterprise. That is what formal poetry is about-the use > of rhyme, meter and structure is important to giving permanence to poetry. > But it's not about managing risk. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: You once said that you see no conflict between your > business and poetic activities because you see both business and poetry as > responses of the self to a chaotic world, and that you see yourself as > someone who goes around the world transforming that chaos into money and > poetry. Could you explore this theme further? > > > Barr: It's still a benchmark of how I view the two strange bedfellows that > business and poetry sometimes are. Both draw their water out of the same > well. Both in their own ways are efforts to seek to bring order to a chaotic > and random universe. Business does it in a way that will produce a profit > for the shareholders, if it is successful. Poetry creates an order that I > would describe as the capture of understanding. > > One of the great things we get out of Shakespeare is that once he has > articulated something, there's a comfort level that comes from that. It's > almost like a talisman. It gives one a feeling of control-not in the sense > of a control freak, but of control of the unknown and the uncertain. To me, > the act of articulation is a basic human response to feelings of uncertainty > and even of fear. > > That is why in old and ancient literatures, names are so important. If you > know a person's name, you have a kind of power over them. Maybe this goes to > the primitive tribal fears of having one's picture taken, too. A picture > becomes a physical possession of a person's image. There's a moment in the > "Odyssey" where Odysseus and his men have been shipwrecked. The mythical > Cyclops asks Odysseus his name, and Odysseus replies, "My name is no man." > It is that ancient encounter with the unknown, where the first thing you try > to do is know how to call it. You find that in Shakespeare, and you also > find that in the great ancient literatures. That is fundamental to what you > get out of writing and reading good poetry. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: Wallace Stevens was well known as a businessman and as a > poet. It is said that he had two compartments in his briefcase: He kept all > his business documents on one side, and his poetry manuscripts on the other. > In these days of the Palm Pilot, a lot more intermingling is possible. Do > you see business and poetry as separate parts of your life, or do they > intermingle, with one feeding the other? > > > Barr: I did not know that Wallace Stevens story, but I love it. He was an > orderly man-he was a lawyer for Hartford Insurance in Connecticut, and he > had a very logical business side to him. But his poetry went the other way. > > Yes, there is a duality to the two sides of the briefcase. But if the > poet-businessperson is willing to let the two sides get close to each other, > it is a potential source of great energy for both. What do I mean by that? > Thirty years ago, people were not as tolerant about a businessman who wrote > poetry. It would have been hard for him to be taken seriously by his > clients. But today that is not the case. While I did not advertise my poetry > when I was in my twenties and thirties, I don't have any problem with people > knowing that now, and they too are fine about it. I think I am probably a > better public speaker because of my poetry. I let the poet side of me loose > in business situations-not in an irrational sense but in an inventive sense. > Imagination can work in any situation it is allowed to. A lot of my work on > the business side involves a different kind of creativity, but it is still > work of the imagination. > > Let me now explore the other side of the argument. I think business can be a > source of subject matter for a poet. It took me a long time to open all the > doors in my life that I did in writing "Grace." That book was written over a > ten-year period. I came to the realization recently that there were no > people in my poetry for the first 30 years of my writing. I wrote > first-person, lyric poetry-and in a lot of lyric poetry there is no one > except the speaker and nature, or the speaker and art. There is nothing but > people in "Grace." The world of humanity came flooding in for me in "Grace." > That's an example of letting the business side-or the world of affairs-enter > the poetry. There's a great release in that. > > Let me add a footnote. I recently came to realize that I decided to leave > Morgan Stanley, where I had happily been for 18 years, in 1989. That was the > same year I began to write "Grace." Looking back, I think that one was my > declaration of independence as a businessman, and the other was my > declaration of independence as a poet. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: So you believe that your poetry helps you remain in touch > with the imaginative part of yourself, and that contact with your own > creativity helps you in business? > > > Barr: Yes I do. There's no question about it. As I said before, it's like > drawing water out of the same well. > > Let me tell you a story to illustrate the power of letting the two > sides-business and poetry-get as close together as possible rather than far > apart in a separate briefcase. There's a story about the early days of > atomic energy, before scientists understood it really well. One American > scientist had a game that he played with two halves of uranium. The concept > of critical mass is that if you let those two halves come together, it would > result in a nuclear explosion. If the two are kept separate, it won't cause > an explosion because each half has less than critical mass. Well, this > scientist would put these two halves on a table with a geiger counter, and > bring them closer and closer together. The geiger counter would soar, and > then he would take the two halves away from each other. This is a true > story. > > One day he made a mistake and the two halves got too close together. There > was a nuclear flash, and ultimately everyone in the laboratory died from the > radiation exposure. But because they were scientists, all of them noted how > many feet away they were from the critical mass. Their data was used as raw > material in measuring the effect of nuclear blasts. > > The scientist called what he was doing "tickling the dragon's tail." My > metaphor in all this is that if the poet-businessman decides to ticke the > dragon's tail-and bring the two hemispheres of business and poetry > together-he should let them get close but not too close. If it's done right, > it can be a great source of energy. > > > Knowledge@Wharton: At the end of your career, would you rather be remembered > for business or poetry? > > > Barr: For poetry. Poetry is forever. Business is about providing for one's > family. I've never sought a public reputation in business though if it has > come, I have been grateful. But in poetry, you hope not just to create a > profit for shareholders. You deal with fundamental questions that have vexed > humanity since the beginning-life, death, love and all their variations. I'd > love to be remembered as some sort of a poet. > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 03:00:19 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca Richard taylor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark. That's right.I "done a mistake". I think he's referring specifically to "La Figlia che Piange" and a weakness in that poem. It might be a simplification to say: but I think Williams (eg in that magnificant poem 1 in Spring and All for eg.) turns his eye brightly out and finds an extraordinary world there. Eliot is always, or seems to have been always, brooding (a bit like Geoffrey Hill) inwardly but unfortunately found nothing happy there.Perhaps "happy" isn't the right term for either poet, and Eliot doesnt seem to have ever been happy.Maybe he saw ecstatic and "religious" or "epiphanic" glimpses of The Truth (whatever that is).Perhaps in diferent ways, all poets struggle toward the same 'big' questions.Or why write? Eliot is operating from the heights of an established theory - an almost medieval view of the world. Williams seems to be struggling to get away from such hierarchical "theories" and is struggling with - the mystery? Of consciousness, and Nature (here he links with the Romantics eg Coleridge).I think Williams was the more radical,but, there were, (perhaps there are with many writers who in many other ways have major divergences)points of near intersection. Perhaps Williams is more of an innovator in the formal sense:Maybe eg in Spring and All in the way his whole work becomes a kind of Poessay (a term invented by Scott Hamilton).In a different way Robert Lowell mixed prose pieces with poetry in Life Studies.People constantly find it "clever" to mock Williams (Wheelbarrow and Plums in the fridge poems). But how many could come so close to such power from such economy? Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark DuCharme" To: Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 5:06 PM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca > Actually, Williams was on "the road to the contagious hospital" in poem I. > of _Spring and All_. The piece of green glass (or actually, "the broken// > pieces of a green/ bottle") is from a poem published later called "Between > Walls." > > On Eliot & WCW, the notion of their opposition probably comes from Williams > himself. Quickly thumbing through my books I have not been able to track > down the reference, but somewhere he says (disapprovingly) that "The Waste > Land" was the poem that put U.S. poetry back into the classroom. He also > dismisses TSE as "a subtle conformist," in the famous preface to _Kora in > Hell_. > > --Mark DuCharme > > > > > > > > > Richard Taylor wrote (among other things): > > > > >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They both > >were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if those > >are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants with > >oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is only > >slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the wings > >of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course WCW > >moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was probably > >temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. > >W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of > >the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very > >innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes > >thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know > >the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 09:47:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Rothenberg Subject: PUBLICATION PARTY FOR THE PARIS JOURNALS BY MICHAEL ROTHENBERG, ZINC BAR, OCT 8 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit PUBLICATION PARTY FOR THE PARIS JOURNALS BY MICHAEL ROTHENBERG hosted by Suzi Winson, editor and publisher of Fish Drum, Inc. An evening of readings from The Paris Journals by Michael R. and readings of excerpts from Fish Drum Magazine by the acrobatic Suzi W. Sunday, October 8, at the Zinc Bar at 90 West Houston St. between LaGuardia and Thompson Streets (downstairs, back room) at 6:30. $5. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 16:49:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Clai Rice Subject: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Lakoff and Johnson 1980, _Metaphors We Live By_ redefines metaphor as a cognitive process rather than a 'figure of speech.' Lakoff and Turner 1989, _More Than Cool Reason_ shows how this redefinition can impact our understanding of texts. Both books provide redefinitions of metonymy along the same lines, and both are quite accessible. --Clai Rice ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 02:42:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mscroggi Subject: jobtime again MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit For those of you who do British writing, a possible job opportunity; please pass on to whomever you think may be interested. --Mark S. *** Florida Atlantic U English, Boca Raton FL 33431 www.english.fau.edu Assistant or Associate Professor of English We seek a specialist in twentieth century British literature, with additional teaching experience in one or more of the following: multi-ethnic literatures of the United States, British literature before 1900, gender studies, rhetoric and writing. PhD in English, publications, and successful university teaching experience required. The Florida Atlantic University Department of English delivers programs on the Boca Raton campus, the MacArthur campus in Jupiter, and the Treasure Coast campus in Port St. Lucie. The candidate we seek will be responsible for developing and maintaining the growing upper-division curriculum at the Treasure Coast campus, and will also teach in the upper-division program on the MacArthur campus, and in the undergraduate and graduate programs on the Boca Raton campus. Graduate teaching will contribute to the MA track in British & American literatures, the MA track in Multicultural Literatures and Literacies, and to the development of a proposed PhD program. Deadline for applications: November 10. Position contingent on funding. Send letter of application, vita, and the names of three references to Professor Mark Scroggins, Chair, Treasure Coast Search Committee, Department of English, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431. Florida Atlantic University is an Equal Opportunity/Access/Affirmative Action Institution. Mark Scroggins Department of English Florida Atlantic University 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431 phone 561.750.5407 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 11:38:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: the incessant shaking of the world, Levinas, insomnia MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII = the incessant shaking of the world, Levinas, insomnia it is too abstracted. it is open to the making of the world. surround and no thing; it is open and the cry of entities are heard at a distance. the hunger. it is never a moment of proper awakening. i see the world exhaus- ted, decathected of meaning. it is my privilege to witness the exhaustion of the world, its uneasy lies. my illness is derived from the cloth of my world. i write somnolent, exhausted. therefore entities shimmer, are gone, before their mentioning. the guise of the name is all they possess, which closes them down. i see through the lies of the name. inscribed on tablets of stone and clay the guise of the name is all they possess; they're closed down. entities are uncanny; they lose their moor- ing in the guise of the name. your enunciation naming entities is uncanny; they lose their mooring in the guise of the name. ghost ghost ghost ghost ghost:thing thing thing thing thing:name name name name name:thing name ghost:ghost thing name: write cliffs ghost thing name through ghost ghost ghost ghost ghost. "Your line is read and re-inscribed. - "Consider the next element you will apply. "Your token should be inscribed at this point? "How would you define this line of thought? "List a partial third inscription, words. "You're written with fingers. "Your inscription finished, you have created $thing. "Your enunciation is uncanny." _ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 09:40:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Rothenberg Subject: Announcing JACK Magazine (Volume 1, No. 2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Announcing JACK Magazine (Volume 1, No. 2) http://www.jackmagazine.com Issue 2 features the following: Artwork by Jonathan Kane Gregory Corso Devotions: Poems by Ira Cohen, Steve Dalachinsky, and Erik La Prade Janine Pommy Vega. (Photo by Ira Cohen. Feature: Allan Graubard's *Fragments of Nomad Days*. Illustrated by Ira Cohen. (Special segment on Allan's thoughts about writing *Nomad Days*) Essays: Phyllis Segura's "Jack Micheline Story" Poetry by Alan DeNiro, Ricky Garni, Steve Kelen, Bill Lawlor, Duane Locke, Marty Matz (special addition of Herbert Huncke's intro to Marty Matz's *Pipe Dreams*), Edward Mycue, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Jose de los Reyes, Michael Rothenberg, Susan Terris, D.R. Yonkin, Karl Young, and Joy Olivia Yourcenar Fiction: "The Stylist" by Tom Bradley and "Sign Language" by Evan Palmer Tea-Party: "Kerouac Cutups" by Dave Moore Reviews: Jack Foley (review of Gary Gach's *What Book!?-Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop*) and Mary Sands (review of Rod Phillips' *Forest Beatniks and Urban Thoreaus*) The Path: Robert Front Interview with Norman Fischer. Illustrations by Robert Front Road Trip: "Postscript" by John Brandi Politics: "Into the Ruins* by William Allegrezza and "Scalia & Miranda" by Tom Devaney Renaissance: "The Germ: A Pre-Raphaelite Connection" by Meg Wise-Lawrence Eco-Watch: "An Ecosystem of Writing Ideas" by Jack Collom JACK Magazine, edited by Mary Sands and Michael Rothenberg, is an offshoot of Beat Generation News (www.beatnews.org) and an arc to the Big Bridge (www.bigbridge.org). It's where the parameters of the Beat Generation are redefined and expanded to embrace a creative movement that goes beyond personality wedged in temporal categories and public relations concepts. JACK will ponder emanations and movements in modern literature and art that have been operating and vital since before the turn of the 20th century but eclipsed by the "Beat movement," such as Post-Apocalyptic Romanticism, Psychedelic Shamanism, Church of Latter Day Surrealism, Cannabis Mumbo Gumbo, Burroughsian Anti-Utopianism, San Francisco Renaissance Poetry, Modern Urban Thoreauism and Forest Beatnikism, Black Mountain Poetry, and Language School Poetry-all creative phenomenon that inform, as well as are informed by, what is popularly know as "Beat." Note: This mailing goes out 3x a year. If you'd rather not receive further notices of JACK, let us know. -Mary Sands and Michael Rothenberg ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 14:05:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brendan Lorber Subject: *GIZZI vs. COOLIDGE AT ZINC BAR* Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" THE ZINC BAR SUNDAY NIGHT READING SERIES announces the opening event for the fall 2000 season. MICHAEL GIZZI & CLARK COOLIDGE Sunday 24 September 2000 at 6:37pm. A $3 donation, if you have it, goes to the readers. Your hosts are Brendan Lorber, editor of LUNGFULL! Magazine and Douglas Rothschild. Zinc Bar is underground at 90 West Houston between Laguardia & Thompson in New York City. Conveniently located near the ACEBDQF&6 subways as well as the N&R, if you'd care for a little excercise. Will we be charmed to see you there? You bet. 212.533.9317 or 212.366.2091 for more information on this delightful event or on the entire thrilling series. & now, for your edification, some bios borrowed from other sources: Eminent experimental writer CLARK COOLIDGE was raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and lived for many years in western Massachussetts. He has been writing poetry since the 1950's and is considered an essential link between the countercultural poetry of the late 50's and early 60's and the Language Writing movement of today. He is the author of numerous collections including Odes of Roba, The Crystal Text, The Book of During, and Own Face. Aside from working with Keith Waldrop, he has also collaborated with the artist Phillip Guston. Coolidge currently lives and works in Petaluma, California. About Clark Coolidge/Kieth Waldrop's BOMB (July 2000) A landmark first-time collaboration between poet Clark Coolidge and writer/scholar/artist Keith Waldrop, Bomb is a meditation on a book of photographs that document the Manhattan Project. Coolidge's thirty-page poem begins with epigraphs by Democritus, Gregory Corso and Andre Breton/Paul Eluard, and continues in an elliptical, glancing narrative style that lucidly investigates a subject often too traumatic to consider directly-the impact of the atomic bomb on our lives. Or should we say instead, the bomb's impact on our everyday lives-as Coolidge puts it, the general tendency has been to "put the bomb in a glass vase/add dust and forget." Like all of Coolidge's work, Bomb is sharp, stark, and rhythmic; the poet here tangles with the dreamlike oddness of the photographs at hand in fits and starts of language with an explosive beauty. Keith Waldrop's series of collages are literal reworkings of the original pictures: deep blacks and bright whites excavated from the book, remade here in the image of the poem. MICHAEL GIZZI was born in Schenectady, New York. He received his BA and MFA from Brown University where he studied with Keith Waldrop. Subsequently, he was associated with the circle of poets centered around Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop's Burning Deck Press. For seven years he worked as a tree surgeon in southeastern New England, before moving in the early 80's to the Berkshire Hills where he collaborated on several Kerouac-inspired projects with Clark Coolidge. For many years he organized a series of poetry readings at Melville's Arrowhead and Simon's Rock of Bard College. Most recently he has edited the Profile Series for Hard Press in West Stockbridge. He lives in Lenox and is married to the artist Barbieo Barros-Gizzi. Critical praise for Michael Gizzi's NO BOTH (Lingo, 1998) Through the mad clutter of everyday life the poet's voice speeds along and isn't going to let you off the hook till the end of the poem, if then. Razor sharp but also rich and generously compelling, Michael Gizzi's poetry lambastes as it celebrates, bringing us finally to a place of poignant irresolution where "This music that for the moment/Takes on the work of youth" is "Held for life in fluttering devastation." - John Ashbery Cross James Joyce and Jack Nicholson in a high energy construct machine and you have Michael Gizzi's poems. He will tell you everything you knew was true but didn't have the guts to say. Physiologically, psychologically,and geographically, Gizzi locates the voices of us, Olson's "last first people," with an element of quick surprise that is all his own. - Lisa Jarnot In the hyperbolic vernacular of the barroom confessional, Michael Gizzi delivers a full bag of urgent messages, their sources detached from the old, weird America of a not-so-distant past. Impossibly rich, these jam-packed audibles are spring-loaded to jack-knife off the page. No Both is word jazz, coiled, mortal and alive. - Kit Robinson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 09:36:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: Waldrop New Book Special MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit As a special offer to the Poetics list... HAUNT (No-Boundary Proposals) by Keith Waldrop, 96 pages, is being offered at 25% off the cover price. But wait! That's not all! As a bonus, listaferians will receive Keith's Instress chapbook, The Eighth Day, at no extra charge. Both items, postage paid, to your address for the incredibly low price of just $9. Checks payable to Leonard Brink, Instance Press, 327 Cleveland Ave., Santa Cruz, CA 95060 HAUNT, ISBN 0-9679854-0-4, $12 (also available from SPD) Words are haunted by, for instance, meaning. The first section of this book proposes, on a disproportionate scale, assuming (with Whitehead) that "the primary function of a proposition is to be relevant as a lure for feeling." Words here are decoys, hoping to entice the real thing within range. The second section is elegiac; the past haunts what language hopes to posit about itself. Propositions retreat and burrow pure sense beneath the level at which song turns language away from the world's edge and back towards what words possess. The third tries -- skeptically-- to follow certain words to their own haunts, where meaning is intermittently glimpsed as feeling. "Skeptic" in the sense of unbridled, disciplined thought that follows meaning along the patient path of the repaginated past. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 18:28:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Molly Schwartzburg Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Here's that amazing Williams passage in full, Marc, from the Autobiography: "Then out of the blue The Dial brought out the Waste Land and all our hilarity ended. It wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had been dropped on it and our brave sallies into the unknown were turned to dust. "To me especially it struck like a sardonic bullet. I felt at once that it had set me back twenty years, and I'm sure it did. Critically Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I felt that we were at the point of an escape to matters much closer to the essence of a new art form itself--rooted in the locality which should give it fruit. I knew at once that in certain ways I was most defeated. "Eliot had turned his back on the possiblity of reviving my world. And being an accomplished craftsman, better skilled in some ways than I could ever hope to be, I had to watch him carry my world off with him, the fool, to the enemy." --Molly Schwartzburg On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Mark DuCharme wrote: > Actually, Williams was on "the road to the contagious hospital" in poem I. > of _Spring and All_. The piece of green glass (or actually, "the broken// > pieces of a green/ bottle") is from a poem published later called "Between > Walls." > > On Eliot & WCW, the notion of their opposition probably comes from Williams > himself. Quickly thumbing through my books I have not been able to track > down the reference, but somewhere he says (disapprovingly) that "The Waste > Land" was the poem that put U.S. poetry back into the classroom. He also > dismisses TSE as "a subtle conformist," in the famous preface to _Kora in > Hell_. > > --Mark DuCharme > > > > > > > > > Richard Taylor wrote (among other things): > > > > >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They both > >were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if those > >are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants with > >oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is only > >slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the wings > >of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course WCW > >moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was probably > >temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. > >W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of > >the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very > >innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes > >thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know > >the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 00:18:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: Visual Poetry or virtual? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit “The easy relation of language and desire derives from their virtuality. When desire inhabits and activates the “empty’ symbolic system of language, sovreign states of meaning come into existence, each with a green harbor, gardens, a citiznry, and a tyrant. Virtuality has always been with us in the form of myth and fiction, for literature offers both representative experiences and words as experience. The real includes the virtual.” Paul Hoover, ‘Murder and Closure: On the Impression of Reality in American Poetry.’ in The mechanics of the Mirage: Postwar American Poetry, Liege, English Department, Universite de Liege, 2000, pp. 3 - 19. David Baptiste Chirot wrote: > > There is no working definition for visual poetry--Karl Young -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 12:26:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET Subject: *&(#@$%+!? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Taylor, Thanks for finding my horrible mistake. I hate mistakes! OF COURSE--A BEAUTIFUL a+bend book called TSIMMES by Tisa Bryant covered by a wonderful archival photograph of an ancestral member of the family. To buy this book find Jill Stengal at Jilith@aol.com. A mere $5.00. Bryant's Leroy book will be out some time in the future. --Rachel Levitsky > >Thanks much for the report. A minor correction for the list: Tisa's book is >published by a+bend, not Leroy. It really is a fine book, and I wouldn't >want anyone barking up the wrong tree after it. > >Taylor > > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group >[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET >Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2000 9:23 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Belladonna report > >Friday September 1--Tisa Bryant and Cecelia Vicuna read to a A/C buzzing, >people-packed Bluestockings Bookstore to kick off Belladonna's Fall season. >Alicia Locker, an open reader, began the event by reciting who read a >painful/funny rhyme about her story of being an Aguna, a Jewish woman whose >hubby won't divorce her as punishment for rejecting his violent ways-a >performance replete with non-verbal expression achieved by pointing to parts >of her body that didn't rhyme as well with the otherwise PG rating. > >San Francisco poet, former Dark Room Collective member Tisa Bryant took the >mike to read from her "Letters to Regret" series and "Tsimmes" (seems the >night had Jewish traditions written all over it). Both pieces use prose as >the base for patchwork united by time period and the consciousness of the >poet resulting in a filmic, real time, spanning camera effect. Yvonne Rainer >films thread into the quilt of "Tsimmes" (jewish compote) alongside Tituba >and slavetrade, breast cancer scare and the artifacts and language of family >history. The long piece is Bryant's new chapbook, published by Leroy. > >Cecilia Vicuña's soft speaking voice belies a mesmerizing shamanic presence. >Exploring the communicative possibilities of the non-verbal, Vicuña's >performance incorporated movement and wordless song-sounded without voice. >She began by moving through the crowd, rearranging objects and brushing >against audience members. This physical survey of the area transformed it >into a numinous space which Vicuña herself controlled. From this arena she >launched into a performance that was equal parts magic, humor and homage (to >prehistory, to fertility). In addition to several poems that have earned her >banned status in Latin America, her evening's repertoire included an >impromptu dialogue with a noisy air conditioner and a duet with an angry >toddler. Interruptions which other readers might deem a nuisance Vicuña >treats as an opportunity. Her idiosyncratic take on "the show must go on" >was a welcome reminder that the show is on at all times whenever you decide >to pay attention to it. > >Belladonna Books and Booglit published a pamplet of much of the work Vicuña >read during the reading, called Bloodskirt. > >--Rachel Levitsky and Liz Young, curators ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 01:48:28 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Visual Poetry & Binary.A rose by any other... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joseph. Maybe its like Shakespear's works. They wern't actually written by him, but by some other joker with the same name. Mind you he (W.S.) spelt his name in quite a number of different ways.Perhaps Zubukoffski was actually Shakespear reincarnated? Or was he just invented by someone? Did he exist? The difference between all these "great" poets and me is that I'm alive. Fuck them, what did they ever do for me? Eh? Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Massey" To: Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 9:36 AM Subject: Re: Visual Poetry & Binary > In a message dated 9/13/2000 3:39:59 PM Central Daylight Time, > richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: > > << And to whoever: Zukovsky wasnt a Zucchini. >> > > True, he wasn't a Zucchini... or a Zukovsky. It's: Zukofsky. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 18:19:07 +0000 Reply-To: anielsen@lmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: anielsen@LMU.EDU Subject: FW:INFO: new york--aacm concerts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII ===================== AACM New York Chapter THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF CREATIVE MUSICIANS 35 Years of Artistic Dedication Presents Saturday, September 16, 2000 at 8:00 PM Muhal Richard Abrams - Solo Piano And The Muhal Richard Abrams=92 Orchestra Featuring: Bob DeBellis (Alto Saxophone), Aaron Stewart (Tenor Saxophone), Karen = Borca (Bassoon) J.D. Parran (Baritone Saxophone), Ralph Alessi (Trumpet), Eddie Allen = (Trumpet) Alfred Patterson (Trombone), Jason Jackson (Trombone), Aaron Johnson = (Tuba/Trombone) Warren Smith (Percussion), Leon Dorsey (Bass), Reggie Nicholson (Drums) And Muhal Richard Abrams (Piano/Conductor) * * * Saturday, October 14, 2000 at 8:00 PM The Phenomenal Quartet Of=20 Fred Anderson (Tenor Sax), Alvin Fielder (Drums) and Kidd Jordan (Tenor = Sax) With=20 Elton Heron (Bass) * * * Saturday, November 18, 2000 at 8:00 PM The Adegoke Steve Colson Quintet Featuring Adegoke Colson (Piano), Iqua Colson (Voice), John Stubblefield (Reeds) Andy McCloud (Bass), Yoron Israel (Drums) Plus The Music of Master Composer/Trombonist George Lewis Featuring George Lewis (Trombone) Aaron Stewart (Tenor Saxophone), Miya Masaoka (Koto), Thurman Barker = (Drums) And The Meridian String Quartet Sebu Sirinian (1st Violin), Lisa Tipton (2nd Violin), Liuh-Wen Ting = (Viola), Wolfram Koessel (Cello) * * * All Concerts Will Be Held At: The New York Society For Ethical Culture 2 West 64th Street, NYC=20 (Located at 64th Street & Central Park West)=20 _________________________________________________ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 19:43:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerrold Shiroma Subject: new publications MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Here is a list of new publications by various publishers hosted by durationpress.com. Taylor Brady 33549 Leroy Chapbooks $5 Bhanu Kapil Rider Autobiography of a Cyborg Leroy Chapbooks $5 Franck André Jamme Extracts from the Life of a Beetle Black Square Editions $6 J.S. Murnet Saw Leaking Trees Potes & Poets $7.50 Sheila E. Murphy Three-Part Inventions Potes & Poets $7.50 Jerrold Shiroma untitled object Potes & Poets $5.50 & the past couple of months from a+bend press... Brenda Hillman The Firecage $5 Fanny Howe Angria $5 Nicole Brodsky Gestic $5 Jono Schneider In the Room $5 Jerrold Shiroma 2 poems $5 Yedda Morrison Shed $5 Robin Tremblay-McGaw making mARKs $5 Avery E.D. Burns Ekistik Displays $5 Mark Salerno For Revery $5 info on these titles can be found at the publisher's respective sites @ www.durationpress.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:09:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Damion Searls Subject: Pain/pleasure (was Re: LangPo, academia, politics) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For what it's worth, I think I'm clear on what the cross-purposes in this debate are. Bob G. is talking in definitional terms -- "pleasure = this, pain = that" -- so that disagreeing can plausibly seem as "insane" to him as disagreeing with a tautology or a mathematical equation. He says he's not relying on any model of pain/pleasure, because he is trying to make a formal, content-independent point (or rather, he is positing a logical structure, not make factual claims within that structure). Cf. >pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. or >I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, >but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. These are not literal content claims (what about vampires?), but logical claims. Taylor B., in constrast, is working from common-sense everyday definitions and then pushing against them. (His term for this: "dialectic.") When he says something like >In order to account for the experiences of those who >undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the purposes of >pleasure, it [Bob G.'s view] has to posit a pain that can be "converted" >into pleasure, and >vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, it's >difficult for me to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic , he is taking for granted that we "know" what "undeniably...painful/disgusting experiences are" (self-mutilation, eating shit, whatever), and also that we more or less know what "the purposes of pleasure" are, and then he is advocating that we rethink those understandings. He is advocating that for explicitly political/activist reasons (he wants people who do certain things not to be seen as "sick" or insane), whereas Bob G. is avowing a purely taxonomic perspective (he wants people to CALL whatever someone enjoys "pleasureable (to them)"). I think Taylor B. either [a] suspects Bob G. of smuggling some content into his supposedly logical point (i.e., claiming to make a definitional point but tacitly excluding certain practices from what can logically be considered "pleasure"), or [b] fears that others will smuggle in those same content biases and have a purportedly "logical, obvious, natural" proof of those biases, a proof which runs as follows: since "whatever anyone enjoys = pleasureable" (Bob G.'s point) and "self-mutilation etc. is painful, since it hurts" (the smuggled content), therefore "no-one (except sick/insane unspeakables) can enjoy self-mutilation" (the conclusion that's politically unacceptable to Taylor B.) So now is everybody pleasured? Painfully pedantic clarity like totally turns me on.... Damion Searls Taylor B.: >A final note, for me, before I admit that we seem to be writing at >cross-purposes here. I'm not sure in what way most of what I wrote was >"outside what you were talking about," but so be it. If the argument is to >be framed in these terms, it can't progress beyond impasse. So perhaps we >should agree to disagree here? Especially when you have recourse to >something like the following, which does the ideological work of granting >your perspective the mantle of common-sense "naturalness": > >>My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple >>definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second >>what makes a person feel good > >...I'd say that's precisely a model - you could draw it with a Venn diagram, >even. Furthermore, it seems to be a particularly metaphysical sort of model, >since it ultimately depends on a seemingly alchemical process of >transubstantiation. In order to account for the experiences of those who >undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the purposes of >pleasure, it has to posit a pain that can be "converted" into pleasure, and >vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, it's >difficult for me to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic >happening in the null set that forms the intersection of the two you've >defined. Now if we were to frame it in terms of a dialectic rather than a >simple opposition, we might get somewhere. But already there, we're pretty >far from the position that could maintain categorical impermeability between >pain on the one hand and pleasure on the other. Hegel's dialectic of >lordship and bondage might do as a thumbnail sketch of some of the >subtleties involved in such situations of opposition. > >Sorry for any immoderate tone in the preceding, but when my experiences and >those of people I care about get characterized as "insane," it brings out a >bit of the swamp 'gator in this Florida boy. > >Taylor > Bob G.: >I snipped a lot you said about taste, Taylor, which sounds interesting >to me but outside what I believe I was talking about, which is simply >that pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. > >To say, as you do, that it's not a matter of "defeating" disgust or >pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under certain concrete >conditions," seems to me insane. Black is white under certain >conditions. Being dead is being alive under certain conditions. >I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, >but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. > >> And this is consistent in the other direction >> as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs > to >me as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways > >typical of "pleasure." > >So you experience a mixture of pain and pleasure. You do not experience >pain as pleasure. > >> A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: >> >> Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other >> people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to >> want that which causeS you to feel only pain, in whatever form. >> >> Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you >> manage to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those >> insane people who want that which causes only pain), from the >> class defined before (those sane people who are practicing >> nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, >> without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly >> that appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've > >just announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced >> that you've demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure >> from" and "wanting that which." From either angle, you're allowing >> me as a sane person full access to my pleasure, but only so long as >> I maintain a categorical distinction between that pleasure and pain, >> setting the stage for the truly >> perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without >> psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely > >that which I do not want. >> >> Still crazy, >> Taylor > >Maybe not, but I don't follow you. By pleasure I mean that which >makes a given person feel good in some way. It has nothing to do >with "the practices and preferences of other people." If a >nonconformist derives pleasure from a poem that makes everyone else >vomit he is sane; if he reads that poem in hopes ONLY that it will cause >him to be sick (assuming being sick is painful for him), then he is >insane. > >The difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting that which" >gives nothing but pain in the short term, and leads to no conceivable >plesure in the long term, is that the first is about feeling good, the >second about feeling bad. How can it be sane to want to feel bad-- >unless what caused you to feel bad will later make you feel more good >than you felt bad? > >> P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our >> primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to > >imply that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - >> any more than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. >> I'd like to see room for what I've argued alongside the more >> "intentional," less "undergone" pleasures of the perfectly executed >> double play or the meticulous alphabetizing of my library. > >My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple >definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second >what makes a person feel good. > --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:28:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: NAW 18 (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 16:58:55 GMT From: Paul Hoover To: maxpaul@sfsu.edu Subject: NAW 18 To the Buffalo Poetics Listserve: New American Writing 18 (2000) has just been shipped to bookstores. It contains a 104-page supplement of Brazilian poetry edited by Regis Bonvicino, an essay by Clayton Eshleman on translating Aime Cesaire, a poem/essay by Kenward Elmslie on the Fifties, and work by 32 contemporary American poets. The issue can be viewed in part on our new website at http://newamericanwriting.colum.edu. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 18:21:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: OL3: Open Letter on Lines Online MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII UbuWeb Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry http://www.ubu.com U B U W E B :: is proud to present in its entirety: OL3: Open Letter on Lines Online (2000, Open Letter, Canada) Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry http://www.ubu.com/feature/papers/feature_ol.html 1. Darren Wershler-Henry "Noise in the Channel, or I Really DonUt Have Any Paper: an antifesto" 2. Christian Bok "The Square Root of -1" 3. Craig Dworkin "Net Losses " 4. Loss Pequeno Glazier " Epilogue. Between the Academy and a Hard Drive: An E-cology of Innovative Practice " 5. Neil Hennessy " The Finite State Poetry Machine: A Reading of John RiddellUs "Pope Leo: El Elope" 6. Neil Hennessy " JABBER:The Jabberwocky Engine " 7. Karl E. Jirgens " A Quick Note on Swift Current: the World's First E-Journal " 8. damian lopes " The Art of Navigation: The Technological Narrative of Project X 1497-1999 " 9. Lucas Mulder " Today/Tomorrow/Apotheosis " 10. Brian Kim Stefans " Reflections on Cyberpoetry " 11. UbuEditor "UbuWeb Wants to be Free" http://www.ubu.com/feature/papers/feature_ol.html UbuWeb Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry http://www.ubu.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 11:15:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Fiona Maazel Subject: Fw: party MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable THE PARIS REVIEW INVITES YOU TO CELEBRATE ISSUE 155 Readings at seven o=B9clock George Plimpton Ann Hood Priscilla Becker Drinks & Music at eight o=B9clock Monday, September 25th, 2000=20 The Culture Project 45 Bleecker Street $15 (issue and open bar) -------------------------------------------------------------------------= ------- Apologies for using this list for decadent ends. But it's a party. Who = doesn't like a party? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 13:56:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: owner-realpoetik@SCN.ORG Subject: RealPoetik J. Peter Mishler J. Peter Mishler is a 19 year old college student. He frequents Moorestown, New Jersey and Boston, Mass. He can be reached at trippingpm@aol.com. living digital my aunt was dead in ohio and it was raining like hell so the family couldn't take a flight so the relatives sent us a videocassette tape in digital with complete date:time so we wouldnt miss any of the action so we popped in the tape the tv sparked on my father farted my sister giggled the dog barked and we bowed our heads as god appeared through the static a girl named layla from texas said she read my work online and "he is someone i would like to talk to" yes that is well and good but who would I like to talk to??? one minute of my time 11:37 fix hair in tv reflection find ginger mostly attractive hate skipper irresistable queer worry about poem shelf life dislike smell of rusty hymnal enjoy piss smell in book being silent allie beautiful reorganize teenage wallet reasses me in visa card hide cigarette in the pocket wish no nausea no love no girl turn dog into shrink on lap masturbate remote control cock yawn over dylan's bob reason same old musiclyric type people are computers are people need to love fyodor book kiss pages feeling slut get praise hold it limp write this and insecure want john to like it best give critic open fly start now to bore me far 11:38. how to think like an artist: today i will do something drastic like... shave my head or pretend i can't cope without pot maybe you will find me smoking a pack a day writing poetry on parking meters (like i saw some brilliant guy do) i guess i could do a painting that really makes no sense because perhaps, to you, it'll be some metaphor for sex Moorestown, New Jersey from the Moorestown Public Library May 2nd, 2000 quarterbacks, 1 skinny boys, 0 the mayor is jogging in a sweatsuit trying to delay heart disease secretary finds a lump maybe it's in the water preacher goes to high school varsity sporting events while spectators close embarassed mouths trying not to be too hard on their daughters trying not to yell "fuck" but mouthing it all the same and he knows, and he'll pray for them fathers come home to diet cokes and forgetting to get laid, and to-do lists, and 8th grade history homework sneaking upstairs to the office to look at models they shouldn't the internet is love boys take violent bitter squeezed-face sips of warm garage piss while college students, returning home, ask "where are we drinking tonight?" they have learned well to hide the violent bitter squeezed-face sips now beer tastes a little more like sweat and lonely showers and lonely cigarettes and lonely sheets the clever boy hides marijuana in his drawer the every boy hopes for wisdom teeth removal someone's older brother said that the percocet feels like you're stoned no one has drug connections, but there is always one kid in the popular group that knows how to inhale and has seen The Wizard of Oz synced up with Pink Floyd teenagers get their drivers licenses and policemen pull up to houses where there are four or more cars less than four is a nuclear family dinner more than four means the parents are out of town mother cuts out clips and sends clips and gets clips sent from neighbors when the local son makes it into the photographer's eye at the school fair, while the oblivious son pinches his stomach, writing down keywords before calling the local girl the closest thing to angels die out quicker here "seraphim" was taken out of the dictionary yesterday someone tries to stand up in the middle of english class however, the alarm clock still reads 6:45 every single morning poets are notorious for losing their girlfriends losing friends easily losing weight easily losing god easily and somehow forgetting to dance sexually at the prom musicians are always in the choir men in wheelchairs always get the worst kind of sympathy the Catholic church puts up abortion banners on Main Street the Christian Scientists' tend to spring flowers speeding tickets are easy murders are quickly forgotten: except for on the anniversary because it is easy for reporters to ask turned-red red-turned questions to the mother: "how do you feel one year later?" "how do you think the town has changed, two years later?" the library has all the decent Beat books, and Rimbaud too although i was expecting, cynicallly, that it would be bare the black men still get dressed up on Sundays except for the white ones the sluts work at the mall and the bagel shop yesterday the bagel shop was replaced by a coffeehouse local bands play less than local gigs local paper ads believe they live in San Fransisco or maybe that's far too endearing perhaps Boston is best music gets heavier veterans hold their ears buy condoms, turn red no alcohol served neon signs are for whores seeing movies at the mall is for white trash father coaches soccer son strikes out and runs to the car and someone suggets on a wall in graffitti that Pete Noel, a black boy, acts white because he listens to the radio the frequency is Mine notoriously, kids come home from college with loaded guns and journals and opinions and they're ready to take down city hall but they haven't yet realized that Whitman had Lincoln and the Beats had Anyone and we have Carson Daly masturbation is still not appropriate in conversation there are no good haircuts you are too lazy to mow the lawn in any weather but you make amendments: will the trashes go out? will the beds be made? there is always some plan to escape that is denied yes, this is the fault of every teacher who had to walk single file as a student everyone is getting their own email account, yet over shrimp cocktail fritos sour-cream dip light beer and remote control conquest, we all have decided unanimously that dot-com is out of control I am the white buzz of conversation. Thank god they sell rolling papers in town but where is the loose tobacco? No one cares about the 2000 elections, yet everyone will vote everyone cares about the schoolboard elections but the candidates are ghosts praise for the private schools where the girls don't give blowjobs praise for two squirrels, making love in the backyard praise for red-stained mouths of snow cone babies praise for the robber that took our cd's and the Wright's television all the detectives know that the robber was definitely black and the children in the house dreamt of a nigger with a knife the babysitter awkwardly and quickly got fingered somewhere uncomfortably in the house and when you babysit, you will too Jehova's Witnesses' trigger warning phone calls from neighbors down the block, but the encyclopedia salesman and the man with a set of kitchen knives will always win jazz died there is no colored hair, except for pre-pubescent perms and elderly vanity where is the colored hair? not here. the only art cinema is a long drive away the only person under fifty in this library is me i am smalltown with bigtown rosary beads quarterbacks, 1 skinnyboys, 0. a fairytale that i believe has no immediate point the father sits in an office room in a suburban house and jerks off while looking at what is left of free internet porn while the son in the game room on the family computer touches himself while looking at the very same site while the wife sleeps cold in her hard bed curled up with a picture of her highschool boyfriend while the daughter closes her ears prying, trying to forget the memory of her mother on the phone, saying, "he was the best fuck of my life" J. Peter Mishler ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 19:32:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: BLACKBIRD 2/CELAN/VISUAL POETRY AVAILABLE (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In light of the recent discussions of visual poetry on this list, and the current availibility of many excellent new anthologies-- made note of-- I'd like to take the occaision to repost this announcement-- having originally sent it on the eve of the July 4th holidays and in the midst of the Orono reports, this may well have been overlooked I should also note that BLACKBIRD 3 to appear next year is open to submissions please direct enquiries to the editor David Stone, at the address below I would most highly recommend BLACKBIRD for learning more of the activites and works of international visual poetry--and, if you are serious about contributing, or learning of visual and other poetries, arts--ordering a copy-- you won't regret it! > Copies of BLACKBIRD 2 are still available. > > BLACKBIRD ia an international anthology of Art, Poetry, Prose, Visual Poetry and Mail art > begun in 1998 by Editor David Stone. > > The anthology is inspired by a poem by Paul Celan: > > > ANREDSAM > > war die ein- > > fluglig schwebende Amsel, > > uber der Brandmauer, hinter > > Paris, droben, > > im > > Gedicht > > > > > As if speaking > > the one- > > winged blackbird hovered, > > over the firewall, behind > > Paris, above, > > in the > > poem. > > (translation David Stone) > > > BLACKBIRD 2 presents works by 36 artists/poets from 12 countries. > > Babenko, Basso, Beining, Bertrand, Blankenburg, Breuer, > Bulatov, Burrus, Chirot, Damman, Dencker, Fierens, Gilder, > Hansen, Hauptman, Inman, Keeney, Klassen, Knapp, Lagerwerf, > Langham, Luigino, Maggi, Masnata, Mazzoni, Nordo, McKindles, > Perez-Cares, Reichert, Sherarts, Vieira, Sourdin, Stone, Lopes > Torres, Vermeulen, Van Sebroeck > > > It is available from: > > David Stone > The Carolina > 112 W. University Pkwy. #1c > Baltimore, MD 21210 USA > > email: chocozzz2@aol.com > > The cost is $15.00 US, plus $3.00 US for shipping and handling. > > BLACKBIRD 2 is published by Merle Publications, Baltimore, > Maryland: 2000. > again, i most highly recommend this superb collection/project --dave baptiste chirot _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 20:12:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerrold Shiroma Subject: new @ duration press MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here is a list of new materials available @ durationpress.com, plus a preview of what is in the works... Archives section: www.durationpress.com/archives Susan Gevirtz, Domino: point of entry Juliana Spahr, Nuclear The new International Poetry Project: www.durationpress.com/international An extensive biographic project on contemporary French poets (still in the works, but on-line) Authors Section: Work by Andrew Maxwell www.durationpress.com/authors/maxwell/home.html New press @ duration: primitive publications www.durationpress.com/primitive In the coming months, projects will be underway for: Tyuonyi (Patterns/Contexts/Time & The Violence of the White Page). Plus books by Keith Waldrop, Rosmarie Waldrop, Stephen Ratcliffe, & Peter Ganick ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:26:24 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/18/00 8:17:35 PM, schultz@HAWAII.RR.COM writes: << Metaphor is understandably in trouble in a world where differences are often considered more important than samenesses, but still has an important place "at the table." Hawai`i's an interesting place from which to regard metaphor, so often misused in the interest of the colonial, too often ignored in more recent struggles against it. Susan >> Hmmm . . . . I don't think metaphor is in trouble, not at all. It ostensibly compares, but all comparisons are in truth the marking of differences. I have at least considered the possibility that metonymy is a metaphor. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 18:15:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: OL3: open letter on lines online Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" UbuWeb Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry http://www.ubu.com U B U W E B :: is proud to present in its entirety: OL3: pen letter on lines online (2000, Open Letter, Canada) Edited by Darren Wershler-Henry http://www.ubu.com/feature/papers/feature_ol.html 1. Darren Wershler-Henry "Noise in the Channel, or I Really Don't Have Any Paper: an antifesto" 2. Christian Bok "The Square Root of -1" 3. Craig Dworkin "Net Losses " 4. Loss Pequeno Glazier " Epilogue. Between the Academy and a Hard Drive: An E-cology of Innovative Practice " 5. Neil Hennessy " The Finite State Poetry Machine: A Reading of John Riddell's "Pope Leo: El Elope" 6. Neil Hennessy " JABBER:The Jabberwocky Engine " 7. Karl E. Jirgens " A Quick Note on Swift Current: the World's First E-Journal " 8. damian lopes " The Art of Navigation: The Technological Narrative of Project X 1497-1999 " 9. Lucas Mulder " Today/Tomorrow/Apotheosis " 10. Brian Kim Stefans " Reflections on Cyberpoetry " 11. UbuEditor "UbuWeb Wants to be Free" http://www.ubu.com/feature/papers/feature_ol.html UbuWeb Visual, Concrete + Sound Poetry http://www.ubu.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 18:42:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Does anyone have emails for Jayne Cortez (or snail mail) or Maria = Negroni???? best, Levitsky ------------------------- "Writing is boring and gets your hand tired" --5th grade student ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:49:24 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Igor Satanovsky Subject: lower case inquiry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dear list members, does anybody know who pioneered use of lower-case-only writing in american lit in the early 20th century? (i heard it was not cummings) best, igor satanovsky isat@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:55:23 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/18/00 8:18:44 PM, schultz@HAWAII.RR.COM writes: << Mark--that quotation is from Williams's autobiography and begins with a statement that Eliot's Waste Land hit the poetry world like an atom bomb (an interesting statement, as there was no such thing in 1922!). Williams always struck me as very anxious about the "competition"--he really sets Hart Crane up for abuse in _Paterson_ (metaphorically, or is it metonymically). Susan S. >> I believe Williams said that Eliot's poetry set literature back 50 years. Bill ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 20:53:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: Pain/pleasure (was Re: LangPo, academia, politics) In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Yo Damion, Way to go, disclosing my agenda for all and sundry to see. But seriously, yes, you do a good job breaking it down, and it's a caution to my own rhetoric to note that this forefronting of the argument in terms of its own motivating "stakes" had to come from a third party. So thanks. Circumspectly yours, Taylor > From: Damion Searls > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 14:09:45 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Pain/pleasure (was Re: LangPo, academia, politics) > > For what it's worth, I think I'm clear on what the cross-purposes in this > debate are. > > Bob G. is talking in definitional terms -- "pleasure = this, pain = that" > -- so that disagreeing can plausibly seem as "insane" to him as disagreeing > with a tautology or a mathematical equation. He says he's not relying on > any model of pain/pleasure, because he is trying to make a formal, > content-independent point (or rather, he is positing a logical structure, > not make factual claims within that structure). Cf. > >> pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. > > or > >> I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, >> but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. > > These are not literal content claims (what about vampires?), but logical > claims. > > Taylor B., in constrast, is working from common-sense everyday definitions > and then pushing against them. (His term for this: "dialectic.") When he > says something like > >> In order to account for the experiences of those who >> undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the purposes of >> pleasure, it [Bob G.'s view] has to posit a pain that can be "converted" >> into pleasure, and >> vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, it's >> difficult for me to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic > > , he is taking for granted that we "know" what > "undeniably...painful/disgusting experiences are" (self-mutilation, eating > shit, whatever), and also that we more or less know what "the purposes of > pleasure" are, and then he is advocating that we rethink those > understandings. > > He is advocating that for explicitly political/activist reasons (he wants > people who do certain things not to be seen as "sick" or insane), whereas > Bob G. is avowing a purely taxonomic perspective (he wants people to CALL > whatever someone enjoys "pleasureable (to them)"). I think Taylor B. either > [a] suspects Bob G. of smuggling some content into his supposedly logical > point (i.e., claiming to make a definitional point but tacitly excluding > certain practices from what can logically be considered "pleasure"), or [b] > fears that others will smuggle in those same content biases and have a > purportedly "logical, obvious, natural" proof of those biases, a proof > which runs as follows: > > since "whatever anyone enjoys = pleasureable" (Bob G.'s point) > > and "self-mutilation etc. is painful, since it hurts" (the smuggled content), > > therefore "no-one (except sick/insane unspeakables) can enjoy > self-mutilation" (the conclusion that's politically unacceptable to Taylor > B.) > > > > So now is everybody pleasured? Painfully pedantic clarity like totally > turns me on.... > > Damion Searls > > > > Taylor B.: > >> A final note, for me, before I admit that we seem to be writing at >> cross-purposes here. I'm not sure in what way most of what I wrote was >> "outside what you were talking about," but so be it. If the argument is to >> be framed in these terms, it can't progress beyond impasse. So perhaps we >> should agree to disagree here? Especially when you have recourse to >> something like the following, which does the ideological work of granting >> your perspective the mantle of common-sense "naturalness": >> >>> My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple >>> definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second >>> what makes a person feel good >> >> ...I'd say that's precisely a model - you could draw it with a Venn diagram, >> even. Furthermore, it seems to be a particularly metaphysical sort of model, >> since it ultimately depends on a seemingly alchemical process of >> transubstantiation. In order to account for the experiences of those who >> undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the purposes of >> pleasure, it has to posit a pain that can be "converted" into pleasure, and >> vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, it's >> difficult for me to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic >> happening in the null set that forms the intersection of the two you've >> defined. Now if we were to frame it in terms of a dialectic rather than a >> simple opposition, we might get somewhere. But already there, we're pretty >> far from the position that could maintain categorical impermeability between >> pain on the one hand and pleasure on the other. Hegel's dialectic of >> lordship and bondage might do as a thumbnail sketch of some of the >> subtleties involved in such situations of opposition. >> >> Sorry for any immoderate tone in the preceding, but when my experiences and >> those of people I care about get characterized as "insane," it brings out a >> bit of the swamp 'gator in this Florida boy. >> >> Taylor >> > > Bob G.: >> I snipped a lot you said about taste, Taylor, which sounds interesting >> to me but outside what I believe I was talking about, which is simply >> that pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. >> >> To say, as you do, that it's not a matter of "defeating" disgust or >> pain, but of disgust or pain being pleasure under certain concrete >> conditions," seems to me insane. Black is white under certain >> conditions. Being dead is being alive under certain conditions. >> I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, >> but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. >> >>> And this is consistent in the other direction >>> as well - a stranger fondling my genitals on the bus uninvited occurs > to >> me as violation, regardless of whether my body responds in the ways > >> typical of "pleasure." >> >> So you experience a mixture of pain and pleasure. You do not experience >> pain as pleasure. >> >>> A final quibble, at the nitpicker's level of logic. When you write: >>> >>> Again, nothing insane about getting pleasure from something other >>> people get only disgust from--but it is, I still say, insane to >>> want that which causeS you to feel only pain, in whatever form. >>> >>> Foregoing that slide I mentioned previously, I wonder simply how you >>> manage to exclude the class you define after the em dash (those >>> insane people who want that which causes only pain), from the >>> class defined before (those sane people who are practicing >>> nonconformists). I don't see how it can be done, >>> without smuggling into the definition of the word "pleasure" exactly >>> that appeal to the practices and preferences of "other people" you've > >> just announced as null. Or, from another angle, I'm not convinced >>> that you've demonstrated any difference between "getting pleasure >>> from" and "wanting that which." From either angle, you're allowing >>> me as a sane person full access to my pleasure, but only so long as >>> I maintain a categorical distinction between that pleasure and pain, >>> setting the stage for the truly >>> perverse act in which the pleasure I am allowed to get without >>> psychiatric/medical intervention to save me from myself, is precisely > >> that which I do not want. >>> >>> Still crazy, >>> Taylor >> >> Maybe not, but I don't follow you. By pleasure I mean that which >> makes a given person feel good in some way. It has nothing to do >> with "the practices and preferences of other people." If a >> nonconformist derives pleasure from a poem that makes everyone else >> vomit he is sane; if he reads that poem in hopes ONLY that it will cause >> him to be sick (assuming being sick is painful for him), then he is >> insane. >> >> The difference between "getting pleasure from" and "wanting that which" >> gives nothing but pain in the short term, and leads to no conceivable >> plesure in the long term, is that the first is about feeling good, the >> second about feeling bad. How can it be sane to want to feel bad-- >> unless what caused you to feel bad will later make you feel more good >> than you felt bad? >> >>> P.S. I'm aware that my whole argument rests on that phrase "one of our >>> primary models for pleasure..." I mean that "one," and I don't want to > >> imply that the model I've sketched above holds true for all pleasure - >>> any more than the "negative-sensation" model holds true for all pain. >>> I'd like to see room for what I've argued alongside the more >>> "intentional," less "undergone" pleasures of the perfectly executed >>> double play or the meticulous alphabetizing of my library. >> >> My observation depends on no model of pain/pleasure, just the simple >> definition that the first is what makes a person feel bad, the second >> what makes a person feel good. >> --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 20:55:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Taylor Brady Subject: Re: new publications In-Reply-To: <000501c01f88$0734fba0$b614193f@u4q7n2> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Just wanted to put in a plug for the Bhanu Kapil Rider book. Despite the weight of a title that might have the Donna Haraway-acquainted among you assuming you've heard this one before -- trust me, you haven't. Taylor > From: Jerrold Shiroma > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 19:43:43 -0700 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: new publications >=20 > Here is a list of new publications by various publishers hosted by > durationpress.com. >=20 > Taylor Brady > 33549 > Leroy Chapbooks > $5 >=20 > Bhanu Kapil Rider > Autobiography of a Cyborg > Leroy Chapbooks > $5 >=20 > Franck Andr=E9 Jamme > Extracts from the Life of a Beetle > Black Square Editions > $6 >=20 > J.S. Murnet > Saw Leaking Trees > Potes & Poets > $7.50 >=20 > Sheila E. Murphy > Three-Part Inventions > Potes & Poets > $7.50 >=20 > Jerrold Shiroma > untitled object > Potes & Poets > $5.50 >=20 > & the past couple of months from a+bend press... >=20 > Brenda Hillman > The Firecage > $5 >=20 > Fanny Howe > Angria > $5 >=20 > Nicole Brodsky > Gestic > $5 >=20 > Jono Schneider > In the Room > $5 >=20 > Jerrold Shiroma > 2 poems > $5 >=20 > Yedda Morrison > Shed > $5 >=20 > Robin Tremblay-McGaw > making mARKs > $5 >=20 > Avery E.D. Burns > Ekistik Displays > $5 >=20 > Mark Salerno > For Revery > $5 >=20 > info on these titles can be found at the publisher's respective sites > @ www.durationpress.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 02:07:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gerald Schwartz Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There is the poem by William Bronk "Metonymy As an Approach to a Real World," found in his Life Supports (Talisman). There is also his essay, "Costume As Metaphor", to be found in The Collected Essays of William Bronk, Vectors and Smoothable Curves (new edition) (Talisman) Much of Bronk's work was concerned with these themes. The most committed discussion I've seen on these -- and Bronk's work in general -- is to be found in The Winter MInd: William Bronk and American Letters, by Burt Kimmelman (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Best Wishes, Gerald ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 00:32:55 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Thanks to Susan M. Schultz & Molly Schwartzburg for pointing out where the Williams reference I was thinking of can be found. Mark DuCharme >From: Molly Schwartzburg >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca >Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 18:28:42 -0700 > >Here's that amazing Williams passage in full, Marc, from the >Autobiography: > > "Then out of the blue The Dial brought out the Waste Land and all >our hilarity ended. It wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had been >dropped on it and our brave sallies into the unknown were turned to dust. > "To me especially it struck like a sardonic bullet. I felt at >once that it had set me back twenty years, and I'm sure it did. >Critically Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I >felt that we were at the point of an escape to matters much closer to the >essence of a new art form itself--rooted in the locality which should give >it fruit. I knew at once that in certain ways I was most defeated. > "Eliot had turned his back on the possiblity of reviving my world. >And being an accomplished craftsman, better skilled in some ways than I >could ever hope to be, I had to watch him carry my world off with him, the >fool, to the enemy." > >--Molly Schwartzburg > >On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, Mark DuCharme wrote: > > > Actually, Williams was on "the road to the contagious hospital" in poem >I. > > of _Spring and All_. The piece of green glass (or actually, "the >broken// > > pieces of a green/ bottle") is from a poem published later called >"Between > > Walls." > > > > On Eliot & WCW, the notion of their opposition probably comes from >Williams > > himself. Quickly thumbing through my books I have not been able to >track > > down the reference, but somewhere he says (disapprovingly) that "The >Waste > > Land" was the poem that put U.S. poetry back into the classroom. He >also > > dismisses TSE as "a subtle conformist," in the famous preface to _Kora >in > > Hell_. > > > > --Mark DuCharme > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Richard Taylor wrote (among other things): > > > > > > > >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They >both > > >were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if >those > > >are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants >with > > >oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is >only > > >slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the >wings > > >of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course >WCW > > >moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was >probably > > >temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. > > >W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some >of > > >the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very > > >innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that >comes > > >thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont >know > > >the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. > > >_________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at >http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 08:58:04 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lawrence Upton Subject: Re: jobtime again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit we're sometimes called the british L ----- Original Message ----- From: "mscroggi" To: Sent: 17 September 2000 07:42 Subject: jobtime again | For those of you who do British writing ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 03:50:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.20000915054750.006eca00@uclink4.berkeley.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII at the risk of sounding (or being) cyncial-- i thnk that the whole issue of pleasure/disgust/pain is really related to the creation of ever new markets, demographics, target audiences in short in a free market capitalist system, anything is welcome in that it may be turned into a money making propostion the "trangsressive", "alternative' is quickly co opted just as is the pleasurable and painful in each case, the various modalities are marketed as "tests" of one's endurance--of pleasure, of pain, of disgust it is interesting to note that a number of the test cases so to speak--the work of Mapplethorpe or Cindy Sherman or Barbara Kruger etc are all "transgressive" in content only--that is, the reframing of already familiar, status quo imagery they are basicaly "classical" works, using classical models and so are easily recongized in their turn as that wonderfully oxymoronic entty, the "instant classic" Magritte made a statement to the effect that the one real accomplishment of surrealism was in the changing modes of advertisement one of the questions regarding visual poetry in this discussion is that all written poetry is visual--because we see/read it this blithely sidesteps the question posed by much visual poetry: can one learn to think in wordless ways? --dbchirot ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 06:23:57 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark DuCharme wrote: > > >As for Bob Gregory's poetry, it makes my point that a poet working > >in the verbal AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other > >things being equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone: Gregory > >has been as innovative a language poet verbally as anyone around-- > >and he is carrying his langpo verbal innovativeness now into visual > >poems (as are a few other language poets). > > Aren't you talking about Bob GRENIER??? Good grief, yes, Bob Grenier. My brain really is going. But there IS a Bob Gregory, who is an excellent visual poet--and for all I know does language poetry, too. There are just too many Bob Gr--'s around! Bob Gr-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 06:30:51 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ward Tietz wrote: > > The difficulty with coming up with a working definition for visual > poetry turns on an acceptable account of its "visuality." There's no > easy way to distinguish between a more traditional text and a visual > one. They're both visual, even as intensely visual, if you like, as > each other. Sorry, Ward, but this has to be the silliest thing I ever read about visual poetry. Textual (or traditional) poetry has to be seen to be read, but it is not visual in any consequential sense, only verbal. Visual poetry differs from it inasmuch as its NONVERBAL visual elements are as aesthetically important as its verbal elements. Take away its visual elements and it becomes aesthetically null, or close to it-- but it remains readable. You might say it is visible but not visual. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 07:15:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit “it’s like walking into a church to me. I can’t do it without a bad feeling at the pit of my stomach: nothing has been learned there since the simplicities were prevented from becoming multiform by arrest of growth... It’s pathologic with me perhaps, I hope not but I am infuriated by such things. I am infuriated because the arrest has taken place just at the point of risk, just at the poin when the magnificence might (possibly) have happened, just when the danger threatened, just when the transition might, just might have led to the difficult new thing.” (March 1939) --WCW ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark DuCharme" To: Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2000 1:06 AM Subject: Re: Language in Lingua Franca > Actually, Williams was on "the road to the contagious hospital" in poem I. > of _Spring and All_. The piece of green glass (or actually, "the broken// > pieces of a green/ bottle") is from a poem published later called "Between > Walls." > > On Eliot & WCW, the notion of their opposition probably comes from Williams > himself. Quickly thumbing through my books I have not been able to track > down the reference, but somewhere he says (disapprovingly) that "The Waste > Land" was the poem that put U.S. poetry back into the classroom. He also > dismisses TSE as "a subtle conformist," in the famous preface to _Kora in > Hell_. > > --Mark DuCharme > > > > > > > > > Richard Taylor wrote (among other things): > > > > >Bill.I've often seen similarities between Eliot and Williams. They both > >were exquisite, and usually "spot on" witheir imagery or imagism (if those > >are the right terms). E.g. Eliot's "details" like "sawdust restaurants with > >oyster shells" and other things like "twists like a crooked pin" is only > >slightly more indirect than W.C.W's piece of green glass between the wings > >of the "contagious" hospital. They're not that far away. But of course WCW > >moved away from "metaphor" and so on. But the main difference was probably > >temperament and philosophy. I think you've got in for the old Posssum. > >W.C.W's was no saint. Sure his influence is a good "antidote" to some of > >the more florid parts of say The Waste Land. O'Hara, I agree, was very > >innovative. He is close to Williams in the sense of lifefullness that comes > >thru and in W's sometimes slightly sureal sense of the real. I dont know > >the history, but I suppose T.S. "put the boot into" Williams. > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 10:58:34 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Massey Subject: Re: Visual Poetry & Binary.A rose by any other... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/18/2000 10:27:02 PM Central Daylight Time, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << The difference between all these "great" poets and me is that I'm alive. Fuck them, what did they ever do for me? Eh? Richard. >> Bless you. Bless you. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 23:59:46 -0500 Reply-To: raltemus@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reed Altemus Subject: Re: BLACKBIRD 2/CELAN/VISUAL POETRY AVAILABLE (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Baptiste Chirot wrote: > In light of the recent discussions of visual poetry on this list, > and the current availibility of many excellent new anthologies-- > made note of-- > Another good visual poetry magazine is O!!zone edited and arranged yearly by Harry Burrus in Houston Texas. Email HarryBurrus@juno.com for more info. Or write 1266 Fountain View, Houston, TX 77057 RA ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 12:18:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: The Ideogrammar MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - The Ideogrammar Ikukonay ashay ittenwray andway allenfay intoway isthay aptray ofway okenbray or dsway andway exhaustionsway oughthray iddlemay-ountrycay athspay, ooklay orfay e rhay iddlemay-ountrycay aysway :::: Write wrists through my ! :::: proclamation with ideogrammar :::: I do not understand your tongue! |]] |:/HELLO |: ________________________________________________:| 6666]6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666|:| 6666]6666666666666666666666666666666666666666666| Write streams |5]5555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555| through my |]] |! :::: !slavretni rammargoedi htiw hpargoloh :::: !slavretni rammargoedi htiw noisicni dark virtue, dark sublime :::can taste her and hear and see; i can't breathe much. It's too much to see:by this point, proclamation with ideogrammar! :::: incision with ideogrammar | o o. o|:| o o.oo |:___________:: imperative with ideogrammar Nikuko has written and fallen into this trap of broken words and exhaustions through middle-country paths, look for her middle-country ways Ikukonay ashay ittenwray andway allenfay intoway isthay aptray ofway:::incision with ideogrammar: Does replace your Ikukonay ashay ittenwray andway allenfay intoway isthay aptray ofway? pronouncement with ideogrammar is across my boulders ofway:::incision with ideogrammar: Does replace your Ikukonay:Ikukonay ashay ittenwray andway allenfay intoway isthay aptray::: Your imperative names my 48 ! manuscripts with ideogrammar _ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 03:08:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Paul Miller Subject: Gayatri Spivak Talk Mime-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Please join the Columbia AMerican Studies Seminar for an evening with Gayatri Spivak, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University "Work in Progress: Beyond American Studies; Making Connections" 7:30-9pm, Thursday September 21 Columbia University Faculty Club All are welcome. ___________ Rachel Adams, co-chair Columbia University American Studies Seminar Department of English and Comparative Literature Columbia University Stephen Paul Miller, co-chair Columbia University American Studies Seminar Department of English St. John's University ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 13:09:52 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: LangPo, academia, politics In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Chirot wrote: >Magritte made a statement to the effect that the one real accomplishment of surrealism was in the changing modes of advertisement quite so, David. >this blithely sidesteps the question posed by much visual poetry: can one learn to think in wordless ways? of course one can at least think in non-verbal ways (not sure about the learning part tho). one example...mathematical thinking...those of you who have studied electromagnetism or advanced calculus will have found yourselves thinking through non-verbal representations at times. though i don't quite know if such thinking is learned or innate; both, I would presume. Patrick ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:27:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Poultry & Business/Metanomy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/7/00 10:58:35 AM, tottels@HOTMAIL.COM writes: The latter day Wallace Stevens Barr say: >Barr: It's still a benchmark of how I view the two strange bedfellows that >business and poetry sometimes are. Both draw their water out of the same >well. Both in their own ways are efforts to seek to bring order to a chaotic >and random universe. Business does it in a way that will produce a profit >for the shareholders, if it is successful. Poetry creates an order that >I >would describe as the capture of understanding Business & poetry are metonomic pieces of "chaos" Business & Poetry are metaphors for each other. (and both are like a "pretzel vender" cornering a street corner) Globally (oh random universally!) this is bullshit. Murat ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:40:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAYHEW Subject: a poet working > >in the verbal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I lost track of who originally wrote: "a poet working in the verbal AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other > >things being equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone" But there is no such thing as "other things being equal." The idea here seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative measure. Thus poet A, who confines his/her innovations to non-visualizable language, will automatically be less innovative than poet B, whose innovations extend to the visual layout of the text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = in other respects. It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the real world? Is Donne less innovative that Herbert? Is cummings more innovative than WCW? It seems to me that a qualitative judgment must also be made, otherwise we'd be forced into some counterintuitive conclusions. Even when it's the same writer who produces a visual text and another *non*visual poem. There is nothing to predict, a priori, that the first will be more innovative than the second. This is to be decided inductively, after the fact, not as some sort of spurious deductive principle. Jonathan Mayhew jmayhew@ukans.edu _____________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 13:12:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Robin Blaser? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm using a fax # of (604) 731-8654 for Robin Blaser. does anyone know whether 1) that's still correct and if so 2) whether that's still the best way to get in touch w him to try to set up a possible reading? thanks Tenney Nathanson POG / Tucson mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:24:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: job opening... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" University of Colorado, Boulder Department of English Campus Box 226 Boulder, Colorado 80309 Assistant Professor, tenure-track: Fiction writer. Prefer background in women's or ethnic literature, commitment to teaching, one book published. Creative Writing offers undergraduate major and M.A. programs. Teaching load 2/2; salary competitive. Letter and c.v. only by 30 November to Creative Writing Search Committee. The University of Colorado, Boulder, is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment. ---------- for more info on our dept. here at cu-boulder, click on http://www.colorado.edu/English/creativewriting best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 08:35:13 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Rimbaud / Rambo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From Andrew Johnston in Paris: _____________________ PARIS, June 16 (AFP) =97 Lovers of French literature are shedding tears of despair at the news that a cultural centre in the Yemeni city of Aden named after Arthur Rimbaud -- poet -- has been turned into a hotel named after John Rambo -- Hollywood war-hero. The three-story house, where the poet himself stayed in the 1880s, was inaugurated as the Maison de Rimbaud in 1994, but three years later lack of French government funding forced it to close down. On a recent visit to Aden, Rimbaud-enthusiast Jose-Marie Bel was shocked to find that a building that once spread the beauties of Gallic civilisation was now dedicated to the epitome of American machismo. =91=91There is a big sign outside saying Hotel Rambo,=92=92 said Bel, who as former head of the association Friends of Rimbaud was responsible for the original renovation of the house. =91=91It is scandalous. It is inadmissible. It is a dishonour to France and it is a dishonour to poetry,=92=92 he said. AFP 161336 GMT JUN 00 _____________________ ... passed on by John Tranter, Sydney from John Tranter Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/welcome.html - new John Tranter homepage - poetry, reviews, articles, at: http://www.austlit.com/johntranter/ - ancient history - the late sixties - at: http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/tranter/index.html ______________________________________________ 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 Registered to collect and remit GST - ABN 11 583 268 217 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 18:40:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kristin Dykstra Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=F1__(enye),_Poes=EDa_y_Cr=EDtica_en_la_SUNY-B=FAfalo?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =F1 (enye), Poes=EDa y Cr=EDtica en la SUNY-B=FAfalo: A Non-Unilingual Reading Series of Poetry, Criticism and Translation Inaugural event featuring Roberto Tejada and Peter Ramos Thursday, 9/28/00 at 8 pm at Rust Belt Books, 202 Allen St. (near Elmwood Ave.) in Buffalo ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 19:36:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Avec's Pivotal Prose Series MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hey friends: With slight apologies for the self-toot, I just wanted to let you all know that I've got a new book out, one of several books of innovative prose just published in a new series from Avec Books. Here's some short descriptions of the books in the series and information on how to access them through Avec's website and Small Press Distribution: *Available September 18th.* (information, excerpts and author information for the series currently available at: www.poetrypress.com/avec) Pivotal Prose Series (introducing shorter books of innovative prose). Pivot: a figure skating move in which the toe pick is placed in the ice as an anchor and the skater turns in a circle on a back outside edge. The Pivotal Prose Series revolves around narrativities, poetic prose, novellas, meditations and writing that defies category. The authors in this series frequently work in other genres, such as poetry, film or visual art. The series also rotates around a varied group of contemporary writers. Some of these texts will appear in translation. The Big Lie by Mark Wallace Pivotal Prose Series, Avec Books * ISBN: 1-880713-22-5 56 Pages $7.50 A boy finds an artist's manifesto on the floor, a gay man reflects on his regrets, a woman suddenly sees a man's face through her car window. Don't be fooled if it sounds familiar or credible; in the world of The Big Lie such simply-told and apparently "sincere" moments are only the iceberg's tip. Subtly referencing some of the great iconoclasts of literature and philosophy (Kafka, Wilde, Nietzsche), these vignettes unveil a defiant sense of contemporary artistic possibility, rising at times into a full-scale attack on American style consumerism, unmediated authorship, and the bloated privileges of literary "genius." Quick shifts between styles, personas and subject matter keep the reader critical and wary. Even when The Big Lie demands an art of open questions, the writing remains its own example, always better-than-advertised. _______ Benched by Cydney Chadwick Pivotal Prose Series, Avec Books * ISBN: 1-880713-23-3 58 Pages $7.50 A failed man haunted by his successful past, a woman whose academic career can't hide her alienation and loneliness, a thoughtless young man living for his next sexual conquest; in Cydney Chadwick's Benched, these three people move through a world of sinister disconnections in search of something they don't understand and are never going to find. The book presents a series of encounters loosely centered around trips to a Hyde Park bench and a London laundromat at an undefined recent historical moment in which place and time have become empty measures of people's inevitable distance from each other. Benched is a minefield of awkward silences, crude gestures, and small exquisite tortures. This understated and stylish novella presents the reader with a truly contemporary gothic, in which grand dramatic horror has given way to the horror hidden in apparently trivial daily moments broken off from each other like bright, sharp fragments of an imperceptible dark structure of dissolution and, possibly, death ______ Benching with Virgil by Gad Hollander Pivotal Prose Series, Avec Books * ISBN:1-880713-24-1 58 Pages $7.50 Benching with Virgil wraps the 'mystery' back inside the enigma. The Narrator's obsessive, Beckett-like observations seem to go nowhere in particular, yet the reader does journey around Paris, does recall a girl reading on a bench, does overhear strange conversations between Mr. Laurel and Bergson (Hardy is busy hanging curtains), and does get to the crime scene just in time to be murdered-by the narrator. In Hollander's writing, the stream-called-consciousness flows beautifully, deceptively, and continuously. Far more than mere digressions, these are the markings of a writer on the track of thought, deconstructing his own deductions, pinpointing the elusive presence of the reader at every twist in the bend. _______ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 10:55:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick" Subject: Re: Bhanu Kapil Rider MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I want to second Taylor Brady's plug for Bhanu Kapil Rider's new book. It's a terrific piece of writing. Here's something I wrote to introduce her to the audience at the Left Hand Reading Series last year. Bhanu Kapil Rider is the author of The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press, and The Autobiography of a Cyborg, portions of which will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Conjunctions. In her rich, adventurous, and highly playful work, the postmodern concerns with the positioning of the subject are given a surprising twist. For Kapil Rider, the figure of the cyborg is not to be found in the uncanny suturing of the human with the machine; rather, she locates it deep inside the human itself. The self is always already a hybridity, produced by the competing and conjoining discourses of parents, family, and cultures. The human is that which is complicated by the idea of the human. Uncanniness arises from the recognition that "I" is heterogeneous. Or as she puts it in Autobiography of a Cyborg, "we don't know how to break this to you: forms dissolve." The notion of identity as continuous, unified, and exactly self-replicating is turned inside out in Kapil Rider's work. Her cyborg traverses the world, from India to London to Vegas, in the quest for an originary, instantiating memory that is produced paradoxically only through the mechanism of the journey itself. Identity is nomadic, a process of dispersion and recovery, but always in a state of flux. At the same time, though, this very human cyborg explores both self and her world with a Blakean delight in the joys of embodiment. For Kapil Rider, each of us is a liminal creature, hovering on the threshold between presence and absence, desire and memory, home and elsewhere, self and Other. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 12:25:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mIEKAL aND Subject: Re: review of =?iso-8859-1?Q?Arg=FCelles?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit fwd review by Jake Berry Madonna Septet Ivan Argüelles Potes and Poets Press 181 Edgemont Avenue Elmwood CT 06110-1005 864 pages in 2 vols. $29.00 also available individually for $17 each For decades Ivan Argüelles was known for his short to medium length dense modernist come surreal poetry. By the mid-eighties he was one of the most widely published poets in circulation. His work in this form reached it’s pinnacle with SEARCHING FOR MARY LOU: ILLEGAL SYNTAX in which Argüelles’s poetry was accompanied by the photographs of Craig Stockfleth. That book received the William Carlos Williams poetry prize ahead of Gregory Corso’s work among other notables. Then came PANTOGRAPH, an at least 10 volume (some of it remains unpublished) reworking of the epic poem that runs as far back as Homer and Gilgamesh without abandoning James Joyce or Elvis Presley. That’s quite a stretch, but half a dozen pages into the epic and one realizes that Argüelles is more than up to the task, in fact he makes it look easy. After the completion of PANTOGRAPH what next? What could be left to do? The answer comes roaring at us out of the new two volume work MADONNA SEPTET. In the interim between the two books Argüelles drove himself through a period on intense experimentation with language and form including collaborations with Jack Foley and John Bennett that produced work quite unlike anything he had produced before. He brings those experiences as well as haunting memories, extensive reading of Sanskrit texts among other readings, and a sense of unfettered abandon to the new work. And for all that can be said the epic nature and scope of Argüelles’s poetry (and MADONNA is saturated with that quality), he is as good line by line as any poet alive and then some. There is an intensity and dense lyricism that proves the work in its music alone. Reading the poem one is struck repeatedly by the sheer beauty of his use of language(s) and is compelled to slow down and savor it. To generate this kind of response in a poem almost 900 pages long is simply unheard of in contemporary poetry. PANTOGRAPH began with a volume called “that” GODDESS and she reappears almost immediately in the new work. Of course the madonna is a goddess form and one is inclined to read this as an extension of the earlier work. However, this is Argüelles as we have never read him before. Due to the period of experiment we see a loser, even broken form, words break in the middle only to continue later in the poem or sometimes we get the second half first. One constantly must re-evaluate what one is reading and becomes aware of deeper currents and countercurrents. The result is that once again he has reopened the epic lyric. Pound, for all his research and intelligence never devised anything so multiply complex, or explored the hinterlands of human imagination so exhaustively. Argüelles is a soul geographer. Love/ lust/ the erotic engines of the ages carry the poem, remain its medium right through oblivion and beyond. oblivion as is every line I write obli vious of you every time I look you are obli vious that I am looking at every line is gone you are OBLIVION for -saking every had a line? … holy madam of Sex what is this ire we are come ing to fold over centerpiece Consider how the reader/listener must almost “sing” the word obli/vious. We are in the throes of an amazing song which defies all limitation while simultaneously remaining true to its obsession. The kind of passion with which this poet sings has vanished except for a handful of brave souls, and few of those can work in the thin air of the heights Argüelles explores as a matter of habit. Much philosophy and art of the 20th century required a leap, of mind, of imagination into a domain that lay beyond the worn out metaphysics of the previous twenty five centuries. Argüelles is well aware of that, but rather than unweaving the neurosis of the past by quasi-ontology he uses the modernists tools of mythos, liberated verse and transformed line to transcend modernism for a poetry that conforms to nothing, not even its own practice. “a s- ystematic but leap into CHAOS” - and what chaos does he mean? The chaos of systems theory as the line seems to suggest or is this mythology, the Greek preternatural chaos, the “with out form and void” of the Bible, or something we might only experience by way of the poem? Like Artaud, Argüelles constantly struggles against the limitations that confront anyone working at the boundaries of language, and he is no less vigilant, even violent in defeating those limitations time and again. no conso-lation but in detritus the whole beside its “self” eaten to the core by loss of wit One cannot help but recall Rimbaud’s demand for derangement of the senses and what the surrealists and Beat writers did with it, and these are both sources. Especially in certain passages this poem has a more jazz influenced/ scat singing feel than most of PANTOGRAPH ?? it seems to work in a freer space: flux a the heavy unh fix I need a frame “bad” Driver, follow that cab the poem’s out of Mind houses burning in the gutter disarrangement of all “poesy” burn the marigolds gladiolas irises hubba hubba … Yet, through every line we are confronted with a poem that is unlike anything that anyone has ever written. It takes more chances, makes audacious proclamations, profanes all poetry in the act of transfiguring the art according to intuition’s disruptive convolutions. This is not to suggest that the poem ever becomes athematic or purely automatic writing. Paradoxically it is simultaneously chaotic and always on theme. Argüelles writes/sings here, perhaps more than in any of his previous poems, as if he were driven, as if he were ridden by forces that insist on the poem’s appearance. One imagines him day after day writing in a fevered sweat to get the voices out before they are overwhelmed by the next chorus. As with much of his work, but especially here, he seems to be articulating a beautiful, exquisitely detailed madness, and no matter how deeply we engage the poem we will never be able to drink the full draught of that madness. What we can do however is open ourselves to how the poem might live in us and allow it to inhabit the unique space it demands, remembering a work like the MADONNA SEPTET has no ultimate resolution. Instead it sounds and reverberates and invokes those chthonic and heavenly powers which have fascinated all humanity always and probably forever will. As such it is, like all Argüelles poetry, a vital oracle, to consult and dwell within, to revel in its music and revelation and be grateful the poet was there to bring the voices forward for the rest of us to hear. MADONNA SEPTET is a record of Argüelles at the top of his art, quintessential work by an artist essential to know. Jake Berry ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 11:38:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Nielsen, Aldon" In-Reply-To: <008801c021c1$c6e9f500$46fc6420@herbert> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 06:42 PM 9/18/00 -0400, you wrote: >Does anyone have emails for Jayne Cortez (or snail mail) or Maria Negroni???? >best, >Levitsky >------------------------- >"Writing is boring and gets your hand tired" > --5th grade student Please post the Cortez address here if you have it -- I'm trying to get some permissions from her and the old address seems defunct! " Subjects hinder talk." -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 (310) 338-3078 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:46:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Susan Schultz--- Yeah, but do you really think that metaphor is primarily really about "sameness" in an age of "difference" (or say it w/ obligatory fr. accent)? A good case can be, and in fact has been, made (by both detractors and defenders) of metaphor that metaphor is no more about sameness than it is about difference--- this is what distinguishes it from simile perhaps.... So, if A = B (truth is a rat-infested subway stop, for instance), the "sameness" implies its opposite, too, the "absurdity" of the link. Even in Shakespeare and other pre-20th century texts, metaphor is often used this way.... there is something else going on, beyond (or at least unregistered by) the level of prose logic.... So, IN GENERAL, what I don't get (TO ANYBODY; OPEN QUESTION; please answer, etc., etc) is why METONYMY (the most known of which would be SYNECDOCHE; that town Michael Gizzi was born in) is considered better, more progressive, more feminist, etc? This argument has never made sense for me, for metonymy seems more reductive, less dynamic, etc..... Curious, curious..... c ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:08:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Belz Subject: henry darger In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Here is the odd tale of the man whose work inspired Ashbery's _Girls on the Run_. I'm sure some of you have already seen this. Aaron Belz http://meaningless.com *** He Was Obsessed With Little Girls and Perhaps He Was a Genius. September 16, 2000 By SARAH BOXER He has inspired a book of poetry ("Girls on the Run" by John Ashbery), fashion designs (by Anna Sui), a British rock band (the Vivian Girls), a Hawaiian dance ("The Valley of Io"), a video game (Sissy Fight at www.sissyfight.com), an opera (being composed by Douglas Cuomo), a play ("Jennie Richee" by Mac Wellman, opening in February at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago) and a movie prospect (now canceled). He has been compared to Lewis Carroll, Fra Angelico, Andy Warhol, Balthus and Dr. Seuss. The word "genius" has often been used near his name, but so, occasionally, have the words "mind of a serial killer." His work has been called part "Child's Garden of Verses," part "pedophilic fantasy." He drew tribes of little girls, and gave some of them little penises. Henry Darger (1892-1973) spent much of his life in Chicago rummaging through trash cans, going to Mass, writing about the weather and fighting with tangled balls of twine. When he died, he left an apartment filled with hundreds of old Pepto Bismol bottles; plastic maple syrup containers; balls of string; a windup Edison phonograph; a music box, and plaster figurines o= f Jesus and Mary. That was not all. "Where there was any wall space, and tacked around every door frame, were pictures of little girls that had been cut out of magazines, newspapers and coloring books," Michael Bonesteel writes in "Henry Darger: Art and Selecte= d Writings," to be published by Rizzoli in November. There were pictures of the Dionne quintuplets, some 20 pictures of the Coppertone Girl and many pictures of Little Annie Roonie. Two trunks held a lifetime of writing: a 5,000-page, eight-volume work titled "The History of My Life," which included thousands of pages on a single tornado; a weather journal covering exactly 10 years, from Dec. 31, 1957, to Dec. 31, 1967; and a series of diaries detailing how many times he went to Mass and his many tantrums over twine. The biggest surprise was a creepy, obsessive 15,000- page manuscript type= d in different colored inks. It was called "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal of the Glandico-Angelinian Wars, as Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion." And it had an 8,500-page sequel, "Further Adventures in Chicago." The Vivian girls Violet, Joice, Jennie, Catherine, Hettie, Daisy and Evangeline are the heroines of "The Realms." They unite with gentle, child-loving dragons called the Blengiglomenean Serpents (Blengins for short) in a four-year--seven-month war (fought sometime between 1910 and 1917 and roughly following the outlines of World War I) against the Glandelinians, a race of fallen Catholics who enslave and torture children. In the end, the girls prevail and so do the Catholic nations of Abbieannia, Angelinia, Abyssinkile, Protestentia and Calverinia, but not before many children are tortured and killed. If Darger had left only the text, he might be just another forgotten recluse. But he also made 300 illustrations everything from small watercolors to 12-foot-long mural-size scrolls, often painted on both sides= . Darger crammed his huge, fantastical landscapes with baby-faced girls, some clothed in colorful dresses, bathing suits and pinafores, and others naked. He equipped certain girls with horns and others with penises; he showed some being disemboweled or strangled, tongues lolling out, and he drew others enjoying the sunshine, the butterflies and the huge flowers. Th= e girls' eyes, as John MacGregor, a pre-eminent Darger scholar, has pointed out, shine in the dark because Darger filled them in with pencil lead. Darger had trouble drawing figures, so he traced or cut and pasted images taken from comics, children's books and magazines. If they weren't the righ= t size, he had them enlarged at his local drugstore. The results were stunning. The Nation's critic Arthur Danto has called Darger "a genius of stammering achievement." Time magazine's critic Robert Hughes has toyed wit= h the term "Poussin of pedophilia." Darger (pronouced DAHR-gurr) had a rotten childhood. When he was 4, his mother died while giving birth to his sister, who was put up for adoption. As a child, Darger was not fond of girls. He "threw ashes in one little girl's eyes and tried to slash another girl with a knife," Mr. Bonesteel writes. When he was 8, his father, a tailor, could no longer take care of him. Darger went to live in a Catholic mission. Apparently he was thrown out for masturbating. He was put in the Asylum for Feeble- Minded Children in Lincoln, Ill. There he became absorbed with religious rituals. He once wrote, "I burned holy pictures and hit the face of Christ in pictures with my fist." At 16 he ran away from the asylum. For the next half-century, Mr. Bonesteel tells us, Darger worked "as a janitor, dishwasher and bandage roller at three Chicago hospitals." He lived a life of magnificent confinement. The room he occupied had no kitchen or bathroom, and the great events of his life were meteorological. He went to Mass as many as four or five times a day. "He would rarely speak to anyone, but if spoken to would respond politely always about the weather," his landlord, Nathan Lerner, recalled in a written statement. "He was a remarkable mimic and sometimes there would be an animated quarrel going on between a deep gruff voice, which was supposed to be he, and a querulous high-pitched voice, which was supposed to be his superior, a nun.= " Kiyoko Lerner, the widow of Darger's landlord, remembered that Darger "would walk around the neighborhood picking through garbage string, magazines, newspapers, books, anything." He brought everything into his roo= m and never took anything out. The room was packed floor to ceiling. A narrow pathway ran from the door to the desk, where Darger both worked and, it seems, slept. In 1972, old and crippled, Darger moved to a place he called Little Sisters of the Poor, a nursing home in Chicago. He died on April 13, 1973, and was given a pauper's burial at All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines, Ill. Darger's real life, though, was with his Vivian girls. "The first indication that Darger had stepped across the line between reality and fantasy happened in the summer of 1912," Mr. Bonesteel writes in his book. "He dubbed the catalytic event `The Great Aronburg Mystery.' " Darger apparently lost a photograph he had cut from The Chicago Daily New= s of May 9, 1911, a picture of a murdered child named Elsie Paroubek. In "The Realms" she became the model for Annie Aronburg, a martyr who is slashed with a razor and strangled. While Darger was obsessed with children in general, he and his only friend, Whilliam Schloeder, formed a two-man club they called the Children'= s Protective Society, he was particularly taken with the photograph of Elsie. (Mr. MacGregor has suggested that Darger murdered her.) Darger bargained with God. "If the picture were not returned by a certain time, and he kept pushing the date farther and farther ahead, he would turn the tide of the war against the Christian nations," Mr. Bonesteel writes. God did not respond, and Darger started drawing little girls being massacred by the Glandelinians. At that point, the story became "a blood bath," as Stewart Lee Allen wrot= e in a review of a Darger show in The San Franciso Bay Guardian, quoting Darger's script: "Little girls, from the ages of 9, 8 and even younger, wer= e tied down stark naked and a spade full of red-hot live coals laid on their bellies. Scores upon scores of poor children were cut to pieces, after bein= g strangled to death. . . . Children were forced to swallow the sliced fragments of dead children's hearts. . . . Their protruding tongues were extracted." The killing did not stop until Col. Henry Darger joined forces with the Vivian girls. And then, Mr. Bonesteel says, the war quickly ended. Gen. Joh= n Manley, the chief villain of "The Realms," named for a bully from Darger's childhood, surrendered. Darger the artist was saved by one man: his landlord, Nathan Lerner, a photographer trained at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. If he had not intervened, the paintings and manuscripts would probably have been destroyed. "I told him to throw them away," says Mr. Lerner's widow, who owns the rights to Darger's work. Darger became a darling of outsider art. In 1977 his work was shown at th= e Hyde Park Art Center. Other shows followed, most of them put on by the Phyllis Kind Gallery, and most of them linking Darger with outsider art or Art Brut, a tradition of madness and creativity that went back to painters like Bosch, Bruegel, Goya and G=E9ricault. But Darger's status really soared in 1997, when the Museum of American Folk Art in New York mounted a show put together at the University of Iowa by Stephen Prokopoff. Now the Art Brut Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, own= s more than 20 Dargers. Mr. Bonesteel is compiling a condensed version of "The Realms." There is talk of a Darger study center in New York that would include his writings. And the Intuit Gallery in Chicago is working on a reconstruction of Darger'= s room. Jane Kallir, the director of the Galerie St. tienne in Manhattan, says, "You can get a very good Darger for $75,000 to $80,000." How did this happen? "It is the quality, the magnitude, the crowded cluttered composition, the unfathomability" of the work, Brooke Anderson, the director and curator of the Contemporary Center at the Museum of American Folk Art, says. And of course, she adds, there is "the secrecy, th= e privacy." Ms. Lerner says "the size is one thing" that draws people to the paintings, but it is also that they are "so raw." There is "no hypocrisy" i= n them, she says. He was not thinking of an audience. Or was he? Darger, Mr. Bonesteel suggests, may actually have anticipated an audience when Annie Aronburg, his character, says "she will have all the battle manuscripts `published as soon as I can, so the world shall know.' " Darger noted in his 15,000-page novel that "editors of great experience will in du= e time be allowed to go over the whole work most carefully." Some people think that Darger even anticipated other artists. His "use of cut-outs from magazines, comic strips and coloring books prefigures the sam= e kind of appropriations by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein," Mr. Bonesteel observes. And Ms. Kallir says: "Darger was an unwitting postmodernist, though he couldn't have conceived what that was. He saw behind the facade o= f mid-century prosperity and propriety. He deconstructed those cutesy images and saw the sexuality and truth behind them." When Darger was a boy, his nickname was Crazy. These days he is embraced with the term outsider. His tombstone offers another alternative: "Henry Darger, 1892- 1973, Artist, Protector of Children." The New York Times on the Web http://www.nytimes.com Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 07:37:42 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Komninos Zervos Organization: Griffith University Subject: Lines, Breaths and Words - What Defines a Poem Visually? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT thought this might contribute to the present debate about visual poetry. it is a review written for the upcoming edition of Text, the online journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs. http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text Lines, Breaths and Words - What Defines a Poem Visually? Review by Komninos Zervos The Written Poem - Semiotic Conventions from Old to Modern English Rosemary Huisman Continuum, 1998 RRP $AU 38.47 ISBN 0 304 70734(paperback) For anyone interested in the many ways in which poetry can be written and read, this book provides a cultural and literary mapping by investigating the semiotic conventions of the genre 'poetry'. For me it was exceptionally timely. You get to a point in your PhD research when everything you read, see and hear seems relevant to the study. That's the time for consolidation, focussing, for suring up the thesis, time to get down to saying exactly what you want to say, and time to say no to any further input. But, as is the nature of academic research, once you have the knowledge you cannot ignore it, as each piece in the inevitably unsolvable jigsaw puzzle seems important but unable to be placed, at this stage, into place. Such is the case with the book I am reviewing, Rosemary Huisman's 'The Written Poem'. Instead of introducing new aspects to my understanding of the various poetries, their production, practice, practitioners and audiences, this book actually helped me to consolidate my own observations of the many ways poetries can be written and read, or spoken and heard. In my study I am grappling with what a poem is in its sounding, and what poetry looks like and how it is being read in cyberspace. I thought the findings of a scholar of old english texts and on the topic of the written poem would be quite different to my own, but was pleasantly surprised when we seemed to arrive at similar conclusions but from seemingly opposite directions. At the same time this book helped me to see the body of published poetry in a new way, from a different perspective, as cyberspace has made me look at poetry differently. The period of study spans eight hundred years and is refreshingly concerned with the workings of poetry rather than the nationality of the literary genre. The book argues that poetry has to be recognised as poetry before it is read as poetry. So poetry is poetry by the standards developed to recognise it as poetry, by the way it looks to the human eye, it's visual form or seen form, it's graphology as Huisman calls it. Yet the visual poem is a complex signifier, and can be read in many ways. We read the way a poem looks long before we read a word as language. Huisman investigates the semiosis of the seen poem, the semiotic of poem as art object, the semiotic of the body and layers of meaning brought to a poem by the performance or presentation of it, and the semiotic of language and the readings of meaning in words and their spatial arrangement on a page. It is a thorough examination of the many ways we write and read poetry. She argues that the written poem, that is, the poem written to be read silently, has only really developed over the past one hundred years. The writing down or publishing of poetry prior to the twentieth century being a representation in written language of a phonological poetry, poetry that used rhyme and rhythm, and sounds of spoken language. In old english manuscripts she finds greater correlation in the semiotic conventions with twentieth century poetry than with any periods of poetry in between. This was a revelation for me, as I had never quite made the distinction before. As a performance poet I was aware that some poetry suited performance and some did not, but this book has allowed me to understand why. Despite recent millenial predictions about the crisis in poetry, publishing, and the lack of good Australian Literary criticism (by certain more traditional sections of academia) books like Huisman's are living proof of a healthy debate and the presence of worthy Australian theorists. Along with other theorists McKenzie Wark, Hazel Smith, Roger Dean, Kevin Brophy, Martin Johnston, Ilana Snyder, Susan Hawthorne, Patricia Wise, David Holmes and others Huisman's book helps us in our understanding of poetry as a social process, as a cultural entity and as a media element. Solid theory exemplified by practical sampling from an Australian cultural record. This book is a must for any scholar of poetry, any reader of poetry, any writer of poetry, and any teacher of writing. komNinos zErvos cYberPoet lecTurer cyBerStudies SchOol of aRts griFfith uniVerSity GolD coaSt cAmpuS pmb 50 gold coast mail centre queensland 9726 tel +61 7 55 948872 http://student.uq.edu.au/~s271502 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 15:49:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Max Winter Subject: Trafika/Fence Reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Fence and Trafika present: a Poetry Reading on Sunday, September 24, at 7 PM, at 31 Grand Street, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Readers: Cort Day Miranda Field Eleni Sikelianos Monica de la Torre 5$ suggested contribution. Directions: Take the L train to Bedford. Walk South on Bedford to Grand. Then, take a right on Grand. Driving? Drive over the Williamsburg Bridge. At the first exit, take a right on Broadway. Take a right on Kent to Grand. Hope to see you there..... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 22:09:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "C. S. Giscombe" Subject: Query: NYC readings in November Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm wanting to take a couple of classes of Penn State students to New York to see a reading or performance and to witness the kind of energy there is around literary events in the city. I'm having some trouble, though, finding listings for events on November week-ends. We need the lead time to get commitments, press the dean for a bus, etc.; it has to be a week-end for all the typical reasons. I know about the Word of Mouth reading and the House of Pernod at the Poetry Project. Does anyone know of other good stuff going on in the city on a week-end (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) this November? Please let me know. Thanks. C. S. Giscombe _______________ C. S. Giscombe Department of English/ Burrowes Building The Pennsylvania State University University Park 16802 814-861-6966 or 814-863-9584 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 13:36:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Gallaher Organization: University of Central Arkansas Subject: Re: Rimbaud / Rambo In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000920083503.00c30bb0@pop3.zipworld.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/enriched; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Garamond HAHAHAHAHA! This IS a joke, right? Please? 0000,0000,8000ArialJohn Tranter <, writes: GaramondFrom Andrew Johnston in Paris: _____________________ PARIS, June 16 (AFP) =97 Lovers of French literature are shedding tears of despair at the news that a cultural centre in the Yemeni city of Aden named after Arthur Rimbaud -- poet -- has been turned into a hotel named after John Rambo -- Hollywood war-hero. The three-story house, where the poet himself stayed in the 1880s, was inaugurated as the Maison de Rimbaud in 1994, but three years later lack of French government funding forced it to close down. On a recent visit to Aden, Rimbaud-enthusiast Jose-Marie Bel was shocked to find that a building that once spread the beauties of Gallic civilisation was now dedicated to the epitome of American machismo. =91=91There is a big sign outside saying Hotel Rambo,=92=92 said Bel, who = as former head of the association Friends of Rimbaud was responsible for the original renovation of the house. =91=91It is scandalous. It is inadmissible. It is a dishonour to France and it is a dishonour to poetry,=92=92 he said. AFP 161336 GMT JUN 00 J Gallaher Metaphors Be With You . . . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:42:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Arielle C. Greenberg" Subject: Tristan Corbiere? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear all -- I am presently undertaking a project of translating some of the poems of the French poet Tristan Corbiere. Corbiere usually gets called a Symbolist, since he was contemporary with those guys, but I find his work to be really different, very much his own, but feel that he hasn't been recognized the way he should be due to dull translations. I think his work is wild -- it's full of slang and wordplay and tends to be quick-paced and jazzy -- but most of the translations I've found (and there aren't all that many) tend to make him seem stiff and old-fashioned. I want to expose the extreme dexterity and innovation I see in him. I'm wondering if anyone out there is familiar with his work and could talk to me about it a bit more. Or if people know of recent translations in journals or other places. Or if there are any French poets on this list who might be able to shed more light on his life and work. Thanks so much. Arielle **************************************************************************** "I thought numerous gorgeous sadists would write me plaintive appeals, but time has gone by me. They know where to get better looking boots than I describe." -- Ray Johnson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 11:45:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: POG update: Sam Smukler to appear with Sharon Wahl this Saturday, 7pm, Antigone Comments: To: Tenney Nathanson Comments: cc: tucson weekly , Tucson Citizen , Tom Mandel , Shelly Dorsey , Rodrigo Toscano , Rodrigo Martinez Toscano , Richard Laue , pogin , "pogevent (E-mail)" , "pog@listserv. arizona. edu" , "poetry@listserv. arizona. edu" , Poesis , Philip Good , Penny Gates , Ofelia Zepeda , Ofelia , "neese@psi. edu" , Michael Davidson , "mfa (E-mail)" , "MCCAFFER@QUCDN. QUEENSU. CA" , Mary Koopman , mary k , Mark Mansheim , Marisa Januzzi , Maggie Jaffe , Lyn Hejinian , Ken Gross , karen tallman , Karen Falkenstrom , Julie Silverman , Juliana Spahr , Jessica Lowenthal , jerry rothenberg , J Kuszai , "Hung Q. Tu" , Greg Jackson , Greg Garfin , Gil Ott , Gibly , Erica Hunt , "english@listserv. arizona. edu" , Eli Goldblatt , Ed Foster , Dennis Evans , David Greenlee , Dan Buckley , Cynthia Hogue , Cole Swensen , Claire West , chuck , carlos , Brent Cottle , Bob Perelman , bob cauthorne , Bill Luoma , Bill Endres , Bernadette Mayer , Barbara Cully , "Anninal@Azstarnet.Com" , Annie Carr , Allison Moore , Allen Brafman , Alison Deming , "AABRAFMAN@aol. com" , Jill Bernstein MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE poet/photographer Sam Smukler will be on the POG program with writer Sharon Wahl this Saturday at Antigone. (Visual artist Sheila Pitt will appear for POG in October 2001, in conjunction with her UA faculty show.) ********** for immediate release POG presents writer/photographer Sam Smukler writer Sharon Wahl Saturday, September 23, 7pm, Antigone Books, 411 N 4th Ave, 792-3715 suggested contribution: $5; students $3 Sam Smukler is a photographer and author of two collections of poetry: Normal Sex (Firebrand Books) and Home in three days. Don’t wash., a book and multi-media project with accompanying cd-rom (Hard Press). Smukler’s work has been widely anthologized and is the recipient of numerous awards in poetry and fiction, including the 1997 Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry. Smukler exhibits photographs under the name of “Sam Rogers” and will have work shown this fall at Etherton Gallery’s new space on Broadway and Fifth Ave. in Tucson. Sharon Wahl has published stories and poems in The Iowa Review, The Chicago Tribune, Harvard Review, Story Quarterly, Pleiades, and other journals and magazines. She was awarded a fellowship in fiction from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and teaches writing at Pima Community College and at the University of Phoenix. She is currently writing a book of love stories inspired by philosophy texts and will read two of these, based on Zeno and Wittgenstein, on the 23rd. She is a member of the POG collective. POG events are sponsored in part by grants from the Tucson/Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts POG also benefits from the continuing support of The University of Arizona Extended University Writing Works Center, The University of Arizona Department of English, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the Arizona Quarterly for further information contact POG: 296-6416 tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:57:36 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: a poet working > >in the verbal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I lost track of who originally wrote: How dare you! It was I. (BOB GRUMMAN!!!) > "a poet working in the verbal AND the visual would have to be more > innovative, other things being equal, than a poet working in the > verbal alone" (correction added) > But there is no such thing as "other things being equal." I can't understand why not. A simpler example would be the statement that a composer composing for two voices would have to be more innovative, other things being equal, than one composing for one voice. The other things that'd be equal would be, mainly, the composer's creativity, experience in the art, well-fedness, emotional support, etc. The composer for two voices simply has much more to work with than the composer for one voice. Where he wants to, he can match the other composer by composing for one voice; but he can also contrast or harmonize his two voices. Etc. > The idea here seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative > measure. Thus poet A, who confines his/her innovations to > non-visualizable language, will automatically be less innovative > than poet B, whose innovations extend to the visual layout of the > text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = in other respects. > It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the real world? > Is Donne less innovative than Herbert? If not, then other things are not equal. If Donne and Herbert are equally innovative verbally (quantitatively and qualitatively), then if Herbert is at all innovative visually, he ought to be more innovative than Donne. If he can't work his visual innovations into his poetry effectively, though, it may be that the results are less than Donne's. But I would say that if he is equal to Donne as a poet, then his use of more elements--or, in fact, a whole extra sensual modality--must make him more innovative. > Is cummings more innovative than WCW? Ditto. (But I have to say that Cummings is the most innovative poet I know of that our country has produced.) > It seems to me that a qualitative judgment > must also be made, otherwise we'd be forced into some > counterintuitive conclusions. > Even when it's the same writer who produces a visual text and another > *non*visual poem. There is nothing to predict, a priori, that the > first will be more innovative than the second. This is to be decided > inductively, after the fact, not as some sort of spurious deductive > principle. I'd never say a visual poem must automatically be more innovative than a textual one. Just that--well, I think my one voice/ two voice example says it all. (Remember also, that my inital question was in response to Bill Austin's saying that language poets have been a good deal more innovative than visual poets.) --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 21:41:56 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bob G., I recognize the distinctions you're trying to make, but I think the terminology you insist on doesn't really get us anywhere. The term "visual" appeals to the sensorium, to perception, but not to cognition. "Visual" only means that something is perceptible by sight. That's really all there is to it. There are significant aesthetic differences between a "visual" text and a more traditional text, but, again, the differences are semiotic and phenomenological, a matter of how certain kinds of signs are understood and experienced. A traditional text appears less visual because its perception verges on the automatic. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 20:38:21 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Lawrence Upton Subject: WF 1000 - ON WORD edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re ON WORD (WF 1000) edited by Bob Cobbing and Lawrence Upton This anthology, designated as Writers Forum's one thousandth publication, *is going ahead. [In fact, as happened with the anthology WORD SCORE UTTERANCE CHOREOGRAPHY, published as WF750, the count has already passed the symbolic number and WF has just published the 8th book in its second thousand - ISBN 0 84254 007 6] However, due to lack of finance, it will be necessary to publish it as a serial publication with perhaps half a dozen poets in an issue. It is hoped that the initial publication will appear early in 2001. It is likely that we shall be looking to publish substantially more than the 4 pp per poet invited previously. However, *all submissions will be taken into account before we proceed to the selection of poets for the first issue and you are still welcome to submit work for consideration. A further announcement will be made shortly and, at that point, everyone who has submitted work with return postage or with an email address for reply will hear from us. Many thanks for your patience. (The WF website has not been updated for a little while and that will be attended to as soon as possible) Bob Cobbing / Lawrence Upton ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:54:59 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Rimbaud / Rambo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable In a message dated 9/20/00 12:51:46 PM, jtranter@JACKET.ZIP.COM.AU writes: >PARIS, June 16 (AFP) =E2=80=94 Lovers of French literature are shedding tea= rs of > >despair at the news that a cultural centre in the Yemeni city of Aden > >named after Arthur Rimbaud -- poet -- has been turned into a hotel named > >after John Rambo -- Hollywood war-hero. Congratulations, Yemen! The future is finally catching up with Europe. Didn'= t=20 Rimbaud use Africa for commercial reasons? Ram- bo in Southeast Asia Rim- baud in Africa. foreign legionaire police polaris legion air! rim beau of Pacific rim. =20 =20 Murat Nemet-Nejat=20 from "Io's Song" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 09:45:14 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Susan M. Webster Schultz" Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Chris S--To answer your challenge, I was writing out of the context of the first book I recommended, namely Derek Walcott's _Omeros_, in which the operative metaphor is _The Iliad/Odyssey_ = life in the contemporary Caribbean. This kind of cross-cultural but also cross-power differential metaphor, as Walcott discovers toward the middle of his epic, is highly problematic. He's trying to write a postcolonial epic with a colonial metaphor at its center. Kamau Brathwaite, whose work is every bit as drenched with European allusions, tries to get away from this problem by employing more metonomy than metaphor, as I read it. My reading continued to be contextual, Chris, in that I was also referring to the situation in Hawai`i, where metaphors like Hawai`i = mainland have been used to abuse a place that is not equivalent to elsewhere. You'd get a hell of a lot of arguments here about a statement like "Hawaiians are Americans" (a metaphor that is also a legal fact). I agree with you that difference (with or without accent) is part of metaphor, but the differences do need to be unpacked from a mechanism that, to my mind, emphasizes sameness. As you know, I sling far more metaphors than metonomies in my own work, so this isn't a question for me of preference. These contexts simply put me on guard that there are dangers involved in slinging metaphors (just as you once noted that one can inadvertently dredge up stereotypes from the operation of the language itself and must work against that). One of the reasons I find Walcott's work so interesting is that he engages the issue rather than working around it. Susan ----- Original Message ----- From: "chris stroffolino" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 8:46 AM Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy > > Susan Schultz--- > > Yeah, but do you really think that metaphor is primarily really about "sameness" > > in an age of "difference" (or say it w/ obligatory fr. accent)? > A good case can be, and in fact has been, made (by both detractors and > defenders) > of metaphor that metaphor is no more about sameness than it is about > difference--- > this is what distinguishes it from simile perhaps.... > So, if A = B (truth is a rat-infested subway stop, for instance), the > "sameness" > implies its opposite, too, the "absurdity" of the link. Even in Shakespeare and > > other pre-20th century texts, metaphor is often used this way.... > there is something else going on, beyond (or at least unregistered by) the > level of > prose logic.... > > So, IN GENERAL, what I don't get (TO ANYBODY; OPEN QUESTION; please answer, > etc., etc) is why METONYMY (the most known of which would be > SYNECDOCHE; that town Michael Gizzi was born in) is considered > better, more progressive, more feminist, etc? > This argument has never made sense for me, for metonymy seems more > reductive, less dynamic, etc..... > > Curious, curious..... > > c ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:53:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: a poet working > >in the verbal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/20/00 10:48:41 AM, jmayhew@EAGLE.CC.UKANS.EDU writes: << I lost track of who originally wrote: "a poet working in the verbal AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other > >things being equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone" But there is no such thing as "other things being equal." The idea here seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative measure. Thus poet A, who confines his/her innovations to non-visualizable language, will automatically be less innovative than poet B, whose innovations extend to the visual layout of the text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = in other respects. It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the real world? Is Donne less innovative that Herbert? Is cummings more innovative than WCW? It seems to me that a qualitative judgment must also be made, otherwise we'd be forced into some counterintuitive conclusions. Even when it's the same writer who produces a visual text and another *non*visual poem. There is nothing to predict, a priori, that the first will be more innovative than the second. This is to be decided inductively, after the fact, not as some sort of spurious deductive principle. Jonathan Mayhew jmayhew@ukans.edu >> I didn't say it. Your comments above make sense to me. Some privilege "technical" innovations over other kinds. Of course we might argue endlessly about the meaning of that word in the arena of art. Is technical innovation restricted to manipulations of surfaces? What about content? Is an innovation in content/tone/etc. inevitably also one of form? Charles Olson seemed to think so? Is metonymy technical? Is metaphor? They are certainly techniques. Interesting issues to explore, perhaps because there are no easy answers. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:52:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: Rimbaud / Rambo In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000920083503.00c30bb0@pop3.zipworld.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE =09actally I think that the "later" Ribaud--see the amazig book SOMEBODy ELSE re this period, as well as Rimbaud's letters from Ayssinia and has dreams of writing for National Geographic and geolgiocac survey type journals--as well his carer as gunrunner and adventurer-- =09 think this later Rimbaud who reudiated poetry and called his old pals in Paris :that buch of clowns"--might well have appreciated the irony of the new Rambo estabisment =09years ago I had a Dutch transcribed book of all Dylans' lyrcis, which one song from DESIRE--"A simple Twist of Fate"?--) i believe it was had the line "verlaine and Rimbbud" transcribed as Baleine ad Rambo (baleine in french means whale in english--and this was ome years before thie first Ranbo flicks appeared)) =09i have heard that a new and supposed definitive biography of M. Rimbaud is due out soon =09i am guilty of contributing to the looney lore re Rimbaud in an upcoming issue of CRAYON --called "I am completely paralyzed, therefore I wish to embark early". =09for a fun read on the exterme identification by one author with an other, check out Henry Millers' Rimbaud rant, THE TIME OF THE ASSASINS= =09 =09in an essay Kenneth Rexroth attacked Rimbaud as being all those politlicallly incorrcet things--colonialist, gunrunner, possible slave dealer, etc--and noted how many of the evil souls of the times and later sported short hair cuts as opposed to the "good" poets and theoreticians who wore beards and had long hair!=09 =09of course, many early drawings of the Parisian Punk Rimbud show hims sporting long filthy hair and rancid clothes--but then he was "a poet" at the time! =09=09--dbc =09 On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, John Tranter wrote: > From Andrew Johnston in Paris: >=20 > _____________________ > PARIS, June 16 (AFP) =97 Lovers of French literature are shedding tears o= f > despair at the news that a cultural centre in the Yemeni city of Aden > named after Arthur Rimbaud -- poet -- has been turned into a hotel named > after John Rambo -- Hollywood war-hero. > The three-story house, where the poet himself stayed in the 1880s, > was inaugurated as the Maison de Rimbaud in 1994, but three years later > lack of French government funding forced it to close down. > On a recent visit to Aden, Rimbaud-enthusiast Jose-Marie Bel was > shocked to find that a building that once spread the beauties of Gallic > civilisation was now dedicated to the epitome of American machismo. > =91=91There is a big sign outside saying Hotel Rambo,=92=92 said Bel, who= as > former head of the association Friends of Rimbaud was responsible for the > original renovation of the house. > =91=91It is scandalous. It is inadmissible. It is a dishonour to France > and it is a dishonour to poetry,=92=92 he said. > AFP > 161336 GMT JUN 00 > _____________________ >=20 > ... passed on by John Tranter, Sydney >=20 >=20 > from John Tranter > Editor, Jacket magazine: http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/welcome.htm= l > - new John Tranter homepage - poetry, reviews, articles, at: > http://www.austlit.com/johntranter/ > - ancient history - the late sixties - at: > http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/tranter/index.html > ______________________________________________ > 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Sydney, Australia > tel (+612) 9555 8502 fax (+612) 9818 8569 >=20 > Registered to collect and remit GST - ABN 11 583 268 217 >=20 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 17:07:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: The Poetry Project Subject: Announcements Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The Poetry Project opens its 35th Season! Monday, October 2nd at 8 pm OPEN MIKE, sign up at 7:30 pm, reading starts at 8 pm. Wednesday, October 4th at 8 pm ROBERT CREELEY and PAUL VIOLI Robert Creeley, poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, editor, and teacher, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Awards in June 2000. His latest book of poetry, Life & Death, is forthcoming from New Directions this fall. Paul Violi is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Breakers (Coffee House Press, 2000) and Selected Accidents/Pointless Anecdotes, forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press. Friday, October 6th at 10:30 pm POETRY SLAM: THE COMPETITIVE ART OF PERFORMANCE POETRY A reading to celebrate the publication of this new anthology from Manic D Press. Editor Gary Mex Glazner and contributors Patricia Smith, Taylor Mali, Stacy Chin, Regie Cabico, and others will read, followed by an open mike. Unless otherwise noted, admission to all events is $7, $4 for students and seniors, and $3 for Poetry Project members. Schedule is subject to change. The Poetry Project is wheelchair accessible with assistance and advance notice. Please call (212) 674-0910 for more information. OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS The incredibly awesome first issue of THE POETRY PROJECT NEWSLETTER, revamped by new newsletter editor Ange Mlinko and designer Dirk Rowntree, hit the streets this week. All of you on our mailing list should be receiving your copy within the next week or so. If you're not on the list, you can pick up a copy at any reading. *** The deadline for submissions for Larry Fagin's Manuscript Development Workshop has been extended until October 10th. Please see our web site at http://www.poetryproject.com for more information on all of our fall workshops. *** THE WORLD 56/57--featuring new work by Amiri Baraka, Richard Hell, Frank Lima, Alice Notley, and Magdalena Zurawski--is in print, is amazing, and is available at bookstores or at the Poetry Project for only $10. *** And finally, we would like to extend a heartfelt welcome to the new staff at the Poetry Project: Program Coordinator Tracy Blackmer, Program Assistant Jenny Smith, Newsletter Editor Ange Mlinko, Monday Night Coordinator Rachel Levitsky, and a big welcome back to Friday Night Coordinator Regie Cabico. It's definitely going to be an exciting year... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 19:38:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Brooklyn poetry/video event! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Alan and Nada are pleased to announce a new reading/video series in Brooklyn at The Flying Saucer Cafe at 494 Atlantic Avenue, between Third Avenue and Nevins Tuesday, October 3, 8:00 p.m.: ***Chris Stroffolino*** and ***Leslie Thornton*** Poetry from Chris Stoffolino, author of _Stealer's Wheel_, _Light as a Fetter_, and a book of essays, forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil, _Spin Cycle_. Enigmatic video artist Leslie Thornton shows three favorite works: (with Ron Vawter) Strange Space - 4 minutes, '93 Peggy and Fred in Kansas, 11 minutes, '86 Another Worldy, 20 minutes, '00 How to get there: Take the 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or D or Q to the Atlantic Subway stop and walk underground to the Pacific Street exit (at the N or R or M Pacific Street Stop) or take the N or R or M - in any case, go out the Pacific Street Exit (right exit), take a right - at the end of the block you will be on Atlantic Ave. Take a left on Atlantic, and about two and a half blocks down, between Third and Nevins, you will find the Flying Saucer Cafe. $3 donation. Coming on November 3: Brenda Iijima and Tom Zummer. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 21:41:02 -0230 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "K.Angelo Hehir" Subject: Gallery Gachet - Shutting Down the School of the Americas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE for those in the Vancouver area. ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Media Release u Media Release u Media Release Release Date: Immediately Closing Date: Nov 24th "Shutting Down=20 the School of the Americas" =20 Music, Film and Performance events to facilitate the presence of H.I.J.O.S. at the next international protes= t against the School of the Americas Georgia, USA November 2000 Entrance to all events $3 Performance and Music Night =20 September 30th 7 pm @ Gallery Gachet 88 E. Cordova St. Vancouver featuring Luis Gutierrez, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, Eva Urrutia, Leoncio Ve= ntura, Tito Medina, Paula Urrutia Coffee Play about Fair Trade/Free Trade October 16th 8 pm @ Dynamo 142 W. Hastings Keeping the Memory Alive Film Series @ SFU Harbour Centre Room 1700 515 W. Hastings September 29th @ 6 pm "Madres de Plaza de Mayo' October 27th @ 6 pm "Crossing the Line" November 24th @ 6 pm "Chile, La Memoria Obstinada" H.I.J.O.S.(Children for Identity & Justice, against oblivion and silence) i= s a human=20 rights group formed by the children (now young adults) of the disappeared, = of=20 exiled parents, of political prisoners, and children of those murdered for = political=20 reasons during military dictatorships in Latin America. =20 for more info call (604)215 9876 or email hijosvancouver@hotmail.com or con= tact Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa @ Gallery Gachet Ph: 687-2468 fax: 687-1196 e-mail: gachet@caf=E9.net www.gachet.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 21:28:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: Re: Query: NYC readings in November MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit C.S. you're in luck. the 1st annual NY Underground Music&Poetyr Festival will be held the weekend of Nov 10-12 it's going to get great from the looks of things. check out NYCundergroundfest.org hope to see you there. ak ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. S. Giscombe" To: Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 12:09 AM Subject: Query: NYC readings in November > I'm wanting to take a couple of classes of Penn State students to New York > to see a reading or performance and to witness the kind of energy there is > around literary events in the city. I'm having some trouble, though, > finding listings for events on November week-ends. We need the lead time > to get commitments, press the dean for a bus, etc.; it has to be a week-end > for all the typical reasons. I know about the Word of Mouth reading and > the House of Pernod at the Poetry Project. Does anyone know of other good > stuff going on in the city on a week-end (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) this > November? Please let me know. Thanks. > > C. S. Giscombe > > > _______________ > C. S. Giscombe > Department of English/ Burrowes Building > The Pennsylvania State University > University Park 16802 > > 814-861-6966 or 814-863-9584 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 21:38:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anastasios Kozaitis Subject: Query: Bookshops in the Adirondacks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I will be in the Adirondack area of upstate NY the weekend of October 14 = and 15. Does anyone know of any good used book shops? Please b/c, if so. A _______________________ Anastasios Kozaitis 30-63 29th Street Astoria, NY 11102 718 267-7943 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 12:06:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kyle Conner Subject: HIGHWIRE FALL SEASON Comments: To: CAConrad13@hotmail.com, cx321@hotmail.com, fhaeussl@astro.ocis.temple.edu, g_fuchs@hotmail.com, hannahjs@sas.upenn.edu, louischw@prodigy.net, MacPoet1@aol.com, malavech2@aol.com, marjh@altavista.com, morillo673@aol.com, abdalhayy@aol.com, aberrigan@excite.com, abirge@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu, agil@erols.com, allison_cobb@edf.org, ALPlurabel@aol.com, amorris1@swarthmore.edu, Amossin@aol.com, apr@libertynet.org, avraham@sas.upenn.edu, ayperry@aol.com, Babsulous@aol.com, bcole@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu, bdowns@columbiabooks.com, Becker@law.vill.edu, bette343@hotmail.com, BMasi@aol.com, bochner@prodigy.net, booglit@excite.com, BrianJFoley@aol.com, BStrogatz@aol.com, cahnmann@dolphin.upenn.edu, charleswolski@hotmail.com, Chrsmccrry@aol.com, coryjim@earthlink.net, Cschnei978@aol.com, daisyf1@juno.com, danedels@sas.upenn.edu, dburnham@sas.upenn.edu, dcpoetry@mailcity.com, DennisLMo@aol.com, DROTHSCHILD@penguinputnam.com, dsilver@pptnet.com, dsimpson@NETAXS.com, ejfugate@yahoo.com, ekeenagh@astro.ocis.temple.edu, eludwig@philadelphiaweekly.com, ENauen@aol.com, ErrataBlu@aol.com, esm@vm.temple.edu, Feadaniste@aol.com, fleda@odin.english.udel.edu, FPR@history.upenn.edu, fuller@center.cbpp.org, GasHeart@aol.com, gbiglier@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu, gmarder@hotmail.com, gnawyouremu@hotmail.com, goodwina@xoommail.com, HighwireGallery@aol.com, hstarr@dept.english.upenn.edu, hthomas@Kutztown.edu, icepalace@mindspring.com, insekt@earthlink.net, ivy2@sas.upenn.edu, jeng1@earthlink.net, jennifer_coleman@edf.org, jimstone2@juno.com, jjacks02@astro.ocis.temple.edu, JKasdorf@mcis.messiah.edu, jlutt3@pipeline.com, JMURPH01@email.vill.edu, johnfattibene@juno.com, josman@astro.ocis.temple.edu, jschwart@thunder.ocis.temple.edu, jvitiell@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu, jwatkins@unix.temple.edu, kelly@dept.english.upenn.edu, Kjvarrone@aol.com, kmcquain@ccp.cc.pa.us, kristing@pobox.upenn.edu, ksherin@dept.english.upenn.edu, kzeman@sas.upenn.edu, lcabri@dept.english.upenn.edu, lcary@dept.english.upenn.edu, leo@isc.upenn.edu, lgoldst@dept.english.upenn.edu, lisewell@worldnet.att.net, llisayau@hotmail.com, lorabloom@erols.com, lsoto@sas.upenn.edu, MARCROB2000@hotmail.com, marf@NETAXS.com, matthart@english.upenn.edu, Matthew.McGoldrick@ibx.com, mbmc@op.net, Measurelvis@aol.com, melodyjoy2@hotmail.com, mgpiety@drexel.edu, mholley@brynmawr.edu, michaelmccool@hotmail.com, miyamorik@aol.com, mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu, mnichol6@osf1.gmu.edu, mollyruss@juno.com, mopehaus@hotmail.com, MTArchitects@compuserve.com, mytilij@english.upenn.edu, nanders1@swarthmore.edu, nawi@citypaper.net, odonnell@siam.org, penwaves@mindspring.com, pla@sas.upenn.edu, poetry4peeps@hotmail.com, putnamc@washpost.com, QDEli@aol.com, rachelmc@sas.upenn.edu, rdupless@vm.temple.edu, rediguanas@erols.com, repohead@rattapallax.com, richardfrey@dca.net, robinh5@juno.com, ron.silliman@gte.net, SeeALLMUSE@aol.com, sernak@juno.com, Sfrechie@aol.com, singinghorse@erols.com, stewart@dept.english.upenn.edu, subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu, SusanLanders@yahoo.com, swalker@dept.english.upenn.edu, Ron.Swegman@mail.tju.edu, Tasha329@aol.com, tdevaney@brooklyn.cuny.edu, thorpe@sas.upenn.edu, travmar03@msn.com, twells4512@aol.com, upword@mindspring.com, v2139g@vm.temple.edu, vmehl99@aol.com, wh@dept.english.upenn.edu, wvanwert@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu, wwhitman@libertynet.org, ywisher@hotmail.com, zurawski@astro.temple.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit HIGHWIRE READINGS NOW AT LA TAZZA 105 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia in Old City between 2nd and Front Streets Every other Saturday @ 6:30 PM Septmeber 23 Magdalena Zurawski and Buck Downs Both Magdalena Zurawskis Bruised Nickelodeon (Hop hop hop Press, 2000) and Buck Downs Marijuana Soft Drink (Edge Books, 2000) will be on sale, ready to mess you up real good. October 7 Elliot Levin and TBA You know Elliot Levin, hes a regular hep-cat on the Philadelphia scene. He plays a mean saxophone. Were working hard to find the writer who can stand her ground with Elliot. October 21 Alicia Askenase and Charles Borkhuis Alicia Askenase curates the readings at the Walt Whitman Center on Rutgers University campus in Camden, NJ. Charlse Borkhuis has two new books available, Mouth of Shadows (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2000) and Alpha Ruins (Bucknell University Press, 2000). November 4 Ixnay Magazine Benefit for Issue 5 The bash for the new issue will certainly be a tasty affair. The editors, Chris and Jenn McCreary, are keeping the poets/performers anonymous until further notice. Keep your ears to the ground. November 18 Don Riggs and Wendy Kramer Don Riggs is the man behind many Philadelphia contemporary writers. Wendy Kramer reads from sculptures she makes out of found materials. December 2 Fran Ryan and Prageeta Sharma Fran Ryan is writing a book literally about the politics of labor and figuratively about Philadelphia trash workers. Prageeta Sharmas Bliss To Fill (Subpress, 2000) is one of the hottest selling books on the Subpress list. Dont miss her. December 16 Janet Mason and Anselm Berrigan Janet Mason will make you crack up laughing and send you home thinking. Anselm Berrigan is our holiday gift for you, our faithful followers. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 20:24:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Subject: Fiction Writing/Literature Job MIME-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; x-mac-creator=4D4F5353; x-mac-type=54455854; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Listees, The following position will be opening up in our department. As a member of the search committee, I'd be glad to answer any questions. > Fiction Writing/ Literature. Full-time continuing appointment (leading to tenure decision), starting Fall, 2001. Teaching > will be split between creative writing courses and a variety of literature courses. Expertise in 20th c. preferred. Applicants > must have a Ph.D. and also demonstrate accomplishment in fiction writing through publication and/or relevant graduate > work. Interviews at MLA. Please send letter, c.v., and fiction sample to Richard Mallette, Chair, Department of English, Lake > Forest College, Lake Forest, IL 60045 by November 15. Lake Forest College is a selective private liberal arts college on > Chicagoís North Shore, with an enrollment of 1250 students. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. > Best, Bob -------------------- Robert Archambeau Montgomery Professor of English Lake Forest College Lake Forest, IL 60045 Samizdat 9 Campus Circle Lake Forest, IL 60045 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 23:05:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ENJOY BELLADONNA* 7:00 pm, FRIDAY OCTOBER 6, 2000 Fanny Howe The Deep North, O=92Clock & Eleni Sikelianos The Book of Tendons at Bluestockings Women's Bookstore 172 Allen Street between Rivington and Stanton Contact: (212)777-6028 for more information ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 23:13:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: levitsk@ATTGLOBAL.NET Subject: October Belladonna* in NYC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit ENJOY BELLADONNA* 7:00 pm, FRIDAY OCTOBER 6, 2000 Fanny Howe The Deep North, O’Clock & Eleni Sikelianos The Book of Tendons at Bluestockings Women's Bookstore 172 Allen Street between Rivington and Stanton Contact: (212)777-6028 for more information ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 04:08:22 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lori Emerson Subject: FREE Laughing Gland issues left: previously unpublished bpNichol Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hello all, I publish a small journal of creative and critical work called Laughing Gland, first through the University of Albert and now (for a few more months, anyway) through the University of Victoria. It was originally intended to act as a forum for students as well as a bridge leading beyond the university, but this is just not always the case! I mean, in the most recent issue we published: * "BUIK: Glasgow Dialects"--a previously unpublished sound poem by bpNichol *poems by Derek Beaulieu *poems by Rob McLennan *An interview with Karl Siegler given by myself *an essay on Marlowe and Sodomy discourse by Daniel Martin *a review of Toy Story 2 I have what _looks_ like a hundred issues left over. It's important to us that Laughing Gland be distributed for free, freely, but since I can't afford to mail out all 100 copies, I _will_ mail issues for free to the first 20 people who respond. I hope someone's interest out there is peeked! All the best, Lori Emerson _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 23:26:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Word of Mouth event in Oakland, CA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Please join me at Diesel Bookstore this Thursday, September 21st at 7:30pm, to celebrate the publication of the Anthology "Word of Mouth" an anthology of Gay American Poetry from the past 50 years. Contributors to the anthology include James Schuyler, Robert Duncan, W.H. Auden, John Ashbery, Carl Phillips, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Kenward Elmslie, J.D. McClatchy, Stephen Jonas, Joe Brainard, Taylor Mead, John Wieners, William Bronk, Wayne Koestenbaum, Tom Carey, Gerrit Lansing, Rafael Campo, Justin Chin, Edwin Denby, Mark Wunderlich, Leland Hickman, Robin Blaser and David Trinidad. Yikes! What an assortment! The book also contains the very first publication anywhere of a 1948 poem by the one and only Jack Spicer. Edited by Tim Liu and published by Talisman House, "Word of Mouth" cuts across formal and aesthetic boundaries in its' inclusions. At the same time, it foregoes the usual focus on subject matter to ask broader questions about what constitutes Gay American Poetry at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Diesel Bookstore is located at 5433 College Ave in Oakland, just a short walk from the Rockridge BART station. Reading from the anthology are contributors Aaron Shurin, Thom Gunn, Dan Bellm, Forest Hamer, Tom Carey, Doug Powell, as well as myself. Please join us for this historic event. And please pass along information about this reading to your students, fellow poets, readers, etc. By Word of Mouth... DIESEL, A BOOKSTORE, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, Ca 94618. 510-653-9965 --- Kevin Killian 2000 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 08:45:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dominic Fox Subject: Re: Henry Darger MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Interesting that Darger and his colleague tried to adopt a child. I wonder what would have happened to that child if he had not been prevented from doing so. I dare say she would have been very comprehensively "protected". Scenes from Edward Gorey's "The Loathsome Couple" come to mind. I note that those nice folks at the Fresh Petals web-site appear to be big fans. Eech!, in other words. - Dom __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 10:57:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Mayhew Subject: FW: Returned mail: see transcript for details In-Reply-To: <200009211555.e8LFtLG29183@wugate.wustl.edu> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > > >> Chris Stroffolino asked: >> >> "So, IN GENERAL, what I don't get (TO ANYBODY; OPEN QUESTION; please answer, >> etc., etc) is why METONYMY (the most known of which would be SYNECDOCHE; >> that town Michael Gizzi was born in) is considered better, more progressive, >> more feminist, etc? This argument has never made sense for me, for metonymy >> seems more reductive, less dynamic, etc...." >> >> Jakobson I think made the first mistake by seeing metaphor and metonymy as >> polar opposites. Metonymy is really a substitution, it would thus be >> paradigmatic as well as syntagmatic. In other words, if I say "Hollywood is >> upset about what the White House is saying..." I am substituting >> "Hollywood" for "people in the film industry" and "The White House" for >> "people speaking on behalf of the Clinton administration." A familiar >> metonymy that substitutes a place for an industry or a organization >> associated with the place. This sub is not actually syntagmatic, >> grammatically speaking, but paradigmatic. >> >> The second mistake was by Jack Lacan, but let's not get into that... >> >> As a result of Jakobson and Lacan, noone seems to know what metonymy is. >> That is, they make it into some abstract master trope rather than thinking >> of real cases of metonymy and how they function. In deconstruction (Paul de >> Man) metaphor became to be seen as essentializing and totalizing, in >> contrast to metonymy which was based on contingent relationships rather than >> grandiose comparisons. Thus meton began to seem more progressive. But it >> turns out that one of the examples that Paul de Man used to demonstrate >> metaphor is actually a "schenectady." It is the famous buzzing of the flies >> that Proust associates with summer, clearly not a metaphor since Proust is >> not saying that summer IS a fly. So the great master of "rhetorical >> criticism" actually cannot distinguish one trope from another. (This is >> explained in a chapter of John Guillory's book, Cultural Capital.) >> >> I am constantly coming across really basic mistakes in people who should >> know better. I came across this one recently: "In Claude McKay's Jamaica >> poems, iambic pentameter is made the metrical mark of colonialism, the >> chains around a corrosive dialect. Pentameter is used to serve as the >> acoustic trappings of 'Old England,' yoked to a diffident creole, the weird >> ordinary of verse dialect. It is an oxymoronic form." The only problem: >> iambic pentameter is not the meter of these poems (at least the lines quoted >> in support of this otherwise brilliant insight), which are actually in >> hexameters (and anapestic and iambic mixed together). This form is actually >> used more in humorous poetry and light verse, so the paradox dissolves, >> there are no "chains" of pentameter here. It is as if all meter, in a >> metrically diffident poetic culture, had become "iambic pentameter." I have >> read recently how bebop de-emphasized melody (that's a good one!). These >> are not pedantic points: in each case the insight rests squarely on an >> outright, disprovable error (not even a subtle blindness of the demanian >> variety). It makes me think my entire discpline of literary criticism is >> built on quicksand. >> >> Jonathan Mayhew >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 09:56:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: travis ortiz Subject: Atelos announces the publication of Verisimilitude by Hung Q. Tu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Verisimilitude by Hung Q. Tu Atelos is pleased to announce the publication on November 6, 2000 of Verisimilitude by Hung Q. Tu. About the book: In the sequence of poems that make up Verisimilitude, Hung Q. Tu presents a skeptical and often comic view of the array (and disarray) comprising post-Vietnam War culture The poems are lyric in mode, suspicious in tone. The pace is fast, the scope panoramic. The works reflect Hung Q. Tu's interest in documentaries and documentation, the modes by which contemporary American (or Americanized) culture attempts to portray itself and authorize its undertakings: flatten Nagasaki / break -- code / cold erode / as postmodern / as a cul-de-sac / provide a reading / map crazy / engineering fan / blueprint fantasies / an invisible light / bouncing between / two bicycle reflectors/ deaf-tone / "point to it son". About the author: Hung Q. Tu was born in Vietnam but grew up in San Diego, California. His first book of poetry, A Great Ravine, was published by Parenthesis Writing Series. He received his BA in Literature at the University of California, San Diego and has an MFA degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He is a founding editor of the literary publisher, Krupskaya. About the project: Atelos was founded in 1995 as a project of Hip's Road. It is devoted to publishing, under the sign of poetry, writing which challenges the conventional definitions of poetry, since such definitions have tended to isolate poetry from intellectual life, arrest its development, and curtail its impact. All the works published as part of the Atelos project are commissioned specifically for it, and each is involved in some way with crossing traditional genre boundaries, including, for example, those that would separate theory from practice, poetry from prose, essay from drama, the visual image from the verbal, the literary from the non-literary, and so forth. The Atelos project when complete will consist of 50 volumes; Verisimilitude is volume 7. The project directors and editors are Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz; cover production and design is by Ree Hall. Ordering information: Verisimilitude may be ordered from Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710-1403; phone: 510-524-1668 or toll-free 800-869-7553; online: www.spdbooks.org or orders@spdbooks.org Title: Verisimilitude Contact: Lyn Hejinian: 510-548-1817 Author: Hung Q. Tu Travis Ortiz: 415-863-1999 Price: $12.95 fax: 510-704-8350 Pages: 136 Atelos Publication Date: 11/06/2000 PO Box 5814 ISBN: 1-891190-07-5 Berkeley, CA 94705-0814 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 09:56:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: travis ortiz Subject: Atelos announces the publication of Alien Tatters by Clark Coolidge Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Alien Tatters by Clark Coolidge Atelos is pleased to announce the publication on November 6, 2000 of Alien Tatters by Clark Coolidge. About the book: Coolidge's Alien Tatters is a series of prose-poem meditations in response to (someone's) sightings of UFOs and encounters with aliens. The writer has been / is being abducted. The writings are the situation's tatters, its tatterings. Inevitably funny (except perhaps to the true believer), the work is also sad and scary. "Lights came. My god, blobs. A sneaky little rill. Bought them a box of shoes made of chocolate. Small silver wire, challenge kit. The Frenchman walks off into the noise with his girl. From the bottom of the craft, enough darkness to fill, replace all our missing nights." About the author: Clark Coolidge grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and has lived in Manhattan, Cambridge, San Francisco, Boulder, Rome, the Berkshire Hills; he currently lives in Petaluma, California. A poet with markedly heterogeneous interests, Coolidge's work is characteristically energetic, multilayered, and moody. He is the author of over thirty books, the most recent of which are Now It's Jazz (writings on music), Bomb (written in conjunction with visual images by Keith Waldrop), and On the Nameways (poems written in response to and while watching films). About the project: Atelos was founded in 1995 as a project of Hip's Road. It is devoted to publishing, under the sign of poetry, writing which challenges the conventional definitions of poetry, since such definitions have tended to isolate poetry from intellectual life, arrest its development, and curtail its impact. All the works published as part of the Atelos project are commissioned specifically for it, and each is involved in some way with crossing traditional genre boundaries, including, for example, those that would separate theory from practice, poetry from prose, essay from drama, the visual image from the verbal, the literary from the non-literary, and so forth. The Atelos project when complete will consist of 50 volumes; Alien Tatters is volume 8. The project directors and editors are Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz; cover production and design is by Ree Hall. Ordering information: Alien Tatters may be ordered from Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710-1403; phone 510-524-1668 or toll-free 800-869-7553; online: www.spdbooks.org or orders@spdbooks.org Title: Alien Tatters Contact: Lyn Hejinian: 510-548-1817 Author: Clark Coolidge Travis Ortiz: 415-863-1999 Price: $12.95 fax: 510-704-8350 Pages: 208 Atelos Publication Date: 11/06/00 PO Box 5814 ISBN: 1-891190-08-3 Berkeley, CA 94705-0814 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 17:43:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ward and bob: there is a fairly extensive history in modern art and psychology which asserts that the visual is purely 'cognitive' 'intellectual' and uninvolved with emotional, visceral, gestural, etc. one can see something, one can see a picture, one can see a picture on a computer screen, one can move awy from the computer screen. while, the other distinction, noted below this might seem like a word quibble I think it's important for art. and not just a word game. one can be intellectual and uninvolved, but that's not 'art' for me. tom bell Ward Tietz wrote: > > Bob G., > > I recognize the distinctions you're trying to make, but I think the > terminology you insist on doesn't really get us anywhere. > > The term "visual" appeals to the sensorium, to perception, but not to > cognition. "Visual" only means that something is perceptible by sight. > That's really all there is to it. > > There are significant aesthetic differences between a "visual" text and a > more traditional text, but, again, the differences are semiotic and > phenomenological, a matter of how certain kinds of signs are understood and > experienced. A traditional text appears less visual because its perception > verges on the automatic. > > Ward Tietz -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 19:21:31 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Rimbaud / Rambo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Not really. Rimbaud spent most of his life as a colonialist exploiter in Africa (often I thought Rimbaud was the model of Kurtz in "Heart of Darkness"). When somebody in Africa turns the table and uses Rimbaud's name, the French establishment sheds pious tears. Anyhow, we have already discussed avant garde's tendency to turn in advertizement. Also, Rimbaud and Rambo are profoundly related in a global world. The poem I posted, which I wrote about fours years ago, is actually titled "Rambo" and is part of poems around the name of Rimbaud, another being "Rai/n/bow." Thanks for the note. Murat ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 18:24:08 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: Rimbaud / Rambo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Dave, The "Verlaine and Rimbaud" line of Dylan's is from a song called "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go," which is on BLOOD ON THE TRACKS. Mark >From: David Baptiste Chirot > years ago I had a Dutch transcribed book of all Dylans' lyrcis, >which one song from DESIRE--"A simple Twist of Fate"?--) i believe it was >had the line "verlaine and >Rimbbud" transcribed as Baleine ad Rambo _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 10:15:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: the anxiety of innovation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit " > The idea here >seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative measure. Thus >poet A, >who confines his/her innovations to non-visualizable language, will >automatically be less innovative than poet B, whose innovations >extend to >the visual layout of the text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = >in >other respects. It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the >real >world? Is Donne less innovative that Herbert? Is cummings more >innovative than WCW? " ************ this passage from Jonathan M. is interesting... what precisely *is* the meaning of "innovation"...often, there is a lot of anxiety encoded in these questions; it rather reminds me of a couple of years ago, when 2 very bright and excellent poets published a dialogue, in which they agreed that (the scene, which they identified themselves with, which they called) "avant-garde" poetry, would lose all meaning if it became the mainstream because *its point was to be in rebellion..* is this true? it strikes me that many of the poets i feel closest to, across the country, are writing out of a sense of the possiblity of their own work, of their own agendas..of where their writing is pointing.. they aren't precisely worried about whether they are "in rebellion" against something.... nor (and i admit, this is a different tho related issue) about whether they are "innovating" ..... in fact, many find these questions uninteresting or amusing.. for the conservative mainstream, where the ego and "accomplishment" of the individual talent is all, Bloom's "anxiety of influence" provided a useful trope, a summery of the things many poets felt fretful about...for those outside the mainstream, it would appear that "the anxiety of innovation" is a similar haunting presence... the poets whose work excites me the most, seem often to be keeping their eye on the ball; they're not too concerned with making sure they try to be innovative...but, it is a preoccupation that bedevils many of us (i don't mean to imply that any of this is Jonathan's problem..patently, it is not; i just got to thinking again about these issues because of the way the thread was focusing so intently on how to judge "innovativeness", and his passage was a useful thing to bounce off of; also, obviously, i'm not so much responding to his points as branching a related thread off at a tangent....) --mark prejsnar @lanta POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU writes: >I lost track of who originally wrote: > >"a poet working in the verbal > >AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other > >things >being >equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone" > > >But there is no such thing as "other things being equal." The idea >here >seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative measure. Thus >poet A, >who confines his/her innovations to non-visualizable language, will >automatically be less innovative than poet B, whose innovations >extend to >the visual layout of the text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = >in >other respects. It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the >real >world? Is Donne less innovative that Herbert? Is cummings more >innovative than WCW? It seems to me that a qualitative judgment must >also >be made, otherwise we'd be forced into some counterintuitive >conclusions. >Even when it's the same writer who produces a visual text and another >*non*visual poem. There is nothing to predict, a priori, that the >first >will be more innovative than the second. This is to be decided >inductively, after the fact, not as some sort of spurious deductive >principle. > > > >Jonathan Mayhew >jmayhew@ukans.edu > >_____________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 19:47:43 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Pain/pleasure (was Re: LangPo, academia, politics) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit You certainly described my point of view correctly, and it looks like Taylor thinks you did justice to his, and everything's okay, I guess. Thanks, Damion. --Bob G. Damion Searls wrote: > > For what it's worth, I think I'm clear on what the cross-purposes in this > debate are. > > Bob G. is talking in definitional terms -- "pleasure = this, pain = that" > -- so that disagreeing can plausibly seem as "insane" to him as disagreeing > with a tautology or a mathematical equation. He says he's not relying on > any model of pain/pleasure, because he is trying to make a formal, > content-independent point (or rather, he is positing a logical structure, > not make factual claims within that structure). Cf. > > >pain is never pleasure or vice versa. They are opposites. > > or > > >I can conceive of black being changed to white, or death to life, > >but while black is black it cannot be white, nor can death be life. > > These are not literal content claims (what about vampires?), but logical > claims. > > Taylor B., in constrast, is working from common-sense everyday definitions > and then pushing against them. (His term for this: "dialectic.") When he > says something like > > >In order to account for the experiences of those who > >undeniably seek out painful/disgusting experiences for the purposes of > >pleasure, it [Bob G.'s view] has to posit a pain that can be "converted" > >into pleasure, and > >vice versa. Since, as you hold, they're categorical opposites, it's > >difficult for me to see how this might be accomplished, short of some magic > > , he is taking for granted that we "know" what > "undeniably...painful/disgusting experiences are" (self-mutilation, eating > shit, whatever), and also that we more or less know what "the purposes of > pleasure" are, and then he is advocating that we rethink those > understandings. > > He is advocating that for explicitly political/activist reasons (he wants > people who do certain things not to be seen as "sick" or insane), whereas > Bob G. is avowing a purely taxonomic perspective (he wants people to CALL > whatever someone enjoys "pleasureable (to them)"). I think Taylor B. either > [a] suspects Bob G. of smuggling some content into his supposedly logical > point (i.e., claiming to make a definitional point but tacitly excluding > certain practices from what can logically be considered "pleasure"), or [b] > fears that others will smuggle in those same content biases and have a > purportedly "logical, obvious, natural" proof of those biases, a proof > which runs as follows: > > since "whatever anyone enjoys = pleasureable" (Bob G.'s point) > > and "self-mutilation etc. is painful, since it hurts" (the smuggled content), > > therefore "no-one (except sick/insane unspeakables) can enjoy > self-mutilation" (the conclusion that's politically unacceptable to Taylor > B.) > > So now is everybody pleasured? Painfully pedantic clarity like totally > turns me on.... > > Damion Searls ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 20:44:22 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ward Tietz wrote: > > Bob G., > > I recognize the distinctions you're trying to make, but I think the > terminology you insist on doesn't really get us anywhere. > The term "visual" appeals to the sensorium, to perception, but not to > cognition. "Visual" only means that something is perceptible by > sight. That's really all there is to it. Not true. Context can determine the meaning of a word. To call something obviously visual (at least on a page) "visual" is to give a secondary meaning to the term, "visual." It is saying that in this visible poetry that which is visible is important enough for us to distinguish said poetry on the basis of it from other also visible poetry (which I call, "textual poetry," which is redundant in the same way, the term, "visual poetry," is, in this case to emphasize the high importance of the textuality of the poetry). The term, "language poetry," came about the same way. > There are significant aesthetic differences between a "visual" text > and a more traditional text, but, again, the differences are > semiotic and phenomenological, a matter of how certain kinds of > signs are understood and experienced. A traditional text appears > less visual because its perception verges on the automatic. I would say it IS less visual because it goes from the eye to a preliminary visual center and then to the cognitive center where reading occurs instead of to the major visual center where things are seen. (No, that's not according to standard neurophysiology, just my own theory.) The visible letters of traditional poetry are read, not seen. The visible letters of visual poetry are seen AND read. And, yes, in reply to someone else who wrote me about this, the tension between seeing and reading is a large element (I'd say virtue) of visual poetry. >From what you and others have said, though, I guess I do need to make my definition more rigorous: so here it is again: "visual poetry is what results when the visual appearance of some portion of a poem's textual matter makes an aesthetically significant contribution to the poem's central expressive value." "significantly," of course, brings in subjectivity. I think we would all agree that the visuality that allows us to recognize what a given word is, is aesthetically null. I would go further and claim that any visual element in a poem which is of only punctuational importance is also aesthetically insignificant (visually): e.g., conventionally-used bold-facing, italics, spacing used to indicate rests--or not important enough to make a conventional textual poem a visual poem. Calligraphy and the like is decorative (unless if does more than simply make a text pretty). I would claim that (on the page) visible elements that indicate words' identities or that punctuate are verbal; visual poetry contains visible elements that are not verbal. There's more to it than that, but I'm too tired to go further. I've been cross because (1) who likes those who nit-pick a definition one has worked years on (believe it or not) and (2) the statement that all poetry is visual poetry annoys me--because it indicates an ignorance as to what visual poetry does, which is much more, visually, than other forms of (not necessarily inferior) poetry. But I thank one and all for the nits because they WILL force me to improve my definition, and explanation/defense thereof. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 20:01:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit are not mETAPHOR and mETONYMY ends of the same pole? tom bell -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 12:12:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Dickison Subject: Tom RAWORTH & Bruce ACKLEY, Thurs Sept 28, 7:30 pm In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable POETRY CENTER 2000 The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives presents an evening of words & music TOM RAWORTH & BRUCE ACKLEY Thursday, September 28, 7:30 pm, $5 donation @ the Unitarian Center 1187 Franklin (at Geary) ". . . in unbroken sunlight wearing masks as aids to memory attributed to interiors unknown . . ." (from "Dark Senses") TOM RAWORTH returns to San Francisco from his home in Cambridge, England-tonight in a duo 'words & music' performance setting. No more a stranger to the improvised music world than he is to these Western shores, Mr. Raworth has worked collaboratively with American master Steve Lacy, Italian reeds-player Giancarlo Locatelli, French contrabassist-singer Joelle Leandre, et al. A large new edition of his selected poems, Tottering State, is out from O Books, here in Oakland. Born at Bexleyheath, Kent, England, in 1938, and having lived throughout the States in numerous situations (Chicago, Bowling Green, OH., Austin, TX., San =46rancisco, San Diego, Atlanta), Mr. Raworth owns the singular distinction of filling the "plus one" position in the French anthology _21 +1 po=E8tes americains_ (Editions Royaumont). Further news locatable at http://www.geocities.com/raworth.geo * Soprano saxophonist BRUCE ACKLEY's premiere album under his own name, The Hearing (Avant), is a beauty worth lingering over-a trio date with stellar bassist Greg Cohen and drummer Joey Baron (2/4ths of John Zorn's great quartet Masada). Mr. Ackley, founding member of Rova Saxophone Quartet (http://www.rova.org ), is one of the surest, sublest, and more graciously accomplished players in the Bay Area improvised music community-or elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D COMING UP: Thomas Glave (Kingston, Jamaica, & Binghamton, NY) * Thursday October 5, 4:30 pm, free, The Poetry Center Chris Kraus (LA) & Mike Amnasan (SF) * Thursday October 12, 4:30 pm, free, The Poetry Center bell hooks (New York City) Writer-in-Residence at Intersection * Tuesday & Wednesday Oct 17 & 18th, 8:00 pm, $5-15 donation, in collaboration w/Intersection, 446 Valencia St Ed Roberson (NJ) & Nathaniel Mackey (Santa Cruz) * Thursday October 19, 7:30 pm, $5 donation, Unitarian Center Robert Creeley (Buffalo) collaboration with Readings at Lone Mountain, USF * Friday October 20, 7:30 pm, free, at The Ira & Leonore S. Gershwin Theater, 2350 Turk Boulevard (near Masonic) Juvenal Acosta (Oakland) & Mauricio Montiel Figueiras (Mexico City) * Thursday November 9, 7:30 pm, $5 donation, Unitarian Center Eugene Gloria (Iowa City) & Catalina Cariaga (Oakland) * Thursday November 16, 4:30 pm, free, The Poetry Center Jennifer Moxley (Orono, ME) & Fanny Howe (Los Angeles) * Thursday November 30, 7:30 pm, $5 donation, Unitarian Center Susan Thackrey: George Oppen Memorial Lecture in Twentieth Century Poetics * Thursday December 7, 7:30 pm, $5 donation, Unitarian Center =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D LOCATIONS THE POETRY CENTER is located in Humanities 512 on the SW corner of the San Francisco State University Campus, 1600 Holloway Avenue 2 blocks west of 19th Avenue on Holloway take MUNI's M Line to SFSU or from Daly City BART free shuttle or 28 bus THE UNITARIAN CENTER is located at 1187 Franklin St. at the corner of Geary on-street parking opens up at 7:00 pm from downtown SF take the Geary bus to Franklin INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS is located at 446 Valencia Street north of 16th St. 1 & 1/2 blocks from 16th St. BART Station off-street parking in lot off 16th between Valencia & Mission THE IRA & LENORE S. GERSHWIN THEATER is located at 2350 Turk Boulevard (west of Masonic) off-street parking is available for $5 ask at guard shack, entrance to Lone Mountain campus on Turk for MUNI bus schedule call 415-673-6864 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D+=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D Readings that take place at The Poetry Center are free of charge. Except as indicated, a $5 donation is requested for readings off-campus. SFSU students and Poetry Center members get in free. The Poetry Center's programs are supported by funding from Grants for the Arts-Hotel Tax Fund of the City of San Francisco, the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc., and The Fund for Poetry, as well as by the College of Humanities at San =46rancisco State University, and by donations from our members. Join us! =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Steve Dickison, Director The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives San Francisco State University 1600 Holloway Avenue ~ San Francisco CA 94132 ~ vox 415-338-3401 ~ fax 415-338-0966 http://www.sfsu.edu/~newlit ~ ~ ~ L=E2 taltazim h=E2latan, wal=E2kin durn b=EE-llay=E2ly kam=E2 tad=FBwru Don't cling to one state turn with the Nights, as they turn ~Maq=E2mat al-Hamadh=E2ni (tenth century; tr Stefania Pandolfo) ~ ~ ~ Bring all the art and science of the world, and baffle and humble it with one spear of grass. ~Walt Whitman's notebook ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 13:35:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: owner-realpoetik@SCN.ORG Subject: RealPoetik Notes NYC Subject: Trafika/Fence Reading Fence and Trafika present: a Poetry Reading on Sunday, September 24, at 7 PM, at 31 Grand Street, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Readers: Cort Day Miranda Field Eleni Sikelianos Monica de la Torre 5$ suggested contribution. Directions: Take the L train to Bedford. Walk South on Bedford to Grand. Then, take a right on Grand. Driving? Drive over the Williamsburg Bridge. At the first exit, take a right on Broadway. Take a right on Kent to Grand. Hope to see you there..... __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 14:07:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Dickison Subject: Tom RAWORTH & Bruce ACKLEY, Thurs, Sept 28th, 7:30 pm Comments: To: bruce_ackley@compumentor.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Note: my (just) previous announcement carries the word "tonight" embedded in its text. "Tonight" in this instance is meant in the figurative, futural sense..... "Tonight" will be "tonight" on Thursday night, NEXT WEEK, Sept. 28th. Like Archie Shepp famously said, "On This Great Night".... Sorry to riddle the brain mass. Steve =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Steve Dickison, Director The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives San Francisco State University 1600 Holloway Avenue ~ San Francisco CA 94132 ~ vox 415-338-3401 ~ fax 415-338-0966 http://www.sfsu.edu/~newlit ~ ~ ~ L=E2 taltazim h=E2latan, wal=E2kin durn b=EE-llay=E2ly kam=E2 tad=FBwru Don't cling to one state turn with the Nights, as they turn ~Maq=E2mat al-Hamadh=E2ni (tenth century; tr Stefania Pandolfo) ~ ~ ~ Bring all the art and science of the world, and baffle and humble it with one spear of grass. ~Walt Whitman's notebook ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 12:10:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Comments: cc: core-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu, martins@nico.bway.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I am pleased to announce that LIVE AT THE EAR the CD I edited, published by Elemenope Productions is now available in RealAudio at the EPC, thanks to Martin Spinelli. Over the next few months, with the assistance of Loss Glazier and the poets, we hope to put up the text of all or most of the poems, but for now the sound files only are available, together with a full table of contents, at -- http://epc.buffalo.edu/sound/live-ear/ Reading on the CD are Susan Howe, Ron Silliman, Ted Greenwald, Rosmarie Waldrop, Ann Lauterbach, Barrett Wattern, Leslie Scalapino, Alan Davies, Erica Hunt, Steve McCaffery, Hannah Weiner, Bruce Andrews, and myself. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 21:59:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit forthcoming this Saturday, 30 September 2000 here, on the Poetics List . . . A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing an experimental use of the Poetics List as a forum for extended considerations/responses engaging a suggested field of issues; the topic in this case has been introduced by Dodie Bellamy in her short piece =Body/Sex/Writing=. featuring responses by: Taylor Brady Robert Gluck Laura Moriarty Jen Hofer Kevin Killian Joe Amato Kristin Prevallet Michael Kelleher Robin Tremblay-McGaw David Buuck Juliana Spahr Susan Wheeler Mark Wallace Alicia Cohen Matthias Regan Ron Silliman Rachel Blau DuPlessis Brian Stefans Jonathan Skinner Who was asked: invitations were made to subscribers and non-subscribers alike based on previous writings on this topic, either in posts to the Poetics List or in other publications; many were invited, and I am grateful to these who came forward to participate. What is hoped-for: that this exchange will challenge the formal constraints of the listserv, chiefly its tendency toward shorter and more ephemeral statements vis-a-vis traditionally-published documents; and, on the contrary, that this exchange can exploit the tendency of the listserv to informal dialogue and rapid response, extending this colloquium past the Colloquium and into broader conversation. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 22:13:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Mayhew Subject: A poet working in the verbal Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Bob Grumman wrote "A simpler example would be the statement that a composer composing for two voices would have to be more innovative, other things being equal, than one composing for one voice." At the risk of enfuriating Bob G, I still don't agree with this. Minimalism, doing less with more, might in fact lead to more innovation: e.g. Ornette Coleman's suppression of the piano in his 1959 quartets. You couldn't say that if he had had a piano cum conventional jazz changes to work with there would have been more innovation there. Again, it's simplistic to think of this in quantitative terms. After all, if I said that a composer who worked had 101 voices to work with would automatically have more innovative possibilities than one with 55, you would probably think I'm crazy. The question cannot be decided a priori, and the "ceteris paribus" argument begs the question because nothing is ever equal after the fact. Maybe at one point it will be more innovative to suppress one aspect of an art see what happens to the rest. How about a poem that couldn't, by definition, be represented by words on the page? That could be more original than a visual poem. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 23:23:39 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: the anxiety of innovation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/21/00 7:50:16 PM, mprejsn@LAW.EMORY.EDU writes: << this passage from Jonathan M. is interesting... what precisely *is* the meaning of "innovation"...often, there is a lot of anxiety encoded in these questions; it rather reminds me of a couple of years ago, when 2 very bright and excellent poets published a dialogue, in which they agreed that (the scene, which they identified themselves with, which they called) "avant-garde" poetry, would lose all meaning if it became the mainstream because *its point was to be in rebellion..* is this true? It is. it strikes me that many of the poets i feel closest to, across the country, are writing out of a sense of the possiblity of their own work, of their own agendas..of where their writing is pointing.. they aren't precisely worried about whether they are "in rebellion" against something.... nor (and i admit, this is a different tho related issue) about whether they are "innovating" ..... in fact, many find these questions uninteresting or amusing.. Yep, it can also make for some pretty funny reading. the poets whose work excites me the most, seem often to be keeping their eye on the ball; they're not too concerned with making sure they try to be innovative...but, it is a preoccupation that bedevils many of us --mark prejsnar @lanta I don't know. Are these the poets who end up being the most innovative? (Shit! I promised myself I wouldn't use that word again for a long time.) Could be. But they do have a better chance of producing quality work, I think. Could be wrong. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 00:51:00 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: Pavement Saw Press Subject: review of Argüelles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>In the interim between the two books Argüelles drove himself through a period on intense experimentation with language and form including collaborations with Jack Foley and John Bennett that produced work quite unlike anything he had produced before. The Ivan Argüelles and John Bennett manuscript referred to by Jake Berry is called Chac Prostibulario and will be published by Pavement Saw Press in early 2001 The book is 96 pages, 8.5 by nine size, written in 5 different languages. Be well David Baratier, Editor Pavement Saw Press PO Box 6291 Columbus OH 43206 USA http://pavementsaw.org ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 03:07:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: PhillyTalks # 17 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit PhillyTalks #17: LISA ROBERTSON / STEVE MCCAFFERY #17 now available for download: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/phillytalks/archive.html Newsletter features nine letters by the two poets (on 'pataphysics, architectural theory, pastoral, the fragment, and other subjects), and recent poetry. 38 pages. Reading and discussion to take place 6 pm, Tuesday October 3rd, 2000. Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia (wh@dept.english.upenn.edu). All welcome. "PhillyTalks" is a series of written and live poets' dialogues. Louis Cabri Aaron Levy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 08:14:57 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ian davidson Subject: Re: FREE Laughing Gland issues left: previously unpublished bpNichol Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Lori I'm thinking of establishing just such a magazine here in north Wales and would be keen to see L G. I realise the cost of postage, so won't hold my breath. Ian Davidson >From: Lori Emerson >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: FREE Laughing Gland issues left: previously unpublished bpNichol >Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 04:08:22 GMT > >Hello all, > >I publish a small journal of creative and critical work called Laughing >Gland, first through the University of Albert and now (for a few more >months, anyway) through the University of Victoria. It was originally >intended to act as a forum for students as well as a bridge leading beyond >the university, but this is just not always the case! > >I mean, in the most recent issue we published: > >* "BUIK: Glasgow Dialects"--a previously unpublished sound poem by bpNichol >*poems by Derek Beaulieu >*poems by Rob McLennan >*An interview with Karl Siegler given by myself >*an essay on Marlowe and Sodomy discourse by Daniel Martin >*a review of Toy Story 2 > >I have what _looks_ like a hundred issues left over. It's important to us >that Laughing Gland be distributed for free, freely, but since I can't >afford to mail out all 100 copies, I _will_ mail issues for free to the >first 20 people who respond. > >I hope someone's interest out there is peeked! > >All the best, Lori Emerson > >_________________________________________________________________________ >Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > >Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at >http://profiles.msn.com. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:34:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Yehuda Amichai MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Obit-Amichai.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:36:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Broder, Michael" Subject: Re: Word of Mouth event in Oakland, CA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Are there going to be readings in other cities as well, such as New York? Michael Michael Broder Vice President, Account Supervisor World Health Communications, Inc 41 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010 (212) 802-1752 PH (212) 679-7883 FX mbroder@whcom.com -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Killian [mailto:dbkk@SIRIUS.COM] Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 2:26 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Word of Mouth event in Oakland, CA Please join me at Diesel Bookstore this Thursday, September 21st at 7:30pm, to celebrate the publication of the Anthology "Word of Mouth" an anthology of Gay American Poetry from the past 50 years. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:57:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Broder, Michael" Subject: Re: Returned mail: see transcript for details MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Jon, Chris, et al--I'm generally too swamped with the day to day grind of my nasty corporate job to read list messages very carefully, but I wanted to say that I enjoyed this posting about metaphor, metonomy, synecdoche, and paradigmatic vs syntagmatic uses of language, not only for its inherent interest, but because it takes me back to my college/grad school days when I actually knew what this stuff meant. If somebody has five seconds (okay, maybe five minutes), could you back-channel me the basic definitions of the terms above. It would make interesting reading while I'm taking my half-hour lunch break at my desk (not that I'm complaining, I've got a 42nd-storey view of lower Manhattan from river to river. Michael -----Original Message----- From: Jonathan Mayhew [mailto:jmayhew@EAGLE.CC.UKANS.EDU] Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 1:57 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: FW: Returned mail: see transcript for details > > >> Chris Stroffolino asked: >> >> "So, IN GENERAL, what I don't get (TO ANYBODY; OPEN QUESTION; please answer, >> etc., etc) is why METONYMY (the most known of which would be SYNECDOCHE; >> that town Michael Gizzi was born in) is considered better, more progressive, >> more feminist, etc? This argument has never made sense for me, for metonymy >> seems more reductive, less dynamic, etc...." >> >> Jakobson I think made the first mistake by seeing metaphor and metonymy as >> polar opposites. Metonymy is really a substitution, it would thus be >> paradigmatic as well as syntagmatic. In other words, if I say "Hollywood is >> upset about what the White House is saying..." I am substituting >> "Hollywood" for "people in the film industry" and "The White House" for >> "people speaking on behalf of the Clinton administration." A familiar >> metonymy that substitutes a place for an industry or a organization >> associated with the place. This sub is not actually syntagmatic, >> grammatically speaking, but paradigmatic. >> >> The second mistake was by Jack Lacan, but let's not get into that... >> >> As a result of Jakobson and Lacan, noone seems to know what metonymy is. >> That is, they make it into some abstract master trope rather than thinking >> of real cases of metonymy and how they function. In deconstruction (Paul de >> Man) metaphor became to be seen as essentializing and totalizing, in >> contrast to metonymy which was based on contingent relationships rather than >> grandiose comparisons. Thus meton began to seem more progressive. But it >> turns out that one of the examples that Paul de Man used to demonstrate >> metaphor is actually a "schenectady." It is the famous buzzing of the flies >> that Proust associates with summer, clearly not a metaphor since Proust is >> not saying that summer IS a fly. So the great master of "rhetorical >> criticism" actually cannot distinguish one trope from another. (This is >> explained in a chapter of John Guillory's book, Cultural Capital.) >> >> I am constantly coming across really basic mistakes in people who should >> know better. I came across this one recently: "In Claude McKay's Jamaica >> poems, iambic pentameter is made the metrical mark of colonialism, the >> chains around a corrosive dialect. Pentameter is used to serve as the >> acoustic trappings of 'Old England,' yoked to a diffident creole, the weird >> ordinary of verse dialect. It is an oxymoronic form." The only problem: >> iambic pentameter is not the meter of these poems (at least the lines quoted >> in support of this otherwise brilliant insight), which are actually in >> hexameters (and anapestic and iambic mixed together). This form is actually >> used more in humorous poetry and light verse, so the paradox dissolves, >> there are no "chains" of pentameter here. It is as if all meter, in a >> metrically diffident poetic culture, had become "iambic pentameter." I have >> read recently how bebop de-emphasized melody (that's a good one!). These >> are not pedantic points: in each case the insight rests squarely on an >> outright, disprovable error (not even a subtle blindness of the demanian >> variety). It makes me think my entire discpline of literary criticism is >> built on quicksand. >> >> Jonathan Mayhew ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 11:44:18 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: a poet working in the verbal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/21/00 4:02:26 PM, BobGrumman@NUT-N-BUT.NET writes: << (Remember also, that my inital question was in response to Bill Austin's saying that language poets have been a good deal more innovative than visual poets.) >> This is true. But Bob's statement that visual poets are necessarily more "adventurous" than language poets predated my statement by a couple of weeks, and we disagree. My argument involves the major innovation of poststructuralism which stretches across disciplines--and langpo as its closest poetic relative. Just tonight I was listening to one of America's hot shot scientists on the subject of Quantum Theory. He mentioned that recent language centered art (vague term, but his, not mine), in his view, has fallen from the same tree, so to speak. How informed this guy is, I can't say. I tend to agree with whomever Bob is responding to, but to be fair Bob does not contend in his most recent post that vispo is de facto more innovative, though at times he does seem to be saying just that. One can argue, I think somewhat convincingly, that the more material an artist has to work with, the more opportunities for innovation present themselves. But of course an opportunity is not a sufficient cause. Frankly, I'm ready to declare a moratorium on the term "innovation." What did O'Hara say? "You just go on your nerve." No doubt literary history will sort it all out. Best to Bob and whomever, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 11:59:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Al Filreis Subject: Gerd Stern Comments: To: Poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics list colleagues and friends: The Kelly Writers House is hosting a visit by Gerd Stern (of "USCO" fame*) next Tuesday. We will not be webcasting the event, but I think some of you will find information about the event, and about Stern, interesting. http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~wh/stern-gerd.html --Al Filreis * a group of artists, engineers and poets creating multi-media performances and environments which toured the U.S. museum and university venues during the sixties, their work appeared at the Museum of Modern Art, Brandeis University, the University of California, the Walker Art Museum, the Riverside Museum and many other sites. USCO also designed one of the first multi-media discotheques, named "The World" (and featured on the cover of Life). ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 11:53:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry In-Reply-To: <39CA8F20.2C17DC4D@home.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually there is a good deal of --and ever faster growing bodo of--very good work done in the field knonn affectionately/half joking as "RocK Art" which deals very seriously with things like phosphenes and shamanistic liminal states being at the birth of the kind of gestural, painted, vocalized, notatated work which continues to this day n the work of what Philadelpho Menezes called "the intersign" or "intermedia". The very recongition by so many cultures of the liminal--not only in states of being, in air/.warter/land/air/water/land interfaces as wekk as "Here" and "eslewhere" (out of the body, spiritual, ecstatic, trance, "beside onself" etc)-- --is a recognition of what continstitutes the intersigg, the intermeida-- as the notations and expressions of the liminal invlve an interaction among the wht we now call the arts--performance, ong, dance, notations, a "montage poem" of call and response with improvisation-- think of the importance of literally "hand writing" in petroglyphs, cav works--that is, the dirct imprint of the hand--oe the outline of it delineated by spraying on of paints through pursed lips or small blow gun, spray paint can cannister as it were in the liminal,intermedia--the belaboured divisions of labor of "intellect" and "emotion" are not kept seprate, but are in an intercgnae, an exchange-- (to indulge in a bit of cattiness--the whole notion we have now of mixed media, mulii media, (as Menezes points out, this is NOT intemedia) transgression etc--is basically a set of intellectualized attemtps to deal with these materials In a "critical' "theortical" "self reflexsive" etc manner--which is why it no w onder is is hevily supported by the galleries, the endowmments, committess, various journals, the academies, the grad shool progams --this helps create jobs and perpetute that argument re intellect/emotions which is keeping the food on many a table and the car in many a garage and the paper delivered at many a conference and the latest book from such and such a press with whole hearted endorsements of its trangressiveness from the reigning respect authorites on trangrssions filling the back cover . . . but then, it is true, we all do need to eat-- . . bread and water, chablis and chevre, pure water and vegan, pork rinds and jelly beans . . .) dbc On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Thomas Bell wrote: > ward and bob: > > there is a fairly extensive history in modern art and psychology > which asserts that the visual is purely 'cognitive' 'intellectual' and > uninvolved with emotional, visceral, gestural, etc. one can see > something, one can see a picture, one can see a picture on a computer > screen, one can move awy from the computer screen. while, the other > distinction, noted below this might seem like a word quibble I think > it's important for art. and not just a word game. > one can be intellectual and uninvolved, but that's not 'art' for me. > tom bell > > Ward Tietz wrote: > > > > Bob G., > > > > I recognize the distinctions you're trying to make, but I think the > > terminology you insist on doesn't really get us anywhere. > > > > The term "visual" appeals to the sensorium, to perception, but not to > > cognition. "Visual" only means that something is perceptible by sight. > > That's really all there is to it. > > > > There are significant aesthetic differences between a "visual" text and a > > more traditional text, but, again, the differences are semiotic and > > phenomenological, a matter of how certain kinds of signs are understood and > > experienced. A traditional text appears less visual because its perception > > verges on the automatic. > > > > Ward Tietz > > -- > Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ > index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell > essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ > > =-///>>>``'|\_ > SOULSOLESOLO > <<<]]] > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 15:23:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Al Filreis Subject: Goldsmith webcast recording Comments: To: goldsmithfriends@dept.english.upenn.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The recording of last night's webcast of Kenneth Goldsmith's reading from FIDGET (Coach House Press, 2000)--and of the conversation we had afterwards--is now available. You can find the link here: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/webcasts/ Participants in the discussion via webcast included Peter Balestrieri, Jim Andrews, and Marjorie Perloff. (The webcast was made possible by technical and other kinds of support from Aaron Couch and Kerry Sherin, among others.) --Al Filreis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 23:16:11 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bob Grumman wrote: "Context can determine the meaning of a word. To call something obviously visual (at least on a page) "visual" is to give a secondary meaning to the term, "visual." [...] The term, "language poetry," came about the same way." I agree with you here Bob. I think what happens with "visual" and "language" poetry is that a label often gets confused with a description. Goodman has something to say about this in connection with classification in Languages of Art. A curious thing about a label, as he says, is that it often effects a classification as it records one, giving the impression that what's labeled is being, or has been, described by the label. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 16:24:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: wcw and tthe wasteland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A number of commentors have hit the nail on the head--WCW realizes that just as the vibrant, lively wide open poetry scene of the late teens and early tewnties--with intense connections wit an interests in and influences from modern art (teh Armory show for example, the Marcel Duchamp edited "Wrongrong" ha, etc etc)-- WCW realised tat just as this scene is cutting loose, old TSE hits the Long Ball--the utlimate in his series of masterful PopSongs--and, coupled with is statements re poetry, a new anon which is a rearrangemet of the old as is so often done by any movement worht is salt--remember "les grandes tetes molles" of Surrealism for example., or some of the betes noirs of this list--couples with all this formidable education and exptriatiion, Eliot also announces he is turning his back not only this native tongue, with which WCW and others are so concerned, and gives hi allegiance to te British Language, its Church and its Crown. WCW as it has often been noted had more than a passing animus towards the British--which may well have have carried over into the betrayal of brother Eliot of his american sisters and brethern, (think of the mighty work of Gertrdue Stein for example)- so intent on making something of American life literature and language--WCW's animus came from his father, an anglophile--i recall reading a year os or ago on the Cap-L a violent anti-WCW attack due to his writing a poeme applauding to some degree a german bombing of London--you caan imagine the outrage over this!--however one person possessed of more critical balance did point out that the pome may well have had to do with WCW's animosity to his pro_british father, as much as anything to with the war, In retrospect, Williams was not wrong in his judgement of the effect of Eliot's not only poetry but his prononciementos regarding poetry and his views on the profession of poetry, and as well is relation with langauge, State and power/poetics. One of his quirkier insights thought among his earlier essays is his interest in popular culture--esp the British musical hall. I think one of WCW's lasting fears with the Eliot--New Criticism lines of developement in american poetry was te eschewing o ways he saw of such importance--the influenecs of modern painting, of he radio, advertising, documents--hence his place I beleive in the Pound-Williams-Paul Mectalf line connect with, interested n and influenced by hieroglphys, various forms of notations (jottings on the run, calligraphies, the uses of the type writer and other new technologies--the interest in paining, music, dance, history, the use of quotation, the attention with the conrete and as well the heard-- "A poem can be made of anything" WCW asserted--and demonstrated-- and as Robert Grenier posed the question in a Talk at Franconia in a 1997 edition of :that:-- in what way s can we work with the proposition in the earlier wcw (SPRiNG AND ALL for example) and the later "no ideas but in things/mr" from PATTERSON-- ) not as either/or" but as "both/and" think that Grenier is indicating how much still remains open in the works of the early american modernists--how much was not shut down by Eliot and the Formalists of our times . . . Grenier's own work and its reception my be seen as part of that long line of work held at bay by the Eliot influence . . . a final anecdote, from an interview in ROBERT SMITHSSN'S COLLECTED WRITINGS: Smithson is recounting his vist as very young unknown painter to the home of WCW--a pilgrammge made by so many young unknown arists and poets and eidtors of itte mags in search of at east a ittle blurb from the Master-- for some many decades to the himelf until late in life largely unknown WCW--Smithson was accompnied by his friend the poet Irving Latyon--at one point WCW remakred to Smithson how much he always enjoyed the disucsssions with painters, all his life . . . far mre than those wth poets . . . --dave baptiste chirot ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 14:58:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: happy Subject: Sanders' Bio-Poem about Ginsberg MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Books cost so much anymore! This was definitely worth the outlandish 28 bucks, though. It's like a warm-up piece for his big historical thing from Black Sparrow, but also just a statement of love. Pete ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 17:13:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Treadwell Subject: Small Press Traffic presents Rae Armantrout & Carol Mirakove Comments: cc: WOM-PO@listserv.muohio.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Small Press Traffic opens its new doors at Timken Lecture Hall California College of Arts and Crafts 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco (just off the intersection of 16th & Wisconsin) with a reading Friday, September 29, 2000 at 7:30 p.m. Rae Armantrout & Carol Mirakove >There's almost too much to say about Rae Armantrout, with seven books of >poetry, a memoir (True, from Atelos Press), a new collection of poetry >(The Pretext, from Green Integer) and a collection of selected poems book >about to burst into print next year from Wesleyan. When you finish with >those you can go on to A Wild Salience: The Writing of Rae Armantrout >(Burning Press) for information on all you've just read. And in the >meantime, you will have come to Small Press Traffic where she helps us to >kick off our 26th season with a thrilling Steadicam view of life's >smallest mishaps and most urgent social tragedies. Or, hang around the >campus of CCAC where she has been named Writer-in-Residence for this year. > She'll be the one paying attention to everything and then condensing it >into poetic magic. > >Carol Mirakove is the author of WALL (ixnay, 1999) and a founding member >of the Subpress Collective, as well as an editor of its journal, Bivouac. >Fresh from the sizzling poetry world of Washington DC, she has >transplanted herself to Los Angeles, in a move completely resonant with >her patented brand of disjunctions that just almost make sense. Mirakove >is interviewed online in the current issue of r e a d m e (find it at >http://www.jps.net/nada/cmirakove.htm). When Mirakove puts her mind to >it, she can deliver the harsh stinging jeremiads of 1950s Howl Ginsberg, >yet in other moods she's soft, evasive and quizzical as Billie Holiday. >By anyone's standards she's a remarkable reader and performer, as we'll >see on this gala evening. > >Elizabeth Treadwell Jackson, Executive Director >Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center >at CCAC >1111 Eighth Street >San Francisco, California >94107 >http://www.sptraffic.org ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 18:30:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Katie Degentesh Subject: new address as of 10/05/00 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Friends, acquaintances, Romans, recruiters, and everyone else -- even, hopefully, the fire department -- can find me at 202 E. 7th St., Apt. 2E New York, NY 10009 (212) 674-1722 degentesh@earthlink.net Whether you set your coasters on the East or West side of the continental shelf, don't hesitate to call and ask me how I like my new apples. Love, Katie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 00:58:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph@AOL.COM Subject: jenny gough address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does anyone have an address for Jenny Gough? Please share it. Thanks. Sheila Murphy shemurph@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 22:51:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Taylor Subject: Re: the anxiety of innovation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >It also occurred to me in reading re visual versus or plus lang poet that an implicit question was, fairly obviously (?): "what is innovative?" How do we define or identify it or the work? In fact it leads to the queastion:"What is poetry?" and "What is and can we or should we define or delineate good poetry?" But I think that all of those writers that have received any acclaim of whatever ilk ( although I read an interview with at at T S Eliot in which he said he was not trying to be original or "modern", it was just that the forms and languages he adopted fulfilled what he had to say.Or words to that effect.) are always aware (even if they keep it at the "back of their mind") of their need to "make it new" or to do something "special". Of course what they have to say, or the impulse in or behind their work, may create a unique style. In a sense we're all unique. Stein and cummimgs were quite distinct (from certain others who had preceded them). But to what extent does that come from preconception? Less so than say the Language Poets. W C Williams, Olson adn Creeley seem to be deliberate "innovators" but Creeley's poems (in a sense like all poems) have a powerful "inner message" an almost abstract quality (hence that - his own "voice" seems to be his originality more than the "p rojective" process even if that too is important. The formal or constructive aspects are more significant in Olson's "Maximus" but even in that work (admitted,y in hindsight) one feels the big presence of Olson himself. What happens is that the two kinds of innovation (or conscious uniqueness) become inter-mixed. Pure experiment just to be "in rebellion" is or can be pointless. The writer needs some "raison d'etre" but I dont therefore imply that the poetry of say Coolidge of "Polarod" is thus meaningles. I find that a powerful work. It gives me a different challenge or pleasure from some of the say extraordinary and often very funny poems (mixed with a kind of aometimes "dark" underspeak) of James Tate or even someone more "mainstream". Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all ares as well as current lit theory) as possible and then to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". Another thing which may seem obscure and may have gone unnoticed: John Ashbert's regret (in an interview) was that he'd never learnt to compose music. I think this gives a clue to the way certain creative writers work. So maybe here's something worth considering here.I'm a bit tired tonight so maybe this might sound a bit disjointed. Anyway, that's my take on things for now. All the best, Richard. >From: Mark Prejsnar >Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 10:15:06 -0400 >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: the anxiety of innovation > >" >> The idea here >>seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative measure. Thus >>poet A, >>who confines his/her innovations to non-visualizable language, will >>automatically be less innovative than poet B, whose innovations >>extend to >>the visual layout of the text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = >>in >>other respects. It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the >>real >>world? Is Donne less innovative that Herbert? Is cummings more >>innovative than WCW? >" > >************ > >this passage from Jonathan M. is interesting... what precisely *is* >the meaning of "innovation"...often, there is a lot of anxiety >encoded in these questions; it rather reminds me of a couple of >years ago, when 2 very bright and excellent poets published a >dialogue, in which they agreed that (the scene, which they identified >themselves with, which they called) "avant-garde" poetry, would lose >all meaning if it became the mainstream because *its point was to be >in rebellion..* > >is this true? > >it strikes me that many of the poets i feel closest to, across the >country, are writing out of a sense of the possiblity of their own >work, of their own agendas..of where their writing is pointing.. > >they aren't precisely worried about whether they are "in rebellion" >against something.... nor (and i admit, this is a different tho >related issue) about whether they are "innovating" ..... in fact, >many find these questions uninteresting or amusing.. > >for the conservative mainstream, where the ego and "accomplishment" >of the individual talent is all, Bloom's "anxiety of influence" >provided a useful trope, a summery of the things many poets felt >fretful about...for those outside the mainstream, it would appear >that "the anxiety of innovation" is a similar haunting presence... > >the poets whose work excites me the most, seem often to be keeping >their eye on the ball; they're not too concerned with making sure >they try to be innovative...but, it is a preoccupation that bedevils >many of us > >(i don't mean to imply that any of this is Jonathan's >problem..patently, it is not; i just got to thinking again about >these issues because of the way the thread was focusing so intently >on how to judge "innovativeness", and his passage was a useful thing >to bounce off of; also, obviously, i'm not so much responding to his >points as branching a related thread off at a tangent....) > >--mark prejsnar >@lanta > > > >POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU writes: >>I lost track of who originally wrote: >> >>"a poet working in the verbal >> >>AND the visual would have to be more innovative, other > >things >>being >>equal, to a poet working in the verbal alone" >> >> >>But there is no such thing as "other things being equal." The idea >>here >>seems to be that innovation might be a quantitative measure. Thus >>poet A, >>who confines his/her innovations to non-visualizable language, will >>automatically be less innovative than poet B, whose innovations >>extend to >>the visual layout of the text, assuming that B is somehow = equal = >>in >>other respects. It sounds logical enough, but does it obtain in the >>real >>world? Is Donne less innovative that Herbert? Is cummings more >>innovative than WCW? It seems to me that a qualitative judgment must >>also >>be made, otherwise we'd be forced into some counterintuitive >>conclusions. >>Even when it's the same writer who produces a visual text and another >>*non*visual poem. There is nothing to predict, a priori, that the >>first >>will be more innovative than the second. This is to be decided >>inductively, after the fact, not as some sort of spurious deductive >>principle. >> >> >> >>Jonathan Mayhew >>jmayhew@ukans.edu >> >>_____________ > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 09:37:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sylvester pollet Subject: Tristan Corbiere? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Arielle--that's a great project. The edition I have is just called Tristan Corbiere / Poems, trans. Walter McElroy, The Banyan Press, 1947. I thought it was a pretty damn good job. He tries to get the tone w/o losing the rhyme. Here's a stanza from La Fin/The End, about death at sea: --Pas de fond de six pieds, ni rats de cimetiere: Eux ils vont aux requins! L'ame d'un matelot, Au lieu de suinter dans vos pommes de terre Respire a chaque flot. For them no graveyard rats, no six feet of sod: They go to the sharks! Not for the mariner's soul To ooze into your potatoes beneath the clod: It breathes from the sea's roll. Anyway, good luck, & maybe you could post one of your translations to the list, or send me a copy. Thanks, Sylvester >Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:42:12 -0400 >From: "Arielle C. Greenberg" >Subject: Tristan Corbiere? > >Dear all -- > >I am presently undertaking a project of translating some of the poems of >the French poet Tristan Corbiere. Corbiere usually gets called a >Symbolist, since he was contemporary with those guys, but I find his work >to be really different, very much his own, but feel that he hasn't been >recognized the way he should be due to dull translations. I think his >work is wild -- it's full of slang and wordplay and tends to be >quick-paced and jazzy -- but most of the translations I've found (and >there aren't all that many) tend to make him seem stiff and old-fashioned. >I want to expose the extreme dexterity and innovation I see in him. > >I'm wondering if anyone out there is familiar with his work and could talk >to me about it a bit more. Or if people know of recent translations in >journals or other places. Or if there are any French poets on this list >who might be able to shed more light on his life and work. > >Thanks so much. > >Arielle ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 03:25:16 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Visual Poetry. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable David. I found your "explanation" of visual poetry very interesting. = (I'm not being ironic here.) If its the sort of thing I think it is it = is the along the lines of a work (not really "in progress" sounds too = pretentious anyway) but a sort of conceptual thing I'm doing (or I'm = "suppoosed" to be doing) called The Infinite Poem which began as an = attempt to introduce a multi rather than a monological work inresponse = to an essay by Charles Bernstein in "the American Tree" . My "tactics" = include (initially) taking quotes, either randomly or "deliberately" = from writers and texts of many kinds and seeing how they interacted. So = I had a quote from Billy Bathgate juxtaposed with art writing then = childrens or scientific. Part of it was published. I was interested at = that time in the interaction of "languages" as I called them and not so = much with the significance of the actual "quotes" (I rarely identify = them). Potentially all media were to be brought into the work or = project. Also the idea was that "meanings" were or could be (by the = reader) generated and regenerated. Much as one can see meanings (so = called) in the interactions of a so-called abstract painting. (I'm not = certain that ther's such a thing).But then I started wondering what the = hell I was doing, or why. I actually started doing drawings (in colour = or black and white)in the "work". Potentially, anything could go in. = But, as I say, I didnt see any point in it. (After all, if one "puts = everything in" its the same as "leaving everything out" as Ashbery says = (not quite in those words (but in Three Poems)). So I was sort of = stalemated or zugwanged (in Chess where every move leads one inevitably = to disaster, trust me, this computer beats me every day!). But your idea = or reference to something that is not "fixed" was actually my next step = (predated by Stein I know)(the idea of process) - it lead to me thinking = that I didnt need to know what I was doing per se. And I didnt even need = to have an actual poem or work - just the idea of it. And the poem could = react itself to its own internal "meaning generators" (which were = "alive" and interacting like living molecules) to produce further = meanings. Another thing that I was interested in was that I often found = that the whole series of drafts to a poem (not the "finished" poem) were = often more interesting to me than the so-called finished poem.(Of say = another writer).The poem doesnt start or stop anywhere.There's a lot = more, but ultimately the poem gets to write me out. It then becomes The = Infinite Authorless Poem (just use this to catch peoples' attention). = Then shorten this to The Project or Game or something. And now everyone = starts partaking. But in a sense I'd probably "discovered" that life = itself is a poem. Also the idea was for everyone to be able to = participate - potentially. A lot of the writers you indicated have = influenced my thinking. Of course Mallarme,and Olson,Pound,Stein. But = also I had in mind a New Zealand artist poet called Len Lye who made = films (he also wrote poems,there was an exhibit of his works at the = Pompidou Centre this year).Also I had been reading the ideas of = contemporary musicians including Cage and Ives. Ives biog.Interested me = and his desire to do a Universal Symphony. So I've moved from a = "meaningless" random thing that is a kind of "investigation" to some = sort of participatory thing involving evrything ang everyone. At which = point I started to think the whole thing should best remain an idea! But = around Auckland quite a lot of people keep asking me how my Infinte Poem = is going! So maybe I'll keep it as a "perpetual possibility" (is that = Eliot?). This will preempt or checkmate anyone else trying to go one = better because it becomes a kind of homage to "Catch 22"! An = interesting thing I found though was that it was nearly impossible to do = an unemotive, "meaningless" poem. The initial thing that I published - = despite its aleatory nature - seemed to have a kind of "beat" overall. = There were certain thermatic "links" and I tended to "choose" quotes = that, especially when juxtaposed with quite different writing, generated = quite a powerful emotive effect.So perhaps that was "original". I'll try = to put bits of it on a separate email (without this long commentary). I = think that it differs from so-called LangPo in that my own "voice" still = came into the poem, if that's what it can be called. As well as that I write shorter poems that are vaguely Asberic and = other "language" or "drier" and perhaps quieter (but still there's a = kind of emotive force behind the words I think) experiments. Thir = justification is that I like doing them. In fact, I cant think of any = ither reason for writing: I cant see the point of "teaching" or = "informing". Who am I to teach? People just want to enjoy things (at = whatever "level"). Rather than a love of labour, a labour of love. = Yours, garrullousally, Richard Z Taylor.P.S. Another "influence" was my = reading of Davisd Antin's "talk poems" which I found fascinating.=20 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 04:28:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Smylie Subject: Homer's Iliad MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Siamese Alligator Man Productions proudly presents: An internet, serialized translation of the songs of Homer's Iliad Books Three and Four "The Book of The Duel Between Paris and Menelaos" and "The Book of The Broken Truce" Sung in harmony and dissonance by Barry Smylie and Jeff Wietor Who invite you to: Click back 3 millennia and journey to the Dardanelles where the Black Ships have been drawn up on the beaches of Troy for 10 long years of skirmishing battles and feuds which are about to condense into a large, decisive, bloody conflict in heaven and on earth: http://barrysmylie.com/iliad/iliad000.htm Autumnal Equinox 2000 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 10:24:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael amberwind Subject: Re: Translation Project MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I am looking for people to help me translate my poems from English to French, then French to German, then German to Esperanto, then Esperanto to Basque, Basque to Persian, then Persian to Swahili, from Swahili to Navajo, then Navajo to Dutch and Yiddish and back to English again. If someone would be willing I would then like to translate this into American Sign Language. I suspect that this will be a more ambitious project than the King's Jame Bible, or even the now famous, but long forgotten, task of translating The Celestine Prophecies to Ebonics. Of course, I expect the finished version of my poems to wind up in more hotel rooms than The King Jame's Bible. I will of course require at least 20 near-sighted linguistics experts, and though the pay is low, which is to say non-existent, I believe the finished work will be of such a grand nature that merely having one's name attached to it will ensure one's place in the Pantheon of Literary Giants. Thank you, and good night. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 17:47:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jacques Debrot Subject: Beauty, the Academy, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brent, Thank you for your thoughtful & terrifically intelligent engagement w/ my previous post. But coherency is really the last thing you should accuse me of. About defining beauty--you're absolutely right--I'm not interested in that at all. Adjudicating the beautiful strikes me as merely a form, either, of policing the reader's response or of doggy intramural scent-marking. "Bad taste" doesn't make me nervous at all. Everybody's different--let's get used to it. & forgive me for not defining beauty myself, but I think of the beautiful as a verb rather than as a noun. It's an experience, as Louise Bourgeois describes it, that we project back onto the object. Dissing LangPo was also about the furthest thing from my mind. Charles Bernstein is appallingly smart about both the resistance to marketplace values and the ways in which radical *content* reinforces dominant ideologies. However, it's a critique that is now almost 30 yrs old and every radical strategy has, I think, a conservative component that emerges in time. Strictly formal innovation strikes me, today, in fact, as having an appeal almost exclusively to a specialist audience which is already in abstract agreement w/ whatever political values the work advocates. (Of course, this line of thinking also carries w/ it all of the stupid baggage--that I'd like to avoid-- of judging a poem merely by what is *radical* about it.) So here is my point again, put in a slightly different way: what is most challenging about artistic work occurs *before* its recognition. Believe me, more power to the LangPos who manage to get endowed chairs etc., but that scene is definitively over--it's just "spectator-food" now--either consumed or critiqued--as evidenced by posts announcing on Poetics that, say, Fanny Howe has received a decent review in the _Times_. The truth is, it means a lot less than it would have 20 yrs ago, but to a lot more people. All of which is to raise another issue re experimentalist poetics--that the effect or sensation of verbal disjunction can become the basis for a conscious criticality. The answer seems, to me, emphatically NO. Our projections strike me, instead, as being entirely solitary and can't be directed or controlled to conform to our political fantasies--except in the way we (us avant-gardist's) tend to review each other's books. All of our beautiful sociability, our concern for community, results in a *politeness* that I often feel as stupidly deadening. Beauty, I wanted to say, is a vernacular that extends beyond the claustrophobia of the poetry world. When I do readings now, instead of reading live, I bring tapes of poems I've made of myself reading to & soliciting responses from people I've called at random & recorded on the phone--usually people at work in tanning salons, prisons, pet shops, etc. Believe me, these people know all about the permisson poetry is given to refuse, scandalize, & insult the doxa. So, the denigration of content--or at least of any content that isn't really formal or nonsemantic--strikes me as simply one more lazy, reflexive habit that needs to be interrogated. --Jacques (w/ apologies, as always, for my digressiveness) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 20:47:44 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: The Red. by Richard Taylor. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable The Red The blocks of red on red on red by black around by black by black by line by line by round. The red in red of red in red where black by back the white around. Around the=20 bound about the white the red more red comes up the red. It rears its head. The eye the see the sight to see. The eye the see the light the sight. And light. The light not light not bright not dim not sun. The sun not=20 round not up not down. The blue not there not green not=20 grey.The grey ungrey not grey not black.The up not down the down not up.=20 And the black not black not black on night. The light alight but light not light. The clock is dead. The clock awake alive like head. The head like blood like hot is red. The squares the slabs the reds the blocks are chops of chunks: the chunks the chunks the bits. The monks. And the red the red and round the black. (There is no black.)=20 To you my red my square my thing: I fall and blubber like a=20 sun-struck king. The red on red of red the blocks. The orange the green the blue. The see the sight the steel the grey.The shape the tall the dark the great. The high the high. The finger like a finger on the sky. The eye the seen. The green. O my blocks my reds my reds my blocks: orange is not is gnomes is gone. And the red in red. (There is no red.) The square that's not that's never that's there.If red be red not IS not not green: then red on red is you my thing.And if that is you by blocks by black are red around And black is black as black is black. And red is red is red. Richard Taylor. =20 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 11:26:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Harold Teichman Subject: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Bravo to Jonathan Mayhew for: "Jakobson I think made the first mistake by seeing metaphor and metonymy as polar opposites… As a result of Jakobson and Lacan, noone seems to know what metonymy is. That is, they make it into some abstract master trope rather than thinking of real cases of metonymy and how they function... I am constantly coming across really basic mistakes in people who should know better… It makes me think my entire discipline of literary criticism is built on quicksand." The venerable aureole that always surrounds the name of Jakobson in poetics circles is something of a mystery to me. In his writing on semantics he does little more than cobble other people’s ideas together with his gross misunderstandings of technical terms (e.g. ‘metalanguage’) and utterly banal, though questionable, ‘commonsense’ models of the way language works (e.g. language as an exchange of ‘messages’). I have yet to run into anything I would remotely classify as an insight in his famous later writings. His very selective citations of experimental work or anecdotal evidence are risible. [I am sure this contention will be dismissed out of hand as the ravings of a crank, but let me enlist the support of J. H. Prynne: in ‘Stars, Tigers and the Shape of Words’ he mentions "the highly regarded (if also curiously anecdotal and unrigorous) later work of Roman Jakobson" (p. 19), and in ‘China Figures’, alluding to Jakobson’s ‘Two Aspects’ paper, he says: "The use of these figural terms [metaphor and metonymy] in recent linguistic and structuralist analysis does not yet rest on stable definition." (footnote to p. 369 in ‘New Songs from a Jade Terrace’). The word to cherish in this last is ‘yet’. Thanks to Nate Dorward (who may not agree with my and Prynne’s verdict on Jakobson) for providing me with copies of these papers.] Jakobson’s windy projection thesis ("the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination") manages to say nothing at all, simply borrowing Saussure’s associative/syntagmatic ‘axes’ (which were tacked onto and cannot easily be reconciled with the signifier/signified relation or the langue/parole distinction or the ‘system of differences’ idea), buying a specious whiff of authority with the use of a technical, ‘rigorous’ word like ‘project’, which has unearned cartographical and geometrical connotations, among others. It has about as much content as my dictum: a three-course meal ‘projects’ the ‘principle of ternarity’ from the ‘axis of enumeration’ into the ‘axis of alimentation’. The emptiness of Jakobson’s ‘rigorous distinctions’ is made quite evident in their careless application by even some of our best critics (Jonathan cites de Man in his original post). Another example: Perloff, in her ‘After Language Poetry’ essay (on the Poetics site), while justly slapping the wrists of an unnamed author in ‘Moving Borders’, writes: "Metonymy is the trope that relates one image or phrase to another along the axis of contiguity, as in "hut," "hovel," "poor little house," "shack" (Jakobson's example)." In fact, in Jakobson’s schema, these words are arrayed along the axis of selection/association, waiting to be slotted into some noun-phrase-place-holder in some complex expression on the axis of contiguity. But the point is: who cares? The amount of real analytical, critical or theoretical work done by these bogus distinctions is exiguous anyway. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 16:38:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Water-shedding MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII == Water-shedding Shedding water / holding it back / in abeyance / closing the loopholes. For the past two weeks I have been burning cdroms of my work of the past six years; I began with the version I did for a group in Atlanta (that I abandoned) - con/text/sub 1.0. This has led to sub/con/text - the current and final title - versions 2.01, 2.02, 2.03, 2.04, 2.05, 2.06, 2.2, and 2.3. The earlier ones were organizations and reorganizations; the later - 2.2 and 2.3 are the result of opening up other, older, computers I have here, and re-editing a number of texts and files. The directory structure - for such it is - is a tree structure, which has remained pretty coherent through most of the history of computing; the root leads to /cdrom/ - at which point, the directory tree and file trees are reproduced; the various directories are given; there is a readme first text; and there is an index.html opening file if one is entering through a browser. Most of the time, all of this has had to be tuned and retuned; in other words, I have been tuning and retuning six years' worth of work - as well as another 20 or so essays from the 1980s and early 90s. There are some parts of the Internet Text as well (found within the /cdrom/network direc- tory) that go back to the late sixties. I worry that all of this is a tomb, in a way; it contains most of my work I've considered valuable over the past few decades. Odd things such as my Structure of Reality - with its numerous diagrams and ruminations on threshold logics - aren't reproduced, but there are descriptions of them in the Internet Text as well. The three older records (two of which were reissued as cds) aren't included; the films aren't included; and only very recent video segments are found on it. None of the work from my post- industrial group Damaged Life is on it. But the writing is there, in all fullness, and in the /cdrom/program di- rectory are numerous programs exploring some of the fractal measure-geom- etries I discovered (I'm sure not originally), for anyone with qbasic.exe installed to play with. And there is _some_ music, including electric gui- tar, which has been a major interest for years, and shakuhachi, which I have been working intensely with, for the past few. Meanwhile, there are all those graphics - the /cdrom/image directory alone has close to 380 - which form a universe by themselves, resonating with the texts, wrapping themselves around each other and the viewer as well. All of which is to say, the watershed. I've been relieved that my work stands a chance of surviving - the disks holds a great deal of work that is not on line for example - in one or another form, that it might be rediscovered sometime in the future. It's oddly supported now - I haven't done a "real" book since Station Hill took me on in 1984 (Disorders of the Real, 1988) - only magazine and book anthologies, e-venues, etc. So I hope that the electronic venue of the cdrom will hold for at least twenty years or so, at least on antique computers, and that I will, or someone will, be able to update the materials, reconfigure them, in the latest incarnation of mass storage devices. There are issues for me of the phenomenology of the disk; the latest copies have a colored label on the disk itself, instead of bleak black and white - and somehow the whole seems more permanent. And a fair number of them, in one or another version, have been distributed. Nonetheless, a lot of people I would want to have them just haven't been interested - and I ascribe this to - no matter how much the opposite is claimed - an intrans- igent attachment to the _book_ - something I also feel. It's as if the cdrom can only be a _project,_ or _resource_ - but nothing that carries the weight or intimacy of the book - nothing, in short, that is _desirab- le,_ in terms of personal ownership. The relationships and gaps between computer and language are still labeled as "experimental," in spite of years of development (my own first computer works were from 1971 for ex- ample). I know the value of my work; I hold onto it like a hungry ghost that's forbidden sleep or recompense, that wanders, devours everywhere. I get nourishment back-channel which keeps me going, and I'm happy that those people who do want the disks are world-wide (in spite of the postage). But there are times I'm overwhelmed by the massivity, by a theory-thicket so large that it literally borders on substance. I've noted with relief that people tend to find the disks easy to navigate and explore (which is what I intended), and I've thought that this might lead further to the idea that there are language/image worlds opening up through this - that a kind of intimacy may result after all. But the activity is very different; like hypertext, it asks a lot of a reader, a kind of mobility he or she might not be comfortable with. It's odd to roam across the six years. They cover periods of intense dep- ression, of my mother's death, of my successes and failures as list moder- ator, as a writer inspired by such disparate sources as Donald Knuth, old Akkadian, linux, contemporary Japan, and Jabes. Nikuko, Jennifer, Doctor Leopold Konninger, Travis, Clara, Honey, Alan, and Julu come and go; there are explorations of MOOs, netsex, protocols, and the very early history of the Net. Different venues (editing an issue of New Observations on Cul- tures of Internet, and the Lusitania Book, Being on Line; putting together the chapbooks for the parables and The Case of the Real; etc.) produce warps into the fabric, texts tending towards momentary completions (36 new parables for example), images carried to extremes and exhaustion (work with Blender for example). I tried all through the work to keep up both intensity and resonance, as if each piece were my last (which is something always haunting me, dreams of death without recompense or memory). I think for the most part I succeeded, sometimes too well; there are sections of the diary and the Internet Text that I can read only with difficulty at this point. I wonder if this comes through, hoping that resonance will carry through (each text, as if within Indra's net, resonating with, and signaling, every other). And all this fits on a single, distributable disk, finally reaching a pla- teau of organization that _makes sense_ to me, carries a certain weight. I find myself less able to sleep, feeling more physically ill, but as if something were taken care of, taken account of - as if something unaccoun- table and unaccounted for, were, nonetheless, subject to a form of tally. So that my writings now, in a sense, are "beyond the disk," oddly cooled, in a period of hiatus, as I wonder if the disk will be understood, if that even matters, and as I work on distribution. (There are copies still available, of the newer 2.2 and 2.3, through Alan Sondheim, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY, 11217, $14 in any form. End of advertisement.) I find myself spending more time within the languorous temporality of the burner, nap- ping between finished disks popping out on this slow machine. I've burned three copies of music cds as well - The Blue Humans, and the two old LPs that were reissued a few years ago as cds - for backup. I've backed up all my usual miscellaneous files and programs and teaching materials. It's as if I could close up shop. It's as if a kind of work is completed. It's a watershed and water shed - somewhere I'm beneath or elsewhere than all of this, protocols splashing from my body; I'm down deep, inviolate; I'm vulnerable, always in league with death. Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm cdrom of collected work 1994-2000/1 available: write sondheim@panix.com === ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 16:25:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: Tristan Corbiere? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Arielle: best place to start as always is in libraries bibliographies of books etc one quick suggestion--I'll try to dig up some things here that may be of use to you as also love Corbiere's work, but have only read it in French s w be most interested in yr translations--)--one quick route might be to look into the well known influence both Corbiere and Laforgue had on T.S.. Eliot--this route may well lead you to some interesting references, researches, translations,commentaries etc--and perhaps something in TSE's or one of his correspondents' letters re a discussion of Corbiere-- also, it has been abt thirty years since i read it but you might want to check for example Arthur Symons' classic book on the French Symbolists--which if some part of my mangled memory serves, may lead you to some interesting references and further routes to research--as Symons was actually hanging out in Paris during and amongst the peripheries of "la Belle Epoque" so had access to some interesting though some claim not always reliable information and insights regarding that crowd-- (as I recall, again forgive my memory of books read so long ago that I can't say for certain)--but as I recall Symons' book had quite an influence on TSE and helped lead him Corbiere-ward-- alos am sure if you check both the texts but perhpas even more importantly thei bibliographies dealing with Eliot's works you may well find some ineterestig paths leading to Corbiere also I know from tryly vague memory that there have been several short studies of influence of Corbiere on not only Eliot but the development and use of slang and irony in much modernist poetry in both french and english poetry--in english often due of course to that Great Arbiter for so long of tastes, talents, traditions and so on, TSE-- (when i first started reading Corbiere in my teens and was at same time also a 'Dylan-freak"--my father suggested that Corbiere was in a way an influence on Dylan, via Eliot and the use of slang and so on that Corbiere introduced, along with Laforgue--into much modern english and french poetry--i think one could make an interesting study of the interrelationships of Laforgue's vers libres, combining seemingly trivial things and events with chains of associations of ideas and images--with the works of Frank O'Hara--some one must have done this i wd imagine?) (I have often thought of especially the early Eliot as a lyricist of pop songs--and indeed he did write a rather affecting little essay on the british music hall and a popular and adored singer of the times . . .) I'll rummage through some of my other sources here and there and see what else I can come up with as your project I think is an exciting and valuable one--and challenging!--so all my best and I'll set to sleuthing-- but do think the TSE connection might lead you to some interesting finds-- Tel qu'une veille coque, sec et degreee, (all but last"e"accented) Ou vient encore parfois clapoter la maree: Ame-de-mer en peine est le vieux matelot Attendant, echoue . . . -quoi: la mort? -Non,le flot. Tristan Corbiere, "Matelots" --dave baptiste chirot On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Arielle C. Greenberg wrote: > Dear all -- > > I am presently undertaking a project of translating some of the poems of > the French poet Tristan Corbiere. Corbiere usually gets called a > Symbolist, since he was contemporary with those guys, but I find his work > to be really different, very much his own, but feel that he hasn't been > recognized the way he should be due to dull translations. I think his > work is wild -- it's full of slang and wordplay and tends to be > quick-paced and jazzy -- but most of the translations I've found (and > there aren't all that many) tend to make him seem stiff and old-fashioned. > I want to expose the extreme dexterity and innovation I see in him. > > I'm wondering if anyone out there is familiar with his work and could talk > to me about it a bit more. Or if people know of recent translations in > journals or other places. Or if there are any French poets on this list > who might be able to shed more light on his life and work. > > Thanks so much. > > Arielle > > **************************************************************************** > "I thought numerous gorgeous sadists would write me plaintive appeals, but > time has gone by me. They know where to get better looking boots than I > describe." -- Ray Johnson > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 09:35:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Gaffney Subject: Fiction... Sorry about the blank message! Mime-version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit COME HEAR LAURA HENDRIE & ELIZABETH GAFFNEY read from their work October 1st, 2000, 4 p.m. CRONICA READING SERIES AT GOOD WORLD BAR 3 Orchard Street (Canal & Division) F to East Broadway It's Free! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 09:22:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: derek beaulieu Subject: housepress - Clint Burnham and d.a.levy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit housepress is pleased to announce the release of 2 new chapbooks: "A4isms" by Clint Burnham - 20 pages, hand-bound 5 hole saddlestitch sewn bindings - tipped-on cover illustration by Julie Sawatsky - printed on Southworth 25% cotton fibre 24lb. linen paper with Exact Bristol 67lb. covers. - limited edition of 50 numbered copies - $10.00ea. "untitled" by d.a.levy - 8 pages of selections from d.a.levy's oeuvre - handprinted linoblock cover portrait of levy by derek beaulieu - handbound 3 hole saddlestitch sewn bindings - printed on Southworth 25% cotton fibre 24lb. linen paper with 100% recycled card covers. - limited edition of 50 numbered copies - $5.00 ea. for more information, or to order copies, please contact: derek beaulieu housepress@home.com http://www.telusplanet.net/public/housepre ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 18:33:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: Poetry Events at UMaine Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable An exciting and diverse group of poets will be making the trip to UMaine this Fall as part of the English Department's New Writing Series. If you just happen to be wandering north of Boston, south of Qu=E9bec, feel free to drop in.... =46all 2000 Events 21 Sept Jay Wright 03 Oct Jayne Cortez 19 Oct Brian Kim Stefans / Rod Smith 24 Oct Kathleen Fraser 26 Oct Robert Grenier 09 Nov Joanne Kyger 14 Nov Elaine Equi 16 Nov Lorenzo Thomas All readings at 4pm * Soderberg Center Auditorium in Jenness Hall * University of Maine * Orono, ME * All events sponsored by the English Department and the National Poetry =46oundation with support from the Lloyd Elliott, Cultural Affairs, and Libr= a Professorship funds. * For more information, e-mail Bio/Bibliographical Profiles JAY WRIGHT was born in New Mexico in 1935 and is the author of eight books of poems, including Selected Poems (1987) and Boleros (1991). His Transfigurations: Collected Poems is due from Louisiana State UP later this fall. Wright was the 1996 recipient of the Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets fellowship for distinguished achievement. His numerous awards include MacArthur, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim Fellowships and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literary Award. JAYNE CORTEZ was born in Arizona in 1936 and published her first collection of poetry in 1969. She is the author of Festivals and Funerals (1971), Scarifications (1973), Firespitter (1982), Coagulations: New and Selected Poems (1984), and Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere (1996). She has also recorded six CDs with her band The Firespitters, including Cheerful & Optimistic, Taking the Blues Back Home, and Find Your Own Voice. Cortez's widely-translated works have earned her numerous awards, including NEA and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, the International African =46estival Award, and an American Book Award. She is one of the directors o= f the Organization of Women Writers of Africa. BRIAN KIM STEFANS was born in 1969 and is the author of Free Space Comix (1998), Gulf (1998), and Angry Penguins (2000). He is the editor of Arras magazine, which after three print issues shifted to the world wide web in 1998. An active presence in the New York poetry community, Stefans has recently performed his works in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and London. ROD SMITH was born in 1962 and makes his home in Washington D.C., where he manages Bridge Street Books. He is the author of The Boy Poems (1993), In Memory of My Theories (1996), and Protective Immediacy (1999). He is the editor of Aerial magazine (founded in 1984) and publisher of Edge books. KATHLEEN FRASER was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1935 and has lived for extended periods in New York, San Francisco, and Rome. She is the author of fourteen books of poetry, including Change of Address (1966), Magritte Series (1977), and when new time folds up (1993). In 1997, Wesleyan University Press published her Selected Poems 1970-1995 under the title Il Cuore: The Heart. Fraser has inspired generations of young writers as a teacher in the San Francisco State University Creative Writing Program (1972-1992) and has been an influential voice in feminist scholarship as editor and essayist. Her visionary journal HOW(ever) (1983-1991) recently transformed itself into the web-site HOW2 and her essays are now available for the first time in one collection, Translating the Unspeakable: Poetry and the Innovative Necessity. ROBERT GRENIER was born in 1942 and began publishing poetry in the mid-1960s. His works include Sentences (1978), A Day at the Beach (1985), and Phantom Anthems (1986). He was the founding co-editor of the influential journal This from 1971-1974. Since the early 1990s, Grenier been working increasingly at what some have called "illuminated poems," texts whose carefully wrought singularity does not easily tranpose to the print medium. Such works--disseminated mainly through the web and in photographic slide format--include owl/on/bou/gh (1997) and r h y m m s (forthcoming). JOANNE KYGER was born in 1934, lives in Bolinas, California, and has published 15 books of poetry, including Going On: Selected Poems 1958-1980 (1983) and Just Space: Poems 1979-1989 (1991). Her Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964 (1981) record the seismic shift in attention from western to eastern modes of living, writing, and thinking which absorbed Kyger and her generation of poets in the early 1960s. Her diaries are also an important social document, providing keen portraits of significant literary figures like Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Clayton Eshleman. Her poetry's wise humor, sharpness of intellect and unobtrusive responsibility to craft have influenced such later writers as Alice Notley, Robert Grenier, and Ron Silliman. ELAINE EQUI was born in 1953 and is the author of a half dozen books, including Accessories (1988), Decoy (1994), and Voice-Over (1999). She is a Senior Editor at the journal Conjunctions and a member of the New School and City College faculties. Her work has been featured in the Best American Poetry anthologies of 1989 and 1995, as well as in the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry. LORENZO THOMAS was born in 1944 and presently lives and teaches in Houston. As a member of the Umbra workshop in the 1960s, Thomas helped shape the terms of the emerging Black Arts Movement. His publications include Chances are Few (1979), The Bathers (1981), and Sound Science (1992). Thomas's groundbreaking book of scholarship, Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry was published earlier this year by the University of Alabama Press. =20 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 13:15:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: POETRY CITY / OCTOBER 2000 Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit POETRY CITY * 5 Union Sq W * NYC Thursday October 12 . 7 PM Charles Borkhuis & Marianne Shaneen (followed by a celebration of Charles's new books: Mouth of Shadows, plays; and Alpha Ruins, poems.) Thursday October 19 . 7 PM Kevin Davies & Erik Sweet Thursday October 26 . 7 PM Brendan Lorber & Nicole Hefner All Poetry City events are free... call 212 691 6590 or write info@twc.org for more details. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 14:06:53 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jill Stengel Subject: poetry reading, 10/8, san francisco MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit synapse: second sundays at blue bar --presents-- kathleen fraser and cole swensen october 8, 2000 2 p.m., $2 (goes to the readers) blue bar is at 501 broadway, at kearney, in sf enter thru black cat restaurant, same address Kathleen Fraser's most recent books include il cuore: the heart, Selected Poems 1970-1995 (Wesleyan University Press, 1997), and WING (Em Press, 1995). Her book of essays, TRANSLATING THE UNSPEAKABLE, Poetry and the Innovative Necessity, was published in the spring of 2000 by the University of Alabama Press [Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series]. Fraser publishes and edits the on-line journal How2 , an electronic extension of the '80s journal HOW(ever), focusing on innovative writing and scholarship by contemporary and modernist women writers. Her new chapbook from a+bend press is 20th Century. Poet and translator Cole Swensen directs the creative writing program and teaches literature and poetry at the University of Denver in Colorado. Recent books include Try (University of Iowa, 1999), Noon (Sun & Moon, 1997), and Numen (Burning Deck, 1995). Forthcoming books include Oh (Apogee Press) and Such Rich Hour (University of Iowa). She serves as the translation editor of the on-line journal How2, and she is active as a translator of contemporary French poetry, fiction, and art criticism. Recent published translations include Olivier Cadiot's Art Poetic and Pierre Alferi's Natural Gaits, both from Sun & Moon. Her newest chapbook is And Hand (a+bend press, 2000). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 14:52:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Arielle C. Greenberg" Subject: Re: Henry Darger In-Reply-To: <20000921154534.18569.qmail@web119.yahoomail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was glad to see the article on Darger, and thrilled to know a new book is coming out. In response to the "eech" comment, well, reserve judgement till you see the work. As far as I know, Darger never hurt anyone, and some amazing art has come from repressed pedophiles. I'm obviously not condoning crimes against children, but people's internal fantasy lives don't really hurt anyone, and I do think that works of art should be judged on their own merits. All of this is just to say that I love Darger's work -- both his paintings and his writing are stunning -- and I am so glad to see them brought to light. Arielle **************************************************************************** "I thought numerous gorgeous sadists would write me plaintive appeals, but time has gone by me. They know where to get better looking boots than I describe." -- Ray Johnson On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, Dominic Fox wrote: > Interesting that Darger and his colleague tried to > adopt a child. I wonder what would have happened to > that child if he had not been prevented from doing so. > I dare say she would have been very comprehensively > "protected". Scenes from Edward Gorey's "The Loathsome > Couple" come to mind. > > I note that those nice folks at the Fresh Petals > web-site appear to be big fans. > > Eech!, in other words. > > - Dom > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. > http://im.yahoo.com/ > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 17:23:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chicago Review Subject: NEW POLISH WRITING Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" A quick preview of CHICAGO REVIEW 46:3/4 "NEW POLISH WRITING" is available at: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/review/463/463homepage.html The issue itself, which will cost $8, should be on newstands within a month. This 400-page anthology, which was guest edited by W. Martin, offers a panoramic snapshot of Polish writing in the 1990s, and includes material from a range of genres. Poems, stories, novel excerpts, feuilletons, reportage, criticism, and polemicism by more than seventy-five writers are translated in this issue, which should give readers a solid sense of the literary landscape in postcommunist Poland. Poetics list members that respond to this e-mail get the following deal: $15 for a one-year subscription a complimentary back issue (take your pick from our back issues webpage). Write soon to reserve your copy of NEW POLISH WRITING. Cheers from Chicago! Eirik Steinhoff Editor -------------------------- CHICAGO REVIEW 5801 South Kenwood Avenue Chicago IL 60637 http://humanities.uchicago.edu/review/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 16:57:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerrold Shiroma Subject: New from The Figures MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Two new books from The Figures... Twenty-Five Sonnets Tim Atkins $7.50 Sunflower Jack Collom & Lyn Hejinian $8.00 more information to be found at www.durationpress.com/thefigures ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 17:05:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: derek beaulieu Subject: housepress - bpNichol MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit housepress is pleased to announce the release of a new chapbook: "discarded novel" by bpNichol - handbound 5 hole saddlestitch sewn bindings - printed on Southworth 25% cotton fibre 24lb. linen paper with Excact Bristol 67 lb. covers. - limited edition of 75 numbered copies - $10.00 ea. for more information, or to order copies, please contact: derek beaulieu housepress@home.com http://www.telusplanet.net/public/housepre ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 01:10:42 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: richard.tylr@ZFREE.CO.NZ Subject: Interesting item on eBay web site item#440678842: "Visions of Gerard & Tristessa" Jack Kerouac MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To the poetics people and the server. If you approve this message is sent in the belief that some members may be interested in placing a bid on this book I'm selling on Ebay. There are 2 days to go. This book by Kerouac is hard to get. This is sent both from my viewpoint as a second hand book collector/dealer and as a lit. person who knows many will have an interest in Kerouac. A sort of "starting" point for the move that lead ont to or through the objectivists,the projectivists and the N.Y. school.Or perhaps a reference point etc. However please dont (i.e. the Poetics List) send this on if you feel someone might object or it contravenes your policy.It is a "commercial" so I will respect your discretion. Yours faithfully, Richard Taylor. Title of item: "Visions of Gerard & Tristessa" Jack Kerouac Seller: richard.tylr@zfree.co.nz Starts: Sep-16-00 22:05:24 PDT Ends: Sep-26-00 22:05:24 PDT Price: Starts at $20.00 To bid on the item, go to: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=440678842 Item Description: Kerouac first in hard back! This book is scarce in hard back."Visions of Gerard & Tristessa",Jack Kerouac.Andre Deutsch,1964.First Thus.Blue and white dust jacket with photograph of Kerouac on the back.The dust wrapper has small chips on the top and bottom of the spine,and is trimmed slightly on the back flap,hence is only Good. There are marks on the end papers and sellotape marks and ex library stamps.So the book is overall only Fair to Good. However this book is scarce in Hard Back.V.G. to Fine are valued at about US$200.00.192 pp.Payment as indicated but contact me for details.Post about US$8.00 outside New Zealand. Visit eBay, the world's largest Personal Trading Community at http://www.ebay.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 02:21:08 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy Reply Richard Taylor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit What for what emtaphotic phoric choric rock that dums and hums itself in or inside a metonoymic metronome whose clocking-drone and unhanded ticklingtick drives mad the loud rambonic biorythmic bomb until a new and nearly gallic song is headlong and unromantic as him or Tom has now gone cataphonic wallic in its nightmare room of song. And this doth put me in the think of what if this is this and what if that is that, and (how metaphoranymical!) the big thing was the small thing and the small thing was the big. Richard Taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 3:26 PM Subject: Re: Metaphor/Metonymy > In a message dated 9/18/00 8:17:35 PM, schultz@HAWAII.RR.COM writes: > > << Metaphor is understandably in trouble in a world where differences are > often > > considered more important than samenesses, but still has an important place > > "at the table." Hawai`i's an interesting place from which to regard > > metaphor, so often misused in the interest of the colonial, too often > > ignored in more recent struggles against it. > > > Susan > > >> > > Hmmm . . . . I don't think metaphor is in trouble, not at all. It > ostensibly compares, but all comparisons are in truth the marking of > differences. I have at least considered the possibility that metonymy is a > metaphor. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 12:16:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: owner-realpoetik@SCN.ORG Subject: RealPoetik Bertha Greschak Bertha Greschak lives in New York City. Her work has appeared in Moria and is forthcoming in Aught. She can be reached at bertha@greschak.com. Set Theory All the narrative possibilities of leaving home. A reader's attention, brooding. Our dilemma. To devise unburdening. Lackluster weather-chasing, protean & odd. All one can reasonably do is resist. monosyllabic. music notation. a tea ceremony (A dissolute life.) It wanders, efficient. Do not affect a breezy manner. This is only one example. a predominance of mettle-testing in the persistent dream a subject that's usually a limitation punctuated with dime-store resonance should be displayed as such logically afraid to fly, shuttered. paintings, architecture. silent things. mosaic ashbery byzantine Throws down a literary gauntlet to young fiction writers everywhere. Pollute, bastardize, but mostly pollute. Bertha Greschak ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 21:52:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: peter bushyeager Subject: Re: Phyllis Wat on WNYE-FM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable -----Original Message----- From: peter bushyeager To: poetic@listserv.buffalo.edu Date: Sunday, September 24, 2000 9:50 PM Subject: Phyllis Wat on WNYE-FM=20 =20 =20 For those of you living in NYC ... Phyllis Wat, whose book "The Fish = Soup Bowl Expedition" was recently published by Ten Pell Books, will be = appearing on the radio program "Anything Goes," which will be broadcast = on WNYE-FM (91.5), October 10 at 12:30 p.m. The program will be repeated = at the same time on October 12. =20 =20 Wat will read selections from her book, which Maureen Owen calls "a = vernacular expedition stunning as an embroidered robe of geographies = shrunk and elongated at will . . . Phyllis Wat has us rowing with her as = she dips her silk sleeves into the sleeves of language." "The Fish Bowl = Soup Expedition" can be purchased through Small Press Distribution. =20 =20 "Anything Goes," which is broadcast weekly, is sponsored by Teachers = & Writers Collaborative. =20 =20 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 12:28:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: owner-realpoetik@SCN.ORG Subject: RealPoetik Notes (National, Phily) BOOK SIGNING & reading, CAConrad & Maralyn Lois Polak P O E T R Y R E A D I N G CAConrad "evaporate again" Maralyn Lois Polak "Death By Chocolate" at Giovanni's Room Bookstore 12th & Pine, Philadelphia October 6th, 2000 7:30 pm EVENT IS FREE THERE WILL BE FREE BROADSIDES OF THEIR WORK (while supplies LAST!) (but there's plenty) Subject: coyote magazine Coyote Magazine at http://www.radamesortiz.homestead.com Hello Everyone, Coyote : Bringing Literature and Art Across Borders, is an online journal dedicated to publishing quality fiction, poetry, personal essays, and artwork by or about minorities in America. It is a journal that explores and embraces the multiculturalism of our age. I invite you to stop by and read the intriguing work of Carmen Tafolla, Diane Gonzales Bertrand, Wang Ping, Duane Locke, Sarah Cortez, Ethriam Cash Brammer, Janet Buck, Sehba Sarwar, Janet Buck, Li Min Hua, Mark Hiebert, Anjela Villarreal Ratliff, Carolina Monsivais and many more. Also, I liked to inform everyone that I am currently seeking fiction and essay submissions. For submission guidelines please visit Coyote Magazine at http://www.radamesortiz.homestead.com Feel free to send me comments or suggestions. Sincerely, Radames Ortiz Editor ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 17:39:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Frey Subject: NOTcoffeeHouse Poetry and Performance Series/Bernstein/Eckes-10/1/00 Comments: To: caroleb@dca.net Comments: cc: firstuu@libertynet.org, nanders1@swarthmore.edu In-Reply-To: <39C9702D.3BEB@dca.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Contact: Richard Frey 215-735-7156 richardfrey@dca.net (NOTcoffeeHouse) Poetry and Performance Series New fiction read by Carole Bernstein New poetry read by Ryan Eckes and guests TBA Sunday, October 1, 2000 1 pm First Unitarian Church 2125 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19103/215-563-3980 Plus Open Poetry and Performance Showcase $1 admission. All Poets and performers may submit works for direct posting on our website via email to the webmaster@notcoffeehouse.org or works may be emailed to Richard Frey at richardfrey@dca.net or USPS or hand-delivered through slot at 500 South 25th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19146. More information: Church office, 215-563-3980, Jeff Loo, 546-6381 or Richard Frey, 735-7156. Visit our website at www.notcoffeehouse.org Poets & performers previously appearing at NOTcoffeeHouse: Nathalie Anderson, Lisa Coffman, Barbara Cole, Barb Daniels, Linh Dinh, Lori-Nan Engler, Simone Zelitch, Dan Evans, Brenda McMillan, Kerry Sherin, John Kelly Green, Emiliano Martin, Jose Gamalinda, Toshi Makihara, Thom Nickels, Joanne Leva, Darcy Cummings, David Moolten, Kristen Gallagher, Shulamith Wachter Caine, Maralyn Lois Polak, Marcus Cafagna, Ethel Rackin, Lauren Crist, Beth Phillips Brown, Joseph Sorrentino, Frank X, Richard Kikionyogo, Elliott Levin, Leonard Gontarek, Lamont Steptoe, Bernard Stehle, Sharon Rhinesmith, Alexandra Grilikhes, C. A. Conrad, Nate Chinen, Jim Cory, Tom Grant, Gregg Biglieri, Eli Goldblatt, Stephanie Jane Parrino, Jeff Loo, Theodore A. Harris, Mike Magee, Wil Perkins, Deborah Burnham, UNSOUND, Danny Romero, Don Riggs, Shawn Walker, She-Haw, Scott Kramer, Judith Tomkins, 6 of the Unbearables - Alfred Vitale Ron Kolm, Jim Feast, Mike Carter, Sharon Mesmer, Carol Wierzbicki-,John Phillips, Quinn Eli, Molly Russakoff, Peggy Carrigan, Kelly McQuain, Patrick Kelly, Mark Sarro, Rocco Renzetti, Voices of a Different Dream - Annie Geheb, Ellen Ford Mason, Susan Windle - Bob Perelman, Jena Osman, Robyn Edelstein,Brian Patrick Heston, Francis Peter Hagen, Shankar Vedantam, Yolanda Wisher, Lynn Levin, Margaret Holley, Don Silver, Ross Gay, Heather Starr, Magdalena Zurawski, Daisy Fried, Knife & Fork Band, Alicia Askenase, Ruth Rouff, Kyle Conner, Tamara Oakman, Robyn Edelstein, Sara Ominsky, Thaddeus Rutkowski Richard Frey 500 South 25th Street Philadelphia, PA 19146 215-735-7156 richardfrey@dca.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 23:25:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: N.B. Mudlark MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New and On View: Mudlark No. 15 (2000) crayola in arcana | Jeffrey Little __________ For the past decade Jeffrey Little has been scuttling around stages and the small presses like a cobbler looking for a pair of lost claws, publishing in journals such as Exquisite Corpse, Shattered Wig, Columbia Poetry Review, Kiosk, Spout, Juxta, and Lost & Found Times. He's the author of a number of chapbooks including, Buckshot & Sammy Davis: A Landscape of Tubas (Undulating Bedsheets Productions, Los Angeles, CA), The Game Show Years (Shattered Wig Press, Baltimore, MD), and in collaboration with Jim Leftwich, Gnommonclature (Luna Bisonte Prods, Columbus, Oh). He's Also Recently Published The Book, The Hotel Sterno (Spout Press, Minneapolis, MN), which is available on Amazon.com or directly through Spout Press. __________ crayola gestures sun ra points at a hamilton blender hovering above the bandstand & just as fitfully worlds are formed, behind the milk tents of el monte & a yemeni dime store where all the bubble gum's aristotelian & can only be bought by decoding the gestures of the clerk, a woman named crayola who's convinced that a blue washcloth is wrapped inside a satellite dish & it's shrouding from us a colossal despair. __________ Spread the word. Far and wide, 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: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 23:42:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Derksen, Hunt, Watten at The Drawing Center Oct 3 / Shaw MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It was requested I forward this announcement to the list. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator -- From: Lytle Shaw Date: 9/24/00 10:44 PM -0400 Derksen, Hunt, Watten at The Drawing Center Oct 3 October 3 7pm The Drawing Center 35 Wooster (btwn Grand and Broome) Jeff Derksen Erica Hunt Barrett Watten Admission is $5; free to Drawing Center members ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 23:28:03 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: A poet working in the verbal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jonathan Mayhew wrote: > > Bob Grumman wrote "A simpler example would be the statement that a > composer composing for two voices would have to be more innovative, > other things being equal, than one composing for one voice." > > At the risk of enfuriating Bob G, I still don't agree with this. I get annoyed sometimes but I doubt you could infuriate me, Jonathan. > Minimalism, doing less with more, might in fact lead to more > innovation: e.g. Ornette Coleman's suppression of the piano in his > 1959 quartets. You couldn't say that if he had had a piano cum > conventional jazz changes to work with there would have been more > innovation there. Not there would have, but that there could have. Because then he could have done all he did without the piano AND done something innovative WITH the piano in an added section--which would have resulted in the further innovation of the suppressed piano parts acting with/against the piano parts. A problem with considering suppressed material in an art is, for me, that suppressing material is a form of using it. That is, an art contains certain elements, so to not use one is innovative, but depends for its effect on its reference to something ordinarily used. So I'm not sure we could say that minimalism reduces the elements of an art. > Again, it's simplistic to think of this in quantitative terms. > After all, if I said that a composer who worked had 101 voices > to work with would automatically have more innovative possibilities > than one with 55, you would probably think I'm crazy. No. He WOULD have more innovative possibilities if he really had 101 voices to work with. There would be a law of diminishing returns, I suspect, inasmuch as the human ear probably isn't capable of distinguishing 101 different voices. If it is, then you have the problem of the possibility of too much innovation (I don't believe innovation is always good, even effective innovation). > The question cannot be decided a priori, and the "ceteris > paribus" argument begs the question because nothing is ever equal > after the fact. Maybe at one point it will be more innovative to > suppress one aspect of an art see what happens to the rest. How > about a poem that couldn't, by definition, be represented by words > on the page? I don't follow. A poem is, by definition, words, so it can't not be represented by words on the page. > That could be more original than a visual poem. No, because a visual poem could, by definition, not be represented by words on the page OR by graphic elements on the page, which would make it capable of twice the innovativeness of the wordless poem. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 23:12:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: Visual Poetry. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit richard, welcome to the worlds of wr-eye-tings http://www.burningpress.org/wreyeting/ and webartery http://webartery.com/defib/webarterymembers.htm tom bell "richard.tylr" wrote: > > David. I found your "explanation" of visual poetry very interesting. (I'm not being ironic here.) If its the sort of -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 23:50:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/Handwrit.htm tom bell David Baptiste Chirot wrote: > > Actually there is a good deal of --and ever faster growing > bodo of--very > good work done in the field knonn affectionately/half joking as "RocK Art" > which deals very seriously with things like phosphenes and shamanistic -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 01:23:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Massey Subject: Re: The Red. by Richard Taylor. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit taggart meets dr. seuss, interesting. richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << The Red The blocks of red on red on red by black around by black by black by line by line by round. The red in red of red in red where black by back the white around. Around the bound about the white the red more red comes up the red. It rears its head. The eye the see the sight to see. The eye the see the light the sight. And light. The light not light not bright not dim not sun. The sun not round not up not down. The blue not there not green not grey.The grey ungrey not grey not black.The up not down the down not up. And the black not black not black on night. The light alight but light not light. The clock is dead. The clock awake alive like head. The head like blood like hot is red. The squares the slabs the reds the blocks are chops of chunks: the chunks the chunks the bits. The monks. And the red the red and round the black. (There is no black.) To you my red my square my thing: I fall and blubber like a sun-struck king. The red on red of red the blocks. The orange the green the blue. The see the sight the steel the grey.The shape the tall the dark the great. The high the high. The finger like a finger on the sky. The eye the seen. The green. O my blocks my reds my reds my blocks: orange is not is gnomes is gone. And the red in red. (There is no red.) The square that's not that's never that's there.If red be red not IS not not green: then red on red is you my thing.And if that is you by blocks by black are red around And black is black as black is black. And red is red is red. Richard Taylor. >> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 01:25:07 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: a poet working in the verbal In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bill writes: "One can argue, I think somewhat convincingly, that the more material an artist has to work with, the more opportunities for innovation present themselves." And rightfully, Bill, you do not sound completely convinced yourself. Mathews' _Selected Declarations of Dependence_ is a remarkable example of the possibilities of very limited material. Bill: "But of course an opportunity is not a sufficient cause. Frankly, I'm ready to declare a moratorium on the term "innovation." What did O'Hara say? "You just go on your nerve." No doubt literary history will sort it all out. Best to Bob and whomever, Bill" Clearly opportunity is not sufficient, absolutely. Is it even necessary? In a sense yes and no, for opportunity can be made from even empty space. So, there opportunity is, and isn't. Just go on your nerve, yes. And time will surely tell us something. And even after we time whispers in our ears it will one day all become dust. A friend recommended to me recently that I should spend more time looking at the stars and the dark in between. Thanks Bill Patrick -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Austinwja@AOL.COM Sent: Friday, September 22, 2000 11:44 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: a poet working in the verbal In a message dated 9/21/00 4:02:26 PM, BobGrumman@NUT-N-BUT.NET writes: << (Remember also, that my inital question was in response to Bill Austin's saying that language poets have been a good deal more innovative than visual poets.) >> This is true. But Bob's statement that visual poets are necessarily more "adventurous" than language poets predated my statement by a couple of weeks, and we disagree. My argument involves the major innovation of poststructuralism which stretches across disciplines--and langpo as its closest poetic relative. Just tonight I was listening to one of America's hot shot scientists on the subject of Quantum Theory. He mentioned that recent language centered art (vague term, but his, not mine), in his view, has fallen from the same tree, so to speak. How informed this guy is, I can't say. I tend to agree with whomever Bob is responding to, but to be fair Bob does not contend in his most recent post that vispo is de facto more innovative, though at times he does seem to be saying just that. One can argue, I think somewhat convincingly, that the more material an artist has to work with, the more opportunities for innovation present themselves. But of course an opportunity is not a sufficient cause. Frankly, I'm ready to declare a moratorium on the term "innovation." What did O'Hara say? "You just go on your nerve." No doubt literary history will sort it all out. Best to Bob and whomever, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 01:43:22 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Translation/Oasis In-Reply-To: <20000923172431.11644.qmail@web1105.mail.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael - I wrote a poem, or rather, i reworked an existing poem by translating it from one language to another 5 or 6 different languages. English to german to english to french to english and so on. After some editing (another translation!) it was clearly a new poem. Anyway, there were applications that do language translation. Part of the fun is the sloppiness and the reduction of what you are left to work with at the end. And the process is fascinating too. Maybe that's at least a partial avenue for you. I don't exactly know the full reach of these tools, so I would doubt such tools are available for, say, Esperanto. but I wouldn't exactly be startled if there were one. Incidentally, Oasis recently published this piece of mine in his Broadside Series. To plug what great work Stephen Ellis has done with these broadsides, recently I've some very good ones by Arielle Greenberg, Sheila Murphy, Gary Sullivan, Nada Gordon, Allen Bramhall, and many others. You can reach Stephen at stepellis@hotmail.com I think. His Broadsides Series is an amazing resource for poetry, in terms of price and scope and depth. They're only $2 a piece. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of michael amberwind Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 1:25 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Translation Project I am looking for people to help me translate my poems from English to French, then French to German, then German to Esperanto, then Esperanto to Basque, Basque to Persian, then Persian to Swahili, from Swahili to Navajo, then Navajo to Dutch and Yiddish and back to English again. If someone would be willing I would then like to translate this into American Sign Language. I suspect that this will be a more ambitious project than the King's Jame Bible, or even the now famous, but long forgotten, task of translating The Celestine Prophecies to Ebonics. Of course, I expect the finished version of my poems to wind up in more hotel rooms than The King Jame's Bible. I will of course require at least 20 near-sighted linguistics experts, and though the pay is low, which is to say non-existent, I believe the finished work will be of such a grand nature that merely having one's name attached to it will ensure one's place in the Pantheon of Literary Giants. Thank you, and good night. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 20:41:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Brink Subject: prose poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit UNTITLED: a magazine of prose poetry, presents its premier issue. 160 pages, 27 poets, including Rosmarie Waldrop, Jackson Mac Low, Gad Hollander, John Yau, Laynie Browne, Dennis Phillips... $8 Special to Poetics List: $6 Subscriptions: $12 for two issues Accepting submissions for the second issue. Mail to: Instress 327 Cleveland Ave. Santa Cruz, CA 95060 All checks payable to Leonard Brink, please. www.poetrypress.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 07:05:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: A poet working in the verbal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/25/00 7:41:48 PM, jmayhew@EAGLE.CC.UKANS.EDU writes: << Minimalism, doing less with more, might in fact lead to more innovation: e.g. Ornette Coleman's suppression of the piano in his 1959 quartets. You >> And leave us not forget John Cage. Atlas Eclipticalis For Three Flutes, as an example. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 12:25:02 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: adventures in poultry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed "But Bob's statement that visual poets are necessarily more 'adventurous' than language poets predated my statement by a couple of weeks, and we disagree. My argument involves the major innovation of poststructuralism which stretches across disciplines--and langpo as its closest poetic relative." Bill Austin I'm always struck -- and the Ubu site would be my case in point -- by how much visual and sound poetry is really antiquarian in much the same way that people who only write in sonnets or haiku are. The next time somebody invents a new sound, I want to hear it. One of the curious fates of poetic form is that once a genre has become identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it dissolves into the fabric of time. If the literary devices that have been associated with langpo catch on, it will suffer the same fate, so it's not ultimately a question of who has a better form. Rather, it is how one approaches the world and what currently exists. Most vizpo would rather look adventurous rather than be adventurous. Ditto the sonic set. But I frankly see little in the way of connection between post-structuralism and langpo other than temporal proximity. Most of langpo's instincts have been neo-structural, it would seem to me. Ron Silliman _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 10:37:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Hlothhere, Eadric, Wihred, and Ine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII == Hlothhere, Eadric, Wihred, and Ine "Hey, if you walk off with that cup and we're all drinking here, pay up a shilling and twelve to the king!" "But ah'ulab! If you walk out of here with a bit of bloodshed, watch out! Give the king 50 shilling, and do something or other for the host." The host: "I don't care what she gives me. I just want something or other. It's been a rough night, what with the drinking and all." The king: "You shouldn't have taken out that weapon! Now give 12 shillings to me and one to the host. You'll feel better in the morning. Put that away!" "Now let's go somewhere really neat! If you're sacrificing to the devils - I don't care what kind of sacrifice - and your wife doesn't know this, you've got to turn over just about everything! And that's not all - just wait! You've got to give healsfang as well - another 120 shillings! Ah'ulab! Where are you going to get all that?" Host: "It's terrific though if you're a slave! Just pay six shillings and sacrifice to all the devils you want! You might be flogged, but that's a small price to pay!" Slave: "Anything but this, I really don't want to be flogged! I promise to be good, I won't sacrifice to the devils any more! I promise, I promise! Look, I'm sweating!" Host: "Well, we could always fuck of course. But then we'd have to give it all up or be kicked out of the church." Slave: "We could start a church of our own!" Host: "We'd have to get a really big building!" King: "Not if I have anything to do with it!" Host: "We might have to fight, and if anyone fights in the palace, he's got to give up everything and the king decides whether he lives or dies!" King: "That's me as well! Now I don't know what to do! A'hulabi! I'll have to give up everything to the luscious slave! She'll be my master! That sounds excellent!" "If you guys continue fighting and drinking, I'll be really patient and you'll owe me 30 shillings." Slave: "It's worth it! This is really great!" "Hey, we're wandering way off the track here, but we're shouting and blowing horns and making noise in all sorts of ways, so we don't have to be killed or redeemed!" Host: "I promise not to fight in the castle!" ==== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 10:09:39 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "K.Silem Mohammad" Subject: Re: the anxiety of innovation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Richard Taylor writes: >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his fearless appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, all of which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the masculine pronoun. Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term has been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that there's a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what happens in poetry, etc. --Kasey ............................ """""""""""""""""""""""""""" K. SILEM MOHAMMAD Santa Cruz, California immerito@hotmail.com http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 13:31:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Broder, Michael" Subject: Upcoming Readings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable First I don't read for a year, then I do two readings in one week... Monday, October 9, 2000, at 8:00 PM The Poetry Project St. Mark's Church 131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Ave) New York, New York I'll be reading with Kristin Stuart. Admission is $7; $4 students; $3 members. Subway Directions: Take the N/R to 8th Street or the 6 to Astor Place = and walk east. Thursday, October 12, 2000, at 8:00 PM Tillie's Cafe 248 DeKalb Avenue (corner of Vanderbilt Avenue) Brooklyn, New York I'll be reading with Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhr=E1n and Ingrid Rivera-Dessuit Suggested contribution is $3. Tillie's is in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, not far from the Brooklyn side of = the Manhattan=20 Bridge. Subway Directions to Tillie's: D, M, N, Q, or R to DeKalb station, and walk about 10 minutes down = DeKalb=20 (you'll be walking against the flow of traffic). 2, 3, 4, or 5 to Nevins station. You'll exit onto Flatbush at Fulton. = Cross Fulton and walk one block up Flatbush to DeKalb. Turn right and = it's=20 about a 10 minute walk. C to Lafayette station. Walk one block north to DeKalb (at Fort Greene = Park), then right about 5 or 6 blocks. G to Washington-Clinton. You'll exit on the north side of Lafayette = St.=20 Walk one block west to Vanderbilt, turn right. It's one block north. If you need more info, contact me: Michael Broder (212) 802-1752 Work (212) 246-5074 Home mbroder@whcom.com Read my poem, "What the Falconer Sees," in the current issue of = Brooklyn Review Online. http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pubindex.htm Thanks for your support. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 17:19:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am uttterly mystified by the turn that this thread on metaphor & metonymy has taken. Some members of this list seem to use these terms as weapons in their petty literary wars. Others feel compelled to put Jakobson in his place, back there with dead-end structuralism, etc. I've been reading Jakobson for the past 20 years, not just the trendy stuff on poetics and semiotics and the stuff on art in that popular poetics collection published by Harvard Univ. Press and that poets feel obliged to cite if not read, but also the techie stuff on phonology, distinctive features, the linguistic mark, the origins and development of Indo-European metrics, linguistic typology, linguistic aphasia, the concept of linguistic zero, shifters, etc etc etc. There is not one person on this list, not one, who comes even close to having the range and depth of insight into the operations of language in us that Jakobson had. So he's been dead for nearly twenty years. He was fallible, like the Pope and Charles Bernstein. Some of his last work was a re-hash of earlier work. Okay. Time to carve him up, I guess. Absolutely pathetic. George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 19:14:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Writers House Subject: Upcoming Webcasts from the Kelly Writers House MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Poetics List members -- Please consider joining us from a distance for one or both of these two upcoming readings. ************************************* Attention Webcast Fans!! Two great upcoming Webcasts from Writers House: Rick Moody on September 28th at 6:00PM and PhillyTalks with: Poets Steve McCaffery and Lisa Robertson on Oct. 3rd at 6:00 PM ************************************** Please RSVP to wh@english.upenn.edu for either (or both) programs. We will send you specific instructions about accessing these webcasts. Hope to hear from you soon. Rick Moody's novels are _Garden State_ (Pushcart Press, 1992), _The Ice Storm_ (Little, Brown & Co., 1994), and _Purple America_ (Little, Brown & Co., 1997). He also has a collection of stories, _The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven_ (Little, Brown & Co., 1995), and has co-edited, with Darcey Steinke, the anthology _Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited_ (Little, Brown & Co., 1997). His short work has appeared in _New Yorker_, _The New York Times_,__Harper's_, _Esquire_, _The Paris Review_, _The Atlantic_, and elsewhere. His forthcoming collection of stories, _Demonology_, will be published in winter of 2001. ******** Steve McCaffery is the author of numerous books, including _The Cheat of Words_ (ECW Press), _The Black Debt_ (Nightwood Editions), _North of Intention_ (Roof), and _Panopticon_ (Blewointmentpress). Rasula's books include _Tabula Rasula_ (Station Hill) and _The American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality Effects, 1940-1990_ (Refiguring English Studies). Lisa Robertson's books and chapbooks include _The Apothecary_ (Tsunami 1991), _XEclogue_ (Tsunami 1993; rev. New Star 1999), _The Badge_ (The Berkeley Horse/Mindware 1994), _The Descent_ (Meow 1996), _Debbie: an epic_ (New Star 1997) and _Soft Architecture: A Manifesto_ (Artspeak/Dazibao 1999). Her recent poetry and criticism appears in _American Book Review_, _Big Allis_, _Boundary2_, _Mix, Nest: a magazine of interiors_, _Raddle Moon_, _Sulphur_, _Stand_ and _West Coast Line_. "From the office for Soft Architecture" is serialized in _Front_ magazine (December 1999-ongoing). A selection from _The Weather_ is published in _W_ #1. ---------------------------- The Kelly Writers House wh@dept.english.upenn.edu 3805 Locust Walk 215-573-WRIT Philadelphia, PA 19104 http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 20:47:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Kimmelman, Burt" Subject: Upcoming Readings in NYC Comments: cc: "postmail@cstone.net" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain KGB Bar Readings - Mondays at 7:30 85 E. 4th Street (off Second Avenue), NYC (212.505.3360) 10/2 - Timothy Liu and Rodney Phillips 10/16 - Paul Hoover and Rebecca McClanahan 10/23 - Amy Bartlett, Andrew Krivak, and Martin Stannard 10/30 - Cathy Bowman and Diann Blakely 11/6 - Colette Inez and Burt Kimmelman 11/13 - Alice Notley, Anselm and Edmund Berrigan 12/4 - Dean Kostos, Rick Pernod, and Ed Webster 12/11 - Katy Lederer and Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 07:30:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing In-Reply-To: <163173.3178907975@ubppp248-31.dialin.buffalo.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this is a terrific idea! At 9:59 PM -0400 9/25/00, Poetics List Administration wrote: >forthcoming this Saturday, 30 September 2000 >here, on the Poetics List . . . > > > A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing > > >an experimental use of the Poetics List as a forum for extended >considerations/responses engaging a suggested field of issues; >the topic in this case has been introduced by Dodie Bellamy in >her short piece =Body/Sex/Writing=. > >featuring responses by: > >Taylor Brady >Robert Gluck >Laura Moriarty >Jen Hofer >Kevin Killian >Joe Amato >Kristin Prevallet >Michael Kelleher >Robin Tremblay-McGaw >David Buuck >Juliana Spahr >Susan Wheeler >Mark Wallace >Alicia Cohen >Matthias Regan >Ron Silliman >Rachel Blau DuPlessis >Brian Stefans >Jonathan Skinner > > >Who was asked: invitations were made to subscribers and non-subscribers >alike based on previous writings on this topic, either in posts to the >Poetics List or in other publications; many were invited, and I am >grateful to these who came forward to participate. > >What is hoped-for: that this exchange will challenge the formal constraints >of the listserv, chiefly its tendency toward shorter and more ephemeral >statements vis-a-vis traditionally-published documents; and, on the >contrary, >that this exchange can exploit the tendency of the listserv to informal >dialogue and rapid response, extending this colloquium past the Colloquium >and into broader conversation. > > >Christopher W. Alexander >poetics list moderator ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 07:40:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: N.B. Mudlark In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" jeffrey little is terrific, and i'm glad to see him get some bandwidth on poetix! At 11:25 PM -0400 9/25/00, William Slaughter wrote: >New and On View: Mudlark No. 15 (2000) > >crayola in arcana | Jeffrey Little > >__________ > >For the past decade Jeffrey Little has been scuttling around stages and >the small presses like a cobbler looking for a pair of lost claws, >publishing in journals such as Exquisite Corpse, Shattered Wig, Columbia >Poetry Review, Kiosk, Spout, Juxta, and Lost & Found Times. He's the >author of a number of chapbooks including, Buckshot & Sammy Davis: A >Landscape of Tubas (Undulating Bedsheets Productions, Los Angeles, CA), >The Game Show Years (Shattered Wig Press, Baltimore, MD), and in >collaboration with Jim Leftwich, Gnommonclature (Luna Bisonte Prods, >Columbus, Oh). He's Also Recently Published The Book, The Hotel Sterno >(Spout Press, Minneapolis, MN), which is available on Amazon.com or >directly through Spout Press. > >__________ > >crayola gestures > >sun ra points at a hamilton blender hovering >above the bandstand & just as fitfully worlds >are formed, behind the milk tents of el monte > >& a yemeni dime store where all the bubble >gum's aristotelian & can only be bought by >decoding the gestures of the clerk, a woman > >named crayola who's convinced that a blue >washcloth is wrapped inside a satellite dish >& it's shrouding from us a colossal despair. > >__________ > >Spread the word. Far and wide, > >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, 26 Sep 2000 10:10:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Camille Martin Subject: Lit City MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ---------------------------------- * L * I * T * * * C * I * T * Y * ---------------------------------- is pleased to present a poetry reading featuring Lee Ann Brown and Ivan Arguelles 7:30 pm, Tuesday, October 3 Ellis Marsalis Jazz Studio New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) 2800 Chartres (Bywater) / New Orleans, LA This event is free and open to the public. A reception and booksigning will follow the reading. ******************************* LEE ANN BROWN'S full-length book _Polyverse_ (Sun & Moon, 1999) won the New American Poetry Series Competition. She has performed her poetry and shown her films internationally and has received numerous writing fellowships, including the New York Foundation for the Arts and The MacDowell Colony. Her poetry has been widely published in anthologies and journals. Patrick Pritchett calls _Polyverse_ "the most entertaining book of poetry I've read in years" and finds in her work "a liberating poetics of permission." IVAN ARGUELLES' most recent work is the long two-volume poem _Madonna Septet_ (Potes & Poets Press, 2000). His book _Looking for Mary Lou_ received the 1989 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. Often referred to as a surrealist, his poetry goes beyond the definition of that label. Jake Berry calls Arguelles "a scoundrel of cosmic proportions. He raids the great mythic foundations of our cognizance, east and west, and reshapes them according to the whims of his own hyperphantasamystic muse. He revels in the banquet of liberated soul ..." Books by Lee and Brown and Ivan Arguelles are available at Maple Street Book Shop, 7523 Maple St. Please support this local independent bookseller! For more information about Lit City, please contact Camille Martin at / (504) 861-8832. Lit City is a New Orleans-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Your tax-deductible contributions are gratefully accepted. Checks payable to Lit City may be sent to Lit City / 7725 Cohn St. / New Orleans, LA 70118. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 12:17:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: SLAUGHTER MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey it just occured to me..... Isn't William Slaughter the name of the character (let's say protagonist) in Hal Hartley's excellent underrated film TRUST? Chris William Slaughter wrote: > New and On View: Mudlark No. 15 (2000) > > crayola in arcana | Jeffrey Little > > __________ > > For the past decade Jeffrey Little has been scuttling around stages and > the small presses like a cobbler looking for a pair of lost claws, > publishing in journals such as Exquisite Corpse, Shattered Wig, Columbia > Poetry Review, Kiosk, Spout, Juxta, and Lost & Found Times. He's the > author of a number of chapbooks including, Buckshot & Sammy Davis: A > Landscape of Tubas (Undulating Bedsheets Productions, Los Angeles, CA), > The Game Show Years (Shattered Wig Press, Baltimore, MD), and in > collaboration with Jim Leftwich, Gnommonclature (Luna Bisonte Prods, > Columbus, Oh). He's Also Recently Published The Book, The Hotel Sterno > (Spout Press, Minneapolis, MN), which is available on Amazon.com or > directly through Spout Press. > > __________ > > crayola gestures > > sun ra points at a hamilton blender hovering > above the bandstand & just as fitfully worlds > are formed, behind the milk tents of el monte > > & a yemeni dime store where all the bubble > gum's aristotelian & can only be bought by > decoding the gestures of the clerk, a woman > > named crayola who's convinced that a blue > washcloth is wrapped inside a satellite dish > & it's shrouding from us a colossal despair. > > __________ > > Spread the word. Far and wide, > > 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, 26 Sep 2000 12:23:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: Burnham Blurb by Bowerwing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey, I've been reading AIRBORNE PHOTO (stories) by Clint Burnham and find it a very fun (one could say poetic in its use of language....) book. I think I like it better than his poetry (but then again I also consider David Henderson's "SCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY" to be one of the best epic poems of recent years.....) and so I figured Id plug it plug it that is without having to get in an anti-usa jab a la Bowering's critique of "a lower mainland,"... Hey George, do you really think Burnham's point in these stories is to satirize something Americans DO and Canadians are ABOVE? Am I missing some canadian in-jokiness here? Chris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 23:12:33 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jonathan's point is excellent. What is needed in such discusions is or are some examples. And they (critics such as Perloff - who is good in the enthusiasm she imparts and her insights otherwise - or Jacobson ) should define their terms very precisely. My feeling is that metaphor, beautiful as it can be, is mostly an ornation (my word I think) while metonymy is a way of leaping from one concept to a blast of categories. But of course that's just obfuscation and pseudo poetry. If I say:"Here comes "Wing Nut" and I was the bloke that used to yell that out after his courier shift, (at about 4.30 pm)I'd be meaning - rather meanly - that the nut referred to was a personage posessing two large flanges in a sort of permanent orthogonal excrutiation from both sides of his caput. The said gentleman, would, in addition, be of such a phlegmatic (or perhaps a phlegmasyntagmatic) state of seemingly paleozoic and frozen stupefaction to the degree that (one think's of T.S's "eye" outstaring from the Protozoic slime of history's misery at this departure)his physiognomy's (for better or worser)disposed expression could be mistaken for a (long now) fleshless and breathless skull of a benighted being the dimensions of whose apperceptions were or are tragically in an exponential (and to some degree the function of the integral of the metronyme ( or should that be the Moogal metalogic Moon moan as described by Jonson B.S.A.L.L 1978?Eh?) )inverse function of his faculties for, or against, as it were, or was, or wasn't? Eh? Im? Eh? But that wouldnt be fair. But it would at least be an example of metonymy. Others may be able to uncover something more succinct and to the purpose outside of the three course meal example. Dickens was a great one for metaphors. In fact, it can be shown that any mark of any description: or even the idea of such a mark, is a metaphor. So in Bleak House (to take a fairly obvious example) the fog befogs and befouls old corroding London, and destroys, like a lethal legal spider of penury and evil, the wicked web of captured and pitifully struggling and shrieking souls, the very heart of Goodness Itself - beside the old river Thames her self. In fact old T.S. probably stole his "the yellow fog that rubbed across the window panes" etc from Charles himself! Itself! But, seriously, joking aside. There's too much confusing and imprecise jargon in French and German philopsophy. And what good does it all do? Is anyone happier for Derrida or Sassure? I think they talk a lot of crap: well, its sometimes interesting crap. But dont try and tell me that a wing nut is anything else but a bloody wing nut. Richard Taylor. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harold Teichman" To: Sent: Monday, September 25, 2000 3:26 AM Subject: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor > Bravo to Jonathan Mayhew for: > > "Jakobson I think made the first mistake by seeing metaphor and metonymy > as polar opposites. As a result of Jakobson and Lacan, noone seems to > know what metonymy is. That is, they make it into some abstract master > trope rather than thinking of real cases of metonymy and how they > function... I am constantly coming across really basic mistakes in > people who should know better. It makes me think my entire discipline of > literary criticism is built on quicksand." > > The venerable aureole that always surrounds the name of Jakobson in > poetics circles is something of a mystery to me. In his writing on > semantics he does little more than cobble other people's ideas together > with his gross misunderstandings of technical terms (e.g. > 'metalanguage') and utterly banal, though questionable, 'commonsense' > models of the way language works (e.g. language as an exchange of > 'messages'). I have yet to run into anything I would remotely classify > as an insight in his famous later writings. His very selective > citations of experimental work or anecdotal evidence are risible. > > [I am sure this contention will be dismissed out of hand as the ravings > of a crank, but let me enlist the support of J. H. Prynne: in 'Stars, > Tigers and the Shape of Words' he mentions "the highly regarded (if also > curiously anecdotal and unrigorous) later work of Roman Jakobson" (p. > 19), and in 'China Figures', alluding to Jakobson's 'Two Aspects' paper, > he says: "The use of these figural terms [metaphor and metonymy] in > recent linguistic and structuralist analysis does not yet rest on stable > definition." (footnote to p. 369 in 'New Songs from a Jade Terrace'). > The word to cherish in this last is 'yet'. Thanks to Nate Dorward (who > may not agree with my and Prynne's verdict on Jakobson) for providing me > with copies of these papers.] > > Jakobson's windy projection thesis ("the poetic function projects the > principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of > combination") manages to say nothing at all, simply borrowing Saussure's > associative/syntagmatic 'axes' (which were tacked onto and cannot easily > be reconciled with the signifier/signified relation or the langue/parole > distinction or the 'system of differences' idea), buying a specious > whiff of authority with the use of a technical, 'rigorous' word like > 'project', which has unearned cartographical and geometrical > connotations, among others. It has about as much content as my dictum: > a three-course meal 'projects' the 'principle of ternarity' from the > 'axis of enumeration' into the 'axis of alimentation'. > > The emptiness of Jakobson's 'rigorous distinctions' is made quite > evident in their careless application by even some of our best critics > (Jonathan cites de Man in his original post). Another example: > Perloff, in her 'After Language Poetry' essay (on the Poetics site), > while justly slapping the wrists of an unnamed author in 'Moving > Borders', writes: "Metonymy is the trope that relates one image or > phrase to another along the axis of contiguity, as in "hut," "hovel," > "poor little house," "shack" (Jakobson's example)." In fact, in > Jakobson's schema, these words are arrayed along the axis of > selection/association, waiting to be slotted into some > noun-phrase-place-holder in some complex expression on the axis of > contiguity. But the point is: who cares? The amount of real > analytical, critical or theoretical work done by these bogus > distinctions is exiguous anyway. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:20:11 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "richard.tylr" Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David. I agree overall. I'd add that Williams was the more "consciouly innovative" writer. Or he was possessed of the future - not only the American laguage or idiom. Eliot also somewhat seemed to want to "get into" demotic language (see the "He do the police in..." (from Dickens) that preceded the Waste Land before Pound excised it with one thrust of his pen), but he was always looking back to the past: obsessed with a belief that civilisation (or the spiritual state or whatever) had declined. So even Pound seems more concerned than him about WW1 (as in "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly") and the Waste Land to him is an abstract one (more or less). But Williams creates Patterson which may have a history including both depravity and wonderful things - but there it is (albeit as a grand metaphor as The Waste Land is also in a way). There's a sense in the best American poetry of an opening up, of hope, or open endedness.(one thinks of Eliot as a British writer - I actually thought he was for years until I "encountered" W C Williams in relatively recent times). Of course Ashbery undercuts this in books like "A Vermont Note Book" (one of my favourites) or in his poem: "these Lacustrines Cities" that "grew out of loathing" (there goes that word): "They emerged until a tower controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back into the past for swans and tapering branches, Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless/ love." But I dont see him or others of his kind as gloomy in outlook as Eliot. Eliot, "genius" to use that overused and dubius term had his rival in the poet of those "tapering branches". Williams would have studied Sein with interest, bur Eliot would (I think he did) dismiss her out of hand (or come up with some convoluted reference to Donne or Swinburne or whoever or something in French) but Williams learnt from Pound and Stein as well as the French writers and was probably more "in touch" with "ornery life" as well as having a keen interest in modern art -art in general.Of course both were influenced by surealism and probably the "irony" and humour of la Forgue. But Eliot tend toward a negative world view. Williams, despite his "slips" and his sometimes angry "crankiness" seems to be trying to engage with the extarordinary "reality that surrounds us, but also in another "reality", that of consciousness: "The value of the imagination to the writer consists in its ability to make words.its unique power is to give created forms reality,actual existence" (from "Spring and All") and as well as th importance of imagination he writes eg. about a work of Juan Gris. Williams is thinking about the proces of artistic creation, and of nature, and the mind. Eliot did too somewhat but one feels he would never quite take the risks that Williams too, or write: "...But the thing he never knows and never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is. And this moment is the only thing in which I am interested..." Eliot may have attempted to in "Burnt Norton" but he is al;ways more "abstract" and distant from the reader than Williams. Regards, Richard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Baptiste Chirot" To: Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 9:24 AM Subject: wcw and tthe wasteland > A number of commentors have hit the nail on the head--WCW realizes that just as > the vibrant, lively wide open poetry scene of the late teens and early > tewnties--with intense connections wit an interests in and influences from > modern art (teh Armory show for example, the Marcel Duchamp edited "Wrongrong" > ha, etc etc)-- > WCW realised tat just as this scene is cutting loose, old TSE hits > the Long Ball--the utlimate in his series of masterful PopSongs--and, > coupled with is statements re poetry, a new anon which is a rearrangemet of > the old as is so often done by any movement worht is salt--remember "les > grandes tetes molles" of Surrealism for example., or some of the betes noirs > of this list--couples with all this formidable education and exptriatiion, > Eliot also announces he is turning his back not only this native tongue, > with which WCW and others are so concerned, and gives hi allegiance to te > British Language, its Church and its Crown. > > WCW as it has often been noted had more than a passing animus > towards the British--which may well have have carried over into the > betrayal > of brother Eliot of his american sisters and brethern, (think of the > mighty > work of Gertrdue Stein for example)- so intent on making something of > American life literature and language--WCW's animus came from his father, an > anglophile--i recall reading a year os or ago on the Cap-L a violent > anti-WCW attack due to his writing a poeme applauding to some degree a german > bombing of London--you caan imagine the outrage over this!--however one > person possessed of more critical balance did point out that the pome may > well have had to do with WCW's animosity to his pro_british father, as much > as anything to with the war, > > In retrospect, Williams was not wrong in his judgement of the > effect of Eliot's not only poetry but his prononciementos regarding poetry > and his views on the profession of poetry, and as well is relation with > langauge, State and power/poetics. > > One of his quirkier insights thought among his earlier essays is his > interest in popular culture--esp the British musical hall. > > I think one of WCW's lasting fears with the Eliot--New Criticism > lines of developement in american poetry was te eschewing o ways he saw of > such importance--the influenecs of modern painting, of he radio, advertising, > documents--hence his place I beleive in the Pound-Williams-Paul Mectalf line > connect with, interested n and influenced by hieroglphys, various forms of > notations (jottings on the run, calligraphies, the uses of the type > writer and other new technologies--the interest in paining, music, dance, > history, the use of quotation, the attention with the conrete and as well > the heard-- > > "A poem can be made of anything" WCW asserted--and demonstrated-- > > and as Robert Grenier posed the question in a Talk at Franconia in > a 1997 edition of :that:-- > > in what way s can we work with the proposition in the earlier wcw > (SPRiNG AND ALL for example) and the later "no ideas but in things/mr" > from > PATTERSON-- ) > > not as either/or" but as "both/and" > > think that Grenier is indicating how much still remains open in > the > works of the early american modernists--how much was not shut down by > Eliot and the Formalists of our times . . . > > Grenier's own work and its reception my be seen as part of that > long line of work held at bay by the Eliot influence . . . > > a final anecdote, from an interview in ROBERT SMITHSSN'S COLLECTED > WRITINGS: Smithson is recounting his vist as very young unknown painter > to > the home of WCW--a pilgrammge made by so many young unknown arists and > poets and eidtors of itte mags in search of at east a ittle blurb from the > Master-- > for some many decades to the himelf until late in life largely unknown > WCW--Smithson was accompnied by his friend the poet Irving Latyon--at one > point WCW remakred to Smithson how much he always enjoyed the disucsssions > with painters, all his life . . . far mre than those wth poets . . . > > --dave baptiste chirot ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 12:16:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Goethe-Institut Reception Subject: CALENDAR OF EVENTS GOETHE-INSTITUT SAN FRANCISCO Comments: To: "ANNOUNCE CULTURAL EVENTS @ GOETHE-INSTITUT" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium Fall 2000 - Spring 2001 Schedule, UC Berkeley Evenings, 7:30-9:00pm: Townsend Center (220 Stephens Hall *) All Lectures are free and open to the public. A series of discussions at UC Berkeley and Xerox Parc, Palo Alto, will bring together the creative minds of ZKM, the Center for Art and Technology in Karlsruhe, UC Berkeley and Xerox Parc, Sillicon Valley, to discuss the interrelation between art, technology and culture. Jeffrey Shaw, director of the Institute for Visual Media at the ZKM, leads a unique research and production facility where artists and scientists work together to develop profound artistic applications in the new digital technologies. Jeffrey Shaw will be the featured speaker of the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at UC Berkeley under the aegis of Ken Goldberg. In addition Mr. Shaw will work together with cutting edge technology groups from the San Francisco and Silicon Valley communities at Xerox Parc. 2000: 27 Sep: Amy Franceschini, Artist, San Francisco Communiculture: Design for Jet Lag 11 Oct: Jeffrey Shaw, ZKM, Germany** Interactivities and Virtualities 27 Nov: Rich Gold, Xerox Parc (UC Regents Lecture) Plenitude: Reflections on a Life Making Stuff 2001: 29 Jan: Eduardo Kac, Chicago Art Institute From Telepresence to Transgenic Art 19 Feb: Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Artist, Montreal Relational Architecture: Building Digital Anti-Monuments 19 Mar: C5, Artist Corporation, San Jose Data and its Discontents 16 Apr: Natalie Bookchin, Cal Arts Street Action on the Superhighway Sponsored by UC Berkeley's Office of the Chancellor College of Engineering Interdisciplinary Studies Program Pacific Film Archive Townsend Center for the Humanities College of Engineering Office of Media Services ** Co-sponsored by Dieta Sixt and Goethe-Institut San Francisco Directions to the Lecture Room: Stephens Hall is in the heart of the Berkeley campus, directly south of the Campanile Tower. Park near Bancroft and College and walk into the campus. Enter from the East (Faculty Glade) side of the building: Up the brick steps through a decorative gate. Up another set of stairs to a large terrace and you'll see the entrance to the Townsend Center. For updated information, please see: http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/ Organized by Ken Goldberg with Advisory Board, goldberg@ieor.berkeley.edu, or phone 510-643-9670 ------------------------------------------------- "Creative Disturbances" will be moderated by Rich Gold and feature Beau Takahara, Mark Beam and their groups as part of a round table discussion at Xerox Parc. Xerox Parc, Palo Alto Tuesday, October 10, 4-7 pm "Creative Disturbances" Invitation only ------------------------------------------------- Goethe-Institut San Francisco 530 Bush Street San Francisco, CA 94108 Phone: 415 263-8760 Fax: 415 391-8715 http://www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 23:29:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: Tristan Corbiere? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Arielle, Chirot is right about Eliot, but don't forget to look in Pound too, 8 references in Literary Essays alone, for example: "If Corbiere invented no process he at any rate restored French verse to the vigour of Villon and to an intensity that no Frenchman had touched during the intervening four centuries." (33) bonne chance, Sylvester ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 01:18:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hi, Ron. Without wanting to defend vizpo or sound poetry from the charge of conservatism - for the simple reason that I know much less about either than many of our conversants - I think there's a troubling stasis to the account of cultural forms you've provided here. For instance, while it would be difficult to disagree that "once a genre has become identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it dissolves into the fabric of time," it seems possible to say that that persistence is not necessarily simple - that those 'same' forms, by their persistence into differing circumstances, or their re-appearance within a different context, can take on an altogether different meaning and one that is not necessarily only a reversal of their previous valence, e.g., the conservation of what had been in some sense radically divergent from the forms prevalent in its milieu. In this sense, it seems the point would be less "a new sound" than the right sound at the right time: one wouldn't want to =resurrect= Keats, but to play Keats in the right key (read: circumstance) could be very useful indeed. Similarly, while the apparently endless reiteration of L=A=N=G=P=O-like techniques by, say, younger writers not yet familiar with the scene of the 1990s does ring out more loudly the wedding-knell for that project - wedding it to institutions that had been its negative ground: not to the university so much as to Literature broadly conceived - the appearance in some contemporary work of techniques disseminated by L=A=N=G=P=Oets may be not repetition but something closer to citation. Obviously, the case may be more difficult to make over the short term; but my point isn't so much to make it with regard to any particular exempla as to argue for the possibility of citationality as a category of analysis, and even one that may reside beyond subjective intention. I'm intrigued by your assessment of L=etc. as a "neo-structural" impulse, and this seems somehow exactly right to me, at least with regard to the early work, L=P proper: partially characterized by its regard only for the synchronic, its analysis of experience as a sub-set of institutional determinations, its emphasis on and hope for clarity in the face of ideology. If, as has recently been claimed, L=P is a child of 60s radicalism rather than the recourse to theory that began in the 70s - and this seems plausible, given the lag-time for the thorough establishment in the 'States of post-structuralist theory - it would have to occupy some position on the axis of Structuralism-versus-Phenomenology. One might not be too far amiss even in taking seriously the half-serious proposition that the specific discourse of the "experimental," a term that has become so troubling to us more recently, is the residue of an Althusserian notion of scientificity as offering the aforementioned clarity. It's this line of thought that has made the proximity of The Black Tarantula/Kathy Acker to L=Poets in the Bay area a source of surprise to me, because her mode is so other; but perhaps in this reaction I'm over-stating the extent to which structuralism may have been a founding assumption of the writers in that scene. cheers, Chris Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator --On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 12:25:02 GMT "Ron Silliman" wrote: > "But Bob's statement that visual poets are necessarily more > 'adventurous' than language poets predated my statement by a couple of > weeks, and we disagree. My argument involves the major innovation of > poststructuralism which stretches across disciplines--and langpo as its > closest poetic relative." Bill Austin > > I'm always struck -- and the Ubu site would be my case in point -- by how > much visual and sound poetry is really antiquarian in much the same way > that people who only write in sonnets or haiku are. The next time > somebody invents a new sound, I want to hear it. > > One of the curious fates of poetic form is that once a genre has become > identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it > dissolves into the fabric of time. If the literary devices that have been > associated with langpo catch on, it will suffer the same fate, so it's > not ultimately a question of who has a better form. Rather, it is how > one approaches the world and what currently exists. Most vizpo would > rather look adventurous rather than be adventurous. Ditto the sonic set. > > But I frankly see little in the way of connection between > post-structuralism and langpo other than temporal proximity. Most of > langpo's instincts have been neo-structural, it would seem to me. > > Ron Silliman > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 21:06:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Corbett Subject: my quarrel with negative capability In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII is that it ain't Keats' idea! it's William Hazlitt's! the idea, if not the phrase, is embedded in his _Treatise on Human Nature_. it reads as if a Lockean tried to explain benevolence (18th c. altruism) instead of the state. item: he claims that we can be no more interested in our future self than another's future self. they are both equally fictional. from here, with a picquant turn of phrase and poetic embroidering, you might well get n.c. but perhaps without its fatal flaw. n.c. hides the subject as if it is simply not a problem (and thus we get Bardolatry and still later Keatolatry: the fantasy of the poet as everyone), while this argument says the subject _is_ the other in some sense. i (at least in the future) is another. though i am not Hazlitt expert, it is about time for his revival. painter, biographer, critic, and, in his most peculiar moment, writer of a cringe inducing, thinly disguised dissection of his "crush" on and subsequent "crushing" by his landlady's daughter. and called it "Liber Amoris": that is, "free love." Robert Corbett -- Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you call that sophistry then what is Love" - Lisa Robertson On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, K.Silem Mohammad wrote: > Richard Taylor writes: > > >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn > >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all > >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then > >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". > > Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his fearless > appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, all of > which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the > masculine pronoun. > > Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term has > been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that there's > a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what happens > in poetry, etc. > > --Kasey > > ............................ > """""""""""""""""""""""""""" > K. SILEM MOHAMMAD > Santa Cruz, California > immerito@hotmail.com > http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 00:51:38 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/26/00 7:48:56 PM, tottels@HOTMAIL.COM writes: I'm always struck -- and the Ubu site would be my case in point -- by how much visual and sound poetry is really antiquarian in much the same way that people who only write in sonnets or haiku are. The next time somebody invents a new sound, I want to hear it. One of the curious fates of poetic form is that once a genre has become identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it dissolves into the fabric of time. If the literary devices that have been associated with langpo catch on, it will suffer the same fate, so it's not ultimately a question of who has a better form. Rather, it is how one approaches the world and what currently exists. Most vizpo would rather look adventurous rather than be adventurous. Ditto the sonic set. But I frankly see little in the way of connection between post-structuralism and langpo other than temporal proximity. Most of langpo's instincts have been neo-structural, it would seem to me. >> Helloooo Ron Silliman! A bit surprised to read the above claim. I assume by "neo-structural" you mean a later version of structuralism? a later, perhaps more recent concern with, and manipulation of, structure? If so, then that is precisely how one would define poststructuralism. Nowhere does Derrida, for example, claim that it is possible to go beyond structure. The one major difference between structuralism and poststructuralism, and it is a rather drastic one, is Derrida's exposition of structuralist bad faith, that structuralists inadvertently privilege speech over writing (while intending to do the opposite). What Derrida gave us is really just a correction. I can't imagine that you think langpo draws a line between speech and writing, placing the former at a higher hierarchal position (Do you?). Langpo's concerns seem quite different from the transparencies "spoken word" (in all of its historical forms) . Langpo contains speech forms, examines their constituents, within its fascination with writing. (The page, its set up, its spacing, is crucial to langpo, no?) Which is Derridean, to say the least. So, therefore, langpo is very much in line with the poststructuralist project. Not to mention conversations in L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E and Content's Dream in which Derrida becomes the focus of some interesting analyses and disagreements. One may argue convincingly that langpo, theoretical as it is, was an inevitable poetic complement to a new age of theory, a time when art and criticism dropped their borders, exposed their intertextuality, and that also is Derridean. The lack of complete agreement between principles is quite different from "little in the way of connection." I understand the desire to forge an independent identity, but most important aesthetic events have been linked to strong philosophical ones, as far as I can tell. This is a plus, clearly. In recent history the Romantics/German Idealists, the Existential novelists in France (and America), Eliot's debt to, and partial disagreement with, Bradley, Stevens and Santy, and more importantly Kant, and on and on . . . . A poetics linked to the Zeitgeist has a better chance of surviving, I imagine, than those not so linked. Langpo is no exception. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 21:59:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Burnham Blurb by Bowerwing In-Reply-To: <39D0CD76.59774DFD@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > > >plug it that is without having to get in an anti-usa jab a la Bowering's >critique of >"a lower mainland,"... > >Hey George, do you really think Burnham's point in these stories is to >satirize something >Americans DO and Canadians are ABOVE? >Am I missing some canadian in-jokiness here? > >Chris I'm sorry. I dont know what you are referring to. In what way did the blurb have anything to do with the USA? gb -- George Bowering Fax 604-266-9000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 01:19:22 -0400 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: Re: SLAUGHTER In-Reply-To: <39D0CC17.B1F22F0F@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Matthew Slaughter. Patrick -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of chris stroffolino Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 12:17 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: SLAUGHTER Hey it just occured to me..... Isn't William Slaughter the name of the character (let's say protagonist) in Hal Hartley's excellent underrated film TRUST? Chris William Slaughter wrote: > New and On View: Mudlark No. 15 (2000) > > crayola in arcana | Jeffrey Little > > __________ > > For the past decade Jeffrey Little has been scuttling around stages and > the small presses like a cobbler looking for a pair of lost claws, > publishing in journals such as Exquisite Corpse, Shattered Wig, Columbia > Poetry Review, Kiosk, Spout, Juxta, and Lost & Found Times. He's the > author of a number of chapbooks including, Buckshot & Sammy Davis: A > Landscape of Tubas (Undulating Bedsheets Productions, Los Angeles, CA), > The Game Show Years (Shattered Wig Press, Baltimore, MD), and in > collaboration with Jim Leftwich, Gnommonclature (Luna Bisonte Prods, > Columbus, Oh). He's Also Recently Published The Book, The Hotel Sterno > (Spout Press, Minneapolis, MN), which is available on Amazon.com or > directly through Spout Press. > > __________ > > crayola gestures > > sun ra points at a hamilton blender hovering > above the bandstand & just as fitfully worlds > are formed, behind the milk tents of el monte > > & a yemeni dime store where all the bubble > gum's aristotelian & can only be bought by > decoding the gestures of the clerk, a woman > > named crayola who's convinced that a blue > washcloth is wrapped inside a satellite dish > & it's shrouding from us a colossal despair. > > __________ > > Spread the word. Far and wide, > > 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, 26 Sep 2000 23:53:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Dillon Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland In-Reply-To: <008c01c0282b$a2f5dae0$ed6c60cb@Richard> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Early on, Eliot began to sing the philosophical/visionary songs he then spent a lifetime perfecting. Like George Herbert Walker Bush, he strode full formed into life - an adult. > From: "richard.tylr" > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:20:11 +1200 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland > > David. I agree overall. I'd add that Williams was the more "consciouly > innovative" writer. Or he was possessed of the future - not only the > American laguage or idiom. Eliot also somewhat seemed to want to "get into" > demotic language (see the "He do the police in..." (from Dickens) that > preceded the Waste Land before Pound excised it with one thrust of his pen), > but he was always looking back to the past: obsessed with a belief that > civilisation (or the spiritual state or whatever) had declined. So even > Pound seems more concerned than him about WW1 (as in "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly") > and the Waste Land to him is an abstract one (more or less). But Williams > creates Patterson which may have a history including both depravity and > wonderful things - but there it is (albeit as a grand metaphor as The Waste > Land is also in a way). There's a sense in the best American poetry of an > opening up, of hope, or open endedness.(one thinks of Eliot as a British > writer - I actually thought he was for years until I "encountered" W C > Williams in relatively recent times). Of course Ashbery undercuts this in > books like "A Vermont Note Book" (one of my favourites) or in his poem: > "these Lacustrines Cities" that "grew out of loathing" (there goes that > word): > > "They emerged until a tower > controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back > into the past for swans and tapering branches, > Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless/ > love." > > But I dont see him or others of his kind as gloomy in outlook as Eliot. > Eliot, "genius" to use that overused and dubius term had his rival in the > poet of those "tapering branches". Williams would have studied Sein with > interest, bur Eliot would (I think he did) dismiss her out of hand (or come > up with some convoluted reference to Donne or Swinburne or whoever or > something in French) but Williams learnt from Pound and Stein as well as the > French writers and was probably more "in touch" with "ornery life" as well > as having a keen interest in modern art -art in general.Of course both were > influenced by surealism and probably the "irony" and humour of la Forgue. > But Eliot tend toward a negative world view. Williams, despite his "slips" > and his sometimes angry "crankiness" seems to be trying to engage with the > extarordinary "reality that surrounds us, but also in another "reality", > that of consciousness: "The value of the imagination to the writer > consists in its ability to make words.its unique power is to give created > forms reality,actual existence" (from "Spring and All") and as well as th > importance of imagination he writes eg. about a work of Juan Gris. Williams > is thinking about the proces of artistic creation, and of nature, and the > mind. Eliot did too somewhat but one feels he would never quite take the > risks that Williams too, or write: "...But the thing he never knows and > never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is. And this > moment is the only thing in which I am interested..." Eliot may have > attempted to in "Burnt Norton" but he is al;ways more "abstract" and distant > from the reader than Williams. Regards, Richard. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "David Baptiste Chirot" > To: > Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 9:24 AM > Subject: wcw and tthe wasteland > > >> A number of commentors have hit the nail on the head--WCW realizes that > just as >> the vibrant, lively wide open poetry scene of the late teens and early >> tewnties--with intense connections wit an interests in and influences from >> modern art (teh Armory show for example, the Marcel Duchamp edited > "Wrongrong" >> ha, etc etc)-- >> WCW realised tat just as this scene is cutting loose, old TSE hits >> the Long Ball--the utlimate in his series of masterful PopSongs--and, >> coupled with is statements re poetry, a new anon which is a rearrangemet > of >> the old as is so often done by any movement worht is salt--remember "les >> grandes tetes molles" of Surrealism for example., or some of the betes > noirs >> of this list--couples with all this formidable education and exptriatiion, >> Eliot also announces he is turning his back not only this native tongue, >> with which WCW and others are so concerned, and gives hi allegiance to te >> British Language, its Church and its Crown. >> >> WCW as it has often been noted had more than a passing animus >> towards the British--which may well have have carried over into the >> betrayal >> of brother Eliot of his american sisters and brethern, (think of the >> mighty >> work of Gertrdue Stein for example)- so intent on making something of >> American life literature and language--WCW's animus came from his father, > an >> anglophile--i recall reading a year os or ago on the Cap-L a violent >> anti-WCW attack due to his writing a poeme applauding to some degree a > german >> bombing of London--you caan imagine the outrage over this!--however one >> person possessed of more critical balance did point out that the pome may >> well have had to do with WCW's animosity to his pro_british father, as > much >> as anything to with the war, >> >> In retrospect, Williams was not wrong in his judgement of the >> effect of Eliot's not only poetry but his prononciementos regarding poetry >> and his views on the profession of poetry, and as well is relation with >> langauge, State and power/poetics. >> >> One of his quirkier insights thought among his earlier essays is > his >> interest in popular culture--esp the British musical hall. >> >> I think one of WCW's lasting fears with the Eliot--New Criticism >> lines of developement in american poetry was te eschewing o ways he saw of >> such importance--the influenecs of modern painting, of he radio, > advertising, >> documents--hence his place I beleive in the Pound-Williams-Paul Mectalf > line >> connect with, interested n and influenced by hieroglphys, various forms of >> notations (jottings on the run, calligraphies, the uses of the type >> writer and other new technologies--the interest in paining, music, dance, >> history, the use of quotation, the attention with the conrete and as well >> the heard-- >> >> "A poem can be made of anything" WCW asserted--and demonstrated-- >> >> and as Robert Grenier posed the question in a Talk at Franconia in >> a 1997 edition of :that:-- >> >> in what way s can we work with the proposition in the earlier wcw >> (SPRiNG AND ALL for example) and the later "no ideas but in things/mr" >> from >> PATTERSON-- ) >> >> not as either/or" but as "both/and" >> >> think that Grenier is indicating how much still remains open in >> the >> works of the early american modernists--how much was not shut down by >> Eliot and the Formalists of our times . . . >> >> Grenier's own work and its reception my be seen as part of that >> long line of work held at bay by the Eliot influence . . . >> >> a final anecdote, from an interview in ROBERT SMITHSSN'S COLLECTED >> WRITINGS: Smithson is recounting his vist as very young unknown painter >> to >> the home of WCW--a pilgrammge made by so many young unknown arists and >> poets and eidtors of itte mags in search of at east a ittle blurb from the >> Master-- >> for some many decades to the himelf until late in life largely unknown >> WCW--Smithson was accompnied by his friend the poet Irving Latyon--at one >> point WCW remakred to Smithson how much he always enjoyed the disucsssions >> with painters, all his life . . . far mre than those wth poets . . . >> >> --dave baptiste chirot > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 01:29:12 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/26/00 8:09:49 PM, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: << David. I agree overall. I'd add that Williams was the more "consciouly innovative" writer. Or he was possessed of the future - not only the American laguage or idiom. Eliot also somewhat seemed to want to "get into" demotic language (see the "He do the police in..." (from Dickens) that preceded the Waste Land before Pound excised it with one thrust of his pen), but he was always looking back to the past: obsessed with a belief that civilisation (or the spiritual state or whatever) had declined. So even Pound seems more concerned than him about WW1 (as in "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly") and the Waste Land to him is an abstract one (more or less). But Williams creates Patterson which may have a history including both depravity and wonderful things - but there it is (albeit as a grand metaphor as The Waste Land is also in a way). There's a sense in the best American poetry of an opening up, of hope, or open endedness.(one thinks of Eliot as a British writer - I actually thought he was for years until I "encountered" W C Williams in relatively recent times). Of course Ashbery undercuts this in books like "A Vermont Note Book" (one of my favourites) or in his poem: "these Lacustrines Cities" that "grew out of loathing" (there goes that word): "They emerged until a tower controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back into the past for swans and tapering branches, Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless/ love." But I dont see him or others of his kind as gloomy in outlook as Eliot. Eliot, "genius" to use that overused and dubius term had his rival in the poet of those "tapering branches". Williams would have studied Sein with interest, bur Eliot would (I think he did) dismiss her out of hand (or come up with some convoluted reference to Donne or Swinburne or whoever or something in French) but Williams learnt from Pound and Stein as well as the French writers and was probably more "in touch" with "ornery life" as well as having a keen interest in modern art -art in general.Of course both were influenced by surealism and probably the "irony" and humour of la Forgue. But Eliot tend toward a negative world view. Williams, despite his "slips" and his sometimes angry "crankiness" seems to be trying to engage with the extarordinary "reality that surrounds us, but also in another "reality", that of consciousness: "The value of the imagination to the writer consists in its ability to make words.its unique power is to give created forms reality,actual existence" (from "Spring and All") and as well as th importance of imagination he writes eg. about a work of Juan Gris. Williams is thinking about the proces of artistic creation, and of nature, and the mind. Eliot did too somewhat but one feels he would never quite take the risks that Williams too, or write: "...But the thing he never knows and never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is. And this moment is the only thing in which I am interested..." Eliot may have attempted to in "Burnt Norton" but he is al;ways more "abstract" and distant from the reader than Williams. Regards, Richard. Hi Richard! Interesting post, per usual for you. But may I adjust a thing or two? Eliot did not dismiss Stein. Quite the opposite. He admired her work (and that of cummings/Cummings) and asked her to submit to the Criterion. In typical Eliot fashion, he then sat on the submission for several months. Did he not like the submission? Who knows? More likely his life got in the way of his work which it often did, since he sat on many submissions from those we know he admired. As to who was more intentionally innovative--well, opinions are all we have, and can have. I don't care since I love both poets' poetry. Who was the better poet? Again, endless debate. But one thing I feel safe in saying is that Eliot was in better control of his materials than was Williams. Paterson, Williams answer to Eliot's anglophilia, never reaches the finish line. Williams clearly took on more than he could handle at the time. I still admire what's there enormously, even if Williams' focus drifts, and his control of his metaphors escapes him here and there. It's not quite fair to compare Eliot to Ashbery since they live in different times. Eliot's times were pretty damn gloomy--World wars and all that. He certainly captured the Zeitgeist. But you're right that Ashbery at times comments, however obliquely, on Eliot's lines. JESUS!! I can't believe I'm defending T. S. ! I need a drink. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 00:09:45 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark DuCharme Subject: Re: adventures in poultry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Austinwja@AOL.COM wrote: >Langpo contains speech forms, examines their >constituents, within its fascination with writing. (The page, its set up, >its spacing, is crucial to langpo, no?) Which is Derridean, to say the >least. By this logic, Williams, Olson & a lot of other writers must also have been "Derridean." Mark DuCharme _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 01:22:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Organization: @Home Network Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ron, I think that perhaps your assessment of visual or sound poetry is perhaps based on a limited view of what exists in mags founded by adherents of these forms at a particular time. I dont think that someone like Menezes, for example, stopped innovating at visual or sound poetry, if innovation is a criterion for art: --'I am seeing my life as part of the struggle between man and nature. I know there is the possibility of some sort of union. This is why I have been forced to take nature as my inspiration. Any artist who takes the 'art scene" or short sighted contemporary history as his inspiration is turning his back on his human self.' - Brice Marden, ca 1991. tom bell Poetics List Administration wrote: > > hi, Ron. Without wanting to defend vizpo or sound poetry from > the charge of conservatism - -- Life designs: http://trbell.tripod.com/lifedesigns/ index of online work at http://members.home.net/trbell essays: http://members.tripod.com/~trbell/criticism/ =-///>>>``'|\_ SOULSOLESOLO <<<]]] ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:44:01 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: adventures in poultry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Chris, Always happy to provoke such a thoughtful response, even if not in agreement as such. I really like the idea of Keats in the right key! Bruce Andrews was at the '66 conference where Derrida, Lacan, Barthes et al came out as posties (the papers are gathered in a good little paperback called the Structuralist Controversy). I was reading Barthes by 1970 and one can hardly accuse the likes of Bernstein or Watten of not paying attention to the latest developments in theory. But I think that the contexts of France v. the US were very different. Even at the height of 1968, very few Americans fantasized that a revolution was immanent, whereas for the French it very nearly happened. I think that the Habermasian formula that modernity is an unfinished project is not the right formulation, but rather that modernity was a project that began under faulty conditions and needs to be reconstructed rather from the ground up. I first knew Kathy in '72 and she was a very special person in my life for reasons that extend beyond writing. But what she was doing with the novel as a form is not as radically dissimilar from what Grenier, say, did with the lyric poem. Hope you're well, Best, Ron _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 13:59:00 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "T. R. Healy and L. MacMahon" Subject: Re: my quarrel with negative capability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yeah! With you on the value of Hazlitt. At high school we had a prose anthology we thought felt was inches away from turning into a delicatessen contain slices of Bacon, Lamb and Hazlitt. Isn't Liber Amoris "Book of Love" or in the light of the above, "Pound of Love" best Randolph Healy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Corbett" To: Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 5:06 AM Subject: my quarrel with negative capability > is that it ain't Keats' idea! it's William Hazlitt's! the idea, if not the > phrase, is embedded in his _Treatise on Human Nature_. it reads as if a > Lockean tried to explain benevolence (18th c. altruism) instead of the > state. item: he claims that we can be no more interested in our future > self than another's future self. they are both equally fictional. from > here, with a picquant turn of phrase and poetic embroidering, you might > well get n.c. but perhaps without its fatal flaw. n.c. hides the subject > as if it is simply not a problem (and thus we get Bardolatry and still > later Keatolatry: the fantasy of the poet as everyone), while this > argument says the subject _is_ the other in some sense. i (at least in > the future) is another. > > though i am not Hazlitt expert, it is about time for his revival. > painter, biographer, critic, and, in his most peculiar moment, writer of a > cringe inducing, thinly disguised dissection of his "crush" on and > subsequent "crushing" by his landlady's daughter. and called it "Liber > Amoris": that is, "free love." > > Robert Corbett > > > -- > Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as > rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip > Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar > University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you > call that sophistry then what is Love" > - Lisa Robertson > > On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, K.Silem Mohammad wrote: > > > Richard Taylor writes: > > > > >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn > > >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all > > >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then > > >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". > > > > Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his fearless > > appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, all of > > which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the > > masculine pronoun. > > > > Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term has > > been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that there's > > a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what happens > > in poetry, etc. > > > > --Kasey > > > > ............................ > > """""""""""""""""""""""""""" > > K. SILEM MOHAMMAD > > Santa Cruz, California > > immerito@hotmail.com > > http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad > > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:11:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: bring me a shrubbery In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>Early on, Eliot began to sing the philosophical/visionary songs he then spent a lifetime perfecting. Like George Herbert Walker Bush, he strode full formed into life - an adult.<<< I want it noted that the letters in George Herbert Walker Bush anagram perfectly into HUGE BERSERK REBEL WARTHOG. Anagram kabbalah don't lie-- Gwyn McVay ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:37:08 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gerald Schwartz Subject: Philly? Comments: cc: wh@dept.english.upenn.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Besides the televised presidential debates, are there any events, readings in Philly next week? Best, Gerald ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 10:02:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland In-Reply-To: <008c01c0282b$a2f5dae0$ed6c60cb@Richard> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Deaa Richard: Many thanks for yr well thought out & expressed reply! Yes--I'd say as well that WCW is more concerned with the future--though without naming them directly takes a swipe at the Zaum poetry of Russian Futurism in the last page or so of SPRING AND ALL. WCW's "openness"--the classic Whitmanian "Song of the Open Road"--"Open Field Poetry" later of Olson--may be seen I think quite literally in his discussions of measure in terms of "the variable foot". WCW had an openess to "the common thing anonymously about us"--the USE of this, as Creeley & Olson'd put it--a favorite line of mine from Larry Eigner--from the prose piece "A View": "and there for one to think about". I think that gives an indication of much of WCW's work--and its effects, what it makes of use for others--the daily world one lives among-- In the study of "Rock Art"--cave paintings, petroglyphs, etc--there's a wonderful word/idea: taphonomy. It means the study of things in their present state, though they may in fact be tens of thousands of years old--one does not, as with Eliot, mourn their fragmentation, nor attempt to put them back together again in some way, a reorganizing of tradition as Eliot attempted. A frequent criticism of Americans over the years of course is just this--their focus on the present as but a wayside to the future--and as well their "cheerful optimism". In the nineteenth century, the earlier half, Americans felt greatly lacking in ruins--made popular by British and European Romantic and Gothic works. Poe managed to pull off a great ltierary coup in mixing this as both a fiction of his own, and a kind of documenting of his culture's fixation with--ruins, death, cemeteries. (The new mode then was to buid park-like cemetries, complete with towers, foutnains, wlaks suppied with benchs for "contemplation" and of cours wondrous collections of trees and flowers from around the world-- which were the leading grounds,so to speak, the interzones, between city and suburb--Mount Auburn Cemenetery for example, at the edge of Cambridge and Watertown, being an early and celebrated example.) (Mary Baker Eddy's tomb is in there--she even has a phone in it--and you can try calling her. I have sevral times--but to no avail. Maybe she's screening her calls!) I think though, at the root of the American openess is actually a very deep sense of both hope/despair being vitally contingent. It's in much of Whitman's writings--esp. say sections of SPECIMAN DAYS and DEMOCRATIC VISTAS--you can find it in Emily Dickinson ("to close the eyes is travel")-- Even in so bleak a novel as Faulkner's THE WILD PALMS--and few authors have so severely cruelly doomed their male protagonist as Faulkner has his here--the final words are : "between grief and nothing I will take grief". To me, that's a kind of song of hope amidst despair--that Eliot I think quite frankly was afraid of. Eliot wanted a more comfortable, ordered world--and the 20th century was no such a place--and America never really has been one, despite the myth of the 1950s. (If you think about it, since the War of 1812 the USA has been virtually at war continually for almost two hundred years now.) I think it's of great importance that SPRING AND ALL is dedicated to Charles Demuth, the great American "precisionist painter"--and as well makes much use of a black and white repro of a Juan Gris painting--not the painting itself--but perhaps a catalog, newspaper or magazine photo. (This wd be the taphonomic state of the painting--in the present in which WCW is studying it.) Demuth painted with "precision" a world of new industrial buildings--in a clear light--there's an odd sense of energy contained--the very static compostions, the buildings for the production of things--energy--but there's little "description" in the sense that Creeley writes of in "To Define"--that is, anything outside the poem, outside the painting--yet this is what gives it its openenss--its use--that as Eigner says it is "there for one to think about". Actually, I think that WCW's openness in an odd way--is closer to an ancient world view than that of TSE's--that is: the ancient view that the world, the universe, is generated out of chaos--that chaos is PRODUCTIVE--a view now much taken up in science--for example Prigogine and Stengers' great work ORDER OUT OF CHAOS. Instead of an entropic state, there is a negentropic one, in which a cylical in a sense wave movement occurs in which order eventually generates chaos, and then chaos a new order-- as Pascal put it, "it is not the elements which are new, but the order of their arrangement". I think WCW understood this, and Eliot did not--it frightned him. I do think Robert Grenier indicates something very profound in his noting that what requires attention is the movement in WCW from SPRING AND ALL's "only the imagination is real" and the later, in PATTERSON, "no ideas but in things, mr.". The proposal in Grenier is that WCW's two seemingly opposed statements are open to, indicative of a both/and, not an either/or--that in this proposition, there is, as always, much work to be done. Again--to signal my agreement with yr sense of WCW's openness-- and the continual USE of his work. (Two additional scraps thrown into the stew: in TROPIC OF CANCER, Henry Miller notes with joy his realization that he has at last escaped not only America--but that he now lives in "a world without hope and no despair". Though the two are not directly related as occuring in the same moment, in the overall context I think for Miller they are--again, I think, indicating the deeply sensed amerian hope/despair dilemna Miller wants to get as far away from as possible--note his book on returning to America in the Forties: THE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE. (Interestingly, it is in Greece before returning to America, that Miller finds true peace--see COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI, his most beautiful work. However, it is not ancient Greece that Miller finds, but the contemporary one, and the ancient in its present, taphonomic state.) The other scrap: when TSE died, Ezra Pound remarked, "now there's no one left to understand my jokes". Grief--or nothingness? again, thank you for the thought provoking reply. -dbchirot On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, richard.tylr wrote: > David. I agree overall. I'd add that Williams was the more "consciouly > innovative" writer. Or he was possessed of the future - not only the > American laguage or idiom. Eliot also somewhat seemed to want to "get into" > demotic language (see the "He do the police in..." (from Dickens) that > preceded the Waste Land before Pound excised it with one thrust of his pen), > but he was always looking back to the past: obsessed with a belief that > civilisation (or the spiritual state or whatever) had declined. So even > Pound seems more concerned than him about WW1 (as in "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly") > and the Waste Land to him is an abstract one (more or less). But Williams > creates Patterson which may have a history including both depravity and > wonderful things - but there it is (albeit as a grand metaphor as The Waste > Land is also in a way). There's a sense in the best American poetry of an > opening up, of hope, or open endedness.(one thinks of Eliot as a British > writer - I actually thought he was for years until I "encountered" W C > Williams in relatively recent times). Of course Ashbery undercuts this in > books like "A Vermont Note Book" (one of my favourites) or in his poem: > "these Lacustrines Cities" that "grew out of loathing" (there goes that > word): > > "They emerged until a tower > controlled the sky, and with artifice dipped back > into the past for swans and tapering branches, > Burning, until all that hate was transformed into useless/ > love." > > But I dont see him or others of his kind as gloomy in outlook as Eliot. > Eliot, "genius" to use that overused and dubius term had his rival in the > poet of those "tapering branches". Williams would have studied Sein with > interest, bur Eliot would (I think he did) dismiss her out of hand (or come > up with some convoluted reference to Donne or Swinburne or whoever or > something in French) but Williams learnt from Pound and Stein as well as the > French writers and was probably more "in touch" with "ornery life" as well > as having a keen interest in modern art -art in general.Of course both were > influenced by surealism and probably the "irony" and humour of la Forgue. > But Eliot tend toward a negative world view. Williams, despite his "slips" > and his sometimes angry "crankiness" seems to be trying to engage with the > extarordinary "reality that surrounds us, but also in another "reality", > that of consciousness: "The value of the imagination to the writer > consists in its ability to make words.its unique power is to give created > forms reality,actual existence" (from "Spring and All") and as well as th > importance of imagination he writes eg. about a work of Juan Gris. Williams > is thinking about the proces of artistic creation, and of nature, and the > mind. Eliot did too somewhat but one feels he would never quite take the > risks that Williams too, or write: "...But the thing he never knows and > never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is. And this > moment is the only thing in which I am interested..." Eliot may have > attempted to in "Burnt Norton" but he is al;ways more "abstract" and distant > from the reader than Williams. Regards, Richard. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "David Baptiste Chirot" > To: > Sent: Saturday, September 23, 2000 9:24 AM > Subject: wcw and tthe wasteland > > > > A number of commentors have hit the nail on the head--WCW realizes that > just as > > the vibrant, lively wide open poetry scene of the late teens and early > > tewnties--with intense connections wit an interests in and influences from > > modern art (teh Armory show for example, the Marcel Duchamp edited > "Wrongrong" > > ha, etc etc)-- > > WCW realised tat just as this scene is cutting loose, old TSE hits > > the Long Ball--the utlimate in his series of masterful PopSongs--and, > > coupled with is statements re poetry, a new anon which is a rearrangemet > of > > the old as is so often done by any movement worht is salt--remember "les > > grandes tetes molles" of Surrealism for example., or some of the betes > noirs > > of this list--couples with all this formidable education and exptriatiion, > > Eliot also announces he is turning his back not only this native tongue, > > with which WCW and others are so concerned, and gives hi allegiance to te > > British Language, its Church and its Crown. > > > > WCW as it has often been noted had more than a passing animus > > towards the British--which may well have have carried over into the > > betrayal > > of brother Eliot of his american sisters and brethern, (think of the > > mighty > > work of Gertrdue Stein for example)- so intent on making something of > > American life literature and language--WCW's animus came from his father, > an > > anglophile--i recall reading a year os or ago on the Cap-L a violent > > anti-WCW attack due to his writing a poeme applauding to some degree a > german > > bombing of London--you caan imagine the outrage over this!--however one > > person possessed of more critical balance did point out that the pome may > > well have had to do with WCW's animosity to his pro_british father, as > much > > as anything to with the war, > > > > In retrospect, Williams was not wrong in his judgement of the > > effect of Eliot's not only poetry but his prononciementos regarding poetry > > and his views on the profession of poetry, and as well is relation with > > langauge, State and power/poetics. > > > > One of his quirkier insights thought among his earlier essays is > his > > interest in popular culture--esp the British musical hall. > > > > I think one of WCW's lasting fears with the Eliot--New Criticism > > lines of developement in american poetry was te eschewing o ways he saw of > > such importance--the influenecs of modern painting, of he radio, > advertising, > > documents--hence his place I beleive in the Pound-Williams-Paul Mectalf > line > > connect with, interested n and influenced by hieroglphys, various forms of > > notations (jottings on the run, calligraphies, the uses of the type > > writer and other new technologies--the interest in paining, music, dance, > > history, the use of quotation, the attention with the conrete and as well > > the heard-- > > > > "A poem can be made of anything" WCW asserted--and demonstrated-- > > > > and as Robert Grenier posed the question in a Talk at Franconia in > > a 1997 edition of :that:-- > > > > in what way s can we work with the proposition in the earlier wcw > > (SPRiNG AND ALL for example) and the later "no ideas but in things/mr" > > from > > PATTERSON-- ) > > > > not as either/or" but as "both/and" > > > > think that Grenier is indicating how much still remains open in > > the > > works of the early american modernists--how much was not shut down by > > Eliot and the Formalists of our times . . . > > > > Grenier's own work and its reception my be seen as part of that > > long line of work held at bay by the Eliot influence . . . > > > > a final anecdote, from an interview in ROBERT SMITHSSN'S COLLECTED > > WRITINGS: Smithson is recounting his vist as very young unknown painter > > to > > the home of WCW--a pilgrammge made by so many young unknown arists and > > poets and eidtors of itte mags in search of at east a ittle blurb from the > > Master-- > > for some many decades to the himelf until late in life largely unknown > > WCW--Smithson was accompnied by his friend the poet Irving Latyon--at one > > point WCW remakred to Smithson how much he always enjoyed the disucsssions > > with painters, all his life . . . far mre than those wth poets . . . > > > > --dave baptiste chirot > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:43:33 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/26/00 11:04:09 PM, dillon@ICUBED.COM writes: << Early on, Eliot began to sing the philosophical/visionary songs he then spent a lifetime perfecting. Like George Herbert Walker Bush, he strode full formed into life - an adult. >> T.S. Eliot strode into life as a frat brat millionaire cocaine abusing adult?!!? Didn't know that. Thanks Dillon. You've finally convinced me to join the Republican/Royalist cause. I'm voting for T.S. Eliot for president. Oops, he's dead. RATS! Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 10:57:54 -0500 Reply-To: David Baptiste Chirot Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: adventures in poultry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think before visual and sound poetry are basically put into, in effect, the status of a dead language, a good deal more knowledge of it by the critics of it is required. The Ubuweb is great for older works--but the new works there bear little indiction of what is going on around the world--or even in the usa-- in visual poetry. There are a great many journals, conferences, web sites, expositions, events, performances of visual/sound poetry, even in the USA, which go pretty much largely ignored, for any number of reasons, by the American poetic community. If anything, visual/sound poetry is an area which is always very wide open and ever developing. Part of the problem is not that visual poetry and sound poetry are dead lnaguages--it is that they are perhaps challenging, different languages. Like learning any language--including that of "language poetry"--discipline, dedication, study, thought and time and a lot of hunting for the materials are required. The word barbarian comes from the Greek--to the Greeks, other languages sounded like ba-ba-ba. To those who prefer to know only one language, any other language will sound barbarian--or, if one truly wants to eradicate it, one proclaims the other language dead. Recently a post was sent out by the visual poet Patrick Burgaud, noting the death of yet more Indian languages. Writers such as William S. Burroughs and Philadelpho Menezes have indicated the potentialities for "a simplified hieroglyphic script" (WSB) and the poetry of the intersign (PM) in breaking down the structures put in place by the manifestations of language of the dominant ideological complexes, the mass manipulations of thought control. I should note, that with a few very rare instances, it is "language poetry" whch has been identified (more or less depending on one 's point of view) that is "acodominant" (Bob Grumman) and not visual or sound poetry. To quote a few lines from Clarence Day: When cultures die, their legacies are often left to strange police. So it is that professors in New England guard the glory that was Greece. Perhaps it is a sign of the vitality of visual and sound poetry that they are not yet taught in american univerisities! Keep the barbarians from the gates! And leave the Greeks to their strange police-- No--visual and sound poetry are ever in a state of development-- as Bob Grumman so aptly puts it in the title of an essay: "MNMLST POETRY: UNACLAIMED BUT FLOURISHING" ( this may be found at: Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry--a great site for much that is going on in visual, sound poetry and as well their critiques, theoretical statements and historical documentations-- http://www.thing.net/~grist/homekarl.htm --dbchirot ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 02:12:39 -0400 Reply-To: jeff@dojo.tao.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "jeff." Subject: Word Selector Rhyme by ryan scot barker Word Selector Rhyme, the first section of ryan scot barker's as-yet unnamed long poem, is now out. "4. Un-rule absentee find fear in rocked let bored. Unwrap Undo Un- time. Rhymed lies in line: you sit two by two. 7. I have never made myself capable of really loving her. Folded hands and silence; practice in being husband/lover/friend/mad/wild/free form." (from Episode One: Stalking the Mall Security Guard) [no cute blurbs, no famous poet endorsements] This chapbook is available for free (like all our books), only we ask people mailordering to pay for shipping (like: $1, or 2 $.32 stamps). Send yer burning desires for the book to: earth books c/o PO Box 563 Morgantown, WV 26507 u$a thanks! jeff miller for the earth books collective ---- check out: http://praha.indymedia.org for the latest on the protests against the imf/world bank in prague. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:06:40 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/26/00 11:03:13 PM, poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu writes: << it seems possible to say that that persistence is not necessarily simple - that those 'same' forms, by their persistence into differing circumstances, or their re-appearance within a different context, can take on an altogether different meaning and one that is not necessarily only a reversal of their previous valence, e.g., the conservation of what had been in some sense radically divergent from the forms prevalent in its milieu. In this sense, it seems the point would be less "a new sound" than the right sound at the right time<< Chris, if you don't mind a little support from the gallery, here be some. My own thoughts are clearly in line with what you've said above. I hope you don't find that too scary. I guess it's a tribute to the list and all of its members that, despite the onset of a new semester, class preparations, endless paper grading, etc., many of us still squeak out the time to participate. Congrats on a job well done. May the list know the foldings and infoldings of eternity--or at least keep a goin' for a looong time. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:25:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Stefans, Brian" Subject: FW: Tristan Corbiere? Comments: To: "" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain > Dear Arielle et al., > > I was lucky enough to chance upon a translation of Corbiere's complete > poetry in England a few years back, a nice affordable edition, and the > translations themselves struck me as rather good, preserving much of the > looseness of his verse form despite all of the work being in meter, and > getting across some of the rough humor of the work, and the knotty > vocabulary. I notice that it didn't come up in an amazon search, but > amazon UK carries it. > > http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1871471559/qid%3D969974651/026-98 > 95741-2343619 > > No to drop the B word yet again, but John Berryman's last book, I can't > remember the title, was dedicated to Corbiere and, with its very > self-deprecating sense of humor (Corbiere used to refer to himself as "The > Toad", and wrote a poem in his own homage that way), and relative lack of > stoicism or optimism, may have something to offer as another American > analogue, perhaps truer than Eliot or Pound who didn't have much use for > him once they became "responsible" and grew up. > > Brian > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:32:48 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/26/00 11:02:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, richard.tylr@XTRA.CO.NZ writes: > Jonathan's point is excellent. What is needed in such discusions is or are > some examples. And they (critics such as Perloff - who is good in the > enthusiasm she imparts and her insights otherwise - or Jacobson ) should > define their terms very precisely. [the rest is snipped] Ummm, have you read J lately? He does define his terms and he gives good examples of them too. On metonymy for example he cites Tolstoy's focus on Anna Karenina's handbag while she is committing suicide. This example is notorious. Notorious. Here's another. I once gave an exam question that went something like this: There is a scene in one of the Godfather movies in which a handful of thugs are eating at a restaurant. Lots of glimpses of all the abundant food and wine. Suddenly Michael Corleone bursts in and the bloodbath ensues. Food, arms, wineglasses, legs, napkins, bodies, plates flying everywhere. In a few seconds it is all over. Corleone has disappeared. Dead bodies draped in blood all over the place. The scene closes with a long, slow shot of a cigarette, still lit, smoke rising slowly up into the air. So, I asked my students, is this last shot of the cigarette an example of metaphor or metonymy? Explain. I got some pretty good answers. Hope this helps, George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 09:35:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Stefans, Brian" Subject: Re: my quarrel with negative capability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain It's actually, I think, Coleridge's idea, except that he called it "Negative Belief" or something like that. Coleridge also invented the term "psycho-analyze," but he did it in one of his notebooks which weren't published until, I think, the early twentieth century. As for Hazlitt, the interesting about him, to me, outside of a really excellent prose style -- it reads as very contemporary, and sharp -- is that he was a nasty little guy, who let loose on everybody, Coleridge especially (to the point of name calling), mostly venting on his older romantic peers whom he felt failed to follow through on their early, radical politics. He once had to take a continental vacation to cure himself of drinking too much tea. The landlady's daughter you mention below was 16. > ---------- > From: Robert Corbett > Reply To: UB Poetics discussion group > Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 12:06 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: my quarrel with negative capability > > is that it ain't Keats' idea! it's William Hazlitt's! the idea, if not the > phrase, is embedded in his _Treatise on Human Nature_. it reads as if a > Lockean tried to explain benevolence (18th c. altruism) instead of the > state. item: he claims that we can be no more interested in our future > self than another's future self. they are both equally fictional. from > here, with a picquant turn of phrase and poetic embroidering, you might > well get n.c. but perhaps without its fatal flaw. n.c. hides the subject > as if it is simply not a problem (and thus we get Bardolatry and still > later Keatolatry: the fantasy of the poet as everyone), while this > argument says the subject _is_ the other in some sense. i (at least in > the future) is another. > > though i am not Hazlitt expert, it is about time for his revival. > painter, biographer, critic, and, in his most peculiar moment, writer of a > cringe inducing, thinly disguised dissection of his "crush" on and > subsequent "crushing" by his landlady's daughter. and called it "Liber > Amoris": that is, "free love." > > Robert Corbett > > > -- > Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as > rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip > Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar > University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you > call that sophistry then what is Love" > - Lisa Robertson > > On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, K.Silem Mohammad wrote: > > > Richard Taylor writes: > > > > >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn > > >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all > > >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then > > >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". > > > > Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his > fearless > > appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, > all of > > which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the > > masculine pronoun. > > > > Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term > has > > been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that > there's > > a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what > happens > > in poetry, etc. > > > > --Kasey > > > > ............................ > > """""""""""""""""""""""""""" > > K. SILEM MOHAMMAD > > Santa Cruz, California > > immerito@hotmail.com > > http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad > > > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at > http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:44:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Mr. Dillon: I got a kick out of your comment re TSE and George Herbert Walker Bush. Wonder if TSE had wound up by some truly weird twist of fate attending Yale--and being a member of the notorious secret society there as was GHWB-- what might have happened to him? It's interesting to note that TSE can include among his fellow St Louis natives: Miles Davis, Chuck Berry and William S. Burroughs. "Roll over Beethoven" indeed! --dbchirot ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 21:29:13 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz Subject: Re: adventures in poultry In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron Silliman wrote: >I'm always struck -- and the Ubu site would be my case in point -- by how >much visual and sound poetry is really antiquarian in much the same way that >people who only write in sonnets or haiku are. The next time somebody >invents a new sound, I want to hear it. > >One of the curious fates of poetic form is that once a genre has become >identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it >dissolves into the fabric of time. If the literary devices that have been >associated with langpo catch on, it will suffer the same fate, so it's not >ultimately a question of who has a better form. Rather, it is how one >approaches the world and what currently exists. I think it also depends on how you conceptualize possibility and diversity in a given "literary environment," to bring back a term from Russian Formalism. I agree that there should be a timeliness to any particular aesthetic response, but I don't think that timeliness necessarily has to be a matter of progress. We know from evolutionary biology, for example, that under some conditions evolution slows, sometimes even reverses. I'd be surprised if this weren't also true for literary aesthetics. As Chris Alexander said, "it seems the point would be less "a new sound" than the right sound at the right time." Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 10:02:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Stefans, Brian" Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Hi Ron, Would you say, then, that Steve McCaffery's "Carnival," Ian Hamilton Finlay's Little Sparta, Juliet Ann Martin's "oooxxxooo", John Cage's graphical pieces, Wershler-Henry's "Grain: a Prairie Poem" (and translations of Appolinaire into Klingon) and, say, Charles Bernstein's "Veil" share the same "form"? The problem with what you write below is that you early define form as something like a "haiku" or a "sonnet" -- singular names that point to specific (either by syllable count, rhyme, meter) types of poems, and then say the forms become antiquarian when the social forces that produced them have fallen away. But the sonnet as declaration of love went out in the (roughly) 18th century -- Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley wrote political sonnets that appeared in the newspapers, and also wrote sonnets (like "Ozymindias," however it's spelled) that were pure imagism (of sorts). Now, it is used mostly, I feel, as a form of landscape painting (at least in the conservative tradition) or a record of "dailiness" (in the New York School vein) -- the social forces that lead to the sonnet long having departed, but the sonnet itself having acquired some new sheen as a kind of clunky old thing, like an old chevy, that we are happy to keep around. In any case, your sense of how a genre becomes "identified" (though a sonnet is hardly a "genre", or at least I think of "poetry" as a "genre") turns into "literary devices", which suggest a plurality of techniques that you are not naming. Would we name them, we would call B. Andrews' technique in I Don't Have Any Paper the "all-over prose two-pager," or Bernstein's technique in Shade the "skinny", Howe's technique the "melville" etc. etc. -- defining a "form" in this sense is tricky. It seems to me that the innovative tradition in American poetry thrives on mixing these forms all the time, and so one would be more prone to describe this activity, this practice, along formal terms than the final products, which are usually rather heterodox. I suppose the "New Sentence" might be a "new form," but I have yet to see a significant critical discussion of all the people who wrote using this form and whether or not it was honored, successful, etc., which I think would be useful. New sounds have been invented; Christian Bok, for example, pretty much uses every organ in his body -- sound sounds are "liver sounds," some make you fear for his health -- to make sounds, and creates a fine, overpower web of tonalities in his readings. I think you are right that there is an "antiquarian" aspect to lots of concrete and sound poetry, and that most people who do it lack anything resemblinng an openness to contemporary aesthetic or social values, but that's because very few practitioners take it very seriously as a discipline -- part of the reason Duchamp didn't produce ready-mades every other day was because he wanted to stay in touch with that specific sensation that leads to the discovery of a ready-made, and Finlay's research into the English gardening tradition (and specific avoidance of the Japanese tradition) are what make his work so exceptional (not to mention the other researches). The Torontonians and Brazilians are unique today in really taking the idea of "concrete" poetry seriously, but nobody in the United States seems to take _them_ seriously, so much of the content fails to get across. I don't think there's a common enough discourse on concrete and sound poetry for anyone to jump in "become" a sound or concrete poet right away. It seems so easy; I actually think it's quite difficult. Because sound and concrete poetry are so expensive to reproduce, there is hardly a "canon" -- ironically, all of our pomo arguments against canon formation find a counter-argument here, in that there is so much of this work out there, little significant (i.e. establishment of values) critical discourse about it, that all we see are xeroxed cut-ups from newspapers, weird line drawings, Ernst-like two-minute collages, etc., always being reproduced as "new." > ---------- > From: Ron Silliman > Reply To: UB Poetics discussion group > Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 8:25 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: adventures in poultry > > "But Bob's statement that visual poets are necessarily more > 'adventurous' than language poets predated my statement by a couple of > weeks, and we disagree. My argument involves the major innovation of > poststructuralism which stretches across disciplines--and langpo as its > closest poetic relative." Bill Austin > > I'm always struck -- and the Ubu site would be my case in point -- by how > much visual and sound poetry is really antiquarian in much the same way > that > people who only write in sonnets or haiku are. The next time somebody > invents a new sound, I want to hear it. > > One of the curious fates of poetic form is that once a genre has become > identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it > dissolves into the fabric of time. If the literary devices that have been > associated with langpo catch on, it will suffer the same fate, so it's not > ultimately a question of who has a better form. Rather, it is how one > approaches the world and what currently exists. Most vizpo would rather > look > adventurous rather than be adventurous. Ditto the sonic set. > > But I frankly see little in the way of connection between > post-structuralism > and langpo other than temporal proximity. Most of langpo's instincts have > been neo-structural, it would seem to me. > > Ron Silliman > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 16:08:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Igor Satanovsky Subject: Re: adventures in poultry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Ron, again and again, I am struck with how many people on this list live in=20= the past, be it 100 years ago or 10 years ago. It's obvious by now that "the= literary devices that have been associated with langpo" already caught on y= ears ago. If we are to judge antiquity of a particular genre by the amount o= f schlock encountered in small independent press, langpo would come out a cl= ear champion, far exceeding vispo redundancies. the real problems with sound= po and vispo lie not in their age, or lack of social context, but with its p= ractitioners often ignorance of general visual/musical principles underlying= visual arts and music. Vispo is also suffering from poor production values=20= in general, which is understandable considering its long-term marginal statu= s. However, to state that "vispo would rather look adventurous rather than b= e adventurous" is to invite examination of langpo itself on this subject. Se= veral well-known langpo poets have been known to venture into vispo and soun= dpo territory on occasion; and poet s like Jackson MacLow, highly regarded in the langpo community, made a valua= ble contribution to these genres. There are also some known vispoets whose t= extual strategies bear strong marks of langpo influence, whether they want t= o admit it or not. These crossovers provided some of the most interesting wo= rk in recent years. On the other hand, a lack of new ideas and a general sen= se of stalemate in the traditional langpo in the last 5-6 years has been ine= scapable. The bottom line is: this whole village is glass, and throwing ston= es is a bad idea. Best, Igor Satanovsky p.s. Re:=93The next time somebody invents a new sound, I want to hear it.=94 -=20 I found this statement to be particulary silly: can=92t recall langpoets int= roducing any new letters to English lately either.=20 ______ "I'm always struck -- and the Ubu site would be my case in point -- by how much visual and sound poetry is really antiquarian in much the same way that people who only write in sonnets or haiku are. The next time somebody invents a new sound, I want to hear it. One of the curious fates of poetic form is that once a genre has become identified, it goes on forever even as the social context that led to it dissolves into the fabric of time. If the literary devices that have been associated with langpo catch on, it will suffer the same fate, so it's not ultimately a question of who has a better form. Rather, it is how one approaches the world and what currently exists. Most vizpo would rather look adventurous rather than be adventurous. Ditto the sonic set." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 13:42:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael amberwind Subject: Re: Translations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii i couldn't find 20 PhDs who were willing to work for free - so just used an online translator w/ one of my simpler poems to do the switch - i'm sure i am not the first person to do this, but the results are interesting, if only to amuse and show the drawbacks of computer translations [sonnet] Swords of green slice the grid where white gulls sit In the wake of Autumn rain, the goalposts Bookend my walk - the curved thousands - tender Beaks devour bright, new fall rain, slow drops. Alone is the word of a leaky vessel. It spreads among the scattered straws of road. So light as to hover over hemlock, And with a gardener's hand, the air I tend. Undelivered, I return to silence, Chanting without tongue unformed miles. Épées de part verte la grille où les gulls blancs se reposent à la suite de la pluie d'automne, les goalposts Bookend ma promenade - les milliers incurvés - devour tendre de becs lumineux, ouvelle pluie de chute, baisses lentes. Seul est le mot d'un navire perméable. Il écarte parmi les pailles dispersées de la route. Allumez ainsi quant au vol plané au-dessus du hemlock, et avec la main d'un jardinier, l'air que je tends. Non délivré, je reviens au silence, chantant sans langue unformed des milles. Swords of green share the grid where the white gulls rest Following the rain of autumn, the goalposts Bookend my walk - curved thousands -devour To tighten luminous nozzles, new rain of fall, slow falls. Only is the word of a permeable ship. It draws aside among the dispersed straws of the road. Light thus as for the gliding flight above the hemlock, And with the hand of a gardener, the air which I tighten. Not delivered, I return to silence, Singing without language unformed miles. *************************************** I can't really argue with the first line. Could be better than what I wrote. I find "to tighten luminuos nozzles" and "permeable ship" bizarre and probably onanistic. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 19:43:53 -0230 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "K.Angelo Hehir" Subject: broadsheet submissions sought MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Greenboathouse Books=92 Broadsheet Series 2000 This project will bring together 15 new and established writers from across Canada, one poem to be selected by each writer. These broadsheets will be designed individually to compliment the form and content of the poem, takin= g all possible design aspects into account, including graphics, the dimension= s of the sheet, the type of paper, type of printing, as well as various types of physical presentation (single flat sheet, accordion fold, printing insid= e a small box, etc). The end results will be sold both individually and as a collection, price to be determined in accordance with production costs. As this is not a contest, there will be no cash prize. Selected writers wil= l receive a copy of the full collection, with two additional copies of that writer=92s broadsheet. Submissions: 3-5 poems with an entry fee of two dollars per poem. Checks should be made out to Jason Dewinetz (editor). Poems should be no more than one page given the nature of the project format. The deadline is December 31, 2000. Although the permanent mailing address for Greenboathouse Books is in Verno= n (2007 - 37th Avenue, Vernon, BC, V1T 2W9), submissions to this contest should be posted to the following address: Greenboathouse Books Broadsheets #17, 10524 - 100th Avenue Edmonton, Alberta T5J 0A9 For more information, please contact me at the email address listed below, or visit our website for news on what we've been up to over the summer. Jason Dewinetz Editor greenboathouse books jason@greenboathouse.com http://www.greenboathouse.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:40:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Somebody, I don't know who it was, suggested earlier that Jakobson's take on metalanguage was misguided. Well, I'd like to challenge that suggestion. I'd like to see your definition of metalanguage, and I'd like to show you that you are wrong both about Jakobson and about metalanguage. Please identify yourself and be prepared to defend yourself. Thanks, George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 16:38:11 +0000 Reply-To: anielsen@lmu.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: anielsen@LMU.EDU Subject: Heberto Padilla MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Cuban poet Heberto Padilla died in Alabama Monday, age 68 -- "Some dangerous poem is always stalking you." --Heberto Padilla "Has All-- a Codicil?" -- Emily Dickinson Aldon Lynn Nielsen Fletcher Jones Chair of Literature and Writing Department of English Loyola Marymount University 7900 Loyola Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90045-8215 anielsen@lmu.edu (310) 338-3078 _________________________________________________ The simple way to read all your emails at ThatWeb http://www.thatweb.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 21:29:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Frey Subject: You are invited Comments: To: janscan@concentric.net, pandgshinn@earthlink.net, jaustin@h2l2.com, lforney@dca.net, janscan@concentric.net, bschoefer@hotmail.com, jjmoaustin@surfree.com, mjkruger@bellatlantic.net, kdansky@alumni.law.upenn.edu, stronsay2@cs.com, james.allen@smginc.com, olsonk@pobox.upenn.edu, susanw@gse.upenn.edu, wsternman@earthlink.net, vhbeier@upenn5.hep.upenn.edu, umajmuda@critpath.org, lacallah@sas.upenn.edu, schult2607@aol.com, dianefiske@hotmail.com, twourevs@ix.netcom.com, daveandbridge@aol.com, kelly@drexel.edu, portia@mymailstation.com, ahillier@ssw.upenn.edu, jjohns@netaxs.com, ktetlow@earthlink.net Comments: cc: philachic@hotmail.com, JCarragee@aol.com, Alchemistmwm@aol.com, revphull@aol.com, Robert_Moore@agnesirwin.org, info@photoreview.org, singer@panix.com, droberts@philamuseum.org, james.sizemore@charming.com, mawestman@aol.com, saenoli@ad.com, daopen@yahoo.com, freytsuk@aol.com, tgrant@icdc.com, "jep@tradenet.net" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Contact: Richard Frey 215-735-7156 richardfrey@dca.net (NOTcoffeeHouse) Poetry and Performance Series New poetry read by Carole Bernstein, the author of Familiar (Hanging Loose Press, 1997) which J. D. McClatchy called =93an exhilarating book.=94 Her chapbook, And Stepped Away from the Circle, won the 1994 Sow=92s Ear Chapbook Competition. "My poetry is very personal and confessional, sometimes graphic, and occasionally gross." New poetry read by Ryan Eckes "if instinct costs only $99.99 a month plus installation, what's that come to? something calculable I am a profit" and guests TBA Sunday, October 1, 2000 1 pm =46irst Unitarian Church 2125 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19103/215-563-3980 Plus Open Poetry and Performance Showcase $1 admission. All Poets and performers may submit works for direct posting on our website via email to the webmaster@notcoffeehouse.org or works may be emailed to Richard Frey at richardfrey@dca.net or USPS or hand-delivered through slot at 500 South 25th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19146. More information: Church office, 215-563-3980, Jeff Loo, 546-6381 or Richard Frey, 735-7156. Visit our website at www.notcoffeehouse.org Poets & performers previously appearing at NOTcoffeeHouse: Nathalie Anderson, Lisa Coffman, Barbara Cole, Barb Daniels, Linh Dinh, Lori-Nan Engler, Simone Zelitch, Dan Evans, Brenda McMillan, Kerry Sherin, John Kelly Green, Emiliano Martin, Jose Gamalinda, Toshi Makihara, Thom Nickels, Joanne Leva, Darcy Cummings, David Moolten, Kristen Gallagher, Shulamith Wachter Caine, Maralyn Lois Polak, Marcus Cafagna, Ethel Rackin, Lauren Crist, Beth Phillips Brown, Joseph Sorrentino, Frank X, Richard Kikionyogo, Elliott Levin, Leonard Gontarek, Lamont Steptoe, Bernard Stehle, Sharon Rhinesmith, Alexandra Grilikhes, C. A. Conrad, Nate Chinen, Jim Cory, Tom Grant, Gregg Biglieri, Eli Goldblatt, Stephanie Jane Parrino, Jeff Loo, Theodore A. Harris, Mike Magee, Wil Perkins, Deborah Burnham, UNSOUND, Danny Romero, Don Riggs, Shawn Walker, She-Haw, Scott Kramer, Judith Tomkins, 6 of the Unbearables - Alfred Vitale Ron Kolm, Jim =46east, Mike Carter, Sharon Mesmer, Carol Wierzbicki-,John Phillips, Quinn Eli, Molly Russakoff, Peggy Carrigan, Kelly McQuain, Patrick Kelly, Mark Sarro, Rocco Renzetti, Voices of a Different Dream - Annie Geheb, Ellen =46ord Mason, Susan Windle - Bob Perelman, Jena Osman, Robyn Edelstein,Brian Patrick Heston, Francis Peter Hagen, Shankar Vedantam, Yolanda Wisher, Lynn Levin, Margaret Holley, Don Silver, Ross Gay, Heather Starr, Magdalena Zurawski, Daisy Fried, Knife & Fork Band, Alicia Askenase, Ruth Rouff, Kyle Conner, Tamara Oakman, Robyn Edelstein, Sara Ominsky, Thaddeus Rutkowski Richard Frey 500 South 25th Street Philadelphia, PA 19146 215-735-7156 richardfrey@dca.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:35:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Robert E. McDonough" Subject: Re: my quarrel with negative capability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit That's interesting. But _Liber Amoris_ (which I confess I haven't read) surely means _Book of Love_? Bob McDonough -----Original Message----- From: Robert Corbett To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 1:23 AM Subject: my quarrel with negative capability >is that it ain't Keats' idea! it's William Hazlitt's! the idea, if not the >phrase, is embedded in his _Treatise on Human Nature_. it reads as if a >Lockean tried to explain benevolence (18th c. altruism) instead of the >state. item: he claims that we can be no more interested in our future >self than another's future self. they are both equally fictional. from >here, with a picquant turn of phrase and poetic embroidering, you might >well get n.c. but perhaps without its fatal flaw. n.c. hides the subject >as if it is simply not a problem (and thus we get Bardolatry and still >later Keatolatry: the fantasy of the poet as everyone), while this >argument says the subject _is_ the other in some sense. i (at least in >the future) is another. > >though i am not Hazlitt expert, it is about time for his revival. >painter, biographer, critic, and, in his most peculiar moment, writer of a >cringe inducing, thinly disguised dissection of his "crush" on and >subsequent "crushing" by his landlady's daughter. and called it "Liber >Amoris": that is, "free love." > >Robert Corbett > > >-- >Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as >rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip >Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar >University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you > call that sophistry then what is Love" > - Lisa Robertson > >On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, K.Silem Mohammad wrote: > >> Richard Taylor writes: >> >> >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn >> >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all >> >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then >> >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". >> >> Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his fearless >> appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, all of >> which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the >> masculine pronoun. >> >> Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term has >> been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that there's >> a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what happens >> in poetry, etc. >> >> --Kasey >> >> ............................ >> """""""""""""""""""""""""""" >> K. SILEM MOHAMMAD >> Santa Cruz, California >> immerito@hotmail.com >> http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad >> >> _________________________________________________________________________ >> Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. >> >> Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at >> http://profiles.msn.com. >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 22:52:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: LAEPS reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This message came to the administrative account. - T. Shaner --On Wednesday, September 27, 2000, 7:47 PM -0700 "Todd Baron" wrote: " Diane Ward, Martin Nakell, Douglas Messerli, Chris Reiner, and Todd Baron " read as LAEPS (Los Angeles Experimental Poetry Society) at Beyond Baroque " October 13th--7:30 PM " " ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 23:41:54 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/27/00 8:18:13 PM, markducharme@HOTMAIL.COM writes: << >Langpo contains speech forms, examines their >constituents, within its fascination with writing. (The page, its set up, >its spacing, is crucial to langpo, no?) Which is Derridean, to say the >least. By this logic, Williams, Olson & a lot of other writers must also have been "Derridean." Mark DuCharme >> Only if you take my statement out of context, which you do. The rest of my post does its job of limiting, I think. If you don't include the issue of the privileging of speech, you're not really responding to what I said. S'okay. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 23:02:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Taylor Subject: Re: my quarrel with negative capability MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Kasey. Thanks. The "his" was an habitual slip. I try to put "their" nowdays. Neg cap was mentioned by either R Silliman or C Bernstein in an essay in "The American Tree" but I'm sure I've seen the Keats letter somewhere re it. I used to enjoy (and still do) Hazlitt's and Lamb's essays.But the way I write I, well I just let the words work thru me: I cant explain it. It sounds heroic and mystical but it happens. Writing is like making music - hence my hint re John Asbery's regret that he had never learnt how to compose music. The musical composition analogy (for Ashbery and writers of his kind) comes via the subconscious. Mozart used to "see" a whole symphony instantaneously. Then he just wrote it down. Not on all works. but the mind (brain-body to me) is a very powerful creative (and very mysterious)machine.Kasey, these other guys just complicate neg cap too much.They're probably frightened of the unknown etc.Richard. >From: "Robert E. McDonough" >Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:35:06 -0400 >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: my quarrel with negative capability > >That's interesting. But _Liber Amoris_ (which I confess I haven't read) >surely means _Book of Love_? > >Bob McDonough >-----Original Message----- >From: Robert Corbett >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 1:23 AM >Subject: my quarrel with negative capability > > >>is that it ain't Keats' idea! it's William Hazlitt's! the idea, if not the >>phrase, is embedded in his _Treatise on Human Nature_. it reads as if a >>Lockean tried to explain benevolence (18th c. altruism) instead of the >>state. item: he claims that we can be no more interested in our future >>self than another's future self. they are both equally fictional. from >>here, with a picquant turn of phrase and poetic embroidering, you might >>well get n.c. but perhaps without its fatal flaw. n.c. hides the subject >>as if it is simply not a problem (and thus we get Bardolatry and still >>later Keatolatry: the fantasy of the poet as everyone), while this >>argument says the subject _is_ the other in some sense. i (at least in >>the future) is another. >> >>though i am not Hazlitt expert, it is about time for his revival. >>painter, biographer, critic, and, in his most peculiar moment, writer of a >>cringe inducing, thinly disguised dissection of his "crush" on and >>subsequent "crushing" by his landlady's daughter. and called it "Liber >>Amoris": that is, "free love." >> >>Robert Corbett >> >> >>-- >>Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as >>rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip >>Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar >>University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you >> call that sophistry then what is Love" >> - Lisa Robertson >> >>On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, K.Silem Mohammad wrote: >> >>> Richard Taylor writes: >>> >>> >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn >>> >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all >>> >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then >>> >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". >>> >>> Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his >fearless >>> appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, all >of >>> which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the >>> masculine pronoun. >>> >>> Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term >has >>> been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that >there's >>> a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what >happens >>> in poetry, etc. >>> >>> --Kasey >>> >>> ............................ >>> """""""""""""""""""""""""""" >>> K. SILEM MOHAMMAD >>> Santa Cruz, California >>> immerito@hotmail.com >>> http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad >>> >>> _________________________________________________________________________ >>> Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. >>> >>> Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at >>> http://profiles.msn.com. >>> > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 02:07:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brendan Lorber Subject: FLY ME TO THE ZINC Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" **THE ZINC BAR SUNDAY NIGHT READING SERIES** hopes to have you by its side as we swing wide eyed into October. Can you guess who we've lined up for the subterranean Moroccan grotto this upcoming month? The answers to that question & even a little peek at the following month, dear friend, lie below: SUNDAY OCTOBER 1: DAN MACHLIN & KIM ROSENFIELD Dan's latest is This Side Facing You (Heart Hammer) & Kim's got Some Of Us (Ouija Madness Press),Rx & Cool Clean Chemistry (Leave Books), & A Self-Guided Walk (Object/p o e t s c o o p). SUNDAY OCTOBER 8: SPECIAL FISH DRUM MAGAZINE EVENT with MICHAEL ROTHENBERG & EDITOR SUZI WINSON in advance of the journal's newest issue's immanent arrival SUNDAY OCTOBER 15: ALLISON COBB, CHRISTOPHER PUTNAM & JENNIFER COLEMAN the highlights from an 8-hour tea & music driven Washington DC Renga session SUNDAY OCTOBER 22: JOHN S. HALL & FRANKLIN BRUNO John of King Missile & Franklin of Nothing Painted Blue SUNDAY OCTOBER 29: GREG FUCHS & MYSTERIOUS HALLOWEEN VERY SPECIAL GUEST VISITATION Greg wrote Came Like It Went (Buck Downs Books) SUNDAY NOVEMBER 5: EXCEEDINGLY SPECIAL LAUNCH EVENT FOR JACK KIMBALL'S FAUXPRESS.COM a new line of e-chapbooks about to be loosed upon the world The readings will run you $3 if you have it to cough up, except the Fish Drum Event which is $5 According to our watches, the readings begin promptly at 6:37pm bang on the dot "Our watches" live on the wrists of your devil may care hosts Brendan Lorber of LUNGFULL! Magazine & Douglas Rothschild Zinc Bar lives at 90 West Houston in New York's elite Between Laguardia & Thompson District. For more information on THE ZINC BAR SUNDAY NIGHT READING SERIES reply to this email or call us at 212.533.9317 or 212.366.2091. We do so devoutly hope you can make the events. I have $20 bucks riding on it. Yours as ever, Brendan Lorber ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 03:50:46 +0000 Reply-To: baratier@megsinet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Organization: Pavement Saw Press Subject: Larry's Poetry Forum MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Looking forward to seeing you'all soon-- Readings: 2 sets about a half hour each. From: October 2 George Myers Jr. October 9 Miekal And from Wisconsin! http://www.net22.com/dreamtime/index.shtml October 16 Joel Lipman October 23 Alice Cone teaches creative writing at Kent State University, where she is also Assistant to the Coordinator of the Wick Poetry Program. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Artful Dodge, and other periodicals. Her chapbook Shattering Into Blossom was published by Interior Noise Press in 1998. Cone was of member of the 2000 Cleveland Poetry Slam Team, and competed in the national competition in Providence, Rhode Island. October 30 20th annual Dead Poets Reading. Special guest: Weldon Kees. November 6 Scott Miner poems, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, The Ohio Review, Ariel, The Antioch Review, Voices in Italian Americana, and other mags in the US and Canada. He has received the Emerson Prize, the Prize Poem Award from Four Quarters magazine, the Joseph Stein Award, and others. He teaches creative writing and literature at Ohio University. November 13 Matt Hart November 20 Jim Palmarini November 27 Cathy Hardy December 4 Fred Andrle December 11 TBA All Events Mondays 7pm 2040 N. High St Columbus, Ohio All readings followed by a brief open mike. Funded by the Ohio Arts Council: A state agency that supports public programs in the arts. Be well David Baratier, Co-coordinator, Larry's Poetry Forum ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 03:10:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: The Visual in Visual Poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Ward: I think you make some very good points here--I would say esp with yr last sentence--that is very very important with what aspects of the visual work that Burroughs/Gysin did and also the works and writings of Philadelpho Menezes are concerned with. Part of the problem is that language we know has become "automatic"-- there is an essay i would very highly recommend at Light and Dust by Karl Young called "Notation and the Art of Reading" in this regard: http://www.thing.net/~grist.homekarl.htm also works by Menezes are here and at the excellent Menezes tribute being put together at the epc I am not sure though that the visual is not cognition--and by this I do not mean "recognition" which in a sense is both automatic and not: for example: the Uncanny--see Freud's very good essay on that and also in Emerson's phrase: "it is strange to me yet not unknown" i mean something other, which is that in the act, the activity of seeing, via attention., is a form of thinking-- i do not know if others experience this. but often in just walking around i am not thinking in words or "automatic" "recognition" but with what is presented visually as thought--for example sidewalk cracks, bark, fragmented or chipped rocks, bricks, concrete--corrosions of metal, calligraphies of trees--movement of light--this all is thinking-- i know i am not alone in experiencing this as spent many happy hours with bob cobbing doing this--sounding and acting the thinking of these things as we received this thinking--no need for words--or "ideas'--but very much a thinking-- i wd say we learned immensities i know from personal experience jwcurry also knows this visual thinking i do not know if this is what others may say is thinking--but i know for some it is-- often in defining something, we make it so that we only "see it that way"-- i.e. visual/cognitive as separate the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg helps one in understanding questions opened by this area--that is, in the continual questioning of what is the relation of the visual and the cognitive Picasso said: "I do not seek, I find" i regard this as an aspect of the visual as thinking i realize i may be on shaky ground here to say the very least re the received ideas of these questions, yet i am not one to argue with Pablo, Bob Cobbing or jwcurry! --dave baptiste chirot On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Ward Tietz wrote: > Bob G., > > I recognize the distinctions you're trying to make, but I think the > terminology you insist on doesn't really get us anywhere. > > The term "visual" appeals to the sensorium, to perception, but not to > cognition. "Visual" only means that something is perceptible by sight. > That's really all there is to it. > > There are significant aesthetic differences between a "visual" text and a > more traditional text, but, again, the differences are semiotic and > phenomenological, a matter of how certain kinds of signs are understood and > experienced. A traditional text appears less visual because its perception > verges on the automatic. > > > Ward Tietz > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 06:06:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baptiste Chirot Subject: Re: adventures in poultry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Touche, Mark! actually--the description here sounds to me like first grade lessons in reading-- all these things were very important to just getting through a few word sentence. remember thinking--before i learned to read--i cdn't wait!--as had already been exploring letters and trying to see them ,in what ways the shapes made sounds for example-- you just knew when you cd read those signs, they wd speak--and all kinds of marvelous adventures where in those pages--i used to hold a book up and listen to it--to see if i cd hear it, the sounds-- but then when i started to learn what was called reading (of writing) i thought what a botch someone had made of the whole thing! i had really imagined it being more hieroglphyic rather than the seemingly limited forms (what?--only 26--supposedly most humans had more teeth in their skulls than that!) so flatly used-- i think Mark is right-- too much is being attempted to be squeezed into too small a space in this statement-- think it's better to allow room for extension, as Mark notes-- from Larry Eigner: "A poem extends itself like you're walking down the street. And you extend the walk sometimes, unexpectedly" (Larry Eigner Remembered 33) --dbchirot On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Mark DuCharme wrote: > Austinwja@AOL.COM wrote: > > >Langpo contains speech forms, examines their > >constituents, within its fascination with writing. (The page, its set up, > >its spacing, is crucial to langpo, no?) Which is Derridean, to say the > >least. > > By this logic, Williams, Olson & a lot of other writers must also have been > "Derridean." > > Mark DuCharme > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:25:51 -0400 Reply-To: perez@magnet.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jamie Perez Subject: a little pound, a little laughter MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re: Ezra Pound, a little something to brighten your thursday (or important historical documents to some...). Neither are "new" but maybe you haven't seen them: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2000/02/14pound.html http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2000/08/04poundwilder.html jamie.p ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 14:59:44 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Philly? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Re events in Philly next week, Steve McCaffery & Lisa Robertson, the event of the season, will be at Writers House in Philly on Tuesday. I, alas, will be in Lowell, Mass, on that night as well as Wednesday & Thursday, Ron _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:29:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Mayhew Subject: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit George wrote: "for example he [Jakobson] cites Tolstoy's focus on Anna Karenina's handbag while she is committing suicide. This example is notorious. Notorious." Sorry, but I don't see how this is a metonymy! Nor the Godfather examples. A metonymy is the substitution of one term for another in which the two terms bore some relation to each other. "I bought a Picasso" (I bought a painting made by Picasso) "Congress attacked Madison Avenue" (Madison Avenue represents, metonymically, the advertising industry) Now if I used the word "handbag" in a sentence in which the word stood in for Anna K, that would be a metonymy. "Here comes old 'big purse'." "The suits are nervous about the impending restructuring." Suits here means people who wear suits, in other words, the management of the company. "He is a skirt chaser." Skirt, metonymically, means women. This is what I originally meant when I said that Jakobson defined metonymy in a way that led to noone knowing what it was any more! The idea of contiguity is especially misleading, since metonymy usually goes along the lines of cause for effect, effect for cause, part for whole, characteristic for object, container for the thing contained, etc... Not simply two objects that are simply next to each other or adjoining. My bathroom is contiguous to my bedroom, but this has nothing to do with the trope of metonymy. I too would like to hear from the person who said Jakobson was mistaken in his definition of metalanguage, and to hear George's refutation of this other person! Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 11:36:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Harry Nudel Subject: m&r...welcome back kotter late to get the POETRY CALENDAR for Sept..glancing at it quickly was like some time warp....09/01/50....William Jay Smith rhyming and prancing along the Cherokee death March...Kunitz Kvetching Akhamotova...Meanwhile back at the DUDE RANCH....Never has so little Reader's Digest $$$$$$ crammed so much mediocrity into the barren wastes of New Joisey... Usually realiable sources have informed me that this year's Eli Weisel GOLDEN CROCODILE TEARS AWARD....popularly known as 'oi veh's mer" and given to the poet who has created the most lucrative career out of the suffering of others is about to be awarded to Gerald Stern and Philip Levine... & for those of you, over the long summer, have forgotten the mantra of this trade...repeat after me...reading$, book$, grant$, job$ & life time self-serving award$....or publish, perish, and resurrect with $tigmata... the Vinnie Barbirino Sweathogs Prize..to who can tell me what French writer sd of another about to be promoted to Parnassus "it's not enough that he refused the legion of honour...he should have never done anything to deserve it"....welcome back, welcome back..DRn... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:53:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Patrick" Subject: Re: Heberto Padilla MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/28/national/28PADI.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:08:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Corbett Subject: Re: my quarrel with negative capability In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Brian, Yeah, Coleridge was good with coinages. That always gets you credit in the history books. But Hazlitt's treatise was out by 1805. Still more, STC was living as an opium befogged dependent when Johnny Keats came of age, while Hazlitt was a working journalist. Furthermore, Hazlitt's treatise had been published by 1805. Finally, this idea is not so far from the general tenor of post-Lockean English philosophy--imaginative identification with the other is a cornerstone of David Hume & Adam Smith's ideas about sympathy. Hazlitt's innovation is to link this with thought of the future and effectively subvert the idea of self-interest by using the tools of self-interest. Oh, and don't get me started about Coleridge's frailties: between Hazlitt and STC, it is simply not a fair fight. As for Hazlitt being "nasty": on the earlier generation's politics, he was absolutely right. They did "sell out," quite literally in Wordsworth's case (though evidence seems to be against him being an actual spy). However, despite all the gossip spread by Coleridge and others against him, Hazlitt also could also write of them quite generously, as in _The Spirit of the Age_ which came out in 1825. That and he remembered folk like Godwin, Horne Tooke, etc, who were being buried by the rush to conformity of the dissenting middle classes. He was complex, but it was because (and he is much smarter than Coleridge in this respect), he didn't let his hopes blinker a sharp sense for the realities of human life. As for the latin: there I go again, mistaking a book for freedom. Cheers, Robert -- Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you call that sophistry then what is Love" - Lisa Robertson On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Stefans, Brian wrote: > It's actually, I think, Coleridge's idea, except that he called it "Negative > Belief" or something like that. Coleridge also invented the term > "psycho-analyze," but he did it in one of his notebooks which weren't > published until, I think, the early twentieth century. As for Hazlitt, > the interesting about him, to me, outside of a really excellent prose style > -- it reads as very contemporary, and sharp -- is that he was a nasty little > guy, who let loose on everybody, Coleridge especially (to the point of name > calling), mostly venting on his older romantic peers whom he felt failed to > follow through on their early, radical politics. He once had to take a > continental vacation to cure himself of drinking too much tea. The > landlady's daughter you mention below was 16. > > > ---------- > > From: Robert Corbett > > Reply To: UB Poetics discussion group > > Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2000 12:06 AM > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > Subject: my quarrel with negative capability > > > > is that it ain't Keats' idea! it's William Hazlitt's! the idea, if not the > > phrase, is embedded in his _Treatise on Human Nature_. it reads as if a > > Lockean tried to explain benevolence (18th c. altruism) instead of the > > state. item: he claims that we can be no more interested in our future > > self than another's future self. they are both equally fictional. from > > here, with a picquant turn of phrase and poetic embroidering, you might > > well get n.c. but perhaps without its fatal flaw. n.c. hides the subject > > as if it is simply not a problem (and thus we get Bardolatry and still > > later Keatolatry: the fantasy of the poet as everyone), while this > > argument says the subject _is_ the other in some sense. i (at least in > > the future) is another. > > > > though i am not Hazlitt expert, it is about time for his revival. > > painter, biographer, critic, and, in his most peculiar moment, writer of a > > cringe inducing, thinly disguised dissection of his "crush" on and > > subsequent "crushing" by his landlady's daughter. and called it "Liber > > Amoris": that is, "free love." > > > > Robert Corbett > > > > > > -- > > Robert Corbett "I will discuss perfidy with scholars as > > rcor@u.washington.edu as if spurning kisses, I will sip > > Department of English the marble marrow of empire. I want sugar > > University of Washington but I shall never wear shame and if you > > call that sophistry then what is Love" > > - Lisa Robertson > > > > On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, K.Silem Mohammad wrote: > > > > > Richard Taylor writes: > > > > > > >Probably the solution for a writer is to study and learn > > > >from the history of his craft, be as well informed (in all > > > >areas as well as current lit theory) as possible and then > > > >to let "instinct" take over - or "negative capability". > > > > > > Hey, no common sense allowed! My hat is off to Mr. Taylor for his > > fearless > > > appeal to about seven or eight volatile presumptions in one sentence, > > all of > > > which I heartily embrace, with the exception of the limiting use of the > > > masculine pronoun. > > > > > > Negative capability is one of my favorite theoretical spooks. The term > > has > > > been so roundly rejected & ridiculed, but I can't help feeling that > > there's > > > a lot there that can still be teased out in terms of describing what > > happens > > > in poetry, etc. > > > > > > --Kasey > > > > > > ............................ > > > """""""""""""""""""""""""""" > > > K. SILEM MOHAMMAD > > > Santa Cruz, California > > > immerito@hotmail.com > > > http://communities.msn.com/KSilemMohammad > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________________ > > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at > > http://www.hotmail.com. > > > > > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > > > http://profiles.msn.com. > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 10:06:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: kathryn graham Subject: Re: Translations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Try "Go Translator" at http://translator.go.com/ that lets you translate from English to French, Spanish, Italian, German and Portugese and from any of those into English. Be warned "Computerized translations are approximations of the original text.They should not be considered to be an exact translation." Thus: When visiting your adolescent niece: paper spa retreat. Cure for human miseries. Just give the would-be attacker a do you have to censor your language? Cultivated inaction making little sniff knock out faster. Do you check office email uprooting definite evils? Then a can of Mace. Work queen of water-cooling state-owned slaves. With antipathy against chatter kissing and tell. Government family unit to extirpate them in a thorough study hall. Becomes: Al visitar a su sobrina adolescente: retratamiento de papel del balneario. Curación para las miserias humanas. Elasticidad justa el atacante supuesto a usted tiene que censurar su lenguaje? La inacción cultivada que hace poco la aspiración golpea hacia fuera más rápidamente. Usted controla el email de la oficina que desarraiga males definidos? Entonces lata de a de macis. Reina del trabajo de los esclavos propiedad del gobierno de la refrigeración por agua. Con antipathy contra la charla que se besa y diga. Unidad de la familia del gobierno al extirpate ellos en un pasillo completo del estudio. Back to English: When visiting its adolescent niece: retratamiento of paper of the bath. Treatment for the human miseries. Right elasticity the attacker supposed to you you must censure its language? The cultivated inaction that recently the aspiration strikes towards outside more quickly. You control the email of the defined office that uproots the evils? Then tin of a of macis. Queen of the work of the slaves property of the government of the water cooling. With antipathy against char the one that is kissed and says. Unit of the family from the government to extirpate they in a complete corridor of the study. To French: En rendant visite à son nièce adolescente: retratamiento du papier du bain. Traitement pour les misères humaines. La bonne élasticité l'attaquant supposé à vous vous doit censurer son langage? L'inaction cultivée vers laquelle récemment l'aspiration frappe en dehors de plus rapidement. Vous contrôlez l'email du bureau défini qui déracine les maux? Puis boîte d'a des macis. Reine du travail de la propriété d'esclaves du gouvernement du refroidissement par l'eau. Avec antipathy contre le char celui qui est embrassé et dit. Unité de la famille du gouvernement à l'extirpate ils dans un couloir complet de l'étude. To English: While visiting his/her niece teenager: retratamiento of the paper of the bath. Processing for human miseries. Good elasticity the attacker supposed with you must censure his language? The cultivated inaction towards which recently the aspiration strikes apart from more quickly. You control the email of the definite office which uproots the evils? Then box A of maces. Queen of the work of the property of slaves of the government of cooling by water. With antipathy against the tank that which is embraced and said. Unit of the family of the government to the extirpate they in a complete corridor of the study. Fun ===== "You are a prisoner in a croissant factory and you love it." -Frank O'Hara, "Lines for the Fortune Cookies" "How far does the desert reach to the north, from the point where the river ends?" I asked. And Mohammed Bai replied: "To the end of the world. And it takes three months to get there." -Sven Hedin, My Life as an Explorer __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos - 35mm Quality Prints, Now Get 15 Free! http://photos.yahoo.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:11:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: address query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Hello, Does anyone have contact info. for Lawson Fusao Inada? Please backchannel. Thanks, Stephen Cope scope@ucsd.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 13:57:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: FW: Book Release Reception for Alison Deming and Lucinda Bliss Comments: To: Tenney Nathanson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit you heard it through the grapevine mailto:tenney@azstarnet.com mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn/ -----Original Message----- From: UA Department of English [mailto:ENGLISH@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Frances Shoberg Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 12:00 PM To: ENGLISH@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Book Release Reception for Alison Deming and Lucinda Bliss FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Christy Karpinski Phone: 882-7542 email: kore@azstarnet.com Kore Press is pleased to announce the publication of Alison Deming and Lucinda Bliss' book Anatomy of Desire, The Daughter/Mother Sessions. A book signing will occur, Sunday, October 16, 2000 at 6:00 PM at the Hazmat Gallery, 197 E. Toole Ave. Anatomy of Desire, The Daughter/Mother Sessions, funded in part by the Arizona Humaitites Council, is the intimate dialogue between mother and daughter on female desires, passions, and experiences. Faith Wilding in her introductory essay to The Anatomy of Desire says: The remarkable dialogue in this book is an opening into fearsome and sublime territories, where home comforts and home truths are scarce; where ancient hierarchies and silences have been broken. I hope that the passionate, disturbing, and sometimes triumphant voices of these two artists will inspire many others with the courage to enter where they have led. Alison Deming is the author of Science and Other Poems, selected for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence and a collection of essays, Temporary Homelands. She has edited Poetry of the American West: A Columbia Anthology. Among other awards, she has received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, two NEA Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. Lucinda Bliss has exhibited widely is the Southwest, Illinois, and New England. Venues include The College of the Atlantic in Maine, Gallery 312 and the cooperative gallery South of North in Chicago, Firestone ArtSpace, Copeland-Rutherford Gallery, Zitlala, and the Red Goebel in New Mexico. She received an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College and a BA in Art History from Skidmore College. Kore Press, Inc.is a non-profit corporation founded on the belief that the architecture of the book is an extension of the text it houses. Kore combines a passion for the book as art with a commitment to publishing literature. The works published by Kore are innovative in their presentation or content and often represent visual/verbal collaborations or experiments in form and technique. Anatomy of Desire The Daughter Mother Sessions was designed by Kore Board members Lisa Bowden and Nancy Solomon. Frances Shoberg Events Coordinator ____________________ The University of Arizona Poetry Center 1216 N. Cherry Ave. Tucson, AZ 85719 520/321-7760 http://www.coh.arizona.edu/poetry ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 17:45:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron D Levy Subject: PhillyTalks #17 Webcast & Download :: McCaffery & Robertson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII #17 newsletter now available for download: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/phillytalks/archive.html Newsletter features nine letters by the two poets (on 'pataphysics, architectural theory, pastoral, the fragment, and other subjects), and recent poetry. 38 pages. PDF format. ----> Reading and discussion <---- 6 pm, Tuesday October 3rd, 2000 Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia >> THIS EVENT WILL BE WEBCAST LIVE << to enlist or for info, email >> wh@english.upenn.edu << "PhillyTalks" is a series of written and live poets' dialogues. **************************************** Steve McCaffery is the author of numerous books, including _The Cheat of Words_ (ECW Press), _The Black Debt_ (Nightwood Editions), _North of Intention_ (Roof), and _Panopticon_ (Blewointmentpress). McCaffery also co-edited the landmark anthology _Imagining Language_ with Jed Rasula. Lisa Robertson's books and chapbooks include _The Apothecary_ (Tsunami 1991), _XEclogue_ (Tsunami 1993; rev. New Star 1999), _The Badge_ (The Berkeley Horse/Mindware 1994), _The Descent_ (Meow 1996), _Debbie: an epic_ (New Star 1997) and _Soft Architecture: A Manifesto_ (Artspeak/Dazibao 1999). Her recent poetry and criticism appears in _American Book Review_, _Big Allis_, _Boundary2_, _Mix, Nest: a magazine of interiors_, _Raddle Moon_, _Sulphur_, _Stand_ and _West Coast Line_. "From the office for Soft Architecture" is serialized in _Front_ magazine (December 1999-ongoing). A selection from _The Weather_ is published in _W_ #1. Louis Cabri Aaron Levy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 18:35:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Up-to-date kings in meadows MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII === Up-to-date kings in meadows "We've got a big meadow here! "Let's sign the Magna Charta! "Let's make a smaller one! "Ok, we need some rules. "Ok, let's make some rules. "We need a ball! "It's not a game. "Ok, well, you can't murder anyone. "We still need a ball. "Ok, we don't need a ball. "That sounds good. "Does anyone own this place? "I do. "I do. "Well, just kidding. "We don't really know! "I like meadows! "If a slave rapes a slave-woman, castrate him! "Where'd that come from? "Well, it's a rule. "Ok, here's one. If you're a woman and you're screwing wizards and sorcerers, you'll be killed. "That's a little harsh. "But think of it, wizards and sorcerers! "If you burn a tree down around here, you'll pay sixty shillings. "That's absurd. There are no trees here! "It's a meadow! "Well don't burn anything! You know, fire's a thief? "Why's that? "Because it takes what you've got. "But it doesn't keep it! "That's different. I think it eats it though. "We're losing track here. "Okay! If you steal a nun and you're fucking like crazy and have a kid and she dies, her inheritance goes to the king. "Would you forget nuns for a moment? You're always going on about them. Nuns, nuns, nuns. "How about this? Suppose you're a thief over twelve years of age, and you steal over twelve pence, then we'll kill you. "Suppose you've left? There's no reason to stay around with the goods! "Well, we'll look all over for you, at least until everyone's had a go at it. "What if you're looking for this guy and you don't have a horse? "Well then, go on foot! "What if you don't have feet? "You're being silly. "No, you're being silly. "Okay, but if the thief flees to a church or even my palace, no one can attack him. "What if someone does attack him? "Then we'll all hate him and he'll have to give up everything he owns! "Is this the Magna Charta? "Where's the ball? "We're not doing the Magna Charta and we're not playing a ball game. "Ok, here's a rule..." === ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:03:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Molly Schwartzburg Subject: Re: adventures in poultry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes--and I believe the act of adding "new" letters or inventing new alphabets/hieroglyphs has been performed in some fascinating ways by visual poets. --Molly Schwartzburg >Re:"The next time somebody invents a new sound, I want to hear it." - >I found this statement to be particulary silly: can"t recall langpoets >introducing any new letters to English lately either. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 01:51:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Dillon Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Monsieur Chirot, Apropos Skull and Bones: Auden: Poets make good spies. We might include in your St. Louis list: Vincent Price. Best, RCHD > From: David Baptiste Chirot > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:44:26 -0500 > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Re: wcw and tthe wasteland > > Dear Mr. Dillon: > > I got a kick out of your comment re TSE and George Herbert Walker > Bush. > > Wonder if TSE had wound up by some truly weird twist of fate > attending Yale--and being a member of the notorious secret society there > as was GHWB-- > > what might have happened to him? > > It's interesting to note that TSE can include among his fellow St > Louis natives: Miles Davis, Chuck Berry and William S. Burroughs. > > "Roll over Beethoven" indeed! > > --dbchirot > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 23:16:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Belz Subject: Re: bring me a shrubbery In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > I want it noted that the letters in George Herbert Walker Bush anagram > perfectly into HUGE BERSERK REBEL WARTHOG. > I just found out that my name, Aaron Sanderson Belz, anagrams to "A LARDASS BORNE ON ZEN" -- has everyone seen http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html ?? Kind of takes the art out of anagramming, I guess. Aaron Belz http://meaningless.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 01:39:48 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: Re: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 9/28/00 8:08:54 PM, dbchirot@CSD.UWM.EDU writes: << Touche, Mark! actually--the description here sounds to me like first grade lessons in reading-- >> Hi David. Seems I must repeat and repeat. What has been ignored in both your and Mark's responses is my focus on speech vs. writing as a hierarchy with speech on the top rung. Derrida violates that privileging of speech and I perceive the langpoets as the closest thing we have in poetry to a similar dissembling. They talked about it in print, after all, so this is not reaching on my part. My comment which you both refer to immediately follows that point. In context, it is quite nonsensical to read my comment as placing Olson or Williams within a Derridian "circle." Both poets are firmly rooted in the hierarchy (and great poets both). Derrida collapses speech into writing. Its potential to mean does not issue from intention, or voice, or a new American language that somehow transcends, or the breath (which clearly privileges voice as in Olson). For Derrida, the system must be in place for any one of its elements to mean. Writing is not a secondary version of speech. Rather, at best, speech may be understood as a subtext within writing. Langpo is somewhere on this path--Olson and Williams are not. Gotta read the entire post, guys, and put it all together before you jump. Gotta read lots of Derrida too since it's quite impossible for me or anyone to repeat his arguments in total on the list. I must by necessity assume more than passing familiarity. Agree or disagree about my view of langpo, love Derrida or hate him, but anyone can be misprisoned out of context. You don't really want to do that, do you? That's really first grade stuff. Best wishes to you both, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 03:14:11 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Austinwja@AOL.COM Subject: adventures in poultry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To be fair to Mark and David, allow me to add the following (though I'm in danger now of boring myself, as well as everyone else--apologies to all). When I wrote that langpo "contains" speech forms, the word loses some of its potency in English. In Derrida's French the word does not merely suggest inclusion. It also means to control and--and this is crucial--diminish. This is part of what I meant by our needing to know Derrida's texts really well. No one can accuse Olson or Williams of diminishing speech forms and privileges within their fascination for writing. And by "fascination for writing" I meant far more than their interest in pens and typewriters. Again, I was assuming a knowledge of how Derrida treats such words. Writing is, of course, marks on the page. But for Derrida it is so much more. It is the entire relational language system which permits all utterances to mean. Once this is understood, my comment about containing speech within writing makes a bit more sense, and is limited in such a way as to exclude speech privileging poets like the spoken word guys and, come to think of it, most Romantics. So langpoets' stress on how writing appears on the page (spacing, relation, etc.) might be more important philosophically to them than it was for Olson, Williams, et al.--not that it wasn't important to them also, but their breath lines and variable feet, etc., do not insist on such exact positioning, in my view. On the other hand James Breslin tried to make the case that Williams was indeed Derridian. Mark, you might want to check out his book. It's a compelling argument. My own little book, I hope, established T.S. Eliot as one of Derrida's most important philosophical precursors among 20th century poets. The stress here is on the word "philosophical." Otherwise many might assume that Stein overarches all in this regard. She is definitely among Derrida's influences. Does any of this help? If not, I'll slip my tail between my legs and move on. Best, Bill ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 10:22:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: J Kimball Organization: http://www.fauxpress.com/kimball Subject: The East Village, v. X MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Volume Ten of The East Village Audio, lots of clip-art images and poems from Tony Towle. More art/images and still more poetry from Gerry Gilbert, Laurie Price, Peter Ganick, Michael Baskinski and Ray DiPalma. An untitled essay on child's play and poetry by Joe Elliot. Much more poetry from Mark DuCharme, Carrie Etter, Harold Rhenisch, Gwyn McVay, Larry Sawyer, David Baratier, Gabe Gunning, Francis Raven, Joshua McKinney, Christopher Reiner, Maria Damon & Miekal And. And search-and-find alphabetized indeces to all ten volumes of the bulging zine-o-plex -- The East Village ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 08:10:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Readings in Chicago In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Wednesday, Oct 4, 6 pm, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 112 S. Michigan Avenue, The Poetry Center: Paul Hoover and Maxine Chernoff Thursday, Oct. 12, Ferguson Theater, Columbia College, 600 S. Michigan: Clayton Eshleman and Bei Dao. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 23:07:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Emily Harvey Gallery, 537 Bway, NYC" Subject: Alison Knowles Opens Oct 5, 6-8pm Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" Emily Harvey Gallery Press Release 537 Broadway at Spring New York, NY 10012 September 16, 2000 Tel. 212 925-7651 Fax 212 966-0439 Alison Knowles: Footnotes objects, prints, illuminations, and exploded page works from the travel journal, Footnotes, published by Granary Books, New York City, 2000. October 5 through October 28, 2000 Tues-Sat, 11:00 - 6:00 Reception for artist: Thurs. Oct.5th, 6:00-8:00 Emily Harvey Gallery will present Footnotes, an exhibition of new work by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles. This body of work reveals a range of innovations through combinations of objects, texts and unusual art materials. Conceived as an environment, the different components of the exhibit are based upon experiments regarding the nature of the page and the meaning of what a book can be. The pieces reflect Knowles' instinct to note everyday events and continually re-examine those experiences, regardless of chronology and linear thinking. Her work is faithful to life experience and the nature of the materials. Large panels extending from the ceiling and walls are page like in their structure, containing various embedded elements and incorporating projections on a grand scale. Some pieces may be explored by gallery visitors through touch. Silkscreen and Palladium prints, as well as cyanotype reflect Knowles' mastery of printmaking. The impetus for "Footnotes" is a lifelong continua of global travel, from which the artist has literally "picked up" things and created annotated journals. The concept of footnotes therefore is a means of referencing and reorganizing those travels, transferring the literary device into visual forms. Well-known for her experimental performances and installations from the early 60s in association with Fluxus movement, and by her affiliation with Something Else Press, Knowles has continually investigated the form and content of books. Examples of her previous works include the monumentally scaled Big Book from l967 and a "walk-in" object The Book of Bean from l983 which was exhibited in the Venice Biennale in l990. In coordination with the exhibition, Granary Books is publishing Knowles's book Footnotes: Collage Journal, 30 Years, incorporating many of the elements of the exhibition but in a different form. There are actual footnotes by the artist here. Copies are available for sale at the gallery. -- Emily Harvey S. Polo, 322 30125 Venice, Italy Tel 39 041 522 6727 Fax 39 041 523 5147 Email: Harvey@doge.it ------------------------------------------------------- To tell us you want no further contact please reply with the subject 'remove' to ehgallery@earthlink.net. You will be dropped from our list of recipients. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 10:24:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris stroffolino Subject: Re: Jakobson on Metonymy & Metaphor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear George Thompson, I was not the person, but what I remember was somebody, in response to a question I had about metonymy and metaphor, wrote that Jakobson mistakenly identified them as opposites. Could you be prepared to defend Jakobson against that claim. Do you think Jakbobson sees them as opposites? Do you agree with that assessment? And with the value J places on them? And, if so, why? Thank you.... Chris Stroffolino George Thompson wrote: > Somebody, I don't know who it was, suggested earlier that Jakobson's take on > metalanguage was misguided. > > Well, I'd like to challenge that suggestion. I'd like to see your definition > of metalanguage, and I'd like to show you that you are wrong both about > Jakobson and about metalanguage. Please identify yourself and be prepared to > defend yourself. > > Thanks, > > George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:43:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing - C. Alexander MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing Christopher W. Alexander I feel pressured to write a thorough-going preface to this afternoon's event, something that could share in the intensity or intensities that = move through the exchange-s that follow. Unfortunately, the material-cum-corporeal situation of my own writing mitigates against good intention, as my tendonitis - in the left, though I am tempted to say 'limp' wrist - has been nearly disabling for weeks now. Apparently, the body has its own priorities - though whether they are indeed its own is questionable; as Bataille reminds us, the human order is borne chiefly of its architecture, rather than vice versa. Or, as he might have said from Detroit instead of Paris, "now I wanna be your dog" - which saying presupposes that I am, and yet provides in that performative enunciation for some unforeseen deviation, a movement against architecture. The idea of an email colloquium is one that Joel Kuszai and I have discussed numerous times, and specifically as one possibility for displacing the listserv-medium from its usual habit of speed and brevity, if not concision: not to dislodge the list from its conversational mode, but to make a further allowance, and too an allowance for further conversation. Though Joel was not 'here' to help me construct this event, = I think he would approve of its impetus no less than its outcome: the lodestar Dodie Bellamy's reconsideration of the project of transgressive writing, and the various courses through and around the transgressive navigated by that star. For my part, I am happy to have provided a forum for these writers to discourse on this important topic, and excited at the prospect of further response. About the structure of the colloquium: participants were divided into four groups, and each participant was given the opportunity to address = Dodie=B9s piece and the prior responses that had been generated within the group; in other words, members of each of the four groups generated their chain of responses independently of the totality of responses. Part of my interest in this structure, which was developed chiefly for simplicity, has been to see the several directions each discussion took. It will be of further interest, I hope, to see how the whole might be addressed, both by the initial participants - few of whom have seen even the whole of their group=B9s responses - and by any subscribers who choose to continue the discourse. -- A Poetics Colloquium: Body/Sex/Writing an experimental use of the Poetics List as a forum for extended considerations/responses engaging a suggested field of issues; the topic in this case has been introduced by Dodie Bellamy in her short piece =3DBody/Sex/Writing=3D. featuring responses by: Taylor Brady Robert Gluck Laura Moriarty Jen Hofer Kevin Killian Joe Amato Kristin Prevallet Michael Kelleher Robin Tremblay-McGaw David Buuck Juliana Spahr Susan Wheeler Mark Wallace Alicia Cohen Matthias Regan Ron Silliman Rachel Blau DuPlessis Brian Stefans Jonathan Skinner Elizabeth Treadwell Alan Sondheim Who was asked: invitations were made to subscribers and non-subscribers alike based on previous writings on this topic, either in posts to the Poetics List or in other publications; many were invited, and I am = grateful to these who came forward to participate. What is hoped-for: that this exchange will challenge the formal = constraints of the listserv, chiefly its tendency toward shorter and more ephemeral statements vis-a-vis traditionally-published documents; and, on the contrary, that this exchange can exploit the tendency of the listserv to informal dialogue and rapid response, extending this colloquium past the Colloquium and into broader conversation. Christopher W. Alexander poetics list moderator ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:44:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 0.1: Sex/Body/Writing - Dodie Bellamy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Zero, Number One Sex/Body/Writing by Dodie Bellamy "a fairy tale assumption in which an all but non-existent condition is assumed to be rampant" - Samuel R. Delany The accused is permitted to display the bumper sticker EAT SHIT because it is determined that no motorist, not even a coprophiliac, is likely to be sexually aroused by a bumper sticker reading EAT SHIT. arousal = criminal non-arousal = noncriminal Offensiveness is outside the equation. When I write, "My cunt is a camera," is this likely to arouse photographers, the scenic vistas of my camera's wandering eye - or the filmstock itself? I'm working towards a writing that subverts sexual bragging, a writing that champions the vulnerable, the fractured, the disenfranchised, the sexually fucked-up. A female body who has sex writing about sex - no way can I stand in front of an audience reading this stuff and maintain the abstraction the "author" A BODY some writers glory in this but I feel miserable and invaded - as if the audience has x-ray vision and can see down to the frayed elastic on my panties. But, really, it is I who have invaded my own privacy. To regain some of that privacy I have desexualized myself in public, have stiffened, as if to say, "This is not a body." To a five o'clock cocktail party in Berkeley I wear a black Italian pantsuit with a pink silk blouse - because that's the way the women dressed at the last five o'clock cocktail party I went to, at the French Consulate. But in Berkeley everybody's in linen, jeans, sandals. J.C. is casual chic, lanky as a cornstalk, all in white - white linen shorts, white shirt, flame white hair, single silver hoop in his ear. Standing beside him, I feel like a black bat. "I'm having some problems with transgressive writing," he says. "Why is A.M. Homes so popular? Because she's transgressive without being challenging." Transgressive but not challenging YES these words circle through my head like a mantra for days - a formula for just about everything that pisses me off. Any sentence containing the word "gender" is at the top of my list. EAT SHIT NO/BODY F., I have heard, rejected a piece of mine because it contained too many body fluids. Now, two years later, I run into him at the Small Press Traffic mailbox. He shows me a favorite passage from Blanchot: the poet must expose himself to the violence of pure being. Or some such thing. "Yes," I say, "but how do you then go to work?" F. explains how he thinks one could juggle that. He's sweet today, so shy, so halting, so "I'll lick your boots." A guy confusing as Lon Chaney - the clownface dissolves to disgruntled scientist dissolves to clown - He who gets slapped (MGM, 1924) gets the last laugh. I don't know what to think of him. I smile, say, "Good luck on your thesis," and walk down the stairs. A physical body writes about sex. H. sits at the back of my prose workshop, sullen alienation brooding in the corner. I take one look at him and think, "Oh shit." His attractiveness is not wrought from art school pretension - it's more of an afterthought - if that. H's writing deals with schizophrenia/paranoia/madness/psychological disintegration. "i live with monsters who are contagious," he writes. "the transmitter planted deep inside my ear instructs the following: i, to justify misfortune and misery of fallen angels, is chosen to sacrifice you to unknown forces that make cars move." I ask him personal questions he refuses to answer, but I keep asking anyway. I learn he's Korean and his family's in Los Angeles. That's all. In one piece a woman gets too close to him so he eats her. It's his "Archiving" assignment. "Choose an object that you can easily bring to class. Write a real or imagined narrative explaining this object's significance - its importance in 'your' life, how it came to be a part of 'your' life. Type and make copies for the class. Bring your object with you." He brings in a plastic fork and knife. "The smell of her boiling flesh invaded my room. shes here no longer but she's here with me. the plastic fork inscribes embryo, the plastic knife paints pictures of her memory. what can i say, i've fallen in love with her." I don't let on *how* drawn I am to this writing, but H. seems to know anyway. Over the semester his manner softens to sweetness, eagerness, affection even. The one day he's not in class I miss him. Unanswered questions, I suppose, are a form of intimacy. He writes, "you, standing middle of my target, i can admire you more than physics allows me." I know this isn't about me, but I pretend. I do a little makeover: lose some weight, streak my hair, spend teaching money on new clothes. T., whom I haven't seen in months, walks up to me at a party and says, "You look really good." In the past he hasn't given me the time of day - even though I've made overtures. I think, "I hate you," get out of the conversation as quick as I can. The last day of class. S. has changed her hair from white blonde to yellow blonde. "I was looking too 80s." S. projects a desperation for attention that she doesn't have a clue how to get. (My softspot for her.) Finally, after hinting about it all semester, she's writing directly about being raped. "in the back of my head lingo had long since departed and I wasn't prepared to go down" This form is really working for you, I tell her, the straightforward narrative interspersed with poetic intensities. I think to myself, "This woman, this BODY has been raped for Christ's sake." While Creative Writing teaches us thus to hermetically seal content in aesthetics, I'm thinking, "Dodie, you are so full of shit." The time is up and I say, "Well, we're finished - in a big way." H. blurts out, "Want to go out for a drink or something? I need some closure." Writing that shifts the matrix, e.g. Samuel Delany's *Hogg.* "What it seriously attempts to do," Delany explains in a 1989 letter to Randy Byers, "is challenge just about every dichotomy on which our culture is based. And the distinction between dirty and clean - as a grounding for both civilization and pleasure - is one of society's most fundamental." And then, "*Hogg* constantly compels the reader to choose one filth-laden situation *over* another, when most of us would simply want to be rid of the entire set of experiences." Fountain pen scribbling across paper, a body writes about sex. Sitting at the computer, a body writes about sex. The keyboard and monitor are enormously erotic THE BEEPING MODEM, THE WORD MACHINE TALKING BACK more than once e-mail has gotten me in trouble. I wake up to a shock of wet at my feet - Stanley, my cat, has peed in the bed while I was sleeping in it. "I'll deal with this later." I get up, make coffee, sit down at the computer and take some Delany notes - "hebephilia, the love of filth" - I'm reading and typing and thinking about Delany for an hour or so when the scent of cat urine impinges upon me - the gray jersey nightgown I'm wearing reeks with Stanley's urine. How marvelous, I think, Delany has imbedded my woof and warp NO DISTANCE WOOF AND WARP I toss the nightgown in the hamper, throw on another thriftstore favorite, this one with "Neiman Marcus" in huge red script down the length of it, and continue typing. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:45:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 1.2: Part-writing - Taylor Brady MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group One, Number Two Part-Writing, a Response in Part to Dodie Bellamy's "Sex/Body/Writing" by Taylor Brady If one version of the social and political poetics of an earlier modernism hinged on the belief that "the pure products of America go crazy," then perhaps we could begin to register the minor epistemological break of our own belated modernity by coming to terms with our escalating suspicion of some pure process driving them there - that there is, after all, a kind of "witnessing," adjusting," "driving the car," despite poetry's often desperate rush to absent itself from the architectures in which it negotiates terms for its own culpability with this science of administration. So I'm sitting on the train and I have these two bodies, and the one is always eating the other, the other always eating away at the one, rabid to bite away another like itself, part of itself, partially like itself except for the minimal difference in charge that seems to promise discharge at a different level of scale altogether - as the filthy ass of another passenger's jeans (a Baudelaire kind of moment, this flash of address in the crowd, but without the recognition that the vision of a person would provide, this "flash" so brief that sex, age, even whether the hands that presumably hang to either side and frame this vision are scabrous and scandalous or neatly manicured - all pass unremarked) sets in motion a series of effects at once microscopic and vast, the minor hitch of breath touching off a squall of feedback in the monitors, the minor oily smudge on the lens destroying or diffracting the entire archive which defers the promises of history to performance - there are stars, fans, technicians from one end of this to the other - not the least of these effects being the call to attention of my own presumably (always) filthy ass as it tails me through the classical and tragic unities of adulthood and citizenship, surveillance of the remainder in which neither body is entirely freedom or discipline, but the uneven imperative, "Except where otherwise noted, please eat yourself," reingest that part which nonetheless continues to gnaw its way out of you, chew away the wholeness of that which nonetheless continues to swallow you whole, and repeat, repeat (I might need, at some point, to account for this basically formalist compulsion), until every part is an eaten whole, every whole an eating part, the singularity of the filthy and anonymous ass shadowed by the presumption of hands that work up generalizable axioms through a kind of signature into the linear architectures of transit, indifferent to both the scummed-over and the scrubbed-clean, in which one finally gets the benefit of a horizon only at the cost of being displaced - or rather, stretched - along it, rather than sited against it, and I realize in my quickened breathing and oily palms along this horizon of inert, blocked-out morning bodies, not at any moment, but across the total process, that I might be writing a roundabout gloss to my thoroughly partial reading of Dodie Bellamy's uneven and compelling imperative: "EAT SHIT NO/BODY." What I have found so useful in Samuel Delany's pornotopic writings (Bellamy mentions HOGG, and I'd also point to the more recent The Mad Man) is their presentation of various paraphilias -- fairy-tale assumptions or not -- as instances of a real social and ethical practice, rather than the simply "licentious" and utopian/dystopian destruction of the social most "transgressive" writing goes to such ideological lengths to position them as; so that for Delany, the perversions of a character like Mad Man Mike or Leaky do not simply pose the largely metaphorical threat of washing away society and history in a wave of fluid filth, but the far more real threat of engaging a theoretical practice of sex which knows itself to be a production and exchange of fluids and parts among other fluids and parts, rather than an axiomatic of need in which the existing sculptural unities of gendered, raced, classed bodies simply put the appropriate shoulder -- queer or otherwise -- to the appropriate wheel in a machine the operation of which is only a matter of being at one's post on time, and not, as The Mad Man suggests so effectively, a manufacture and circulation of particles of gender, race, class along with the droplets and particles of shit, urine, semen, mucus, dirty fingernails, and blood. I commute to my job as a writer. I find myself very hesitant to write in defense of gender by way of answer to Bellamy's anger at the word, but find also that celebrations of "pure sex" by straight male writers are too often a mere sleight-of-hand effacement and apologetics for existing institutional practices of the very gender they disavow -- and this again is a value I find in Delany's work, in that the paraphilias of his novels are not a detached "other side," but might return to interrogate our statistically more-common hetero- and homosexualities, to reveal their gendered positions as sedimentations, ideological formations limiting and channeling the sexual practices that found them (bearing in mind the full complexity of a reading of ideology that acknowledges it as an unavoidable modality by which we first come to suspect the possibility of the very reality it obscures). The writing and art practice of myself and many of my male near contemporaries seems focused almost to obsession on the mechanics of pre-adolescent desire, to various effect, as in the profusion of toys, fetishized commodities and shiny things that make loud noise in this year's "Bay Area Now" group show at the Yerba Buena Art Center in San Francisco, the best of this work, like David Huffman's "Traumabots," with their dissonant meeting of minstrelsy, Japanophile pop fetishism, sexed bodies both too transparent and too opaque to equal themselves, and landscapes of dangling viscera keeping the hidden body in circulation, getting at the difficulty of a moment when the boy's pleasure in playing with other bodies, others' bodies, has been first hailed by the demand to enter into an abject relation with race, a foundational relation with gender, a consumptive and reproductive relation with history and culture, but before the response to this call has been fully articulated -- a moment when an alternate route is still at least thinkable. (see note 1) "I have these two bodies" -- and already the language is working against me, turning a productive dislocation into possession, the incommensurate into an apartment and a vacation cabin, a home and an office, aggregating architecture into development, and accumulating the flecks of dirt on denim and under fingernails into a bona fide real estate, where the false carnival of pleasure receives its operating permit from an equally false science of administration, or, as in Rod Smith's "Write Like Soap": (licks inside won't subside. Mazes, furiously significant, type a person out of adjusted circus belief. What might it mean to adopt Bellamy's call for "a writing that subverts sexual bragging, a writing that champions the vulnerable, the fractured, the disenfranchised, the sexually fucked-up," as a program for the male body writing the male body? I "invade my own privacy" by writing about what I see on a train, in transit between one publicly-sanctioned privacy and another, why I see it, what it sees in me or on me, why I can't "glory in this," but find pleasure there nonetheless. An asymmetry in the public dimension of literary work, in which sex might do the work of writing, but gender orchestrates the response from the other side of the lectern, the blank approbation of applause or the blank refusal of incomprehension making you good or bad but definitely whole again, so that you have to disavow the fucked-up, fragmented body that avowed itself in the work, and go home pissed off at gender all over again (?) Like Walter Benjamin's historian-collector, "to seize hold of a memory" or image of the fragmentary, circulating body of parts at the "moment of danger" of its own inevitable collapse into the sculptural body of a frozen (and always getting colder) present, so that I might lift this shine of rubbed-in grease off a back pocket before it adheres to a body about which I always know in advance how I feel, where I stand, what mechanics I desire in the spaces between it and my own body, so that I might write of a sexual gesture that might jump out of the choreography of gender ("Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations, 255). To lift a habitual syntax from Leslie Scalapino's recent work, perhaps it might help to write, not of having a body, being in a body, or even being a body, but to be on the body as the act of writing. One writes, I write (fiction, and we poets had better get used to admitting the primacy of this) as a kind of body work, in order to make sense of it on one's own body, not in order to make sense of the body. Scenes of instruction, the workshop, etc., might be adduced as further evidence that one does not have a decided-upon body from which one acts, enacts, sex, but that one practices a body, that this practice might be learned, that the question might be raised, "What's the sex of teaching?", a question which I can now ask, being no longer a teacher. Write what I will against "my" sex, my heterosexuality, as a channelization and diminishment of the possibility of sex as such, and however far this work of writing may carry me from it, the return commute brings me back more or less reliably -- there are occasional track fires, missed connections, even accidents, derailments and suicides from the platform, but belief requires me to think of these as always belonging to another person's experience, even and especially when they happen to me. The constant temptation confronting the "progressive, male, heterosexual" writer -- a strange creature which flees the light of which it continues to believe itself to be the source, and keeping in mind Giorgio Agamben's suggestion that the devil might be, not the supreme tempter, but the supremely temptable (The Coming Community, 31) -- is to idealize his opposition to his own sexual "state," in a form that goes both too far and not nearly far enough: too far, in that it positions other sexualities/sexes/sex as utopian zones of pure license and the transparent production of pleasure, which they can never in actuality be, wired as they are into many of the same political, ideological and economic circuits through which heterosexuality is programmed; not far enough, in that this making of other sex a utopia underwrites a category-distinction between the unattainable, the limit, finally the metaphysical paradise of sex "over there," and the pragmatic, materialist physics of "one's own" sex, this distinction, deciding its all-or-nothing always in favor of nothing, in effect pre-empting the possibility of putting anything substantive of my sex at stake. Unless otherwise noted I quote myself, as in the following: "This debt began in childhood, as you picked your nose until it bled and I stood in line, angling for a taste - if the body was the principal in the scene, my interest lay nonetheless in the variable rate at which its slippery edges accrued to balance gendered image with dark matter, the weight unaccounted in these separate entries for pleasure and disgust," or, what I looked for were the minimal architectures, densities of circulation along that imperfectly linear horizon of commuter transit. What's at stake in my writing body and my domestic body both will be found in the contradictory compartments of that train(ed)-space, in learning to practice it as site, horizon, and exchange of spewing, leaking, swallowing, chewing parts, rather than a simple public utility contract for power transfer from one body-as-known-quantity to another. "His mother, like millions of other mothers in Germany, used to say, 'Mr. Bungle sends his regards' whenever one of the countless little catastrophes of childhood had taken place...; it was he who had tripped you up when you fell and knocked the thing out of your hand when it went to pieces" (Hannah Arendt, Introduction to Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 6). ..Or , in a bit of a contextual leap, Scalapino's "the 'small person' - every one - adventures, as such. only" (New Time, 57). Or the parts, the mechanics of fluid and heat exchange, the whole sexual garage, that comes into focus "...whenever one of your beautiful synthetic objects slips through the pore between any two or several parts of the several parts of me, separating organs from the limit of their own insides, tugging insistently at my lips." Body-allegory as opposed to body-symbolism, the body occupying the same plane as that for which it stands, not "glorying in" itself as transcendent, the vantage from which all that risk pays off, but buffeted, fragmented by the very forces of it stands in for -- not simply a schizoid multiple, but a determinate (if not "whole") set of practices in which parts of one's body are always entering into a writing that is a "WORD MACHINE TALKING BACK." In alternate version A, the anonymous jeans on the train belong, by statistical experience, to a woman, and the vision can't elide its complicity in the institutions that make a man's taking pleasure in a look on public transit such a loaded, even potentially anti-gestural, gesture, even while the encounter is not reducible to this, as it hinges on an instability, a falling-apart into dirt and particle matter, of the body which has the experience of pleasure only by acknowledging its placement within that system in which one kind of dirt calls out to another and there is no categorical cleanliness; while in alternate version B, all the kids hanging out at the video arcade in the mid-80s shopping mall in the working-class suburb in Florida, boys and girls, wear the same skin-tight jeans gone fairly luminous with the rubbed-in grease of summer and sebaceous early adolescence, and this is by no means a vision of pre-lapsarian license, as we all play at economy and power, circulating our tokens among the Tank War machines, undecided yet whether to become product or process, partly crazy and thoroughly impure. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:45:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 1.3: Writing Sex Body - Robert Gluck MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group One, Number Three Writing Sex Body by Robert Gluck I was moved by Taylor's description of a body that is "buffeted, fragmented by the very forces it stands in for...." Sexuality: I'm not only homosexual - but I'm always homosexual. In some circumstances I am Homosexuality. When I sit on a chair it's a homosexual chair; when I rise it renounces homosexuality; my homosexual breath puts a spin on the atoms Socrates breathed. Words are homosexual when I use them, or do I *attract* them? I put my sexuality on the world as *Espanol* puts gender on words. Gl*ck lives in a Gl*ck world, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. Compelling sexuality, alarmingly threadbare. It furiously builds a world on top that frays off in mismatched threads at the bottom. Gender: What a strange page the body is, covered by narration so many times at once. The awareness of this arbitrary and total saturation is founded on my experience as a gay child which made me a kind of prepuberty-Tiresias, though in my case it wasn't the knowledge of pleasure I gained but the unwanted, sickening knowledge of gender as artifact, and all I could prophesize was my shame. I remember that time very well, buffeted and fragmented by the barren effects of gender. I tried to stiffen. Gender seemed fantastically arbitrary since I seemed to be encased in the wrong one. Maybe human shape seems immutable in one's twenties, but ask a queer boy who is six, or any fifty-year-old. That the body is matter only makes the body more fantastic - at this point, who would take matter seriously? About twenty years later I was working on a story called "Nightflight." It was about an infatuation that lacked a narrative - "a feeling with no outlet, followed by a question mark." Pursuing the logic of the story - to unite feeling with image - I borrowed a plot that seemed to be the same size as my emotion. I chose one of Sade's *Crimes of Love* - wonderful valentines that are nothing but plot. In it, the unfortunate heroine is seduced by her brother, bears a child, then murders her grown-up son while defending her honor against him, then marries her father, then testifies against her mother which sends the poor woman to the scaffold. She doesn't realize till the last page that they are her relatives, or related to each other. I turned her into a man named Felix, the object of my obsession, and I was writing along till I got to my hero's pregnancy and motherhood. For a few days I was stumped, till in a weird elated transsexual moment I realized that I would simply make Felix pregnant and then make him a mother. A mother with a masculine pronoun. Even now I wonder what gap was crossed. Perhaps my own assumptions had not curtailed me so much as the assumptions that I imagined belonged to my audience. That is, I'd already had dreams in which I become pregnant - not a problem. So why did the ability of men to bear children temporarily vanish? And my feeling of pleasure when I passed through that resistance resembled the gratified freedom in dreams, when it's understood that I'm pregnant and I am roundly congratulated. Why was gender so porous in my imagination, yet so opaque in the realm of writing? - a realm entirely public and entirely private. I wish for freedom in writing and in the dimension of flesh and blood. I'm tired of the two old sexes. In *Margery* I wrote, "Gender is the extent we go to in order to be loved." I meant gender as a weird extremity. I don't want to be a real woman, though perhaps I did when I was Tiresias. Certainly I don't want to have a real man, I like them a little femmy. I wish we were more like orchids which, in order to please their pollinators, take the form "of little birds, lizards, insects, man, woman, of sinister fighters in a death embrace, of lazy tortoises basking upside-down in the sun, of agile and ever chattering monkeys screened by fronds," as Kenward Elmslie says in *The Orchid Stories*. One of my heroes is Pierre Molinier. He was a wonderfully awful painter and a fellow traveler of the surrealists. His thrilling photo-montages - which he made late in life, from the 1950s through the early 70s - mix autobiography and fantasy in ways that new narrative writing aspires to. His palette was meager: his body, a room, a patterned screen, and a few fetish objects, a plaster hand, a whip, a mannequin leg, a female mannequin head, a shoe with a dildo attached to the heel. With these materials he staged an ongoing performance of imploding categories. "The contradiction between shame and performance is played out in these secret spectacles memorialized in Molinier's photos," writes Earl Jackson, Jr. The shame of these transformations makes a performance of such art based on the tension around a liberal decorum, as though writing is "just writing." Don't tell me I'm promiscuous, even though the Bob of *Jack the Modernist *is fucked in public. Perhaps I'm "dishing up" the shame I felt in the first place, as a first place. Why write about body and sex unless they are problems? Dodie Bellamy writes, "No way can I stand in front of an audience reading this stuff and maintain the abstraction the 'author'. . . To regain some of that privacy I have desexualized myself in public, have stiffened, as if to say, 'This is not a body.'" I love that *stiffened* - to ward off judgment, as though turning into a corpse, or a man. I know that shame: "Now that I'm older I clench over my orgasms rather than arching back from them," I wrote in *Margery Kempe*. At a reading, I know that line is coming. A story told this way reveals the life of nakedness. After I put my orgasm in words, I can't look people in the eye. Nakedness becomes a goal, as though absolute nakedness can be *achieved* (always along with the understanding that one image simply replaces another, endlessly). Not endlessly: Kathy Acker's sex-drenched books did a curious thing without the presence of Kathy's body to support them. In "The Madness of Day," Maurice Blanchot says, "I must admit I have read many books. When I disappear, all those volumes will change imperceptibly." I thought Blanchot had lapsed into a pretentious sentimentalism that marred his terrific story. But when Kathy died, I felt her words *rustle* themselves into another position. They "stiffened." Her words moved outward as they adjusted to her death, there was more white space between them. Kathy's life no longer gave them scale, or bound them with a current of tension and changeability. A hip magazine called *Cups* interviewed me, and the sympathetic editor asked, "You are against safe sex, right?" I was mildly dumbfounded till I realized he was looking for the transgressive formula, as though I was going to whip out my Junior Woodchuck Guide to Transgression. Everywhere pieties proliferate. What is *appropriate* transgressive writing? It can't be known; such writing describes the present, the one thing that has yet to be put into words. The impulse to shock becomes an interesting social event when it bridges the disjunction between what experience looks like and what the culture thinks it is *possible* to say. One has to add that some part of the culture will be asking for that kind of transgression. I'll extend this line of thought (and take up Taylor's observations on preadololescent sexuality) by swapping workshop stories with Dodie. In some graduate playwriting class at SFSU, a student wrote unrelentingly about kiddy sex. The students had to perform each others' plays, and portraying lascivious toddlers made them anxious. Perhaps one source of their anxiety was the playwright's age. No youthful high jinx from this man of sixty, perhaps he was someone really twisted, *inured to Vice*. The playwright bragged about his gun, and he started killing his characters off, characters modeled on the students in the workshop. Was he a Columbine kind of guy? - Or the older version who goes postal? The students refused to continue, the class shut down till the administration could find another teacher for this student - someone wise in the ways of transgression - guess who? The unwanted play is about some people waiting for a bus to pull out. The mother of a three-year-old fondles her child's vagina, and the baby loves it. The other passengers also love it, and demonstrate other ways to pleasure the child. "Little pink tickle buttons sticking out of their baby soft cunnie lips. So precious. I spider-tickled them and gave them all little baby orgasms." This goes on and on. The bus driver sighs, "How cute! I guess I'll now call this the 'love bus'." One of the characters describes Hopi mothers taking great pride in masturbating their children. I have no idea if they do, but different cultures handle childhood and sex in different ways. The nurses of Louis XIV fondled the toddler king's "drawbridge," as they called it. His little erections put them in a festive mood. Mongolian mothers fellated their male infants but never never kissed them on the face. Through this kind of "unwanted" information, our author cleverly adds scale to his play, and disallows a judgment based on "community standards." In fact, his play destabilizes our tenet against child sexuality. All the characters on this bus share the same vision about what is acceptable in sex and in violence (killing is okay), certainly an unimaginable coincidence, yet they make other such naive agreements about what is appropriate that seem just as unimaginable. For the benefit of the Cups editor, I add that I don't recommend sporting with toddlers. In judging this play, perhaps the most disquieting problem is that I don't know where the author is "coming from." What is his intent? Is the play a dark farce? Is it perfectly sincere? Is it ugly on purpose like some of Kathy's writing or ugly by accident? As Dodie points out, even outlaw literature arrives with its pedigree, which reads (authorizes) the work before we get to it. That is, should he get an A or an F? Where does the "falsehood" of fiction become a dream that leads to a psychological truth, as though a piece of writing fares past a certain point of extremity to be analyzed as a case history? Writing about sex invites such unwanted extra-literary assumptions to be made. Am I wrong to fret about my student's sex life? Was the *Cups* editor wrong to assume that I promote barebacking? I recognize in myself a certain urgency mated with certain reluctance to answer these questions. My audience makes assumptions. I would be falsely naive to be surprised. That confusion of fact and fiction, of actual bodies and words, gives power to sex writing; a writing that can't be contained by explanation. Put another way, it demands to exist in the same world as the reader's body. Where is the autonomy of the text? The reader is lead in directions as divergent as spiritual abjection, solitary pleasure, and communal joy. Sex writing brings a dissonance or even helplessness into the activity of interpretation. I felt the same way about Stanley Kubrick's *Eyes Wide Shut*. I revere Kubrick, but I don't know how to understand this film. Tom Cruise listens to Nicole Kidman's confession of desire for another man. She's naked, and the rich lust she describes is like the opposite of her sliver of a body. Fueled by his wife's story, Tom goes on a night journey that takes him to an orgy. The sexuality in this movie is as smutty as a sixties sexploitation film, where the women are naked - breasts breasts breasts - and the men rarely take off their Nehru's. The orgy illustrates the challenge of presenting sexual enormity visually. It's a comedy, the mechanical optimism of many pistons. (To describe sex is one thing. To *arouse*, writing mimes the rhythm of sex, the mounting tension and release, conforming to a dramatic structure in a kind of decency.) The most exciting moment of the orgy is when the Master of Ceremonies orders Cruise to get undressed. Even through his mask you can see him thinking, Is this in my contract? He doesn't get undressed. The banal sexuality of the movie may belong to Cruise's character rather than to Kubrick, and the movie itself may portray the disgust of marriage, the terror and contempt Cruise feels after living for some years in close proximity to his mate's libido, at once a force totally compelling and just threadbare fantasy, just thin air. That is a goal: to unframe writing about sex and the body, to derail the mechanisms that make a unified position. I'd like to recommend Juan Goytisolo's *Makbara* for its stew of point of view, class, desire and filth. Sometimes late at night I like to watch the Playboy Channel while I floss. I would never pay for such dumb entertainment, but I discovered that the actors have been degraded into splashy bands of color for the nonsubscriber that pump pump pump, folding into each other on the verge of representation, resolving in a instant of clear image - sort of a reward - before resuming existence as a kaleidoscopic lava lamp on speed endlessly squishing into itself. Completely legible is the background music - thump, thump, thump, porn, porn, porn - as well as the cries and grunts of the dear actors. What a faithful representation! - as though through eyes wide shut, then opened for an instant: oh that's an ass, a leg, a tongue. Here's overflow, here's a paradise of sensation, here's the modernist present, here's no-mind, here's living in eternity twenty-four seven - find it on the Playboy Channel! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:45:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 1.4: Sex the Body Writing - Moriarty/Mishka MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Poetics List Colloquium: Group One, Number Four Sex the Body Writing by Moriarty/Mishka Between love and fate there is time, but very little. This writing is by a disembodied (and yet female) presence whose will is physical. We share the "I" but not comfortably. I am Josephine Mishka, a heteronym, a word borrowed from Fernando Pessoa. But unlike Pessoa's heteronyms, I possess the knowledge of my falseness. I am also in some way "Laura." Lately I am writing her work. Like myself, sex is not a firm category. It might be divided from the body as we are from each other by a slash or be part of an ambiguous phrase. It can be divided from writing or be included. The moment of inclusion interests us. Of enclosure. When we stand together in the awareness of the implications. As with allegory, there are levels. The meaning is there for everybody, but we are beyond that. Reader and written. Daily life becomes science fiction. One thing is another and yet not equivalent. The cunt the camera. Light emulsifies into image. We have little need for verbs as understanding becomes action. The seduction is well underway. The reader = is doing the work, producing her version. One text overlays another, as = Taylor of Dodie's, beat for beat. The departures are commentary. The meanings are mixed. There is shit. The shit is fated. It is incidental. Delectable. Or not. Does the writing refer to what is outside of itself? To an event? Or is the writing the event? Is this the difference between prose and poetry? Clearly not. The writing is always the event. The allegory is of allegory. In this reading, shit is everything. Body. The sex. Writing. Feeling compelled. Urged. Resistant. The warmth. The sense of relief. Of production. The pleasure of Stanley's fluid collecting at our feet. Who could not eat it? *A Streetcare Named Desire*. The place where you = actually end up when you take that ride. "Give them what they want," Bob once noted to Laura in response to a comment about the beauty of his many lovers. To be willing to exploit the pleasure of narrative, to tell all, name names, to do what shouldn't be done is given. Lovers, like readers, are interchangeable. Each assertion, each phrase, is a new chance to lose one's identity, to confuse the identity of your interlocutor and to examine and benefit from that confusion. A seducer's work is never done. Almod=F3var's recent movie *All About My Mother* refers to *All About = Eve*, a movie in which one woman replaces another. *Streetcar* is the play within the movie in Almod=F3var. The part of Stella, the fecund woman, is played = by various of the characters in *All About My Mother*. Laura played Stella in college, but I see myself more as Blanche. One senses the fluid sexuality of Tennessee Williams in Blanche, drifting into the miasma of the New Orleans underworld. Fecal. Fecundity. The hidden thing sees the light of day. The will of my own writing is physical and allegorical. (Laura has taken over here, the bitch.) It succumbs to a fated pleasure that is variously renewed. There is a critique of pleasure. Why read this writing? Why write it? What does it do to time? There is a dividing of time into units - phrases, songs, narratives, old forms, newly devised ones. These forms are like hours or days, arbitrary human devices to kill time. Or they are like the forms of sexuality. Like allegory (or seduction) they function by moving between levels of meaning. They can be manipulated. Like the transvestites in *All About My Mother*, they are a comment on the = trappings of seduction and identity. Note:A few people have the job of teaching the new writing. It is my job = to sell it. Anything that any of us can do to show what is transgressive = about a book in the actual writing will make my job easier. At SPD we can't keep the Dodie's *Letters of Mina Harker* in stock. I am back. My desire - I wanted to have this last word - is not just some Pinocchioesque aspiration to be "real," much less to be a "real live boy." The desire is to be in the context of death and war. (We haven't mentioned it but there is always a war). Sex is close to death, but you have to be alive to die. I am not a person but a sexualized construct. Far from fleeing the light of (or as) Taylor's postulated progressive male heterosexual, I bask in it, steal it, reflect it back off myself . The fated part is that my ability to manipulate identity and to be in any context is predicated upon my continuing knowledge that I don't exist. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:45:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 1.5: Writing Body / Writing Sex / Writing Writing - Jen Hofer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Poetics List Colloquium: Group One, Number Five Writing Body / Writing Sex / Writing Writing by Jen Hofer whole rotten world come down and break. let me spread my legs. Kathy Acker Pussy, King of the Pirates spoken/sung on CD with the Mekons 1. Every Time You Open Your Eyes Environmental Bits And Pieces Find You, Stick To Your Fingers Like Angry Birds Squawking For A Context (DB, Mina Harker, 86) Feeling flayed, my head and face the only parts of me not pressing against bodies of people I do not and will not know at 5:15 on a Friday afternoon taking F. to the airport to go back to Buenos Aires, which means an hour-long West-to-East metro ride crossing barely a fraction of the mancha urbana (urban stain) known as Mexico City. To meet someone's eyes while touching them is a form of intimacy not appropriate to public transport. I am trying not to have a body, trying to be a "passenger" rather than a "girl" (or, more accurately to the situation, a "gera," roughly translated as fair-skinned female but used as a sign of "respect" or deference for people of all colors in the public economy (say, the commerce of market, bakery, street) or as a catcall (I not only notice your great tits, baby, but I'll call you what you are, white girl), trying to stiffen into my millimetrical personal space (the space inside my skin, that is, since the space outside it is pressed and fondled far beyond my control), to somehow shift my ass so that it is touching asses and hips and purses instead of half-hard cocks the wielders of which must be the only people who can possibly enjoy subway travel at this time of day. Within an hour and a half, however, there is enough space on the return trip for me to lean my shoulderblades against the bright red fire escape ladder and feel comfortable in my own body, which implies, the great majority of the time, not particularly feeling my body as a body at all. (Though I immediately wonder if this is true.) What makes me myself, and what does my body have to do with me? "The edifice of experience conforms to the experiencing subject to form an enclosure." (Patrick Durgin, working notes) Is experience a closed circuit or an open field? Is the body? Do we see the body as a racetrack (separating the frontage road - a way out of traffic - from the = glittering, writhing bay itself), a field with indicated lanes (beaten paths), and various gates or valves, phalanges, openings letting out, letting in? Or = as a sky, something apparently finite and perceptible which is actually infinite nothing, i.e. something limitless. I tend these days to see = events and bodies (real and imaginary objects in time) as vaporous, slippery, suggestive, as intimations towards themselves: the world is porous (except when it's not) and we are porous, so that "letting out" and "letting in" are not in opposition to one another but are simultaneous. We read both directions at once. In his column this week for the cultural supplement of Unom=B7suno, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Espina wrote: "During his life, Elvis imitated himself so much that he ended up being what he was." (my trans.) We are what we are by repeatedly enacting what we are. Taylor describes the figures in David Huffman's paintings as "sexed bodies both too transparent and too opaque to equal themselves" - like painted figures in a painted world (or like real figures in a real world - "realness" = being constantly renegotiated) we do not equal ourselves. The writing self is = and is not the self: the written body does not equal the bodied body, written sex is not sex even as it is also sex. "One thing is another and yet not equivalent." (LM) And yet (the converse being also true) in writing I can be more naked even than when I am naked. I have these bodies and suddenly, in moments, a body comes into (comes over, impinges upon) a body, writings (occurrences) that sex the body, that body the body over again, call attention to it, call it into question but call it nonetheless (the smell of cat piss invading Dodie's writing space, her nightgown), make the body = a "body" as such. The body is called to attention: I am aware of my cunt. Perhaps this is = the underbelly of Althusserian interpellation, where the category is not fit over the body like a wetsuit or magician's glass box (soon to be sliced in half - good luck to the beautiful girl inside) but rather where the body blossoms (like light pollution only less diffuse) towards an object to which it did not intend to subject itself, the body interpolated as "body" so that suddenly, as in illness or other forms of physical compromise, the part of the body which is not the body ("me," "I," or "my mind") becomes aware of the body as a body - or I have these two bodies, the one busily, sometimes anxiously, often pleasurably masturbating its way through the business of being me, the other gracefully (on good days) swerving out towards other bodies, moments, events to which it is indelibly drawn. I am aware of my cunt (which seems to grow larger than itself) even through the post-airport headache: when he got on at the last stop it looked like a backpack strapped across his front but when he slides the silver and black cloth off the bulk against his chest it is a red accordion, his hands like parentheses which stroke the phrase inside them to depths of joy and sadness, the delight of a tune whose distressingly gorgeous consonances = and dissonances become the motor which before was the rumbling of the train = and across the aisle our eyes meet, we smile, he keeps playing his tune, we do not have sex, I am aware of sex, of my sex, I write this paragraph. 2. "Are You Sure You Want That On Your Body Forever?" or What A Strange Page The Body Is, Covered By Narration So Many Times At Once (BG) A west-bound conversation on the San Francisco Bay Bridge, towards the sky-blue and black post-industrial-use space where we=EDll add to the = tattoos we already have on our knees (my left, her right). (To follow Bob's homosexual essay, what spin does the spinning atom on my queer knee - a knee which has in the past twelve months pressed itself between the legs = of both boys and girls - put on the atoms that make up everything we breathe, touch, perceive?) The act of getting a tattoo in the first place, let = alone sharing the same tattoos with my sweetie (which are of course not the = same, as no two bodies are the same, nor is the same body (the tattoo artist's hand) the same at two different moments: M.'s atom's trajectory is more elongated than mine - she maintains that mine's just going faster than hers), elicits a range of nervous responses (in the self to some extent, but more often in others). People tend to see tattoos as "permanent" symbols, which, in a certain sense, I suppose they are, though as experiences, as writings, their resonances shift over time. It wasn't = until we noticed people reacting skittishly to our knees that it occurred to us that we were "getting the same tattoo," or that this might be thought of = as a kind of relationship solidification or cultural statement. Tattoos (a kind of writing) are a way to engage with history, to intersect with a specific time or event in (on) the body. Exactly contrary to what people's reactions suggest, for me the tattoo is less about permanence than it is about impermanence, about the temporary, the temporal, time and passage. Memory and memory's failings - or developments. You might be wondering, = and you wouldn't be the first, what if you break up? And if we break up, will she not have happened to me? Will this time not have passed, these experiences not been drawn on, through, with this body? Is there anything the body experiences that does not stay "on it" "forever"? And simultaneously is not all experience (inked or not) temporary and in time and thus always passing? We (I'm speaking especially of the United States here) live in a disposable world yet seek to stop time, inherently a = failed enterprise: the body is always and always the daily evidence of time's motion and mobility. I don't see that anything is able to fix either time or space so that they are less mobile, less expansive, less rapid. For me, the tattoo - like the writing - is an annotation, a documentation, a recording and a reminder. It is an impulse which says "this was (is) my impulse" and which propels me towards. Tattoos push the private into the public space as writing does, "the realm of writing, a realm entirely public and entirely private." (BG) I put my body into this writing. (That's my knee we're talking about, or "it is I who have invaded my own privacy." (DB)) Thus making my body not my body. The written body is the writing and the writing is not the body. I.e., "I" am putting "my" "body" into this writing. The falseness (scare quotes) which comes with the distance of the sheet of paper (as opposed to the = lack of distance implied by the bedsheet?). The writing as only itself (not the body, not sex, not experience other than the experience (bodied, sexy, sexed) of the writing), not needing scare quotes because the fact of its being writing imposes the "quoted" as a condition of being: I am not I, busy messing around with the representation of I. And of you, which is = even more fun, even more messy, involved (as the smell of another person seeps into the skin of the fingers so that even a day later there is the film of another body on my body which I then imagine on my keyboard, on the tiny red clit of a mouse nestled between the g, the h and the b, so the residue of my experience writes itself from my hand onto the machine). Writing = puts the self between the quotation marks, makes me a stranger to myself, so that I become "Jen Hofer" instead of Jen Hofer, or me. Am I giving too = much power to the page? Perhaps I slink around between those superscripted little squiggles, comma-like, all day every day, on or off the page. What makes me realer in flesh than in ink? Or not "realer," per se, when impressions (as we emboss ourselves onto ourselves) are, as experiences, absolutely real in that temporary, temporal, shifty way reality has of being itself. 3. (We Haven't Mentioned It But There Is Always A War.) (LM), or Our Escalating Suspicion / Some Pure Process Driving Them There (TB) When Dodie begins her essay quoting Delaney's "fairy tale assumption in which an all but non-existent condition is assumed to be rampant," perhaps out of some innate orneriness, perhaps because I love it when signs read wrong (any realty office instantly becomes a broker of reality to my crooked eye), perhaps because I live in a city where the intensities of dissonance produce a strange and lovely incongruence, as of continental plates which should meet but jag instead just short of connection, or an iridescent bird whose mangled wings won't let it move past the effort of flight - for whatever reason, I read the phrase also vice versa: a fairy tale assumption in which a rampant condition is assumed (or presumed or functionally, institutionally ignored and so implicitly and effortfully assumed) to be non-existent. Tomorrow (Monday, 14 February 2000) classes are slated to begin again at the UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The 10-month student strike is officially declared to be over, the university having been forcibly taken from the students by federal = riot cops one week ago this morning. Nearly a thousand young people were arrested over the past ten days, approximately one-fourth of them minors. Laura notes the pleasures of writing and the critiques of pleasure. "Why read this writing? Why write it? What does it do to time?" (LM) Or what does it do to event, to system, to institution, to economies of thought which make economies of repression not only possible, but rampant? I have no illusion that these questions - why am I sitting at a wooden table listening to the sound of a neighbor's shower under the Red Aunts on my stereo, watching the sun crochet shadows of bougainvillea against the = patio wall as I look up to find a word, a concept, my mind, when people whose convictions I share are behind bars? - are particularly new, or even particularly interesting. But they are with me (in my body, in my sex, in my writing) as I walk these streets, as I fail to understand, as I fail to remember what exactly writing does in the world (though I know - perhaps only on the level of faith, i.e. a bodily level) that it does something. = "A seducer's work is never done" (LM), and I'm working towards and through a writing that seduces bodies and minds (mine included) away from assumption and towards what today I'm willing to call a troubled, joyous autonomy. "All anybody really wants is an autonomous existence in a non-alienating setting" (DB, Mina Harker, 45) or whole rotten world come down and break. let me spread my legs. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:45:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 1.6: The STRAP-HANGER - Kevin Killian MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group One, Number Six The STRAP-HANGER by Kevin Killian Body, sex, writing, collide at the portal of scandal, or orality, though why this should be the case I'm not sure. Under the face of scandal the inside turns to outside, the personal and public confused, then conflated into a politic. James Ellroy's *Black Dahlia,* with its indelible, uncomfortable image of the woman sawn in half, her innards laid out for the world to see. (All of Ellroy seems to flow from this trope - the Communist witch hunt, the gabby psychoanalists, in *The Big Nowhere;* the "Hush-Hush" ethos of *L.A. Confidential,* in which the unspeakable gets spoken via a bizarre diaresis of bebop and camp slang - the ineluctable ooze of the private towards the spectacular present.) When Scandal subsides, when the great Mouth closes, the community it serves re-composes itself, however slightly. Bob Gluck asks, "Why write about body and sex unless they are problems?" At the DeYoung Museum here in San Francisco, a massive Bruce Conner show fills a whole wing. There's a long dim gallery of the late 50s assemblages that in photographs look so blurry, unreadable. Even up close, these large constructions of wood, fabric, paint and filth are nearly unseeable - dark, dirty and dingy - the eyes can't take them in. Basically so ambiguous they're depressing. The broken spirits of Elizabeth Short - the *Black Dahlia* - and the executed rapist Caryl Chessman are this space's saints. "This stuff gives you the creeps," I heard David say. The next room however's filled with sound and music and brightness, for it's a small theater set up to play, over and over, Conner's short film "Breakaway" (1966). I hadn't seen this before. It's a prototypical music video, such as you might have seen in the early days of MTV - featuring the choreographer/actress Toni Basil. The soundtrack is her singing this insipid song - but it's not insipid, though produced perhaps in a garage somewhere, with very muddy sound, heavy back bass beats, the kind of LA session music I associate with the Motown covers people like Johnny Rivers and the Mamas and the Papas used to put out - a music in its way hypnotic and professional as anything out of Detroit, with its own fascination. And when Conner films Basil, he has her dancing in perhaps a dozen different outfits, which change every five hundred frames. Often she's nude, then has her clothes on, then *some* clothes, and always this relentless, droning, somehow sunny beat and her singing about how she's gonna break away from her chains. She's made up in the Mod 60s style that Elizabeth Hurley is always wearing now, and she's magnificent, exultant. Just perfect. I remember seeing Basil as one of the dancers on my favorite TV show *Hullabaloo,* in the films *The T.A.M.I. Show, Pajama Party,* and *Village of the Giants,* the teen terror movie from the early 60s. She must have been only 17 or 18 when she made "Breakaway," in which she's credited as "Antonia Christina Basilotta" - to point up her ethnicity? (Big in the 60s.) Later she played a much bleaker, proto-Lesbian version of herself in the New American Cinema (*Five Easy Pieces, Easy Rider, The Last Movie, Greaser's Palace, American Graffiti*) and still later engineered a magnificent arrival - on MTV no less - for which she had this wonderful early training - with her song "Hey Mickey" - remember? Okay, I'm making a specious contrast between two periods of Conner's work - dark and light - San Francisco and L.A. It's not only wrong, it's stupid. Still the atmospheric change, as we walked between the two rooms, was almost palpable, you could register it in your body. I wonder how Language Poetry managed to become a social phenomenon without having first to endure the rigors of the sex scandal. The "disappearance of the word, appearance of the world" aspect of L-P, its focus on language's materiality, its drive to expose the ideology within formalism to improve social conditions, had the perverse effect of insuring that its adherents would appear, in the world's eyes, as sex-free, soulful and calculating all at the same time, so we had a scandal of character; fifty Calpurnias in the American tree. (This despite the personableness and indeed the sexual attraction manifested by the poets themselves, as human beings, but that's another story.) The sex of Language Poetry, in its classical period, was so not there, so deferred and prohibited, that into this vacuum strode the New Narrative writers, led by Kathy Acker, a bunch of hapless clowns sent to relieve Mafeking; and afterwards, as we have seen in the past fifteen years or so, sex (indeed narrative) has crept back into Language Writing. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Dunno, one of these poets has a passage in every book that describes a sex life with such unblinking clinicism the revulsion rises faster than the skin on Kristeva's cocoa. Yet as Dodie (citing Delany) points out, everyone's gorge is set at a different level, and one woman's filth is another's ambrosia. One young writer told me his secret porn collection consisted of Sianne Ngai's essay on disgust and overdetermination, "Raw Matter" in that chartreuse issue of *Open Letter* - got him off every time. I stared, like, then, thinking of my own guilty pleasure, *have you ever read "Slaves of the Empire" by Aaron Travis?* As writing disappears behind theory, its filthy ass remains visible, if vestigial, a sad reminder of its once-alluring body in a desperate game of hide and seek. I'm watching Toni Basil's body (on film) "glorying in itself as transcendent, the vantage from which all that risk pays off" (Taylor Brady) and yet my pleasure is spoiled by thinking, *She is being fed to me through the menu of Mr. Bruce Conner, it's his imagination I'm buying into.* Dodie stands in front of an audience reading, perhaps, from *Cunt-Ups* or *The Letters of Mina Harker* and feels miserable, invaded, "as though the audience has X ray vision and can see down to the frayed elastic on my panties. But really, it is I who have invaded my own privacy." She becomes three people as she opens her mouth, the transgressor - confessor? - with a mouthful of scandal; the frozen, desexualized public servant I suppose; and these two combine to create the performer, the actress, she who pays for the sins of the other two. Eve Black, Eve White, and what was the third's name, who could carry off all the neuroses of Black and White? "Jane"? Bruce Conner's *Black Dahlia,* suspended superbly on a plywood platform almost above my head, parts dripping off, hanging from straps, unknowable and almost invisible except as a shape of dark murk, dusty answers. But, Taylor, when I'm in a train as you describe, I don't have those Baudelarian moments. I identify myself as the strap-hanger in Jen Hofer's train; I experience that crowd as a smorgasbord of sensual delight. Is it the prerogative of consciousness that makes me, I think quite without shame, wonder when I meet any particular man what it would be like to have sex with him? Or to be the figure crushed between two bodies always straining, while strap-hanging, to squeeze from the situation - the lucky situation - always the maximum frisson of contact, friction, pleasure? Thinking it over (i.e. writing about it) this retrospective pleasure "stiffens" into a problematic, due to writing's appeal to ethics. And to aesthetics. *Why, it's not only wrong,* scream these two voices like cats crying for food, *it's stupid!* I've gotten myself out of so many scrapes by using the same alibi, *I wanted to know what it was like so I could write about it.* The writing is the event. (So I can answer Laura's question.) Bruce Conner, whose attorneys sent me an injunction (summer 1996) forbidding me to use him as a character in a play I was writing, "Wet Paint." And me thinking, all those wonderful lines already written for Bruce Conner, so I did a global replace and made Bruce Conner into Kenneth Anger, changing hardly a word, and Rex Ray played him. I'd been *censored* - by an *iconoclast* - worst cut of all. Someone said he had cancer or something. "Good!" I spat. *[Enter DIEGO RIVERA.]* RIVERA. Are they gone? ANGER. You are not marrying that Countess, I hope. RIVERA. Nor her daughter, Eva, either. I have made love to them both, but a man has got to do what a man must do, for Stalin. ANGER. Substitute "Satan" for "Stalin," and there, in a nutshell, is my reason for filming "Kustom Kar Kommandos." RIVERA. Feel, the sweat on my brow, flowing like wet bull sperm. ANGER. Ole! Senor Rivera, have you seen my property, Bobby Beausoleil? I bought him for a trusty down at juvenile hall for two bottles of Dr. Pepper and a rookie Roger Maris. RIVERA. They are throwing rice in my direction. What was it Burt Bacharach said, ten years from now? "I've got the wedding bell blues." ANGER. There's a large statue of the Great God Beelzebub in my studio on Polk Street. Hide in it. I'll wait here and throw them off the track. RIVERA. You are a good man under layers of lurid homosexual vice. ANGER. I'm in no mood for compliments, I think. What do ordinary people, who aren't writers, do - why then do they have sex? Have they similar goals I don't know about? Are they a less result-driven species than I? Why bother with it unless it can be problematized? It's unlikely that many of these "ordinary people" will bother having read this symposium this far, but if indeed you are one of them could you get back to me with your answers at "dbkk@sirius.com"? If there is any writing on your body send replies by mail, as you form a third category outside of my dichtotomy. I've painted myself into a corner - but isn't that corner the direction towards which one's body hourly moves without even giving one's sex a courtesy call? The fourth category of people, those who write but not "about" any particular subject. Who work in language the way Jackson Pollock worked in paint. Poets. Sianne Ngai writes, "Only the poet who recognizes the negative agency of exasperated utterances, their ability to not-express or not-articulate, is able to paradoxically express her own inexpressiveness and give form to what is formless." My hand closes around the strap of the subway train, K-Ingleside, L-Taraval, whatever, I stiffen up as the flesh moves in. The car stops. Doors open, fresh air at my ankles. Then finally Bruce Conner, happily recovered in the past few years and looking hardy, here he comes, spring in his step . . . infinitely fuckable. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:46:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 2.2: Return to gender, address unknown - Joe Amato MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Two, Number Two Return to gender, address unknown by Joe Amato META what does it mean exactly to bring the body under the scrutiny of intellectual discourse to permit the body to mean in accordance primarily with words and images of the body doesn't this risk subsuming precisely what we mean by the body sensations feelings and the like under that which is commonly understood as its categorical other those cultural bodies such as the body politic or the student body that are only figuratively related to an autonomous organismic mortal and perhaps erotically conceived whole FETA but one could argue that the body as such is never understood as such that one which pronoun must of necessity denote inclusively one's body takes its relation to other bodies as a mark of its constitutive nature that is one understands one's body as an essentially social body wrapped in institutional contexts META this argument already stipulates the subsumption to which i refer FETA still in a fundamental sense intellectual work is bodily work and intellectual work along with being e.g. emotional work as trilling once wrote is fully imbricated as we used to say in social change hence bringing the body one's body under intellectual scrutiny as you put it is meant as a counterstatement historically and imaginatively to that objective-compulsive discourse which would deny any correspondence whatever to metabolic which is also to say social status a discourse whose various practitioners would understand and would have us understand word processing as solely and profoundly information communicated through media networks without sentient which is to say human value as a gradient of same which of course includes families and villages and the like and as such working at a remove conceptually and materially both from the let us say experiential-biological as well as planetary-evolutionary spectrum META but certainly you would concede that in an equally fundamental sense intellectual work is not bodily work if only because it works differently and is understood in our social spheres differently from say ditch digging FETA the perceptions beliefs opinions mythologies and dogma inherent to our social spheres are one aspect of what is at issue here why take them for granted META perhaps the issue turns on whether the mind/brain interface undoubtedly the most contentious mind/body interface is to be understood as a matter of formal interpretive emphasis a question of revaluing what are in essence reciprocally interacting entities or rather a matter of bringing discrete and qualitative consideration to bear on each FETA the evidence cognitive psychological supports the contention that minds are in an important sense bodily matters but if so it should come as no surprise that networks of bodies/minds might be accounted for in the very terms said bodies/minds have used to understand who/what they are as bodies/minds foremost among which one might argue is language by which is meant for the record utterance both as material and spiritual substrate by which latter is not necessarily meant prayer META but here again if by language you mean that which is not feeling or sensation or at the very least epiphenomenal responses to environment presuming for a moment a geological and not human datum in any case if so this does not exhaust the affective means our bodies have at their disposal to grasp their interior workings body language if we must call it that is not reducible to verbal language this would represent yet another intellectual reduction FETA but it's not and never has been the intellectuals' wish to reduce body to language or body language to verbal language quite the contrary intellectuals or those who definition being crucial here if necessarily broad those who to repeat for you readers no doubt hard at work working through this absence of punctuation this work in and out of progression this work of words and light to be judged in accordance to your lights each of you yet at the same time all of you intellectuals or those who e.g. work with words are trying to illustrate through a wide array of semiotic-interpretive procedures that a thorough consideration of cultural and social codes including language is requisite to understanding the body which latter conceptual and physical site exerts a reciprocal effect on cultural and social codes on the one hand discourse must account for the actual presence of living social bodies in so doing language practices e.g. are constrained accordingly on the other language practices determine in so many ways perceptions of thereby individualized bodies hence the possibilities for artistic which is to say expressive interactive dialogic transformation of our public domain in the long term should be only too apparent further and perhaps more to the point there exist no un-bodied discursive sites anymore than there exist non-discursive bodies flesh inflects discourse and discourse inflects our perception and it's fair to say albeit speculatively sensation of flesh META here again inflects is a peculiarly linguistic way of putting things no FETA consistent with my premise META consistent with your premise perhaps but your language also obscures the issue FETA again this is to the point language marks precisely the discrepancy between bodies and minds instinct so to speak and thought even as it consistently reveals a necessary conflation or if you prefer intersection of the two it's not that the intellectual and the bodily are the same it's that their respective differences must be understood against custom as having everything to do with each other META so what is it intellectuals wish to do ultimately with bodies so delineated FETA well recuperate for one the language of bodies you have a chance of recuperating the bodies themselves the many different bodies META and where does technology fit into this i guess you would call it agenda of yours FETA agenda right technology too a matter of desire and need actualized acted performed instrumented as the technicians now say by bodies that are ever in the process of absorbing and shaping these very technologies through technology we literally rework ourselves into more manageable and more exotic creatures which is to grant that there's a corporate presence at work here often incorporeal not simply the language of the corporation but the strategies and logics and consolidations and mutations of same we must attend to the entire spectrum as i say and write as intellectual bodies seeking a more just confrontation with and perhaps provocation of reality but fact is folks don't ordinarily talk like this do they and isn't it a lovely day for a walk in the and why the entire discourse of intellectuals not to say political pundits and most writing instructors should be marked by argumentative or expository as opposed to fictive discourse is a question too to be pondered long and hard or short and soft that the whole point of bodily-centered or perhaps simply aware or even ethically accountable discourse is to admit into the spectrum this damned spectrum i keep returning to of language practices those realities of the body that are either silenced or the subject of scatological jokes in engineering and engineered circles and squares and triangles orgasms bowel movements miscarriages underwear even vibes to get beyond current limitations then to oppose something christ or crap or old news or wildly disposable income and it surely must be the case that all of us to a one are capable of wishful thinking i would think one would imagine and aspire to not simply a deployment of new prefixes post trans etc. but as well a mindful introduction of alternative vocabularies including the shit the shit yes the shit the everyday ordinary shit of everyday living that transcends lo may it profoundly transcend the steel certainties of our discourse the shit the divine materials as who was it put it of this stainless composted sphere META and the future FETA yes you are cooking dinner tonight i take it ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:46:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 2.3: Untitled Response - Kristin Prevallet MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Poetics List Colloquium: Group Two, Number Three Untitled Response by Kristin Prevallet I. Theory ................cooking dinner tonight take it off the stove and rub it all over a body the dinner is on a body a person can eat it because it is real food and bodies are also food and when they are in the state of being food they are controlled neither by language nor by mental intelligence. Physical intelligence=97when the body is moved through writing; when the writing inhabits the body and makes it feel hot, numb, sad, aroused=97is a very real thing. The body experiencing pleasure is a kind of private discourse; writing brings sex into the social sphere and complicates public/private boundaries. Sex writing means that anyone can experience pleasure while reading. If a person ejaculates all over the text, that means that like pictures, the reader has imagined his/her body entering = the text (or visa versa). This the transcendent text, which necessarily is transmitted to the reader via the META airwaves (by META I take it you = mean pre-defined narratives, patriarchal confines, determinations of beauty and all of its problematic representations.) Just as theorizing language can = be achieved through poetry, achieving orgasm through writing only works when the writing is imaginable. For the writing to be imaginable it must describe the act at least partially by referencing the often cacophonous language of sex: eat, cock, wet, clit, suck, hard, tit, shit, fuck. (Funny that cum is one of the few euphonic sounding words used to describe sex.) However, there is a separation between the sexual act and the language = used to depict it. There is a constant dialogue, a discourse, between what the body is actually feeling, and the limitations of the words available to describe those feelings. If I think about sex and write "fucked wet by a cock" the text about the sexual act directs the act itself away from its bodily incarnation. II. Arousal In the essay "Sex/Body/Writing" by Dodie Bellamy, I assumed the bumper sticker that read "Eat Shit" and the man who was not convicted because of it was from an actual news story. Bumper stickers are an interesting space to experiment with the power of words. There is the body of the car onto which the sticker is firmly planted. There is the person behind the car at a stoplight, reading an abbreviated statement about the car driver's personal, religious, or political beliefs and attitudes. The person = reading from behind often looks at the driver after he/she has absorbed the = meaning of the bumper sticker. The reader of the bumper sticker might either wave, flip off, snarl, or smile at the driver of the car. Bumper stickers take risks; they reveal personal politics to people who very well might be extremely antagonistic to them. They can cause people to have confrontations with other people. (I remember my mother was stopped behind a car with a bumper sticker that read "Honk if you love Jesus." She = started honking and waving and honking and the guy got out of his car came up to her window and screamed "What the fuck is your problem.") There are bumper stickers that could make other drivers sexually aroused: HONK IF YOU WANT TO EAT ME. I [HEART] JISM. MY OTHER CAR IS A SEX MACHINE. MY COCK IS MY SAVIOR. I WILL NOT JERK OFF, I HAVE WORK TO DO, I WILL NOT JERK OFF. Some drivers would certainly be offended, and if there was a confrontation the displayers of such stickers would be hauled off and sentenced for inciting public fervor. It is not hard to incite the public by using sex words like a decoy rabbit at the dog track. People like dogs follow behind sex words, panting and racing for a taste of the rabbit, only to be mad and embarrassed about how easy it was to be swayed by language. Decoy rabbits always have the last laugh; like words, they are not real and so cannot be destroyed. III. Sex without Setting Dear Dodie: So you are working towards a writing that "subverts sexual bragging...and that champions the sexually fucked-up." I am thinking about your chapbook Broken English (Meow Press, 1996). One thing that interests me about it is that there is no setting; the book does not take place anywhere in particular. It is all about fluid jetting out all over the place, tamed only by bold analogies like "I'm going to skin you like a fucking rabbit" and "I'm wet all the time like some fucking cum cow." You seem to have no interest in settings; you find them banal, distracting, = and an easy way out for the reader. You want the reader confronted and confounded by the cacophony of sex words, which themselves yield numerous positions. The reader has no idea where he or she is; there are no = castles; no basements; no heart shaped beds with mirrors. If the reader wants to imagine "where am I?" then let him/her read Bataille. Does the absence of = a setting diminish the danger of aestheticizing sex through writing? The focus is on the activities of the body, raw and exposed through the onslaught of the language you use to describe it. Does this way of writing about sex prioritize language over image, thus "championing the fractured, the disenfranchised, the sexually fucked-up"? I know bringing in this reference is like beating a dead rabbit, but what do you think about Du Champ's peephole titled "Given: 1. the Waterfall, 2. the Illuminating = Gas"? Because its title foregrounds the setting and not the woman's open cunt, the violence of the exposed cunt is dramatically aestheticized. The = written title forcibly directs the viewer to the background (the waterfall cascading down a mountain, and the lamp which illuminates the scene) when actually, the viewer wants to look at the cunt. In other words there is = the inevitable separation between the image and the words used to describe it; in your text, there is no separation, because any images inferred from the text are in a state of constant motion; they ARE fluid. You write "My cunt is a camera." How about putting a camera inside the cunt of Duchamp's peephole? It would photograph the eyes of all the viewers who were looking at it. If it was a video camera it would also capture how long each eye = was looking at it. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:46:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 2.4: Bodies Writing "Sex" - Michael Kelleher MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Two, Number Four Bodies Writing "Sex" by Michael Kelleher 1 This is a body writing about bodies. This is a body writing about writing about bodies This is a body writing about sex. This is a body writing about writing about sex. This is a body writing about writing about bodies writing about sex. It has a cock, a heart, two fists. (They pump). 2 On a chair in the living room of an apartment filled with poets, a young poet reads his poems aloud. T., his girlfriend/partner/other (significant), sits beside him. He reads (I paraphrase), "Or maybe I should just fuck T. again instead." An expression of hurt or violation by T's body or face will be read by the audience as hurt or violation. Her body makes no expression. The word "fuck" colors everything else that is read that evening. I think, "I need to use 'fuck' in my poems more often." 3 There is real violence But it as an after-dinner violence Mellow in the air As sex is a kind of violence like anything that pulls us toward it even though we're unable to ask for it by name. ? Elaine Equi, "Brand X" 4 In a forest in England, standing in a pit that's four feet deep ? wide enough to hold eight 13-year-old boys and one 15-year-old girl ? one of the boys and the girl are having a disagreement about the outcome of a game. The boy shouts, "Shut up or I am going to rape you." She screams, "Bugger off." An expression of hurt or violation by his body or face will be read by the audience as weakness or cowardice. He grabs her by the shoulders and drags her to the ground. The other boys hold her there, each using one hand for pressure, the other for groping. Hands grab breasts, reach for crotch, unsuccessfully try to slide beneath skin tight jeans. Then, suddenly, they stop. None of them knows what it means to "rape" some one. None of them knows how to use his cock (or her cunt, for that matter). Covered with tears and dirt, the girl runs off, shouting behind her. "My boyfriend's got a knife. He's going to kill all of you." In college, I write a story about this. I want to purge myself of the guilt I feel at having remembered taking part in it. I have never written a story before. I publish it in the college literary journal. One night, a woman I've never met knocks at my door. She wants to know why I wrote this story. Because it happened, I say. She cries a little, then hands me five pages of green-lined traction paper printed out off the VAX system in the computing center. Her story begins after the rape, when the girl begins to suffer from shyness, anxiety, bulimia. We date for a while, but we never have sex. She later moves to South Africa, marries a member of the ANC. Another woman, an acquaintance, uses my story in her English class at an all girls' Catholic high school in Manhattan. Many of the girls in the class admit to having been physically violated at some point in their lives. She calls to tell me how happy she is that my story helped her girls open up. She asks, Why did you write it? Because it happened, I say. Were you there? Yes, I say. Were you the boy who said it? No. I just followed, I say. I have sex in my dorm room with a woman who is very drunk. She wakes up and leaves without a word and we don't see each until graduation day, at a party. She begins shouting at me and hitting me, screaming over and over: "We have to settle, we have to settle." Someone pulls her off me and takes her home. I leave the party soon after that, not knowing what she meant. A couple years later, my best friend, a woman who is also her best friend, tells me that the woman has since been telling all her friends that I raped her. I ask why she hasn't told me about this. I didn't want to get in the middle, she says. If you thought it was a lie, you would have told me. I know, she says, but that story you wrote in college. 5 I wonder if I were to brag about sex what I would brag about. "I have been fucked by so many women." The phrasing would need to change, of course. I wonder who "the vulnerable, the fractured, the disenfranchised, the sexually fucked-up" really are. I picture a diseased body with a broken leg, quivering, crying out in pain. His cries are sexual. I wonder why my body often feels symbolic. Like its meaning has been written by someone else. It must be real, it leads me to do terrible things. I wonder what happens to "My cunt is a camera" if I change it to: "My cock is a camera standing before a waterfall cascading down a mountain lit by a street lamp. It's looking at you looking at it thinking to yourself I am looking at Mike's cock and it is looking at me"? I wonder about "transgression" as a value. I wonder ? if I offend, does it follow that what I have said is "offensive"? Or is it just me? 6 Whatever sex is it is because of the meaning I give it. I am having sex with my lover. I cannot come. Her body doesn't turn me on tonight. Dirty words issuing from her lips don't sound dirty. I fantasize about fucking a prostitute in the front seat of my car. This really gets me off. I come, fast. Who am I fucking? I write: "Whatever sex is it is because of the meaning I give it." I am having sex with my lover. I cannot come. Her body doesn't turn me on tonight. Dirty words issuing from her lips don't sound dirty. I fantasize about fucking a prostitute in the front seat of my car. This really gets me off. I come, fast. Who am I fucking? I write: "Whatever sex is it is because of the meaning I give it." I am having sex with my lover. I cannot come. Her body doesn't turn me on tonight. Dirty words issuing from her lips don't sound dirty. I fantasize about fucking a prostitute in the front seat of my car. This really gets me off. I come, fast. Who am I fucking? I write: "Whatever sex is it is because of the meaning I give it." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:47:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 2.5: CONtext seX: WRIThING - Robin Tremblay-McGaw MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Two, Number Five CONtext seX: WRIThING by Robin Tremblay-McGaw the reader wants to be my parents sniffing my fingers from around the door jamb or demanding an example of how I do it. for this demonstration, I skip the clit. Give Me More. why doesn't rubbing my arm feel as good. I should stop but I can't. NOW. to speak it constantly & exploit it as a secret. (F) wear these gloves to bed and keep your hands above your head. systems of utility forcing them into hiding so to make their discovery. (F) in 5th grade I get into trouble for showing my bush to the neighborhood kids. the same year I shit in the neighbor's 4 foot pool. school dances held at the town hall I want to dance with him. all the clean middle class girls express disgust (pig squeals). his hair dark, greasy. the working classes have dibs on sex. I go on the floor with him. my first hard-on pussying up against me. it floats. JD, after other methods fail, eats his victims in order to be closer to them. first he tries to keep them in an anaesthetized state: available but not much trouble. the WRIThING flesh decays and imposes its own dis-order, causes dis-ease, an upset applecart. what a sweet mess. I still experience the meta (as she's a woman) of the lyrical polite . it is hard to resist. it sneaks in a fog. gobbles up writing. a horror show in disguise. a big assimilation machine. some resist, re-cyst, recess, resize, capsize. sexual syntax. sin tax. vulgarity a multiple anarchy. a vIrus run rampant. Kathy Acker, Dodie Bellamy. my daughter at 4 rubs against a couch arm or in an ancient abbey in the middle of a tour group. unreHEARSEd public theater. a vortex swallows good bad clean dirty public private. clit. click. the fallout is galaxies. black holes. hello. ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross to see a fine lady. shit stained. my finger up his ass inside his story slipping at the nib of his prostate. prostrate. spread them or on your back knees lifted. open. o pen me something rancorous and sweet. the double joint, disjoint of woman, mother, sex, angry rude girl, a thirst for brain/cunt juice. keep a lid on. knees together. Bitch Medusa Lysistrata. Pandora's box. primer: put your lox in my box and I'll spit you out a fox. I hate those air brushed bitches but frig my breasts are everywhere. a voracious extension into the world. have an apple. the octopus in Hokusai's The Fisherman's Wife. the readers writer writhing wringing. each cell stimulated to pitch. and twist. sex occurs the moment it is missing. your politeness encased in mucus (shit from your childhood) your horse. your weapon. it points. curiosity is a strong passion. (A) let me turn it on. you. turning you ON/OFF. inside. keep an open word ow. does it hurt. do you want more. plait pleach thraw lie. and so on. (F) Foucault. History of Sexuality (A) Acker. In Memorium to Identity Robin Tremblay-McGaw 2/2000 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:47:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 2.6: Untitled Response - David Buuck MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Two, Number Six Untitled Response by David Buuck ..and sew on a stitch, into-and-over the wound, Duchamp's peephole perhaps the gaze-wound of male desire, voyeuristic fear and longing, wanting both closure (of the hole, the fear of castration) and control (mastery of the gaze, the female body contained and objectified). Or: throw on the switch, plug into the mediating machine, the flesh-object writes back, becomes subject, suspect, the gaze cut-up and fed back into vibrating loops of uncontainable desire. "A kiss on each drain, I use a knife to dismember your nose, and hold it up against your face. Bone-and then you placed them in plastic bags, our tongues. Absolutely. According to my state, about a month later my panties were soaked. All these parts coalescing into a heart, we had sex and used sleeping pills, rose, and your cock is in the center fucking, strangled me and then dismembered my body for the first time..." Dodie's recent work "Cunt-ups", sections 1-4 of which are featured in a recent issue of The San Jose Manual of Style, is an even more extreme expression of "sexual writing" than Broken English (Meow Press) her collaboration with Bob Harrison. Whereas the latter text, even after having been processed by the machine and aligned into an alphabetized encyclopedia of desire, still contains an implicit exchange (of come-ons, fluids, raw matter, etc.) between more than one gendered subject (though heavily mediated), "Cunt-ups" is a further explosion of textual sexuality that resists principles of formal ordering, is polyvalent in its voice and range, and as perverse in its sentence construction as its content. Its "setting" is the mediated exchange itself, the fractured articulation of "a female body who has sex writing about sex." While the title might imply a gendered site of production, it also suggests a sexual/textual violence that is more than a mere "disorganization of the senses" but a dismemberment of the gendered body as well. The text becomes a (feminist) desiring machine, its writing a prosthetic device mediating the traces of physicality, imagination, abjection, and pleasure. "And then your blood will be in my cock on your cunt, your nipples, dragging through my totally cliched heart, opening like a big silly, and yes my heart, your balls slapping against me and you would be sucking and meaning. All this says small, or in between. You are very easy with words, but life is different." The "cunt-ups" resist the scopophilic gaze of the masculine reader/voyeur, although "participation" is not entirely refused: one can "play", but only on the terms of the implied author-dentata. Or, perhaps more accurately, a cinema-dentata, which dismembers the camera obscura of Duchamp's peephole and produces a camera lucida, a writing machine shooting out images onto the page. The cunt-ups are less a stitching-together of variant expressions of sexuality as much as a ripping-out-by-the-teeth of the never-quite-healed stitches of normative sexuality. The writing-machine (the organ-without-bodies) is a prosthetic device for the flesh-machine, translating arousal into a language that cannot be organized into the "non-criminal" without overturning the logic of "criminal" itself. A Foucauldian might suggest that arousal per se is not criminal, unless such arousal cannot be contained by normative sexual values. Arousal directed away from heterosexual norms and/or the eroticized realm of commodity fetishism becomes a threat to both patriarchal norms as well as the values of capitalist consumption. It is not so much a question of refusal but of possible redirection and resistance. The film "A Question of Silence" ends with the outbreak of feminist laughter that cannot be contained by the masculinist discourse of patriarchal society. Violence against the male-dominated regime cannot be explained in the regime's own language without undermining the very regime itself. Sexual deviance, always mediated but always embodied, is the laughter of flesh-machines jacked-in to prosthetics that can never fully stitch closed the cultural and material wounds of disenfranchised bodies. The filmstock threads itself through the machine's cinema-dentata. Every camera is a two-way mirror; every mediation a politicized exchange. The virus-code of deviance is the cyborg's flesh-machine pleasuring itself with explosions of uncontainable laughter. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:47:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 3.2: Body / Writing / Money - Susan Wheeler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Three, Number Two Body / Writing / Money by Susan Wheeler Before me a text. As in working from any text, what gets to me is the sense of moving into it, moving into Dodie - or rather, her clothing, the cat pee odor on my nightgown, the black pantsuit in the linen sea, the chic new clothes, all this not intended as violation but violation nonetheless. What I then think is my breasts don't even measure up to breasts. The part where I fit the clothing best - her shoulder, maybe, or is it hip - is when the fellow quotes the Blanchot, the poet exposing himself to the violence of pure being, and her "'Yes,' I say, 'but how do you then go to work?'" It is that curbing of the body for survival economically. For is it not the social wherewithal to blend at any function that brings on the bacon. For thirteen months my prayer had been, "Thy will you piece of shit be done," but/thus I still came home to eviction notices. Job interviews plenty (my seams contained on paper, my excretions not hitting the page), my interviewing clothes thinning, fraying. After a long hiatus, I had gotten a call-back for a second interview with a woman as prelude to a third with a higher-up. The woman registered me with shock when I showed. "When you come for the next," she said, confidingly, "you need to wear some make-up." The scrim of oil on the skin. The bleeding that starts willy-nilly, at any time of month, the inappropriate office attire. Signaling health, class, mother's care. Evaluative markers - a gate and now tracing the path to a paycheck. The risk in drooling, bleeding through, smelling, dirt. The unemployable. Both Brooks Brothers and Armani women's clothes cut the chests large, the hips narrow: bred into a class, a shape. The leaves are down. The woman next door has just crawled onto the roof of the first floor and is now reaching into the gutters of the second. She wears yellow rubber gloves. A canoe passes on the Hudson. It's raw and gray and I imagine the exhaustion in the muscles of the canoeist. As my days worsened, I came home to the reek of Willy's pee on the bed, the only soft surface in the studio, every night, we fighting over territory, tension, attention, food. I had started to make the rent by contracting the studio as a bed-and-breakfast and moving out along with Willy and his cat box whenever there was a taker. Willy's piss lost me takers, lost me rent, the reek of it. Among my six undergraduate students this week, one writes a long prose piece about reaming "a booger" and another's goes from one piss to another piss, a poem dense with urinals and sex. There is the ghost of class, money - as there is the not ghost at all but declaimer of money in A.M. Holmes' fiction, this what domesticates her work - but nonetheless the piss poem is obsessive, it rattles the others in the class struggling to be tolerant Ivy Leaguers. I mimic the class, the class. To be the skin sliding into another's. The first French I learned was about washing dirty laundry, something about salle and vetements that leaves me now. The canoe is gone. A sports utility vehicle drives by slowly and a woman in the passenger's seat looks up at me in the window, my standing body, its disconnected fingers at this screen that with a Windows nature scene barks at me when I err, the reminder of pure fear in the beetle that ticks off waiting-time with the software, me afraid to touch the perforated stickers of spiders I had for pasting in the nature booklets we had when I was six. The booby trap the body was in the illnesses it brought. The bleeding. Not hard to write off for a paycheck. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:47:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 3.3: Moneybody - Mark Wallace MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Three, Number Three Moneybody by Mark Wallace So after considering the first two responses a long time, I've come to the conclusion that these two ladies are all in a huff about nothing, bless their emotional little hearts. Their complaints come out of a failure to exploit the market potentials of their own position. Self-aware marketers never suffer from the pain and rage expressed by Ms. Bellamy and Ms. Wheeler, who don't yet understand how to make the most out of what they've got. At the risk of giving away trade secrets, I'd like to offer my own analysis of how they might more fully understand their particular market potentials. In a free market system of the kind that thankfully we have, pain, rage and doubt are not necessary, and easy to do away with if one can think clearly. They are, in fact, nothing more than insufficiently understood marketing. The person who has learned to sell him or herself properly and completely has no space left over for unproductive pain and rage. While I can't outline a complete business philosophy in this short response, I can at least outline several key marketing principles that will help Ms. Bellamy and Wheeler overcome their unproductive feelings and be happy, American, and rich. Anyone following these principles can develop their own fabulous Moneybody to its full earning potential. Principle #1: Learn to sell each body part separately, so that each can become as productive as possible. If I think of myself as a single individual, then it's hardly surprising that I would have only myself to sell, and that, as myself, I would be only able to perform a single task at a time. But think of how many more goods an individual has to sell if that individual sells each body part individually. And think of how many more tasks one could complete if each body part, given a chance to develop its powers fully, was allowed to function according to its separate talents. I remember very well the afternoon when I realized how many tasks my different body parts could perform simultaneously, or at least within a short period of time. With my left hand, on my new palm held computer I was busy squeezing the last drop of profit out of my South American factories by a quick calculation of how much harm I was doing to myself by actually paying wages, and noted how much more I could make if I only promised wages and then fired workers after two weeks, right before their first pay period. Meanwhile my mouth, in an effective temporary group project with my right hand, was busy dismissing a secretary; the woman wore no make-up and wouldn't flirt with the guys in the office, and we all know what that means, so I couldn't have her around. Of course, they've got their markets too; tolerance is a byword with the self-aware marketer, who's always in search of new markets to penetrate. My stomach, meanwhile, was busy digesting a supposedly five-star meal from a restaurant I was considering purchasing; far from being a negative sign, my vague discomfort told me that the food there was not as fine as advertised, a sure sign that the restaurant would have a sufficiently high profit margin to be purchasable. I was doing all these things just a moment before my legs received part of their daily physical workout by running to the john, where other parts... pardon my not using the words, I don't like to be obscene... helped me to take a long, healthy, proud American piss, freeing me of unnecessary burdens like a good downsizing, and not at all like the wasteful protest piss that Ms. Bellamy describes, or the furtive ashamed urination taken by Ms. Wheeler's student, who's afraid to directly assert his consumer desires. I was aware the whole time of how much more my body could be doing than it even was. If all these parts could perform these separate tasks with such efficiency, then how much more money could I make by contracting my various body parts out on various occasions to other businesses that had need of my formidable skills? Principle #2: Negative images of ourselves or others are nothing more than markets that have yet to be penetrated. For the unaware marketer, Ms. Bellamy's and Ms. Wheeler's obsession with urine may seem on their part expressions of anger or loathing that can only get in the way of their making a proper presentation of themselves, a sad commentary on the waste caused by the maladjusted. But the aware marketer sees that this particular obsession might be amenable to a whole range of products. Granted, the urine obsession market is probably a niche market rather than a mainstream one; still, there must be a significant population that shares this obsession. Thus, while Ms. Bellamy and Ms. Wheeler use urine as a marker of what is unacceptable as a mode of body and social presentation, the aware marketer recognizes that individuals who feel unacceptable because of their desire for urine could transform into a whole product line what only seems like an unhealthy preoccupation. One can imagine, for instance, a cat piss perfume for those who like to be pissed on by cats but have no cats currently at hand; indeed, if cat piss is what someone was after, why bother with the whole cat at all? You need only purchase the part of the cat that you want to purchase. Thus this second principle can be seen to be a direct extension of the first. Principle #3: The differences of each person's body parts are precisely what make each body part a unique product. All hands are not the same any more than all beers are the same. If all hands and beers were the same, we'd have no need of marketers. Marketers are exactly in the business of marketing differences. What kind of hand would you like to touch you? What kind of arm would you like attached to that hand? Which particular types of body measurements, male or female, are most powerfully arousing to you? Do you have particular preferences for certain sizes, shapes, skin colors, emotional or cultural histories? Do you prefer your bodies scarred? The aware marketer of separate body parts can custom design exactly the kind of body that will lead you to new peaks of orgasm; indeed, it's now possible even to custom design your orgasm itself. Principle #4: Beliefs about differences between male and female bodies create the different markets in which each group can be sold. Of course, by now, it should be clear that the notion that male and female bodies exist is nothing more than an inadequate marketing concept; once we break down bodies into individual parts, nothing at all prevents us from mixing and matching parts to create all sorts of new sellable sexes. Nonetheless it remains true that many dominant markets still insist on a definite natural distinction between men and women, and as long as they do so, there's a tremendous amount of money to be made. Given the existing marketplace, the various ways in which men and women can sell their bodies remains different and definable, but these differences should be thought of as chances to sell more products, not as reasons for complaint. The number of ways in which men and women can sell their bodies is far too large to document here, but several key points might profitably be made. In mainstream markets it may be easier for women to sell their bodies in certain types of ways, as objects of sexual pleasure for instance; the woman who does this will be happy, according to the laws of the marketplace, when she gets as large a wage as possible for these services. Similarly, in mainstream markets men are currently more able to sell their bodies as violent projectiles intended to cause physical harm; again, according to the laws of the marketplace, they should sell to the highest bidder this talent for inflicting pain. Men and women whose bodies or desires do not conform to the mainstream marketplace need not despair; the niche markets for differing activities can certainly lead to significant wealth as long as one develops a self-aware marketing plan. Principle #5: Happiness comes from selling yourself completely. Any body part that languishes in unproductive pain is of no use either to the current owner of that body part or to other potential owners. An unused body part is no more than ignored profit potential. If each body part is actively involved in an adequate marketing plan, no part of the body need suffer unnecessary discomfort. It's important to make the most of yourself, and you can do so if you get committed to always selling every part of yourself that you can. Ms. Bellamy and Ms. Wheeler should stop yelling, and start selling. Remember, the key to your perfect Moneybody is not to let anybody else sell you short, unless, of course, short is what you're selling. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:47:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 3.4: Untitled Response - Alicia Cohen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Three, Number Four Untitled Response by Alicia Cohen I had no time to hate - Because The grave would hinder me - And Life was not so Ample I Could finish - Enmity - Nor had I time to Love - But since Some Industry must be- The little toil of Love - I thought Be Large enough for me - Emily Dickinson Sex is how we're all connected and the same as each other one big primordial sea and electric lightning impulse from heaven that charged the sea with life is love that lights our eyes to wink at each other. Writing is letters that collapse time for conversation between bodies that have this material form and movement like me now breathing and changing at my desk and the spirited disembodied dead hovering around the foreseen souls wandering to and fro on the page-love letter, Dear One,. A sea of voices waving at each other in an inverse of chronological time turned out on itself moving and singing a round inwardly. Outside the snow falls and black ravens circling above trees out my window mean something. I took a biology class long ago. We watched a film made in the late sixties about the primordial sea and the lightning that sparked life. I was in love and writing love letters secretly in my journal during class. The professor told us about the "Prokaryote Cannibal Host" theory of of sexual evolution: that in the Primordial Sea single cells swallowed other single cells and that is the first sex. Two days ago Tom and I flew back from Oregon to Buffalo and in the airport I read about Kip Kingle who at age fifteen killed both his parents and then shot twenty-four classmates killing three. He was super in love with some girl in his class and they watched the newest movie version of *Romeo and Juliet* together. When the police arrived at his house the soundtrack from the movie's death scene - an opera piece - was blaring from inside and his parents were dead covered with white sheets. Before his rampage he wrote in his journal about love being a bad thing because love leads to hate. (Shakespeare keeps humming lines to actors out in the graveyard.) He said he killed his parents because he had to, because he loved them. I remember vividly a super erotic image I had when I was about six years old: diving off the high diving board at the Navy base swimming pool onto a knife being held by a Sailor treading water below me. And the knife goes into my vagina and blood floods everywhere in the water. How did I come up with that? I can tell you that I didn't get that image from anything explicit I'd seen or heard. I even didn't know what a period was, or a penis, or the penis in the vagina scenario. Where did that scenario come from and why did it turn me on so intensely at six? I love the world and water and trees and people and animals. I masturbated yesterday and as I came I was swimming in the warm clear beautiful tropical water with dolphins singing and swimming nearby. I thought after I came how much I now associate *pleasure* with the erotic (go figure) and that it was not always this way. How violent and rape oriented my primordial-young erotic fantasy life was. Also I wondered if it was bestiality of some sort - this love connection I felt in orgasm to sea beasts and sun and water. I think of Dodie's physical body sitting across me. Of friendship. Of TELLING stories. I remember Dodie and Kevin staying with me here in Buffalo years ago and miss them. Dodie and I ate breakfast and drank coffee in the kitchen. Deep in a time when I couldn't remember love or friends like a whispering voice down a hall behind a rust belt brick city wall Dodie and Kevin came and I remembered. The sound of feet. Chinese medicine pellets and extra toothbrushes. Empty Diet Pepsi cans in the recycling box. The deep winter freeze, the lay-out of a city. The prison architecture of University at Buffalo - so cruel it is criminal. Factors I compute inside the deeply isolating experience of being here in Buffalo, New York. A City, a life (grad student) that prohibits intimacy. In one Autumn walking through a Buffalo graveyard with the leaves all aflame I knew I had chosen to be a writer. All red yellow and orange having just died. Paradoxically Buffalo is where I fell in real love .like bursting dirty toenails sweet smell wild. impassioned. These days, my last here, I think of Luis Bunuel and his films. He wrote that the erotic was for him somehow connected to dead bodies. Lusty . and we want to be here . period. each breath . Maybe we write so as to have friends in the Land of the Dead. White gauze paper wrap. Recently I visited an old friend in a city far away and we saw the new Omnimax film about the Pyramids together. She was a month away from her trip to Egypt. That day it rained really hard but the bright green of an inner city rain forest brightened my eye. Now she is wandering in hot sun and sand and I'm sitting at a desk in the snowy cold writing about it. The secret is in three dimensions out my window ravens circle and it means something because she told me in Alaska black birds circling above the trees meant something and so to me it was revealed that night in the Chapel the ice cold of a longing for two dimensions in this world. Oh dear. I gave her H.D.'s *Helen in Egypt* for her January 20th Birthday before she left for Egypt. I copied this out and tucked it in the book: how can you find the answer in the oracles of Greece or the hieroglyphs of Egypt? you may work or steal your way into the innermost shrine and the secret escape you; some say a bowman from the Walls let fly the dart, some say it was Apollo, but I, Helena, know it was Love's arrow ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:47:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 3.5: An Economy of Bodies/Writing/Gender - Matthias Regan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Three, Number Five An Economy of Bodies/Writing/Gender by Matthias Regan I. The first word in Dodie's title is "Body"; the last word of her piece is "typing." These words have at least two things in common. First, both signify bodies: "Body" provides the abstract, the place-holder, which a body is, and typing describes a process requiring a body. One form of the physical labor of writing, typing requires a direct and articulate contact between machine and body. When the body comes into contact with machines we call the labor proletarian and think of it as more primitive, sometimes more enjoyable, more "earthy" than other kinds of work. "Primitive," "enjoyable," "'earthy'": three words to describe a presently accepted intellectual construct of what bodies are. What gets produced when typing produces writing we call intellectual. "Abstract," "etherial," "fantastic," perhaps. The other thing these two words have in common, after all, is that they are both words. This is unavoidable, even when the words signify "body." Dodie is well aware of these complexities. The body is almost the only thing left these days easily played off against language. "I'm working towards a writing," she tells us, and sends us to a writing class to think about bodies. "Writing that shifts the matrix," she tells us. Hinting Sartre, we could say all writing either shifts or confirms "the matrix," which I read as "world view" or "hegemony." Three propositions Dodie's piece provokes: "writing about the body shifts the world view"; "a body, like writing, shifts the world view"; "a body, writing, shifts the world view." A matrix of possible meanings, a constellation (many of which are bodies). "Writing that shifts the matrix," she tells us; I think that's possible. Impossible, however, when confined to "sex." "No sex without gender" means you can't conceptualize a sex without imagining a gender. The distinction between "gender" and "sex" roughly corresponds to that between "superstructure" and "base" in post-Marxist theory. Once it was believed that everything could be traced back to the base, pure and simple. The base was unimpeachable, a solidarity, just as the sexed body once was. Now we understand that the superstructure is hardly derivative--it is precisely what allows us to conceptualize the economy (which, after all, begins with bodies-in-time), even though engendered by it. This is also true of sex, except the gender categories that determine are less products of sex than of ideology. Ideological categories encode power relations, but not necessarily. When they do, they determine the sex and control the body--but never, perhaps, to the nth degree (save in fantasy). This is a hopeful figuration; I hope it's possible. If no fantasy is entirely determined by ideology, but if the body almost always is, when is fantasy a way out? When the matrix's shifted, which, because fantasy's categories are involved, means no sex without a gender. II. Just about the only thing I can image myself doing in which my body is totally out of the picture is fantasizing. Nonetheless, the fantasies in both D's and Susan Wheeler's narratives are about the body. I was doing it just now, in fact, when I was trying to imagine myself doing things that didn't involve the body. (It seems there's no escaping it.) The textual body Wheeler terms "I" reaches out to the body D. names "A female body who has sex." Their cats and workshops seem similar, although this is conveyed in one and many words, respectively. Each word might be thought of as a piece of the body; D's body assembled, in her own words, through "my cunt," "my head," "my hair." Is the phrase "I miss him" three words about the body? Are some fantasies--say porno, horror flicks and avant-garde writing--more about the body than others? Is the body in loose-fitting clothes, or in a car, a body? Wheeler's last paragraph suggests an end to the fantasy; the female passenger of the SUV takes us away from the computer screen, perhaps moments before the words are encoded into electricity and flashed through wires, the actual connection. III. The first time I was sure Mark Wallace's work was parodic was the 2nd paragraph: "In a free market . . . Of the kind that thankfully we have." Two tip-offs here: the intellectual bodies that respond to internet poetics lists hosted by the sort of ideological apparatus a state university is rarely express gratitude for the free market. Being a government institution, SUNY participates in the free market somewhat negatively, "a sore thumb." The other clue was antiquated syntax: "that thankfully we have" sounds vaguely English Lit.; I think of Swift, and everybody is thinking of Swift when they write satire. (Or, for that matter, when they contemplate the delicate horrors of ladies shitting.) It's hard to imagine one could have History without first having bodies, but a commonplace that one can (and often should) have a history without bodies. This is because: a) abstraction burns through ideology like sun though smog, and b) the bodies in history have long since reduced to dust, or ash. When, earlier, Wallace writes "I've come to the conclusion that these two ladies are all in a huff" I guessed it might be satire but wasn't sure: this is why we mustn't let gender piss us off. The "desire for urine" Mr. Wallace expresses is, apparently, entirely his own. IV. Bodies in this narrative come paired with desire, the marketplace, friendship, love. Fantasy, remembrance, perhaps, are the modems the body uses to connect up to these things. Melville's word, "Queequeg" comes to mind--a friendly body covered in foreign writing. "Inscribed," as in "conscripted" or "encrypted." A body brought by the free-market into contact with the narrator's body; they sleep together and then its hundreds of pages before we get the close-up of Q's body covered in unreadable words--perhaps that's how long it took for his script to grow foreign again. One may extrapolate from Alicia Cohen's seventh paragraph the idea that "prison architecture . . . prohibits intimacy." During the ellipsis we get this news about a body: it walks through a graveyard in Buffalo in the fall. One might have said: the information we get about the body is: it walks; but what is a body without scenery? Taken out of context and, in all its glory, it amounts to little (hence we mourn our dead). Fortunately, thanks to context, all sorts of bodies exist. This may, of course, be unfortunate as well. How does desire expressed by the non-intimate body-in-prison differ from desire expressed by the non-private body-in-a-writing-class? If we were conversing and you said, "no difference," I'd reply: "Yeah? Well what happens to institutions, then? Just where are they supposed to go?" If so, why are desire and the market hot topics today? The answer, again, is gender. V. The body is an archive, the body is a rope, the body likes a toothbrush, the body turned to soap: erase the context and all you get are words. My body tells me this, typing. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:48:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 3.6: Lip Sync - Ron Silliman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Three, Number Six Lip Sync by Ron Silliman Possibly sex is always ahistorical, or at the least outside of history, because its always *my body*. Strands from the thread of sex as an institution over the past sixty years: implicit though largely unspoken within the creation of a "youth subculture" that was always at its heart a "market" (the perceived lewdness of Elvis, Chubby Checker, *Louie Louie*); explicit in the frothing out of control of that same market into a vaguely directed counterculture (from "Love-ins" and the poetry of Lenore Kandel to the airplane rape in Robert Frank's documentary of the Stones, *Cocksucker Blues*, to the Sutro Baths hetero sex scene and polyandry in all its guises); deeply problematized everywhere in the fact and discourse of AIDS; explicit again in every high school poli sci course discussing the impeachment of a President; the world wide web offers not only cybersex but also every fetish, legal and otherwise, in every wired home on the planet. You don't have to leave Rock Springs to get French postcards anymore. Today, what is most outrageous about *Behind the Green Door* are the preposterous 70s hairdos. "The body is an archive" is exactly right. Herpes is the gift that keeps on giving. Contraceptive technology can leave scar tissue where you least expect/want it. We find one cohort of people pushing 40 suddenly very concerned over the ability to get pregnant, another already welcoming grandchildren. Take a step back, disentangle yourself from the fleshy nets of being. There have been (are) two great currents at work. The stronger has been constantly toward greater self-determination and choice, increased openness (most of my grandmother's sisters had abortions well before WWI). The second, a literal backlash, has in our lives been articulated through a discourse of contagion. Whereas what might have been the free play between libidinal impulse (that utopian moment in the gay community expressed as/thru anonymous sex) and the equally powerful urges for intimacy & community - & the enormous toll of acknowledging/accommodating both - never gets to be developed, what remains is, in the broadest terms, our life (lives). How many of my cohorts actually hear the word "gentle" in "gentleman"? It is within this ensemble of the already given that each one of us must act (daily, even moment by moment) always positioned. Our age, our history, bodies, all the social stigmata each one of us carries about is perpetually being recalibrated by every person in our field (and by none more anxiously than ourselves). Confronting death - & what else do you stare at, naked in front of your mirror? - sex was a promise of release by other means. So why is Nixon waving forever in front of that grainy helicopter? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:48:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 4.2: Untitled Response - Rachel Blau DuPlessis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Poetics List Colloquium: Group Four, Number Two Untitled Response by Rachel Blau DuPlessis "gin dear hiss delight" sad dough tea bellum me wansin moo van bo drip age tic tock 2 cum "gender is the night" said Dodie Bellamy once in *Moving Borders*, page TKTK (to come to 2 cum. zzz gindra delite ides aye - ginestra scissors delays, hex you all in ties his duh nigh, to come). Is gender the night? I'd say - gender is the day, sexuality is the night. tis un gin dread gin fizz herd non owed ream? Tide sane oh. Butt on sss exude all eyes. Is one gendered (fixed-gendered) in one's own dream? I'd say no. But one is sexualized. Hi. juice rote sun ding bike tis: "en um dean hair snow ow organ snope intel 2 one I just wrote something like this: "in the dream there is no now or then/ no pointing to an arthur spice on his mule end femur =AE wiper saturn 8 did ad ream, knowy hershey loll other space = from this/ male and female are hypersaturated/ in the dream, no he or she all bart oeuf mends/ taj hey sew yam mahal/ vitamin A pennies end utterby = nary/ wills part of me and/ staged so I am many/ vaginies, penies and other binaries/ with end stations...." Wet my ink, fur perp horses ovulate end rear, hat tear rizzo faxt jinn drain sensations...." Let me think, for purposes of argument here, that there is no fixed gender in D-D ream. Nuns cinder height - touchee drat weigh. Butt dear lisp land tea six you alley tea the dream. None in "the night" - to say it that way. But there is plenty sexuality dare, ninja greens pace wear sum think kiss riding oz. Juxtapose yurt german nanny wear, there, in the dream space where = something is writing us. Just open your journal anywhere, few rote tit trounce. Oat sit tup. Behoove dun mammary ding send head on ned titwillow'd, if you wrote it down. Wrote it up. You've done many things and had done and did will do, rough and rogue. Semiphor issue RE: member, sum snot. Tis e'en drecks swannery com-round and round. Some of this you remember, some not. This dream sexuality comes fort da polly ginger delft bee fore eddy pal itty. Policy more fuss per versicle, daff's oi'd. from the poly-gendered self before oedipality. Polymorphous perverse, that's Freud. Vertically bi (try?) cycle - do mollify Sex ooze. Diddles pull ease sect tool. Food forage, Vatically bi (tri?) sexual - to modify Cixous. Id est Poly sexual. Good for it, thirl that thoth rare rem agit san din script shuns sin amend lass et love the thought that there are images and inscriptions in an endless set of cum bin a story puss abilities (handsome R, cunt bend special, snatch) aching strafe combinatory possibilities (and some are conventional, natch) taking shape yon diplomatic scream. Dear farce dewy - eek under ell, a fustian on (sad tinny time) lift on the Big Screen. Therefore Do we - each and all of us - Every One (said Tiny Tim) live "hilfen loaves" (ewe no - = de sleeting elf ur nil) owl sine fed nepal it tea? Disk fellows: "half our lives" (you know - the sleeping half or third) outside of oedipality? This follows: fit hairiest know fittest enter endocrine, moan lease extra = youall it tease. Deer tryst now if There is no fixed gender in the dream, only sexualities. There is no gizmo - gimmick storm din wetter phallic tee, poesy lisp esteem, inner knives inner gender - gender is formed in oedipality, so we live the dream in our lives in a hole marmoset love err relay shovel tips, thru pecs you are a tease, gill slits here whole other set of relationships to sexualities, genders, their lords send = roods, dare indeed, o jeeze, eye mut hulk in abut hutch poison/special laws and rules, their ideologies. I am not talking about such personal/social coracle flogs sez mite email marge and dick's sister, who are id'd and enterprised buy character flaws as might emerge in this system as were identified by jewel ya christ terrific - hipro dentist efficacious whisper pallas a thena guess again Julia Kristeva - hyperidentifications with the Phallus or regressive iden-tiff caucasians widow material. Eye men dot weenie spear these scents (sass love tifications with the maternal. I mean that we experience (as of curse wed nipple lice hut chimneysweeper pole, hose room delicious ask ben setter ploy course oedipalized but sleeping people, those whom the unconscious has been set in play older glow danger groan pip) duh prejudgment pride of place evenup simple fight. although they are grownup) the pre-gender pre-oedipal every single night. Weiner hearing sense lay dunkel troubled nixed sensual heft leveling ring uglies. We experience a doubled, tripled, mixed sexuality of everything all ways. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:48:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 4.3: Untitled Response - Brian Stefans MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Poetics List Colloquium: Group Four, Number Three Untitled Response by Brian Stefans I'm wasn't really sure how to respond to your post, Rachel, except perhaps to recycle some arguments from Sianne Ngai's "Poetics of Disgust" essay, which I don't have on hand. It seems, nonetheless, to have something to = do with the "good doo doo" (a quote from a Deanna Ferguson poem) aspect of = the "abject" corner of Language writing, and I guess is forcing a = consideration of the ugliness of its clashing syllables versus the relative clarity of the references to thinkers such as Kristeva (whom I've never really read) and Freud. And to suggest, elsewhere, that the "dream" permits a sort of never coming to "terms" with gender, which I suppose is a position I am attracted to (I tend to call it enforced adolescence, hence putting it in = a social scale) though would not quite know how to declare. McCaffery on semantic slippage in bpNichol's wordplay also comes to mind, but I'm not sure whether I should interpret the text or respond to it on its terms (a little of both, it seems). However, now that my stream-of-nothingness is running full speed, here is a direct connect: I was reading Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd this morning on the subway, a book which is kind of boring to read all the way through, and when it's least boring it seems rather wrong, but nonetheless interesting as an attempted dialogue with a generation much younger than him, the Beats in the case of the chapter I find interesting. He writes, concerning the sexuality of the Beats: "So perhaps another reason for their dropping the old physical jazz and revival is just the opposite, that the display of energy would upset their coolness, it would be embarrassing to make them feel too young. I wonder if this is not the simple explanation of their disdain of social dancing = as "dry" sex; for certainly one of the reasonable uses of social dancing is body contact and sometimes sexual foreplay. But these boys are = embarrassed to get an erection, to betray feeling, in public, though they are more = than willing to take their clothes off and exhibit themselves, or to beat a = drum wildly in public as an exhibition for the others, but not as contact with them." (182) This addresses one paradox, as the purported "freedom" associated with running around naked that is held up against society's repression actually comes up cold in those moments within society in which "sexual foreplay" can be enacted in public. I remember reading in Habermas about the = sixties political youth movements that there was a certain narcissism present in much of this activity that would limit the actions to displays, but that there was no chance for them to take the majority role once anything was achieved as their self-image would be disrupted. I think of this a fair amount (poets should dress like bankers, Auden once wrote), as I wonder = how many are willing to make this flip from performative disdain to = responsible member of a community should that community gain political weight, or whether anyone cares about this. Elsewhere Goodman writes of these male Beat poets have a "healthy sexuality" in fact, but he sees the role that women played in the community as primarily maternal, with the young men bursting into tears the moment someone like Kenneth Patchen says their poetry's childish, and the woman poet stepping in to coo reassurances in their ear. This seems a little opposite of what we generally take to be the story of the Beat era, whose best poets were gay and whose women poets were often radical individualists (is that a word?) but had been excluded from the male-centered self-canons. But Goodman makes it clear that = "Beat" and "artist" were not synonymous (he argues many points regarding this), hence, though there were hundreds of people keeping notebooks and drawing pictures and calling themselves "artists", few had a framework for viewing the world in terms of social relations due to the pure excitment of the Beat community itself as experience. (This brings to mind something tangential: we all bitch and moan about how the "community" is not fer = real today, it's just some pose, but actually, were the community to be as exciting and self-concerned as the Beats, we might have worse poets - who knows.) Anyway, to bring this back to Dodie's essay, there seems to be a paradox present in that she writes she is "working towards a writing that subverts sexual bragging, a writing that champions the vulnerable, the fractured, the disenfranchised, the sexually fucked-up," and at the same time would not want one with "x-ray vision" to see the "frayed elastic on my = panties." Her essay itself, which argues for the person for whom "EAT SHIT" could be an erotic suggestion, seems to set up a forceful argument along the lines of "you must take all of this in to 'qualify' as a radical" via a very performative language - she don't mince words - and yet at the same time looks at the "vulnerable," and where radical sexuality crosses with social pose in the many anecdotes later on. So the abstraction of the "body", = she argues, should be brought to some specific materiality probably through anecdote (as she is a prose writer), but on the other she as the reader becomes vulnerable once this body appears in the writing - hence the challenge, the need for form in presenting oneself. Both pure abstraction = - leaping from critical term to critical term - and pure exhibitionism - as I've heard at several New York poetry readings and probably not for the last time: "here is a poem about my CLITORIS" (hahaha goes the audience) - fail because they don't engage with the struggle with form. Well, I'm not asking everyone, i.e. these writers of the latter group, to mature; as I wrote above, I think the pre-adolescent mode of writing is perfectly legit (Rimbaud haunts this discussion, I feel, his sonnets about seeing the erect dicks of bulls at the county fair, for instance, combined with his Catholicism). However, it seems that part of the challenge is using this erotic tendency to "do good" in a way. I think some writers = are doing this now, or are beginning to: a book I've received recently, by a guy named Garrett Caples, takes on the lack of eroticism in what he considers the "Victorian" underpinings of the Language poets is a case in point. So here is a younger poet using performatively "vulgar" language (the poem is called "Humped by Barrett Watten") to somehow address larger social issues, while trying to avoid what he would probably consider the castration of abstract terminology and the social control of theoretical models. I'm sure some people consider him inarticulate, mean, or completely untalented to do this in the way he does, but I think he's interesting precisely because his pose (or reality, who knows when he = wrote these) is of an adolescent refusing to give up the directness of his pre-discursive, poly-sexual experience while keeping his eyes on the future, which is that of social scales of meaning, and potential conformity. (Some of the poems are really very good, a sure improvement = on the "Beats", though tied to a nostalgic surrealism.) To quote Dodie on Samuel Delaney: "*Hogg* constantly compels the reader to choose one filth-laden situation *over* another, when most of us would simply want to be rid of the entire set of experiences." In language, this "set of experiences" would be words that are deemed counter-discursive, words of "disgust," the Calibanic perhaps, but also the discursive content when it is deemed offensive to sexual mores. So, Hogg forces us to conceive of a hierarchy of values, a structure, where once was a shit-mound of unassimilable experience; once this structure is conceived, what's to stop one from attaching it to the larger ethical structures we associate with democracy? I feel like I could go on with this - wanted to mention the new law = against distributing "crush" videos, which I've read about in the Voice (I don't think cute animals should die for anyone's sexual pleasure myself) - but this is probably too long. Attached to this email, however, is a little poem that uses the words of Rachel's text. I ran some computer processes on it; actually, all I did was alphabetize the words in it and then construct shorter poems from = them. However, various faults in the method left a cluster of non-alphabetized words at the top, and words that appear after m-dashes and slashes are not alphabetized. These processes usually display the formless subconsious of certain texts, but it's hard to imagine a subconscious to Rachel's text - it's so "exposed" - so this actually provides a superego for it. Change = or add to it what you will. Ok, gotta run. *** One Or Two Things I Don't Know About Her or, "Dick's Sister" (Bellamy) probably after Stacy Doris and Eugen Gomringer en gender gin half - hilfen "in "the (and (as (ewe "fixed-gendered, handsome!" - sad said sass. (to (tri?) (try?) (you r a a a A a - abilities about abut aching ad again age - AGIT all all all all all (alley) although am am amend an and anywhere, are are are argument: "Arthur" as "Aye!" Behoove Bellamy bellum Ben bend Bi Bi Big bike binaries/ bo/ Borders, But butt Buy Caucasians Character? chimneysweeper christ, cinder cixous. Com-round, combinatory: come come) comes - conventional cunt curse... cycle. dear dear Dear Deer delays, delft delicious delight" delite dentist dewy-eek dick's "ding ding" (diplomatic Dodie). dread dream dream dream dream dream, dream, dream. dream? drip duh duh e'en ease eddy, efficacious. elf email emerge, endless endocrine! enter enterprised err est esteem, evenup everything experience extra exude eye farce fed fellows: female: femur fittest flaws flogs follows: Food for Freud. fustian gender gender gender gender - gender gendered genders, - german gill gizmo gimmick good grownup guess had hair hairiest half has hat he hearing heft height - touch=E9 herd here: hershey hex hey Hi. his hiss hole horses hose hulk hypersaturated/ I I I I I'd I'd Id id'd iden-tiff identified ideologies. ides' if images in in in in in in in in in in in in In In In indeed! ink, inner inscriptions - intel is issue Itty jeeze Jewel Djinn journal juice. Julia just juxtapose kiss knives know know - the knowy =3D Kristeva - hyperidentifications land lass laws leveling lice lift like lisp live lives loaves" loll lords love love male mammary many many/ material. maternal. me me me mean member, men mends/ might mite mixed moan modify mollify moo more Moving mule mut my ned nepal nigh, night" night "- to night. night. night? nil) ninja nipple nixed no no no no no no no - de non. not. now Nuns o Oat oedipality, oedipality. oedipality? oedipalized oeuf of oh. oi'd. older on once one's ooze. open or organ our outside ovulate... ow owed owl own oz. pace page pal pallas part pecs penies pennies people, per perp personal/social perverse, phallic pip) place plenty ploy poesy pointing poison/special Policy polly Poly poly-gendered Polymorphous possibilities pre-gender pre-oedipal prejudgment pride pull purposes R, rare RE: ream, ream. ream? rear, regressive relationships Relay Riding, ring Rizzo. rogue. roods rote rough round. rules, sad said sans sane saturn Say say say-gender scents. Scissors scream. Script sect self. Semiphor send sensations...." sense sensual set sew Sex-sexual-to sexual. sexuality sexuality sexuality sexuality sexualized. sez shape she shuns simple sin single sister, sit sleeping sleeping sleeting slits snatch) snot. snow so some something spear special, spice staged stations...." strafe such sum sum sun swannery system talking tea tea tea? tea? tear tease, tease. terrific-hipro that's the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the think, third) thirl this tic Tide tifications Tim) time) tinny Tiny tips, tit titwillow'd, TKTK to tock tool. tripled, troubled tryst tup. uglies. um un unconscious under up. ur us -Every us. utterby vaginies, van Vatically versicle, Vertically vitamin ways. we we We we-each wear wed weenie weigh. Weiner were Wet wetter where whisper who widow wills wiper with writing wrote ya yam yon you you you you you You've youall your z z Z ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:48:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 4.4: PACKRAT - Jonathan Skinner MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Four, Number Four PACKRAT by Jonathan Skinner The paradox Dodie grapples with in her effort to "subvert sexual bragging," as Brian points out, is that "sexual bragging" is required of "the vulnerable, the fractured, the disenfranchised, the sexually fucked-up." Those who fall outside these categories (though I'm not sure what D. means by "sexually fucked-up," as hardly any of us could claim not to be) perform their sex "optionally," not "bragging" only because their performance is normalized - as in the romantic pronouns of mainstream lyric poetry. Everyone else sounds loud, or resorts to abstraction. Don't know exactly where "my" body is in writing - but as a heterosexual, white male I'm not supposed to, am I? Just enjoy the "option" of sex, of marking my body, as I think I'll step in and get pierced, have a tatoo here, BE somebody. Dodie's writing reaches into and around, holds the body - making some kind of direct connect, or glimpse through shifted matrix. Not that she - "a female body who has sex" - seems to enjoy this stance: authors are listened to, bodies get looked at (w/x-ray specs). In response writing brings the abstraction of the "body" to "some specific materiality;" the challenge is for writing to embody without ratifying the coarse objectifications, to resist hegemony without simple counter hegemony. This, I take it, is what Brian phrases "the challenge, the need for form in presenting oneself." Depending on which direction you're coming from, a thickening blood infusion or an injection of dialectical fluid, an architectonic colonic. Dodie's forms - yes anecdote, along with letter, persona, autobiography (w/ the initials that authenticate more than they protect) - and, more vitally, her cunt camera, a floating points cinemaxis eluding arrows of simple narrative - form in what appears to be a resistance to form. As would her prose's hovering unclassifiably on the (moving) borders of poetry. I can't add to this conversation without packing in some environment. First thing a country boy like me notices on coming to the city is sex - it's "rampant." While cities are less socially "repressive," the body undergoes another kind of repression - its contacts with soil, oxygen, flowing water, chlorophyll, plant and animal life, open spaces, hi fi soundscapes, is severely limited; if not aggravated by exposure to various levels of toxicity. (Notice how the body quickens at an open air market?) Car based, suburban "strip mall" life of most middle-sized towns is even worse. "Sex" in this sense rides somewhere in the positive-negative feedback between (relative) release from village confinement and asphalt's enclosure - a surrogate wildness for a "concrete jungle." As Vertov and Benjamin made clear, after the camera space would never be the same for the masses. Once the preserve of the elite, all would now be subject to the deforming (one-point perspectival) space of the gaze, isolating bodies, making sex "nature:" Hollywood, the car and the VCR generalize the sex-nature equation, country and city alike consolidated for a "discourse of the body." Even if it be a futile, largely imaginary endeavor, I find it important to resist the totalizing panopticon of a discourse that would vouch for all experience on the basis of sub/urban hegemony. I won't deny that's where it's "happening" nor would I propose it desirable to "go back," but instinct tells me to remember the differences, hoping for the day we learn to live with, rather than under, our technologies. Brian raised the spectre of Rimbaud - a poet who inhabits the space between country and city in ways that remain, I believe, largely unexplored. His relationship to the city was intense and ambivalent as it was short-lived. The body in his work (eyeing the dicks of bulls at market) is far less regulated than, say, Baudelaire's - who works with a heavily romanticized (& Catholic) postcard nature: ports, vistas, memories from his Mediterranean cruise. If the social upheavals (and repressions) of the 1870s are more relevant, to the "history" of Rimbaud's body, it's the instability they occasion that sets him a-wandering, between city and country - where registers, referents, dialects, sexual valencies fissure, separate, slide across, over and into one another. Although modernism attempts to claim Rimbaud, the break-up of personality in his work may in fact suggest other directions: "persons" are such narrow frames. Think about the multiplicity of a body: "metametazoan... a sort of ornately elaborated mosaic of microbes in various states of symbiosis" (Dorion Sagan). The ecology of a body, the choreography. Or lack thereof. Once I was fortunate enough, probably too fortunate, to enter the monarch butterfly sanctuary above Zitacuaro in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Found myself in what appeared to be a grove of dead pine trees. When a band of sun came raying out all of the gray needles unfurled orange and black wings, suddenly the air was filled with big heavy butterflies. They all looked rather juicy. Then I heard them slapping together - they were coupling. Sometimes the impact was so forceful the couple (trio?) would fall flapping thickly to the ground. The stickiness of it was in the air. Laying in the warm sun (it was spring and quite cool up here in the hills) with eyes closed I could feel the thousands of shadows spotting my lids. The wet thud and click of fallen fucking insects all around me. A velvet whir. I undid my fly - there was no image, no "fantasy" other than the imagination of sticky butterfly organs, sexy wings - the heaviness and ripeness of the act. The clinical strokes separating sex/body/writing seem to stand in for the only process that could articulate a meaning here: feeling. Not that poetry "expresses" feeling, but it finds, uncovers feeling latent in the materials. It's about finding that groove in the work, the connectedness. Sometimes you have to break apart to find this, I won't deny that. Doing it now. Body: any bounded aggregate of matter fr. Germanic bot- (unattested), container American Heritage Dictionary 'cask, tub, vat' OED Not the tidy container (body) of "creative writing" poetic form is the pulse between being and not-being it is the recurrence of this body reasserting, reinscribing, reiterative, repeating "Pollen condenses to mottled light on the ground. Assuming the sense of an activity/ links to the frame of its experience, weakness in the framing process makes our senses vulnerable . . . though nothing's unconnected in the world,/ your memory of a person casting strands across unfixed wild space sticky with pollen,/ and the moving frame of a child's hand inside the chest cavity of an animal beside a barrel cactus/ crowned with magenta flowers, how it stands in the world. The top is where growing crosses into the real./ The child turns toward an imaginary animal." Berssenbrugge, "Pollen" It's that incongruity, play or tension between framing and the senses, between the real and the imaginary, between lines (of flight) and poem, that's the body. Neither Rachel's poly-sexual and semantic, night-time slippage (writing's not just words having sex), nor Dodie's polarized daytime, x-ray abjection. I'm rooting for some in-between, some twilight here. The body IS a catachresis, but one that knows it's some. "Kleist invented a writing of this type, a broken chain of affects and variable speeds, with accelerations and transformations, always in relation with the outside. Open rings... designated by indefinite articles, or rather by partitives (*some* couchgrass, *some* of a rhizome...)" Deleuze & Guattari, *A Thousand Plateaus* yes bodies get dispossessed "this body has been raped" this body has been captured this body is beautiful this body is deformed this body has no face this body is natural this body does work this body does not work does an animal "have" a body? do we say, at sight of roadkill, "this body has been crushed"? Olson's sense of humans as objects to get the outside view that garners us as things to see culture as an embodied, material phenomena movement and conversion of material all the cars at this moment everywhere burning up the dinosaur shit all of the shit at this moment everywhere flowing into the rivers and seas can the animal "become" by virtue of its performativity as sexed being? don't know where gender fits except to say I'd agree its construction's tied in with personhood, with "having a face" that the category "human" can be no more nor less fundamental (than gender, race, class, age The human arises in the flesh of another the human looks into the eyes of the fish "which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. --It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light." Bishop, "The Fish" "The eyes of axolotls have no lids... So there was nothing strange in what happened. My face was pressed against the glass of the aquarium, my eyes were attempting once more to penetrate the mystery of those eyes of gold without iris, without pupil. I saw from very close up the face of an axolotl immobile next to the glass. No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the outside of the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood." Cortazar, "Axolotl" As far as the "senses" and the "real" go, I mean them in this orientation, as features of an outside: self ("my" body) as node in a chain of material/energy exchanges - transformer, always already "outside." "A liberation of sexuality not only from reproduction but also from genitality..." (D & G) Further, sensation outside the gaze immersed in a body of sounds every pore touches and is touched taken in, this body of air bodies inside of bodies bodies ingested, bodies excreted where does "mine" end and this other body, imprint of others begin ear shaped whorls of voices in the air where I touches other ears a body of scents chemicals ozone pollen molecules sprayed tastes & smells unfurl back of the palate house a body of bodies in movement, in work, reactions up & down through impeded spaces adjustments to shifts of scale chasing & being chased sniffing one anothers' shit getting tired caught & fucked & eaten proprioceptions you can't get on the Internet outside as "wilderness" repetition, iteration, unoriginal where there are no individuals out lost, swimming, wandering pathless hearthless woods without key or center ultimately uncognizable every time you return it's different every space you turn to is another nomad breathing exercise I needs to come out body unhoused and unhouseled rhizomatic, yes with multiple entryways and exits and bring the outside in to its packrat's den of a body chunks of world stuck with cactus velcro JS ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:48:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 4.5: numbered body diary/sex pistola - Elizabeth Treadwell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Four, Number Five numbered body diary/sex pistola by Elizabeth Treadwell "But, really, it is I who have invaded my own privacy." - Dodie Bellamy "the pantheism of it/remembering a light on the trees" - Linda Russo "It's each plastic, visionary hope chest" - Yedda Morrison "Gender is a nightmare. To inhabit, to enact one gender, to embody one gender all day and all night, everyday and every night is a nightmare." - Jocelyn Saidenberg "Wonder if any person really went anywhere, but here and there. We tried to remember the stately stories of our houses, until that too became a question which of us had gone really anywhere? And what were we?" - Mary Butts "Patriarchal poetry they do not do it right." - Gertrude Stein "...a condition which rendered us generally incomprehensible to the public at-large and placed us dangerously close to the possibility of being who we were with only impossible means of expressing ourselves." - Pamela Lu Pricetags like old banners still stuck to my forehead: December 11, 1999 1.) Re Rachel Blau du Plessis: There is a power negotiation inherent in the "gender" deal: one which invades - alters, disrupts, includes - the dream life (in my experience) & the writing. 2.) Re Brian Kim Stefans: There is a moment in your piece where "best poets" and "woman poets" are rendered yet again as mutually exclusive categories. Annoyingly and falsely as they ever were rendered so. December 17, 1999 Tenants in a Drama Not of Own Devising, Or Even Illusion Of Once again in David Lehman's *The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets*, women are shelved upon the side, when there at all. I admit to not knowing tons about the era and the place (apart from what any red-blooded global citizen knows instinctively) (which is why I'm reading the book, alongside a much more hilarious account, *The Golden Spur*, a fiction by Dawn Powell), but forgive me if I find it strange that listed as the key players are the group of four men - Ashbery, Koch, O'Hara, Schuyler - with Barbara Guest included in the list about every 2nd or 3rd time the group is so invoked. (Not terribly shockingly, Guest doesn't get her own chapter - that would be too confusing?) Even more troubling is the rendition of poor Jane Freilicher, a painter given a few establishing shots in order to portray her "pithy" personality (she reads like Margaret from "Dennis the Menace", or an early Shirley MacLaine character) that the men found so muse-worthy. And I do find it rather odd that whilst so much in Lehman's book is made of these gentlemen's "homosexuality" and openess to "heterodox ideas" the muse is so central to the author's (and authors' - ? -) configuration of a basis to their writing - the idea of the muse being, need I say, rather "hetero" and "ortho" - An instructor (Sarah Parker) I had as an undergraduate was researching the history of Cherokee women. Reading the Europeans' early records of several meetings with ambassadors from the tribe (nation) she found that whilst the people were recorded as male statesmen, descriptions of the garments and ornaments they wore sounded an awful lot like traditional women's wear (Parker had studied the "anthropology", aka the fashion). Her theory was that the European men couldn't even take in the fact that the Cherokee "allowed their women" this type of power and citizenship. Mine: oops, how much more easily the pronoun "him" slips off the quill. And so on, histories are - often - lost.* * Here I recommend 5 books: Dale Spender, *Mothers of the Novel* Joanna Russ, *How to Suppress Women's Writing* Gillian Hanscombe & Virginia L. Smyers, *Writing for Their Lives* Paula Gunn Allen, *The Sacred Hoop* Jimmie Durham, *A Certain Lack of Coherence* (tattoo you: here some material was excised & sent to list sometime early in 2000) May 10-11, 2000 sex pistola (in which my treatise is sideswiped by Aphra, a character in the novel I'm working on....) .. My careful notes deteriorated by force of their own crisp beattitudinal sidelines or been expunged for backstage trembling with my (historical) ego. (Neither his inner nor outer child was appealing.) Segue City deep mac stinky feet Cassandra was very popular, believing as she did Queen Slow-Ass's notes to an arrangement we all shared, the square horse track & 4 story mistakes of her mind, the pain & the idiocy, simple gonads, lumpier koala or whatever disrespect Bret Easton Ellis in a recent Harper's Bazaar says is more respectful than the original (canvas). creep ass fuck in fucking me in my father's house, fuck off. and also the flipside of this offbalance impassion, little boys learning to say fuck you and suck my dick, and they all say it, sweet little penny-balls hanging. Hubcap Sonnet # 17 oh mighty bridge of narcissism, free please & console me, natch (her confinement in Aragon), the trope of his body hair trope his like Jim Morrison with less air space, more competition, the world being so round lately, or sucking the dix of your forebears in public, how skin tags, ultra conservative pottery trading at the high coliseum, button-nosed allegorical half-thing, twin garananimals in the back of the plain amid hubcaps, see lots of little green men, any size but a trace, oh mighty bridge of narcissism, free please & console me Miss Timeless Yet Stylized Ornate Monsterfuck, butcherslut, wholesale reenactment with an umlaut as the New Yorkers lately pose; the orchard of mother in single time, disinhabiting the ones you love as you lie on the turnstile, rocky beach sandy-haired, sideline's clutter. The thing itself or some other unapproachable notion of it lies below. Separacism. Schizaplenty boombox, work it. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 19:49:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Administration Subject: Colloquium 4.6: Denatured Wryting - Alan Sondheim MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poetics List Colloquium: Group Four, Number Six Denatured Wryting by Alan Sondheim === 0000000 005012 053412 064562 062564 071440 067556 071567 064440 0000020 071556 071143 061151 020145 064164 020145 067542 074544 0000040 060440 062156 064440 071556 071143 061151 071545 072040 0000060 062550 061040 062157 020171 071167 072151 067151 020147 0000100 061141 072557 020164 062563 027170 052012 062550 061040 0000120 062157 020171 060564 062553 020163 064164 067562 063565 0000140 020150 074555 020440 000012 0000147 Write stones inscribe the body and inscribes the body writing about sex. The body takes through my ! A liberation of sexuality not only from reproduction but also from "dry" sex; for certainly one of the reasonable uses of social dancing is the "history" of another's body, the instability it occasions - that "option" of sex, of marking the body. This body has been raped and writes "A physical body writes about sex." hardly any of us could be taken in by this, the body of air, what hearing :writing it. It goes back to the sexually fucked-up catastrophe of naming -:materiality; the challenge is for writing to embody the body without:of the computer, which is a body, writing about its sex, immobilized, in:turmoil within. This body works and doesn't work, is faceless, and has splayed open for you. You write in its walls; you come/cum online you stop writing, start wryting, you type zjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss you type oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you type dksjssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssjjjjjj ikonic sizzle you type with lag sudden stop your screen freezes Don't know exactly where "my" body is in writing-- but as a fountain pen scribbling across paper, a body writes about sex. It inscribes sex and inscribes the body and inscribes the body writing about sex. The body takes away, erases, the inscription, having sex. I'm working towards a writing that subverts sexuality, a writing returning the repressed, turning it. Not the tidy container or body of "writing" but the clinical strokes of sex/body/writing standing for an absence of names resonating deeply, exhausted, emptied of all affect. no name or container no channel but flow meandering among, holding myself rigid like a natural kind, holding myself open like a signifier, labia mouthing nothing of language, of "emptied of all affect" precisely in- scribed on the body of the slave, of which culture turns about Your assertion names my of the computer, which is a body, writing about its sex, immobilized, in! assertion with ideogrammar thy grammyr whych maykes ytself, grammyr whych tumblys blyss of lyngage I'm having no problems with transgressive writing - a body of bodies a body of scents and this other body, the imprint of others, short-lived, they shall lose their names, which were short-lived. Once this body appears in writing, it is no longer this body - hence the body contact and sometimes sexual foreplay. I'm having no embarrassment over or within or devouring bodily fluids, from the body unhoused, transgressed. you can buy me hence th'contract; you can buy us hence th'exhibition; you can buy them hence culture; you can dissolve us; take out th'eyes/I's of th'Mitannian prisoners of war There's no sexual bragging, no description of interest. She writes, con- cerning the sexual chain of material/energy exchanges, like a transformer which always already champions the vulnerable, fractured, the disenfranch- ised. Sex is an option performance; the body has no discourse, no discur- sive content to be realized. This body has been crushed, and has no name. Do I have a body? Does an animal? do we celebrate, serrate body against body, rub raw labia and labia, cere- brate th'privilege of lost control, of pure display among th'dis/eased Have it doubled, tripled, mixed sexuality of everything all ways, a dream sex come forth polymorphous perverse after the oedipal. Give me toxicity; notice how the body quickens in forage, fucked-up, a female body having sex with another Australian female body, smearing the screen with menses, typing with me in ytalk. Reading debris through the debris. No way can it be stood against the gaze; it was her son taped the whole thing; I met him later there at the conference. Sex was nature; they were feral, living in the bush w/ others south of the city. Enjoy them immersed in sounds, in the recurrence of bodies. y lyved yn thy syth yf thy cyty, "Would you please recite the Sutra, as I cannot read it myself." (Hui Neng.) Tt is the recurrence of this body language, this "set of experiences" - words that others might deem horrible, ask for names, I won't give them. Look at what might be deemed vulnerable, slipping in the night - writing is more than words having sex, night-sex, against the fractured and disenfranchised, choreography of the body or its lack, of orientation, of insides against or among outsides, or their lack thereof. when fucking intersperses themselves among thine words, layerings readyng- wrytyng thys, you will place your hands and fyngers there among the words in thyse placys I'm a node in the other, interspersed among they're language, are we? Not to perform or mince words, they don't, yet they're pierced, have a tattoo, ARE. The poem's not it, nor is poly-sexual or semantic pose a prose in too many anecdotes. So the abstraction of the "body" is a thereof, therefore is a therefore. "Please recite, please stop speaking in quagmire, please: operative." "17 rm h hh 18 grep body gg > h 19 wc h 20 grep trans gg >> h 21 grep language gg >> h 22 wc h 23 grep sex gg >> h 24 wc h 25 sort h > gg; rm h; ls 26 mv gg ww; pico ww" in the bush w/ others south of the city. Enjoy them immersed in sounds, in:him later there at the conference. Sex was nature; they were feral, living:be stood against the gaze; it was her son who taped the whole thing; I met:been grabbed, natural and deformed. Think of it as a human, faceless and:many anecdotes. So the abstraction of the "body" is a thereof, therefore sweetly lying in bed, or so entirely unnatural, so the clasping, arms bound, mouths open, always the formless word, labial To regain privacy, I have sexualized myself, stiffened in public, useless male scrawled across others - referents, dialects, valencies, fissures, separations, slidings-across, and refusing to give up the pre-discursive. The body comes forth from its abstraction, because she's transgressive without bragging, that writing that champions the vulnerable and frac- tured. Phallacy, no phallic or gizmo, juxtaposed with shape and juice. The body who has sex enjoys the stance of the body who has sex, although there's some twilight here. The body's a catachresis knowing specific materialtiy; the challenge is for writing to embody the body without writing it. It goes back to the sexually fucked-up catastrophe of naming - hardly any of us could be taken in by this, the body of air, what hearing is, what speaking is for, and around, that matter. scrawling of useless mail, "is faceless," was the doing around http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/l someone somewhen somewhere Your hands turmoil within. This body works and doesn't work, is faceless, and has is above my rocks The computer, a body, writes about sex. The keyboard and monitor are part of the computer, which is a body, writing about its sex, immobilized, in turmoil within. This body works and doesn't work, is faceless, and has been grabbed, natural and deformed. Think of it as a human, faceless and maybe what could or would be meant by transgressive. ARE. The poem's not it, nor is poly-sexual or semantic pose a prose in too:::away, erases, the inscription, having sex. I'm working towards a writing:tured. Phallacy, no phallic or gizmo, juxtaposed with shape and juice. - denatured wryting 0000000 051101 027105 052040 062550 070040 062557 023555 020163 0000020 067556 020164 072151 020054 067556 020162 071551 070040 0000040 066157 026571 062563 072570 066141 067440 020162 062563 0000060 060555 072156 061551 070040 071557 020145 020141 071160 0000100 071557 020145 067151 005040 067564 035157 035072 073541 0000120 074541 020054 071145 071541 071545 020054 064164 020145 0000140 067151 061563 064562 072160 067551 026156 064040 073141 0000160 067151 020147 062563 027170 044440 066447 073440 071157 0000200 064553 063556 072040 073557 071141 071544 060440 073412 0000220 064562 064564 063556 072072 071165 062145 020056 064120 0000240 066141 060554 074543 020054 067556 070040 060550 066154 0000260 061551 067440 020162 064547 066572 026157 065040 074165 0000300 060564 067560 062563 020144 064567 064164 071440 060550 0000320 062560 060440 062156 065012 064565 062543 005056 000012 0000337 ===